The fact that ghosts and demons are everywhere believed to cause diseases, and that sorcery is practised more or less by most of the races of man in connection with the causation or cure of disease, has been used as a factor in the argument for the origin of primitive man from a single pair in accordance with the orthodox belief. Dr. Pickering, the ethnologist, says: “Superstitions also appear to be subject to the same laws of progression with communicated knowledge, and the belief in ghosts, evil spirits, and sorcery, current among the ruder East Indian tribes, in Madagascar, and in a great part of Africa, seems to indicate that such ideas may have elsewhere preceded a regular form of mythology.”[41]
There has long been practised in the West Indies a species of witchcraft called _Obeah_ or _Obi_, supposed to have been introduced from Africa, and which is in reality an ingenious system of poisoning. Mr. Bowrey, Government chemist in Jamaica, connects Obeah-poisoning with a plant which grows abundantly in Jamaica and other West Indian islands, called the “savannah flower,” or “yellow-flowered nightshade” (_Urechites suberecta_).[42]
Mr. Bowrey concludes that there is some truth in the stories told of the poisoning by Obeah-men, and that minute doses, frequently administered, might cause death without suspicion being aroused. The _British Medical Journal_, June 18th, 1892, has the following interesting notes on Obeah (p. 1296):—
“It is difficult to obtain detailed information regarding Obeah practices. They rest largely on the credence given to superstitious practices and vulgar quackery by the uneducated in every country, but there seems little doubt that among them secret poisoning is included. Benjamin Moseley (_Medical Tracts_, London, 1800) states that Obi had its origin, like many customs among the Africans, from the ancient Egyptians, _Ob_ meaning a demon or magic. Villiers-Stuart (_Jamaica Revisited_, 1891) says that Obeah in the West African dialects signifies serpent, and that the Obeah-men in Jamaica carry (but in greatest secrecy, for fear of the penal laws) a stick on which is carved a serpent, the emblem being a relic of the serpent worship once universal among mankind, and also that they sacrifice cocks at their religious rites. Moseley gives the following account: ‘Obi, for the purposes of bewitching people or consuming them by lingering illness, is made of grave-dirt, hair, teeth of sharks and other animals, blood, feathers,’ and so on. Mixtures of these are placed in various ways near the person to be bewitched. ‘The victims to this nefarious art in the West Indies among the negroes are numerous. No humanity of the master nor skill in medicine can relieve the poor negro labouring under the influence of Obi. He will surely die, and of a disease that answers no description in nosology. This, when I first went to the colonies, perplexed me. Laws have been made in the West Indies to punish the Obian practice with death, but they have been impotent and nugatory. Laws constructed in the West Indies can never suppress the effect of ideas, the origin of which is in the centre of Africa.’ ‘A negro Obi-man will administer a baleful dose from poisonous herbs, and calculate its mortal effects to an hour, day, week, month, or year.’ The missionaries Waddell (_Twenty-nine Years in the West Indies and Central Africa_, 1863) and Blyth (_Reminiscences of Missionary Life_, 1851) confirm this account. They are all agreed that similar practices prevail in West and Central Africa, and that Jamaican Obeah-men use poisons. Mr. Bowrey informs me that he has examined many Obeah charms, and confirms Moseley’s account of them. He thinks, however, that among the negroes the knowledge of poisons has been rapidly dying out, ‘doctor’s medicine’ and the much-advertised patent medicines having largely replaced the drugs of the native practitioners. The belief in Obeah is still, however, almost universal among the black population. According to Sir Spencer St. John (_Hayti, or the Black Republic_, second edition, London, 1889) secret poisoning is a lucrative occupation in the neighbouring island of Hayti, certain of the people having an intimate knowledge of indigenous poisonous plants and being expert poisoners.”