A native American medicine man with elaborate body painting performing a dance. Wood engraving, 1873.

"In cases of sickness which defy the ordinary old woman doctor, or those who have escaped some great danger, or who have been very ill themselves and have recovered, and are therefore supposed to have acquired a sort of brevet-doctorate, the medicine-man is called in. One or more will dance round the patient for hours, yelling fearfully, beating drums, shaking rattles of the bills of the horned puffin, and in other ways attempting to frighten the evil spirit. I have seen them sometimes clutch the air (as if they had seen the evil spirit), and hold their hands below water, as if to drown it, or put it into the fire so as to burn it. The medicine-man will sometimes declare that he has seen the evil spirit fly away, and tell them it is like a fly with a long curved proboscis."--Brown, op. cit., p. 126