**3. History of animal-assisted therapy**

#### **3.1. Animal souls and spiritual healing**

Animals play an important role in the history of the disease with different ideas about disease and its treatments. However, the precise characteristics of these roles depend not only on the prevailing views of animals but also on supernatural or "scientific" belief systems in which they are buried. Probably, the oldest of these belief systems, often called "animism," includes the concept that all natural beings, as well as other natural objects and phenomena, are circulated by an invisible soul, spirit, or "essence," but with conscious bodybuilding, the carrier can act independently of the body when it dreams or is unconscious. In a typical animist worldview, all statements of illness or misfortune are the direct result of attacks by the other angry or evil spirits encountered during these periods of unconsciousness toward the spirit of the person or the "truth." In some cases, these spiritual attacks are thought to be reprisals. It is the result of moral accusation that the person intentionally or mistakenly does. On the other hand, a person can be the innocent victim of a malicious shaman or the attack of souls acting in the name of witches. Tips about the root of spiritual attacks are provided by the contents of dreams or images just before certain illnesses, injuries, or misfortunes [7–9]. Animist belief systems carry the characteristics of all communities that engage in hunting, and disturbing animal spirits among these communities are often seen as the most common source of malicious mental influences. Many hunters believe that the souls of hunted animals in the tribe have the ability to seek revenge as the ghosts of killed people. To avoid this accretion, all animals, whether dead or alive, are treated with great respect [10]. In other hunting and feeding cultures, there were more specific moral associations between people and the animals they hunted for food. For example, many Native American and Eurasian peoples believe in the concept of personal "protective spirits" [7, 11]. Between Ojibwa (Chippewa) and the Algonian neighbors, these spirits were known as *manito* and were often represented as spiritual representations of wild animals or figures of their ancestors. Live animals were regarded as "honorable servants" of their own *manitos*, and this kind of spirit apparently presided over and represented all the worldly members of their species. For this reason, the hunters made contradictory ceremonies after killing an animal, so that the "essence" would return to *manito* with a convenient explanation of how it was processed. According to Ojibwa worldview, *manito's* activities explained almost all conditions of everyday life. Every living thing, whether alive or dead, was equipped with spiritual powers and associated with any unfortunate *manito*, such as illness, injury, death, or hunting that resulted in failure or the lack of personalized intention of someone else [12]. It was believed that the protective spirits of the animals differed in power. The majority of insects and small animals, such as mice, rats, or squirrels, were referred to as not important species because there was the belief that these animals lacked the protective qualities. On the other hand, it was believed that animals such as the bear and eagle had good protective spirits and so they were considered valuable [7, 12].
