Medicine amongst certain tribes has a connection with the adoration of particular objects and animals believed to be related to each separate stock or blood-kindred of human beings, and which is known in anthropology as totemism. The Algonquin Indians use the name, Bear, Wolf, Tortoise, Deer, or Rabbit to designate each of a number of clans into which the race is divided. The animal is considered as an ancestor or protector of the tribe.
In considering the institutions of “totemism” and “medicine,” we must not forget that savage “medicine” has a function somewhat different from that of medicine in our sense of the word. Some doubt if there be any real distinction between the totem and the medicine.[75]
Schoolcraft says that among the Sioux a clan consists of individuals who use the same roots for medicine, and they are initiated into the clan by a great _medicine-dance_. The Sioux and other tribes make a bag out of the skin of the medicine (totem?) animal, which acts as a talisman, and is inherited by the son. Here we have an instance of the reverence inspired by an inherited medicine. It is a little surprising that we have so few evidences of the worship of healing herbs and drugs.
Demon-worship is the explanation of the mysteries of Dionysus Zagreus and the Chthonic and Bacchic orgies. M. Reclus says: “If we knew nothing otherwise of these orgies, we could obtain a sufficiently correct idea of them by visiting the Ghâts, the Neilgherries, and the Vindhyas.”[76]
[Illustration: THE MEDICINE-DANCE OF THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. [_Face p._ 32.]
Bleeding.—Scarification.—Use of Medicinal Herbs amongst the Aborigines of Australia, South America, Africa, etc.
The Healing Craft of many of the northern tribes of Australia is thus described by Mr. Palmer:—
“Among the northern tribes many devices and charms are resorted to in the cases of pains and sickness. The doctors are men who, it is supposed, possess great powers of healing, some of which they obtain from the spirits. They use stones and crystals to put away sickness from any one, and sometimes they bandage the afflicted part with string tightly till no part of the skin is visible. One common plan of alleviating pain is by bleeding, supposing that the pain comes away with the blood. For this minute cuts are made through the skin with pieces of broken flint, or the edge of a broken mussel-shell, over the part affected, and the blood is wiped off with a stick. Sometimes the doctor ties a string from the sick place, say the chest, and rubs the end of it across his gums, spitting into a kooliman of water, and passing the string through also; he then points to the blood in the water as evidence of his skill in drawing it from the sick person. Stones are sucked out with the mouth, and exhibited as having been taken from the body. A good number of plants are used in sickness as drinks, and for external application. A broken arm is cured with splints made of bark and wound round tightly. Snake-bite is cured by scarifying and sucking the wound, and by then using a poultice of box-bark, bruised and heated.”[77]