Behind this rationale, however, there lies perhaps the idea of association of death with the fœtor of decomposition and the expectation that a pleasant aromatic odour will naturally “obviate the tendency to death.” This view of the matter must have become strengthened among nations like the ancient Egyptians, who had discovered that aromatic substances might be relied upon to preserve the body after death. Even in recent times and countries similar customs have prevailed. Scott in “The Bride of Lammermoor” tells us that rosemary, southernwood, rue and other plants were in Scotland strewn on the body after death, and were “burned by way of fumigation in the chimney.”
Be that as it may, we find fumigation employed all over the world as a rite of purification, particularly during the menstrual and puerperal periods, women being at those times regarded as unclean or taboo.
Later, in the natural course of evolution, fumigation comes under the category of anti-demoniac remedies.
When disease was ascribed to the operation of demons in residence in the patient’s body, a belief at one time world-wide in its distribution, the treatment mostly relied upon to cure the disease, and, granting the premises, a perfectly rational therapeutic method, was by various devices to render the patient’s body too uncomfortable for the demon. And among many other modes of securing this desirable end was the smoking of the demon out by strong odours, fumes being generated around the patient by burning horns, hair, and certain odoriferous woods and plants. Among the Chippeway Indians, we are told, a species of cypress was set on fire for this purpose, and the efficacy of the remedy was heightened by the needle-shaped leaves of the tree flying off and sticking in the spirit.
Sometimes a medical man may feel disposed to smile when he sees the priest in church “censing” the Bible in order to drive away the evil one before he begins to read it. Yet fumigation has lingered on long in medicine as well as in religion. During the severe epidemics of cholera in Egypt not so many years ago, hundreds of pounds weekly were spent upon bonfires of sulphur in the streets of Cairo, a method of disinfection more likely to drive off demons than to destroy the comma bacillus in the drinking-water!