of treating the afterbirth or navel-string in ways which are supposed to influence for life the character and career of the person, making him, if it is a man, a nimble climber, a strong swimmer, a skilful hunter, or a brave soldier, and making her, if it is a woman, a cunning sempstress, a good baker, and so forth. Thus the beliefs and usages concerned with the afterbirth or placenta, and to a
less extent with the navel-string, present a remarkable parallel to the widespread doctrine of the transferable or external soul and
the customs founded on it. Hence it is hardly rash to conjecture that the resemblance is no mere chance coincidence, but that in the
afterbirth or placenta we have a physical basis (not necessarily the only one) for the theory and practice of the external soul. The
consideration of that subject is reserved for a later part of this work.
A curious application of the doctrine of contagious magic is the relation commonly believed to exist between a wounded man and the agent of the wound, so that whatever is subsequently done by or to the agent must correspondingly affect the patient either for good or evil. Thus Pliny tells us that if you have wounded a man and are sorry for it, you have only to spit on the hand that gave the wound, and the pain of the sufferer will be instantly alleviated. In Melanesia, if a man's friends get possession of the arrow which wounded him, they keep it in a damp place or in cool leaves, for then the inflammation will be trifling and will soon subside. Meantime the enemy who shot the arrow is hard at work to aggravate the wound by all the means in his power. For this purpose he and
his friends drink hot and burning juices and chew irritating leaves, for this will clearly inflame and irritate the wound. Further, they keep the bow near the fire to make the wound which it has inflicted hot; and for the same reason they put the arrow-head, if it has been recovered, into the fire. Moreover, they are careful to keep the bow-string taut and to twang it occasionally, for this will cause the wounded man to suffer from tension of the nerves and spasms of tetanus. "It is constantly received and avouched," says Bacon,
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"that the anointing of the weapon that maketh the wound will heal the wound itself. In this experiment, upon the relation of men
of credit (though myself, as yet, am not fully inclined to believe it), you shall note the points following: first, the ointment wherewith
this is done is made of divers ingredients, whereof the strangest and hardest to come by are the moss upon the skull of a dead man
unburied, and the fats of a boar and a bear killed in the act of generation." The precious ointment compounded out of these and
other ingredients was applied, as the philosopher explains, not to the wound but to the weapon, and that even though the injured
man was at a great distance and knew nothing about it. The experiment, he tells us, had been tried of wiping the ointment off the
weapon without the knowledge of the person hurt, with the result that he was presently in a great rage of pain until the weapon was
anointed again. Moreover, "it is affirmed that if you cannot get the weapon, yet if you put an instrument of iron or wood resembling
the weapon into the wound, whereby it bleedeth, the anointing of that instrument will serve and work the effect." Remedies of the
sort which Bacon deemed worthy of his attention are still in vogue in the eastern counties of England. Thus in Suffolk if a man cuts
himself with a bill-hook or a scythe he always takes care to keep the weapon bright, and oils it to prevent the wound from fester-
ing. If he runs a thorn or, as he calls it, a bush into his hand, he oils or greases the extracted thorn. A man came to a doctor with an
inflamed hand, having run a thorn into it while he was hedging. On being told that the hand was festering, he remarked, "That didn't
ought to, for I greased the bush well after I pulled it out." If a horse wounds its foot by treading on a nail, a Suffolk groom will
invariably preserve the nail, clean it, and grease it every day, to prevent the foot from festering. Similarly Cambridgeshire labourers
think that if a horse has run a nail into its foot, it is necessary to grease the nail with lard or oil and put it away in some safe place,
or the horse will not recover. A few years ago a veterinary surgeon was sent for to attend a horse which had ripped its side open on
the hinge of a farm gatepost. On arriving at the farm he found that nothing had been done for the wounded horse, but that a man
was busy trying to pry the hinge out of the gatepost in order that it might be greased and put away, which, in the opinion of the
Cambridge wiseacres, would conduce to the recovery of the animal. Similarly Essex rustics opine that, if a man has been stabbed
with a knife, it is essential to his recovery that the knife should be greased and laid across the bed on which the sufferer is lying. So in
Bavaria you are directed to anoint a linen rag with grease and tie it on the edge of the axe that cut you, taking care to keep the sharp
edge upwards. As the grease on the axe dries, your wound heals. Similarly in the Harz Mountains they say that if you cut yourself,
you ought to smear the knife or the scissors with fat and put the instrument away in a dry place in the name of the Father, of the
Son, and of the Holy Ghost. As the knife dries, the wound heals. Other people, however, in Germany say that you should stick the
knife in some damp place in the ground, and that your hurt will heal as the knife rusts. Others again, in Bavaria, recommend you to
smear the axe or whatever it is with blood and put it under the eaves.
The train of reasoning which thus commends itself to English and German rustics, in common with the savages of Melanesia and America, is carried a step further by the aborigines of Central Australia, who conceive that under certain circumstances the near relations of a wounded man must grease themselves, restrict their diet, and regulate their behaviour in other ways in order to ensure his recovery. Thus when a lad has been circumcised and the wound is not yet healed, his mother may not eat opossum, or a certain kind of lizard, or carpet snake, or any kind of fat, for otherwise she would retard the healing of the boy's wound. Every day she greases her digging-sticks and never lets them out of her sight; at night she sleeps with them close to her head. No one is allowed
to touch them. Every day also she rubs her body all over with grease, as in some way this is believed to help her son's recovery. Another refinement of the same principle is due to the ingenuity of the German peasant. It is said that when one of his pigs or sheep breaks its leg, a farmer of Rhenish Bavaria or Hesse will bind up the leg of a chair with bandages and splints in due form. For some days thereafter no one may sit on that chair, move it, or knock up against it; for to do so would pain the injured pig or sheep and hinder the cure. In this last case it is clear that we have passed wholly out of the region of contagious magic and into the region of homoeopathic or imitative magic; the chair-leg, which is treated instead of the beast's leg, in no sense belongs to the animal, and the application of bandages to it is a mere simulation of the treatment which a more rational surgery would bestow on the real patient.
The sympathetic connexion supposed to exist between a man and the weapon which has wounded him is probably founded on the notion that the blood on the weapon continues to feel with the blood in his body. For a like reason the Papuans of Tumleo, an island off New Guinea, are careful to throw into the sea the bloody bandages with which their wounds have been dressed, for they fear that if these rags fell into the hands of an enemy he might injure them magically thereby. Once when a man with a wound in his mouth, which bled constantly, came to the missionaries to be treated, his faithful wife took great pains to collect all the blood and cast it into