back to abide within him. For this purpose, and in conformity with such
ideas, when the sorcerer _Malgaco_ wishes to cure a sick man, he makes a
hole in a tomb to let out the spirit, which he then takes in his cap,
and constrains it to enter the patient's head. The process of disease is
supposed to be a struggle between the sick person and the evil spirit of
sickness. The Greek-word, _prophylakê_ signifies the arrangements of
outposts. _Agonia_ is the hottest moment of conflict, and _krisis_ the
decisive day of battle, as we see in Polybius, liii., c. 89. Medicine
was from the earliest times confounded with magic, which is only the
primitive form of the conception of nature. The Aryan rulers in India in
ancient times believed that the savage races were autochthonic workers
of magic who were able to assume any form they pleased.[14] The negro
priests of fetish worship believe that they can pronounce on the disease
without seeing the patient, by the aid of his garments or of anything
which belongs to him.[15] The superstition of the evil eye recurs in
Vedic India, as well as among many other peoples. In the Rig-Veda the
wife is exhorted not to look upon her husband with an evil eye. There
was the same belief among the ancient Greeks, and it is also found in
the _oculus fascinus_ of the Romans, and the German _böses Auge_. The
early German _Rito_, or fever, was a spirit (_Alb_) which rode upon the
sick man. A passage in the Rig-Veda states that demons assume the form
of an owl, cock, wolf, etc.[16] Such was the primitive attitude of the
transfusion of individual psychical life into things, and consequently
of general metamorphosis. Kuhn identifies the Greek verb [Greek: iaomai]
with the Sanscrit _yavayami_, to avert, and in the Rig-Veda this verb is
used in connection with _amivä_, disease; so that it was necessary to
drive away the demon, as the cause of sickness. A physician, according
to the meaning of the old Sanscrit word, was the exorciser of disease,
the man who fought with its demon. We find the practice of incantations
as a remedy for disease in use among the ancient Greeks, the Romans, and