This study will compare two articles on the role of the supernatural both in healing and in causing illness and even death: Walter B. Cannon's "'Voodoo' Death" and Curt Nimiendaju's "Soul-Loss and Magical Cure (Apinaye of Eastern Brazil)." The study will argue that the beliefs about reality held by a culture (whether that culture is "primitive" or "advanced") create a powerful force for affecting the psychological, emotional, and finally physiological state of individuals in that culture.
Cannon's article explores the process whereby fear induced by a voodoo practitioner in an individual can lead to death. The process begins with the cultural belief that the voodoo practitioner is indeed capable of performing supernatural feats which can make a person sick or even kill him. The individual is made aware of a curse put upon him by a "black magic" man and responds to the curse with fear, as to an emergency. Even though the body has no literal emergency to fight against, the body continues to experience powerful changes which eventually wear it down and can even kill it. Cannon examines the specifics of these processes of witchcraft, fear and "voodoo death" in primitive cultures.
Cannon determines that the implementation of voodoo practices is successful because the individual believes that voodoo is a genuine threat to him, because his body reacts with great changes in response to that danger, and these changes, when prolonged, cause great stress, shock and breakdown. The effect of voodoo "on the organism is produced by a lasting and intense action of the sympathico-adrenal system" (Cannon 371). Blood pressure eventually begins to fall, shock sets in, and the body begins to deteriorate. This process is intensified by the fact that the victim of voodoo practices stops eating and drinking, hindering the ability of his body to heal itself.
Curt Nimiendaju, in a much shorter account of magic, focuses on its curative rather than destr...