BLACK ART IN MALAY MEDICINE 89 



it also figures largely in the medico-magical practices of 

 Anglo-Saxon medicine (Kef. 5). 



I have known the mental distress of two native 

 patients relieved in Kota Bharu hj the performance of 

 permaimn pMiri : one was the w^ife of my gardener, 

 'Che Lima, a Keiantan woman who invited me to witness 

 the night-long performance ; the other w^as a Portu- 

 guese Eurasian, wife of a Government clerk, who suffered 

 from hysteria following forcible massage used by Malay 

 women to procure an abortion. *Che Lima had suf- 

 fered a long, indefinite iUness following a confinement, 

 and had been treated as an out-patient at the State 

 hospital for some time. It is not improbable that the 

 cure in both these cases was due to suggestion. 'Che 

 Lima was one of those who " likes to take medicine." 



The demoniac theoiy of medicine is of very ancient 

 origin. It is derived largely from the civiHsation of the 

 Tigris and Euphrates. Dr. Charles Singer, in an 

 address to the Boyal Academy (1920) says : " Besides 

 the orighial stratum of demonism in Greek medicine 

 which was presumably drawn more directly from 

 Babylonian sources, much new belief concerning demons 

 has been introduced into the Greek system by Chris- 

 tianity, and has been propagated from an early date by 

 the spread of that religion in the West. The pathology 

 of the New Testament is mainly demoniac and many 

 of the miracles of healing are exorcisms* There were 

 devils of blindness, dumbness, madness and epilepsy, 

 and Luke the physician regarded the * great fever ' of 

 Simon's wife's mother in the hght of a demon, for Jesus, 

 he says, ' stood over her and rebuked the fever ; and it 

 left her.' So also the infirmities of Mary Magdalene 

 were of the nature of seven evil spirits^ — the demons of 

 early Christianity, like those of the Mesopotamian 

 system, were often grouped in sevens — ^and Peter con- 



