Witch doctor

6d., and promising to pay a visit on Monday evening to the "old witch," Mrs. Mole, and put an end to her subtle arts... ...the news of the expected coming of the witch-doctor spread far and wide, and about eight o'clock there could not have been less than 200 people collected near the cottage of Mrs. Mole to witness the supernatural powers of the Hadleigh wizard.The Oxford English Dictionary states that the first record of the use of this term was in 1718, in Francis Hutchinson's work An Historical Essay concerning Witchcraft, with Observations upon Matters of Fact; Tending to Clear the Texts of the Sacred Scriptures, and Confute the Vulgar Errors about that Point.

[6] Hutchinson used the phrase in a chapter defending a prisoner who was charged with witchcraft, by asserting that the "Witch-Doctor" himself was the one using sorcery: The said Dorothy Durent, having been with a Witch-Doctor, acknowledges upon Oath, that by his Advice she hang'd up her Child's Blanket in the Chimney, found a Toad in it at Night, had put it into the Fire, and held it there tho' it made a great and horrible Noise, and flash'd like Gunpowder, and went off like a Pistol, and then became invisible, and that by this the Prisoner was scorch'd and burn'd lamentably.

Charles Mackay's book, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, first published in 1841, attests to the practice of belief in witch doctors in England at the time.

The Oxford English Dictionary states that the first use of the term "witch doctor" to refer to African shamans (i.e. medicine men) was in 1836 in a book by Robert Montgomery Martin.

It is sometimes reserved specifically for practitioners of Nepali shamanism, such as that practiced among the Tamang people and the Magars; it is also used in the Indian states of Sikkim and West Bengal, which border Nepal.

Jhākri shamanism is practiced among numerous ethnic groups of Nepal and Northeast India, including the Limbu, Rai, Sunwar, Sherpa, Kami, Tamang, Gurung, Magars, Lepcha and Khas.

Even now the indigenous ethnic groups of Assam, Northeastern India (especially in the Mayong region as well other rural places) have shamanistic medicine men who treat diseases using sorcery as well as witchcraft and black magic for which the area was once renowned.