After her delivery the medicine-man purifies her by
breathing on her and laying an animal, it matters not what, upon
her. But even this ceremony only mitigates her uncleanness into a
state considered to be equivalent to that of a menstruous woman; and
for a full lunar month she must live apart from her housemates,
observing the same rules with regard to eating and drinking as at
her monthly periods. The case is still worse, the pollution is still
more deadly, if she has had a miscarriage or has been delivered of a
stillborn child. In that case she may not go near a living soul: the
mere contact with things she has used is exceedingly dangerous: her
food is handed to her at the end of a long stick. This lasts
generally for three weeks, after which she may go home, subject only
to the restrictions incident to an ordinary confinement.
Some Bantu tribes entertain even more exaggerated notions of the
virulent infection spread by a woman who has had a miscarriage and
has concealed it. An experienced observer of these people tells us
that the blood of childbirth "appears to the eyes of the South
Africans to be tainted with a pollution still more dangerous than
that of the menstrual fluid.
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