aromatic substances might be relied upon to preserve the body after death. Even in recent times and countries similar customs have prevailed. Scott in “The Bride of Lammermoor” tells us that rosemary, southernwood, rue and other plants were in Scotland strewn on the body after death, and were “burned by way of fumigation in the chimney.”
Be that as it may, we find fumigation employed all over the world as a rite of purification, particularly during the menstrual and puerperal periods, women being at those times regarded as unclean or taboo.
Later, in the natural course of evolution, fumigation comes under the category of antidemoniac remedies.
When disease was ascribed to the operation of demons in residence in the patient’s body, a belief at one time world-wide in its distribution, the treatment mostly relied upon to cure the disease, and, granting the premises, a perfectly rational therapeutic method, was by various devices to render the patient’s body too uncomfortable for the demon. And among many other modes of securing this desirable end was the smoking of the demon out by strong odours, fumes being generated around the patient by burning horns, hair, and certain odoriferous woods and plants. Among the Chippeway Indians, we are told, a species of
