In rural African communities, there are widespread beliefs that epilepsy is due to possession of bewitchment by evil spirits or the devil. There is also a belief that the transmis­ sion of the disease is by physical contact, such as by sa­ liva (Osuntokun 1990:106). In central Africa, as well as in Sub-Saharan Africa, epilepsy is attributed to the presence of a lizard in the brain, and epilepti...

Traditionally, the word "abracadabra" was encrypted onto amulets and other magical paraphernalia to help ward off evil. George Polya ([8], [9]) provided the cryptic form of this word shown in Figure 1 and asked how many ways abracadabra can be spelled out using this diagram. If we replace the diagram in Figure 1 with the grid shown in Figure 2 where letters in the original diagram are placed at...

RICHARD CAVENDISH, The powers of evil in western religion, magic and folk belief, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975, 8vo, pp. ix, 299, £5.95. Evil supernatural agencies are part of every culture in degrees varying with their sophistication. As is to be expected, primitive man is surrounded by them, but they are of course still believed in by races who boast advanced social and cultural devel...

RICHARD CAVENDISH, The powers of evil in western religion, magic and folk belief, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975, 8vo, pp. ix, 299, £5.95. Evil supernatural agencies are part of every culture in degrees varying with their sophistication. As is to be expected, primitive man is surrounded by them, but they are of course still believed in by races who boast advanced social and cultural devel...

Despite recent efforts to expand health care services to a broader segment of the world's population, the majority of the world's babies are still born without the benefit of modern health care services. A large proportion of these deliveries are performed by TBAs (traditional birth attendants). Health programs could be more rapidly expanded if these TBAs, who constitute an already existing r...