ABSTRACT
In 1942 Walter B.Cannon, head of the Department of Physiology at Harvard Medical School, published his now-famous essay “‘Voodoo’ Death.” In this study, Cannon elucidated the mechanisms responsible for the detrimental physiological effects of “magic” spells or “voodoo” rituals in “primitive” societies. Cannon’s essay, which appeared in the American Anthropologist, soon became a staple of anthropological studies on magic-induced death.3 Pioneering anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, for example, had expressed a common view in 1958, when he argued that Cannon’s 1942 “‘Voodoo’ Death” essay had provided the physiological rationale for “the efficacy of certain magical practices” to cause death in normal and healthy individuals. LéviStrauss’s own study “The Sorcerer and His Magic” depended in important ways on Cannon’s physiology of voodoo death and the scientific legitimacy that Cannon’s article bestowed on the study of death through voodoo ritual.4
