 We only know germs exist because priests tell us they exist, priests who can see them through special instruments that lay people do not know how to use. And then they tell us about these invisible spirits that only special instruments can see, special divinatory instruments can see, and then we believe them. So the similarity, the parallel to what we would call rituals is very close. But we say, well, but we have actual logical evidence-based reasons to know that our ritual works. In other words, our ritual draws from a story about the world that says, here's how the world works, here's what's real, here's what's not real, here's how to create changes in the world, and so forth. Thing is, other systems of ritual have the same thing. They also have a story that validates the rituals that they do and explains the rituals that they do. So whereas we say it's bacterial contamination, they say it's an evil spirit being transmitted. While we subject our instruments to heat, they might subject their ritual implements to the smoke of a sacred plant or something like that. And so basically what I'm saying is that we are applying the same kinds of cognitive functions, the same templates of understanding, the same weaving of mythologies to our medical rituals as those we might call primitive applied to their medical rituals. We're not doing anything different, but we imagine that we have graduated from those superstitions and rituals into a realm of verifiable, objective, empirical, evidence-based technology.