ever and ague are taken as coming in the course of nature. To
say that savages are never ill without supposing a supernatural cause is
not true of Melanesians; they make up their minds as the sickness comes
whether it is natural or not, and the more important the individual who
is sick, the more likely his sickness is to be ascribed to the anger of
a ghost whom he has offended, or to witchcraft. No great man would like
to be told that he was ill by natural weakness or decay. The sickness is
almost always believed to be caused by a ghost, not by a spirit....
Generally it is to the ghosts of the dead that sickness is ascribed in
the eastern islands as well as in the western; recourse is had to them
for aid in causing and removing sickness; and ghosts are believed to
inflict sickness not only because some offence, such as a trespass, has
been committed against them, or because one familiar with them has
sought their aid with sacrifice and spells, but because there is a
certain malignity in the feeling of all ghosts towards the living, who
offend them by being alive."[54] From this account we learn, first, that
the Melanesians admit some deaths by common diseases, such as fever and
ague, to be natural; and, second, that they recognise ghosts and spirits
as well as sorcerers and witches, among the causes of death; indeed they
hold that ghosts are the commonest of all causes of sickness and death.

[Sidenote: The possibility of natural death admitted by the Caffres of
South Africa.]

The same causes of death are recognised also by the Caffres of South
Africa, as we learn from Mr. Dudley Kidd, who tells us that according to
the beliefs of the natives, "to start with, there is sickness which is
supposed to be caused by the action of ancestral spirits or by fabulous
monsters. Secondly, there is sickness which is caused by the magical
practices of some evil person who is using witchcraft in secret.
Thirdly, there is sickness which comes from neither of these causes, and
remains unexplained. It is said to be 'only sickness, and nothing more.'
This third form of sickness is, I think, the commonest. Yet most writers
wholly ignore it, or deny its existence. It may happen that an attack of
indigestion is one day attributed to the action of witch or wizard;
another day the trouble is put down to the account of ancestral spirits;
on a third occasion the people may be at a loss to account for it, and
so may dismiss the problem by saying