Tongusians, the Greenlanders, the Esthonians, the Australians, the
Peruvians, and a host of other savage and barbarous peoples. They not
only animate and personify material objects, but even diseases and their
remedies.

The incubus, for example, termed _Mara_ in Northern mythology, was the
spirit which tormented sleepers. This is the _Mar_ of the German
proverb: _Dich hat greitten der Mar_. The word is derived from _Mar_, a
horse, and becomes _nightmare_ in English, _Cauchemar_ in French,
[Greek: Ephialtês] in Greek, meaning one which rides upon another. So
with epilepsy, which signifies the act of being seized by any one; it
was, like all nervous diseases, held to be a sacred evil, and those
afflicted by it were supposed to be possessed. Insanity was regarded in
the same way, as we see in the Bible where Saul's melancholy is said to
be an evil spirit sent from God. A furious madman was supposed to have
been carried off by a demon, and in Persia the insane were said to be
God's fools. In Tahiti they were called _Eatooa_, that is, possessed by
a divine spirit; and in the Sandwich Isles they were worshipped as men
into whom a divinity had entered. In German the _plica polonica_ is
called _Alpzopf_, or hobgoblin's tail. All nations believed that the
malign beings which animated diseases could, like men, be propitiated by
ceremonies and incantations. The Redskins are always in fear of the
assaults of evil spirits, and have recourse to incantations, and to the
most absurd sacerdotal rites, or to the influence of their _manitu_, in
order to be safe. Their devotions and sacrifices are prompted by fear
rather than by gratitude.

Tanner mentions, in his "Narrative of a Captivity among the Indians,"
that he once heard a convalescent patient reproved for his imprudence in
exposing himself to the air, since his shade had not altogether come