Abstract

Medicine, Religion, and Culture

This article presents information about the books related to medicine, religion and culture. These books are "Medicine, Magic and Religion," by W. H. R. Rivers and "The Origin of Magic and Religion," by W. J. Perry. In the first two chapters Rivers points out the various relations into which purely secular medicinal practices may enter with magic and religion. Chapter 3 is of great theoretical interest. There Rivers points out that had he written the book some years earlier he would have been satisfied to regard the similarities in the treatment of disease among different peoples as due to the general comparability of the mental attitudes of primitives coupled with the similarity in the bodily conditions involved in disease.