Months later at night, drinking the strong medicine which makes your head swim, singing the while in ebbs and flows of pictures, the topic of these kids came up. I strongly doubt that the healer and I would have talked about them had we not been taking this medicine. The father, an Indian, had died because he had gotten involved with Satanas, the devil. He had recklessly bought a book of magic that traveling herbalists sell in the marketplaces and was studying its spells. One day, going out to fish at dawn, he met a stranger sitting in the mist by the river. When he came home, he fell sick with fever and bloody diarrhea. In a few days he died. Then the wife. Now he was calling his children. And the healer? He is calling too. This side. Two sides.

– Michael Taussig, “The Sun Gives Without Receiving“