Page:Transactions of the Second International Folk-Congress.djvu/293

 life, we can understand that the most natural way to prevent a fatal issue would be to increase the store of life in the sufferer as much as possible. We shall, perhaps, understand this better if we first look at the curative application of saliva. For example, you will recollect a curious recipe Pliny gives us for curing a crick in the neck. It consists in rubbing the sufferer's thighs with another man's fasting-spittle. It was also the favourite cure of my old nurse for our growing-pains. Then everyone knows that it was by the direct application of his saliva that our Saviour cured the blind and dumb.

Now let us see if blood is ever used as a salve for curative purposes. There are many examples. Among certain tribes in Australia, we are told that it is usual, when one of their number is sick, for the other members of the family to draw blood from their own bodies, and give it him to drink; and among the Guamos of the Orinocco we read that it is the duty of the chief, on the occasion of a clansman falling ill, to draw some blood from his own body for the purpose of anointing the stomach of the invalid, and thereby infusing new life into his vitiated system. But we have seen that life is believed to be existent in the saliva, and capable of being transferred in it. Therefore, when we find instances of people spitting to cure disease of any kind, I think we may infer that they are really actuated by the same motive as the Australians or the Orinocco chiefs when they give their blood to their sick tribesmen.

And now we may understand the full significance of the spitting at the Roman lustration ceremony. It does not keep witchcraft away: it only makes the child better able to resist and survive it. Why? Because its weak store of life has been implemented with the strong life of its maturer relatives passed on to it in their saliva.

In the same way, I think we can account for the practice of spitting to avoid infection; and an instance quoted by Mr. Turner of what he saw done in Samoa seems to throw some light upon the question. He tells us that among the Samoans, when a man was ill, his relatives used to assemble to "confess and throw out", as it was called. That is to say, each man confessed whether he had wished the invalid any evil, and, in order to show that he