by other weapons than the teeth. It is true that the bite of certain animals—a squirrel, for example—often suppurates and heals very slowly, but this is to be ascribed to the depth and laceration of the punctures inflicted by its powerful teeth, which are usually made to meet in the finger of the person bitten. Of course, in what precedes, it has been assumed that the animal which inflicted the bite was not rabid. There is a rather wide-spread belief among uneducated people that, if any one is bitten by a dog, the latter should at once be killed, lest at some future time he go mad, when the person bitten would also become rabid. This baseless fear seems also to be common in Ireland, according, to Lady Wilde.
Equally irrational with the general ascription of hurtful powers to mammalian saliva is the popular belief in its healing powers. Not only is it usual to hear people say that the dog, for instance, in licking his wounded paw, is making a most efficient vulnerary application, but the dog is encouraged to lick the hand of his master to cure a cut finger or other slight injury. No doubt the cleansing effect of constant licking would be most salutary and would promote healing by the first intention, but in the popular mind a specific healing virtue is attached to dogs' and to cats' saliva—a virtue which is, however, purely imaginary.
Would it be premature to suggest, as a provisional explanation of many saliva cures, especially those of a surgical character, that they are survivals of primeval surgery; and that this, in turn, had its origin in our inheritance from the lower animals, which so often apply saliva to wounds and ulcers by lapping them with the tongue?
But to trace in detail the genealogy of saliva cures and saliva charms is a task as yet impossible. It would surely not be easy even to show how the Mandingo negroes, the South Sea islanders, the American Indians, and the Japanese have come to share with the Aryan and Semitic races in beliefs concerning the magical efficacy of saliva.[1] For the solution of such problems as this the young science of folk lore must wait, on the one hand, for a general advance in the field of anthropology, and, on the other, for the accumulation and collation of data exceeding a hundred-fold those accessible to the folk-lore student of to-day.
- ↑ Some details in regard to the geographical and ethnical distribution of certain saliva charms were given in a paper of mine, Some Saliva Charms, read before the American Folklore Society, at its Philadelphia meeting, November, 1889.
