ABSTRACT
Thus, through the conflict between grand-daughter and grandmother, human beings, one and all, had to submit to the process of decay and debility brought on by old age. This, however, did not yet involve the full incidence of the inexorable fate which is the present lot of man; for old age, bodily decay, and debility do not spell death to the natives. In order to understand the full cycle of their beliefs it is necessary to study the factors of illness, decay, and death. The native of the Trobriands is definitely an optimist in his attitude to health and illness. Strength, vigour, and bodily perfection are to him the natural status which can only be affected or upset by an accident or by a supernatural cause. Small accidents such as excessive fatigue, sunstroke, over-eating, or exposure may cause minor and temporary ailments. By a spear in battle, by poison, by a fall from a rock
or a tree a man may be maimed or killed. Whether these accidents and others, such as drowning and the attack of a crocodile or a shark, are entirely free from sorcery is ever a debatable question to a native. But there is no doubt whatever to him that all serious and especially all fatal illnesses are due to various forms and agencies of witchcraft. The most prevalent of these is the ordinary sorcery practised by wizards, who can produce by their spells and rites a number of ailments covering well nigh the whole domain of ordinary pathology, with the exception of very rapid fulminating diseases and epidemics.
