Clement of Alexandria says that all superstition arises from the inveterate habit of mankind to make gods like themselves. The deities have like passions with their worshippers, “and some say that plagues, and hailstorms, and tempests, and the like, are wont to take place, not alone in consequence of material disturbance, but also through the anger of demons and bad angels. These can only be appeased by sacrifice and incantations. Yet some of them are easily satisfied, for when animals failed, it sufficed for the magi at Cleone to bleed their own fingers.”[58]
“The prophetess Diotima, by the Athenians offering sacrifice previous to the pestilence, effected a delay of the plague for ten years.”[59]
MAGIC AND SORCERY IN THE TREATMENT OF DISEASE.
These originated partly in the Desire to cover Ignorance.—Medicine-men.—Sucking out Diseases.—Origin of Exorcism.—Ingenuity of the Priests.—Blowing Disease away.—Beelzebub cast out by Beelzebub.—Menders of Souls.—”Bringing up the Devil.“—Diseases and Medicines.—Fever Puppets.—Amulets.—Totemism and Medicine.
Dr. Robertson tells us that the ignorant pretenders to medical skill amongst the North American Indians were compelled to cover their ignorance concerning the structure of the human body, and the causes of its diseases, by imputing the origin of the maladies which they failed to cure to supernatural influences of a baleful sort. They therefore “prescribed or performed a variety of mysterious rites, which they gave out to be of such efficacy as to remove the most dangerous and inveterate malice. The credulity and love of the marvellous natural to uninformed men favoured the deception, and prepared them to be the dupes of those impostors. Among savages, their first physicians are a kind of conjurers, or wizards, who boast that they know what is past, and can foretell what is to come. Thus, superstition, in its earliest form, flowed from the solicitude of man to be delivered from present distress, not from his dread of evils awaiting him in a future life, and was originally ingrafted on medicine, not on religion. One of the first and most intelligent historians of America was struck with this alliance between the art of divination and that of physic among the people of Hispaniola. But this was not peculiar to them. The _Alexis_, the _Piayas_, the _Autmoins_, or whatever was the distinguishing name of the diviners and charmers in other parts of America, were all physicians of their respective tribes, in the same manner as the _Buhitos_ of Hispaniola. As their function led them to apply to the human mind when enfeebled by sickness, and as they found it, in that season of dejection, prone to be alarmed with imaginary fears, or assured with vain hopes, they easily induced it to rely with implicit confidence on the virtue of their spells and the certainty of their predictions.”[60]