In numerous works of fantasy, the law of similarity and the law of contagion are magical laws that suggest that once two people or objects have been in contact a magical link persists between them unless or until a formal cleansing, consecration, exorcism, or other act of banishing breaks the non-material bond. The first description of the law of contagion was written by German ethnographist Richard Andree in Ethnographische Parallelen und Vergleiche (1878), and the law of contagion was similarly codified in The Golden Bough (1890) by Scottish folklorist James George Frazer. Other authors have noted parallels in quantum physics.