Among the savage Loeboes of Sumatra a child fell ill. When it failed to improve, the muttering family repaired to a stone beneath the house which seemed to mark a grave, poured hot water on the stone. A European observer who witnessed this ceremony inquired its significance. The natives told him that the stone marked the place where the child's afterbirth had been buried in a rice pot a few months before, that the baby's continued illness was obviously due to the fact that ants were stinging the afterbirth, that the hot...
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