Voodoo Death Excerpt from The Serpent and the Rainbow by Wade Davis Part of what was going on in Victorian England [socially conditioned ailments, such as the fainting spell, catalepsy, cataplexy, trance, and ecstasy] was related to a phenomenon that Western anthropologists had noted in "primitive" societies but overlooked in their own culture. For just as an individual's sickness may have a psychosomatic basis, it is possible for a society to generate physical ailments and conditions that have meaning only in the minds of its people. In Australia, for example, aborigine sorcerers carry bones extracted from the flesh of giant lizards, and when these slivers are pointed at a person while a death spell is recited, the individual invariably sickens and almost always dies. According to one scientific report the victim stands aghast, with his eyes staring at the treacherous pointer, and with his hands lifted as though to ward off the lethal medium which he imagines is pouring into his body. His cheeks blanch and his eyes become glassy and the expression on his face becomes horribly distorted ... he attempts to shriek but usually the sound chokes in his throat, and all that one might see is froth at his mouth. His body begins to tremble ... he sways backwards and falls to the ground ... writhing as if in mortal agony. After awhile he becomes very composed and crawls to his [shelter]. From this time onwards he sickens and frets, refusing to eat and keeping aloof from the daily affairs of the tribe. At this point only the nangarri, or medicine man, may save him by initiating a complex ritual. But should the nangarri refuse to cooperate, the victim will almost certainly die. What happens to the Australian aborigine is an example of something that occurs in many cultures. It is a phenomenon every bit as real, and every bit as enigmatic, as the ailments generated by the Victorian mind. Its basic pattern is consistent. An individual breaks a social or spiritual code, violates a taboo, or for one reason or another believes himself a victim of putative sorcery. Conditioned since childhood to expect disaster, he then acts out what amounts to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Often the death knell is sounded by a hex or, as in Australia, a simple gesture rife with meaning. Sorcerers may use props as media of transmission: African witch doctors have knucklebones, and European witches carved wooden dolls. Or transmission is direct. Even today in Greece the harbinger of death need merely squint the evil eye. In Haiti, there are literally dozens of methods, and that is perhaps why anthropologists call the entire phenomenon voodoo death. Voodoo death has been so commonly reported, and so frequently documented and verified by scientific observers, that its existence is no longer a matter of debate. Of course, no scientist would believe that there is a direct causal relationship between the death of the victim and, for example, the physical act of pointing a bone. Clearly it is the victim's mind that mediates the sorcerer's curse and the fatal outcome. What remains to be discovered is the mechanism that actually allows this to occur. Three possible explanations have been offered. The first scientists seriously to consider the phenomenon of voodoo death were not anthropologists but physicians, many of them affected by the peculiar cases they witnessed on the battlefields of Europe during the First World War. In the nightmare of despair and death on the Western Front, certain traumatized soldiers who had not suffered any wound inexplicably died of shock, a medical disorder normally, brought about by a critical drop in blood pressure due to, excessive bleeding. When these physicians later became familiar with cases of voodoo death, they saw a connection. They suggested that individuals terrified by a magic spell suffered, like the soldiers, from an overstimulation of the sympathetic-adrenal system, which led to a form of fatal shock. Fear, in other words, could initiate actual physiological changes that quite literally led to death. Many anthropologists, less familiar with the complex workings of the autonomic nervous system, have considered voodoo death as a psychological process, emphasizing the power of suggestion. If faith can heal, they argue, fear can kill. Psychologists have studied, for example, something that most of us take for granted -- that the likelihood of becoming ill or even dying depends to a large extent on our frame of mind. Feelings of depression, hopelessness, or despair do not cause diseases, but somehow they make us vulnerable. Loneliness would seem hardly a fatal affliction, yet a disproportionate number of spouses die in the first year after the death of their mates. Psychologists label this the "giving up/given up complex." According to this view, the victim of voodoo death becomes caught in a vicious cycle of belief that indirectly kills him, perhaps, as some suggest, by making his body susceptible to pathogenic disease. His psychological state can be imagined. He is doomed to die by a malevolent curse that both he and all those around him deeply believe in. He becomes despondent, anxious, and fearful. His resignation is both recognized and expected by other members of his society. They join him in speculating how long he may survive, or who is the source of the curse. And then a strange thing happens. A consensus is reached that the end is near, and his friends and family retreat as from the smell of death. They return, but only to wail and chant over the body of this person they consider already dead. Physically the victim still lives; psychologically he is dying; socially he is already dead. A third group, also anthropologists, agree with this perspective but carry it further by suggesting an actual mechanism to account for physical death. They point out that in many cases the victim of voodoo death is not merely a benign presence but, having by definition crossed into the realm of the spirits, has become an actual threat that must be removed. And in the case of the Australian aborigines, this is precisely what happens. Weakened by the long ordeal, the victim of sorcery receives no relief from even his closest relatives. On the contrary, these former supporters actually take food and water away, on the theory that a dead person has no need for either and with the motive, as one physician was told, "if real close up finish, take water away so spirit goes." In the deserts of Australia, where the daytime temperatures average over one hundred degrees Fahrenheit in the shade, death by dehydration occurs in about twenty-four hours. Not all cases of voodoo death are as clearly explicable as these examples reported from Australia, where because of the harsh climate a relatively simple act by the kin eliminates the victim's life supports. More usual in voodoo death, but again more enigmatic, the victim dies despite the fact that his family offers succor. All that can be ascertained is that voodoo death occurs, and that as a process it involves a number of complementary factors. Fear probably does initiate physiological changes. Certainly it makes the victim psychologically vulnerable, and this in turn affects the physical health. Neurophysiologists still do not fully understand the process, though the response of the victim's family and society would seem inevitably to influence both his psychological and his physical well-being. So, while a universal mechanism to account for voodoo death has not been identified, the basic assumption is clear. As one researcher has put it, the brain has the power to kill or maim the body that bears it. Copyright 1985 by Wade Davis / Simon & Schuster, Inc. / Warner Books, Inc. See also:
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