Note 223-2 — Chapter VIII
Reading edition
The Eskimo innuk, man, means also a possessor or owner; the yelk of an egg; and the pus of an abscess (Egede, Nachrichten von Grönland, p. 106). From it is derived innuwok, to live, life. Probably innuk also means the semen masculinum, and in its identification with pus, may not there be the solution of that strange riddle which in so many myths of the West Indies and Central America makes the first of men to be “the purulent one?” (See ante, p. 135.)