one: a case is reported of a man who, on learning that he had
lain down on his wife's blanket, became violently ill.

+593+. Various restrictions are imposed on women at periods of sexual
crisis. The girl on reaching the age of puberty is generally (though not
always[952]) immured, sometimes for weeks or months, to shield her from
noxious influences, human and nonhuman. During menstruation a woman is
isolated, may not be looked on by the sun, must remain apart from her
husband, and her food is strictly regulated.[953] It is not infrequently
the case that certain foods are permanently forbidden women, for what
special reasons is not clear.[954] The rule forbidding a wife to eat
with her husband may have come originally from nonreligious social
considerations (her subordination to the man, or the fact that she
belonged to a social group different from his), but in that case it
later acquired a religious character. Women have commonly been excluded
in savage communities from solemn ceremonies (as those of the initiation
of males) and from tribal councils;[955] such rules may have originated
in the natural differentiation of social functions of the sexes or in
the desire of men to keep the control of tribal life in their own
hands, but in many cases the presence of women was supposed to vitiate
the proceedings supernaturally. In industrial enterprises, such as
hunting and fishing, they are sometimes held to be a fatal
influence.[956] In family life a wife's mother was debarred from all
social intercourse with her son-in-law.[957]

+594+. Where procreation was ascribed to the union of the sexes, sexual
intercourse, as being intimately connected with life, was credited with
supernatural potency, generally unfavorable to vigor.[958] It has been
largely prohibited on all important public occasions, such as hunting
and war, and particularly in connection with religious ceremonies.[959]
Various considerations may have contributed to the establishment of such
customs, but in their earliest form we have, probably, to recognize not
any moral effort to secure chastity, but a dread of injurious mana
resident in women.[960] We may compare the fact that women have often
been regarded as specially gifted in witchcraft.[961]

+595+. _Taboos connected with great personages._ The theory of mana
includes the belief that special supernatural power resides in the
persons of tribal leaders, such as magicians, chiefs, priests. It
follows that