Medicine, Magic and Religion

W.H.R. Rivers

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415254038
• eBook ISBN: 9781134524549
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

One of the most fascinating men of his generation, W.H.R. Rivers was a British doctor and psychiatrist as well as a leading ethnologist. Immortalized as the hero of Pat Barker's award-winning Regeneration trilogy, Rivers was the clinician who, in the First World War, cared for the poet Siegfried Sassoon and other infantry officers injured on the western front. His researches into the borders of psychiatry, medicine and religion made him a prominent member of the British intelligentsia of the time, a friend of H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw and Bertrand Russell. Part of his appeal lay in an extraordinary intellect, mixed with a very real interest in his fellow man. Medicine, Magic and Religion is a prime example of this. A social institution, it is one of Rivers' finest works. In it, Rivers introduced the then revolutionary idea that indigenous practices are indeed rational, when viewed in terms of religious beliefs.

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Medicine, magic, and religion are abstract-terms, each of which connotes a large group of social processes, processes by means of which mankind has come to regulate his behaviour towards the world around him. Among ourselves these three groups of process are more or less sharply marked off from one another. One has gone altogether into the background of our social life, while the other two form distinct social categories widely different from one another, and having few elements in common. If we survey mankind widely this distinction and separation do not exist. There are many peoples among whom the three sets of social process are so closely inter-related that the disentanglement of each from the rest is difficult or impossible; while there are yet other peoples among whom the social processes to which we give the name of Medicine can hardly be said to exist, so closely is man’s attitude towards disease identical with that which he adopts towards other classes of natural phenomena.

METHODS OF INQUIRY

In any attempt to study a social institution there are three chief lines of approach and methods of inquiry. We may examine the institution historically, seeking to learn how it has been built up, how this advance has taken place here and that there; we may study the social conditions under which it has progressed in one place, been stationary in another, and degenerated in a third; and we may attempt to go back to its origin, and ascertain the steps by which it has become differentiated from other institutions, and has acquired an independent existence.

A second method is the psychological. We may attempt to study the states of mind, individual and collective, which underlie the acts, again individual and collective, the sum of which make up the institution in question.

The third method, which may be called the sociological method, is the inquiry into the relations of the social processes which we are attempting to study to other social processes, in order to determine the interactions between the two.

Since the object of the FitzPatrick Lectures is the study of the history of medicine, it might seem that the first of these three lines of inquiry should form their subject. This would certainly be so if medicine were everywhere the independent and self-contained institution which it is among ourselves; but if my opening statement is correct this is very far from being the case. A necessary preliminary to any knowledge of its history must be the study of its relations to those other social processes with which it is associated. This preliminary task will occupy us in these lectures, which will deal with certain prolegomena to the early history of medicine, rather than with the history of medicine itself.

It would be quite impossible within the scope of this book to deal with the subject exhaustively. My object will be rather to consider lines of inquiry by which the subject may be studied; and for this purpose I shall limit myself as far as possible to one part of the world, viz. Melanesia and New Guinea, which have been especially the field of my own researches, with occasional references to the allied culture of Australia. The time has gone by in sociology when we tried to understand human institutions by comparing examples taken at random from every part of the world. The present trend¹ in the science which deals with these matters is to limit inquiries to a series of related peoples. If we reach conclusions by means of such inquiries, we can then proceed to see if they will apply in other parts of the world.

DEFINITION OF THE SOCIAL PROCESSES

I must begin by defining the three kinds of social process which are to be the subject of our study. The distinction between magic and religion is one which has long tried the ingenuity of students of human society. Among many peoples, including those with whom this book will especially deal, it is far from easy to draw any definite line between the two, and we need a term which will include both. A word which is sometimes used in this sense in English is magico-religious, and, in default of a better, I shall use it occasionally in this book. The use of this word will imply a certain attitude towards the world. If the matter be looked at from our point of view, this attitude would be one in which phenomena are dealt with by supernatural means. I say if regarded from our point of view because, of course, the use of the word supernatural implies the existence of the concept of the natural, and it is just this concept, as we have it, which is lacking among the people with whom I shall deal. The essence of medicine, as we now understand it, is that it regards disease as a phenomenon subject to natural laws, to be treated as we treat any other department of nature. The distinction between the attitude of the modern practitioner of medicine and the magico-religious attitude depends on the difference in the concept of disease in the two cases. One chief object of this book will be to discover what is the nature of the concept of disease among those who fail to distinguish medicine from magic and religion.

While the main topic will thus be the nature of the concept of disease among certain peoples of rude culture, and the relation of this concept to those underlying magic and religion, it will be interesting to pay attention to the distinction between these two groups of social process. A full study of this distinction would take us too far from our main subject, and I must be content to use a provisional distinction, which will be useful for descriptive purposes. When I speak of magic, I shall mean a group of processes in which man uses rites which depend for their efficacy on his own power, or on powers believed to be inherent in, or the attributes of, certain objects and processes which are used in these rites. Religion, on the other hand, will comprise a group of processes, the efficacy of which depends on the will of some higher power, some power whose intervention is sought by rites of supplication and propitiation. Religion differs from magic in that it involves the belief in some power in the universe greater than that of man himself.

Magic and religion are thus differentiated from one another by their attitude towards the means by which man seeks to influence the universe around him. Medicine, on the other hand, is a term for a set of social practices by which man seeks to direct and control a specific group of natural phenomena—viz. those especially affecting man himself, which so influence his behaviour as to unfit him for the normal accomplishment of his physical and social functions—phenomena which lower his vitality and tend towards death. By a process of generalization, society has come to classify these phenomena together, and has distinguished them from other groups of natural phenomena under the name of disease. As I have already said, one of the chief tasks of this book will be to ascertain how far this notion of disease, this category of the morbid, exists among the peoples included in our field of study; and we shall do this mainly by means of an inquiry into the processes by which man reacts to those phenomena we call morbid.

CONCEPT OF DISEASE BY VARIOUS PEOPLES

One way of approaching the problem will be to inquire how far different groups of mankind have set apart certain members of the community to deal with the morbid. When we have evidence of such division and specialization of social functions, we shall have at the same time definite evidence that those who have reached this specialization of function have also reached a stage of thought in which they separate morbid from other natural phenomena. One point of nomenclature may be considered here. In dealing with the subject of medicine from the comparative point of view, and among peoples of rude culture, we are met by a difficulty arising out of the wealth of the English language in terms for practitioners of the healing art. When in this book I am to speak of those members of the community whose special business it is to deal with disease, am I to call them doctors, medical-men, medicine-men, physicians, or what? Medicine-men might seem the most appropriate of these, in that it is not a term used of our own practitioners, and will thus carry with it no connotation derived from our civilization. It suffers, however, from the disadvantage that it comes to be widely used in anthropological literature for sorcerers and dealers in various forms of magic, who may have no dealing with the morbid, and certainly exercise no therapeutical activities. I propose therefore, to use the old English term “leech”. When I speak of a leech I shall mean a member of society whose special function it is to deal with the cure of disease. He may have other functions, such as the formation of rain, the promotion of vegetation, or even the production of disease itself; but in so far as he is dealing with the cure of disease be will he, in the nomenclature I shall use, a leech.

One of the methods, then, by which we may seek to ascertain how far different peoples of the world distinguish morbid from other natural phenomena is by inquiring how far they distinguish the leech from the sorcerer or the priest. The chief line of inquiry, however, will be an examination of the processes by which man at different stages of culture deals with disease. We shall find that, even when there is no clear differentiation of the leech from other members of society, mankind has theories of the causation of disease, carries out proceedings which correspond with those we call diagnosis and prognosis, and finally has modes of treatment which, even if they have little in common with our own remedies, nevertheless may be regarded as making up a definite system of therapeutics.

I have said that one of my chief objects will be an attempt to discover the nature of the concept of disease held by different peoples. I must first say a word about what we mean when we speak of a people possessing and acting on such a concept. I do not mean such a clear concept as is held, say, by the writer of an European textbook of medicine, a concept capable of being expressed by the formula we call a definition. Such a concept is the result of a very advanced process of generalization and abstraction, and we all know how difficult it is to frame such a definition, even with the large system of exact knowledge which we possess. It is evident that when we speak of the concept of disease held by such a people as the Melanesians we mean no exactly formulated definition, but a more or less vague system of ideas, which, though not distinctly formulated by a people, yet directs their behaviour—their reactions towards those features of the environment which we have classified together under the category of disease.

BELIEFS AS TO CAUSATION OF DISEASE

One element of the concept of disease, and perhaps the most important, is that it includes within its scope the factor of causation. There are usually clear-cut ideas concerning the immediate conditions which lead to the appearance of disease. One happy result of this fact is that we are able to approach our subject by way of etiology, and are thus led to deal with the medicine of savage peoples from the same standpoint as that of modern medicine, which rests, or should rest, entirely upon the foundation of etiology. By starting from etiology we shall find ourselves led on as naturally to diagnosis and treatment, as is the case in our own system of medicine.

If we examine the beliefs of mankind in general concerning the causation of disease, we find that the causes may be grouped in three chief classes: (1) human agency, in which it is believed that disease is directly due to action on the part of some human being; (2) the action of some spiritual or supernatural being or, more exactly, the action of some agent who is not human, but is yet more or less definitely personified; and (3) what we ordinarily call natural causes.

Among ourselves there are indications of the presence of all three kinds of belief, and this was certainly so in the not very remote past. We now only think of human agency in cases of poison and injury, and then only as the means by which the action of natural causes has been directed. The second category still exists in the “hand of God” of our statutes, and in the oral rites of our religion, but has ceased to take any part in orthodox medicine, though it still plays some part in the behaviour of the laity towards disease. In the professional art of medicine, and in the practice of the majority of the laity, the attitude towards disease is directed by the belief in its production by natural causes, meaning by this a body of beliefs according to which disease comes into being as the inevitable result of changes in our environment quite independent of human or superhuman agency.

If, on the other hand, we examine the culture of any savage or barbarous people, we find that their beliefs concerning the causation of disease fall in the main into one or other or both of the first two categories, while in many cases the third category can hardly be said to exist, and even then we cannot assign the beliefs to the category of natural causation. I shall deal with these cases more fully in the second chapter. For the present I shall confine my attention to those cases in which the native ideas concerning causation bring them within the realm of magic or religion. In this chapter I shall deal with cases which must either be definitely classed with magic, or belong more nearly to this category than to that of religion.

It would greatly simplify the treatment of our subject if the line of cleavage between the cases of causation of disease by human and non-human agency corresponded with the distinction between magic and religion. When writing this book I was at one time inclined to throw the distinction between magic and religion on one side, and describe the facts with which I shall have to deal under the headings of human and non-human agency. Such a plan, however, would only have avoided a difficulty which it is better to face, for if we treat medicine from the sociological standpoint we must study it in relation to other recognized social processes. Unless we are prepared to throw the categories of magic and religion aside altogether, they cannot be ignored in any discussion of the social relations of medicine.

DISEASE OR INJURY ASCRIBED TO MAGIC

The concept of magic which at present holds good in sociology and ethnology is largely influenced by the art called by this name in our own Middle Ages. The best known form of mediaeval magic was one in which non-human, spiritual agents took a most important part. These beings acted as the immediate producers of disease and other effects, the magical character of the proceedings resting on the belief that the non-human agents had come in one way or another under the power of the human magician.

The magic of many peoples of rude culture, including those of the area with which I especially deal, differs widely from this in that disease or injury is, in many cases, ascribed to purely human agency, even when to us the real cause of the condition would seem to be obvious. This mode of causation is not merely brought into play to explain cases of illness which have no obvious antecedent, but also those in which what we should call the natural cause is obvious. Thus, if a man is killed or injured by falling from a tree in the Island of Ambrim in the New Hebrides, the fall is not ascribed to a loose branch, or to some failure of coordination of the movements of the climber, but the accident, as we loosely call it, is put to the account of the sorcerer. It is probable that the sequence of ideas in the Melanesian mind is that, in a business so familiar as that of climbing trees, accidents would not happen unless someone has interfered with the normal course of events. If a sorcerer had not loosened a branch, or produced an illusion whereby the victim had seen a branch where there was none, he would not have fallen to the ground.

Similarly, death or injury in battle is not ascribed to the superior skill of the enemy, or to a failure of defence, but it is believed that a sorcerer has directed the missile of the assailant, or has interfered with the defensive motions of the victim, or the integrity of his weapons. A case of snake-bite is not ascribed to the act which, according to our ideas, is natural to a venomous animal, but it is believed that the snake has been put in the path of the victim by a sorcerer, or has been endowed with special powers by a sorcerer; or it may even be held that the animal which has bitten the victim is no ordinary snake, but the sorcerer himself in snake-like form.

To those whose main category of the causation of disease is human agency there is a firmly rooted belief in this mode of production, not only where causation would otherwise be mysterious or unknown, but also in those cases where the cause would seem, even to the most uninstructed lay mind in our own community, to lie within the province we call natural. It may be noted, moreover, that such ideas concerning the causation of disease are not empty beliefs devoid of practical consequences, but act as the motives for processes of treatment in case of injury, or for acts of revenge if the magical process should lead to the death of the victim. If we were so to define magic as to identify it with the exclusive action of human beings, this part of our subject would soon be treated. The art of diagnosis would consist in the discovery of the human agent, and the essential elements in the treatment would be the use of measures which would lead the sorcerer to put an end to the actions by which he is effecting his maleficent purpose.

In addition to these cases of purely human agency, there are many others in which our records tell us explicitly of conditions closely similar to those of our own Middle Ages, in which the immediate cause of the di...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Preface
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• Index