eaten by the spirit that took him; and though the soul of one thus devoured would go to the common spirit-land of the departed, yet it would have no power of speech there, and if questioned could but beat its breast. It completes this account to notice that the disease-inflicting souls of the departed were the same which possessed the living under more favourable circumstances, coming to talk through a certain member of the family, prophesying future events, and giving directions as to family affairs.[1] Farther east, in the Georgian and Society Islands, evil demons are sent to scratch and tear people into convulsions and hysterics, to torment poor wretches as with barbed hooks, or to twist and knot inside them till they die writhing in agony. But madmen are to be treated with great respect, as entered by a god, and idiots owe the kindness with which they are appeased and coaxed to the belief in their superhuman inspiration.[2] Here, and elsewhere in the lower culture, the old real belief has survived which has passed into a jest of civilized men in the famous phrase of the 'inspired idiot.'
American ethnography carries on the record of rude races ascribing disease to the action of evil spirits. Thus the Dacotas believe that the spirits punish them for misconduct, especially for neglecting to make feasts for the dead; these spirits have the power to send the spirit of something, as of a bear, deer, turtle, fish, tree, stone, worm, or deceased person, which entering the patient causes disease; the medicine-man's cure consists in reciting charms over him, singing 'He-le-li-lah, &c.,' to the accompaniment of a gourd-rattle with beads inside, ceremonially shooting a symbolic bark representation of the intruding creature, sucking over the seat of pain to get the spirit out, and
- ↑ Turner, 'Polynesia,' p. 236.
- ↑ Ellis, 'Polyn. Res.' vol. i. pp. 363, 395, &c., vol. ii. pp. 193, 274; Cook, '3rd Voy.' vol. iii. p. 131. Details of the superhuman character ascribed to weak or deranged persons among other races, in Schoolcraft, part iv. p. 49; Martius, vol i. p. 633; Meiners, vol. i. p. 323; Waitz, vol. ii. p. 181.
