Plucking herbs.
That the plucking of herbs and digging up of roots was a process very apt to be attended by magical procedure we find abundant evidence in theNatural History. Often plants should be plucked before sunrise.[302]Twice Pliny tells us that the peony should be uprooted by night lest the woodpecker of Mars try to pick the digger’s eyes out.[303]The state of the moon is another point to be observed,[304]and once an herb is to be gathered before thunder is heard.[305]A common instruction is to pick the plant with the left hand,[306]and once with the thumb and fourth finger of the left hand.[307]Once the right hand should be stretched covertly after the fashion of a pickpocket through the left sleeve in order to pluck the plant.[308]Sometimes one faces east in plucking herbs; sometimes, west; again one is careful not to face the wind.[309]Sometimes the gatherer must not glance behind him. Sometimes he must fast before he takes the plant from the ground;[310]again he must observe a state of chastity.[311]Sometimes he should be barefoot and clothed in white; again he should remove every stitch of clothing and even his rings.[312]Sometimes the use of iron implements is forbidden; again gold or some other material is prescribed;[313]once the herb is to be dug with a nail.[314]Sometimes circles are tracedabout the plant with the point of a sword.[315]Often the plant must not touch the ground again after it is picked,[316]presumably from a fear that its virtue would run off like an electric current. Pliny alludes at least three times[317]to the practice of herbalists of retaining portions of the herbs they sell, and then, if they are not paid in full, replanting the herb in the same spot with the idea that thereby the disease will return to plague the delinquent patient. Frequently one is directed to state why one plucks the herb or for whom it is intended.[318]In one case the digger says, “This is the herb Argemon which Minerva discovered was a remedy for swine who taste it.”[319]In another case one should salute the plant and extract its juice before saying a word; thus its virtue will be much greater.[320]In other cases, as an offering to appease the earth, the soil about the plant is soaked with hydromel three months before plucking it, or the hole left by pulling it up is filled with different kinds of grain.[321]Sometimes one sacrifices beforehand with bread and wine or prays to the gods for permission to gather the herb.[322]The customs of the Druids in gathering herbs are mentioned more than once.[323]In gathering the sacred mistletoe on the sixth day of the moon they hold sacrifices and a banquet beneath the tree.[324]Two white bulls are the victims; a priest clad in white cuts the mistletoe with a golden sickle and receives it in a white cloak.[325]
Agricultural magic.
To Pliny’s discussion of herbs we may append some specimens of the employment of magic procedure in agriculture and of the superstitions of the peasantry in which his pages abound. To guard against diseases of grain the seeds before planting should be steeped in wine, the juice of a certain herb, the gall of a cow, or human urine, orshould be touched with the shoulders of a mole[326]—the animal whose use by themagiwe heard Pliny ridicule. One should sow at the moon’s conjunction. Before the field is hoed, a frog should be carried around it and then buried in the center in an earthen vessel. But it should be disinterred before harvest lest the millet be bitter. Birds may be kept away from the grain by planting in the four corners of the field an herb whose name is unfortunately unknown to Pliny.[327]Mice are kept out by the ashes of a weasel, mildew by laurel branches, caterpillars by placing the skull of a female beast of burden upon a stick in the garden.[328]To ward off fogs and storms from orchards and vineyards a frog may be buried as directed above, or live crabs may be burnt in the trees, or a painted grape may be consecrated.[329]Suspending a frog in the granary preserves the corn stored there.[330]To keep wolves away catch one, break its legs, attach it to the ploughshare, and thus scatter its blood about the boundaries of the field; then bury the carcass at the starting-point.[331]Or consecrate at the altar of the Lar the ploughshare with which the first furrow was traced. Foxes will not touch poultry who have eaten the dried liver of a fox or who wear a bit of its skin about their necks. Fern will not spring up again if it is mowed with the edge of a reed or uprooted by a ploughshare upon which a reed has been placed.[332]Of the use of incantations in agriculture we shall treat later.
Virtues of stones.
Pliny appears to have much less faith in the possession of marvelous virtues by gems than by herbs and parts of animals. He not only characterizes the powers attributed to gems by themagiand Democritus and Pythagoras as “terrible lies” and “unspeakable nonsense”;[333]but refrains from mentioning many such himself or inserts a cautious “if we believe it” or “if they tell the truth.”[334]Of the gemsupposed to be produced from the urine of the lynx he says, “I think that this is quite false and no gem of that name has been seen in our time. What is stated concerning its medicinal virtue is also false.”[335]To other stones, however, he ascribes various medicinal virtues, either when taken pulverized in drink or when worn as amulets.[336]A few other occult properties are stated without reservation, as thatamiantusresists all sorceries,[337]that adamant expels idle fears from the mind, thatsideritisproduces discord and litigation, and thateumeces, placed beneath one’s pillow at night, causes oracular visions.[338]Magnets are said to differ in sex, and the belief of Theophrastus and Mucianus is repeated that certain stones bear offspring.[339]
Other minerals and metals.
Of the metals iron sometimes figures in Pliny’s magical procedure, as when he either prescribes or taboos the use of it in cutting herbs or killing animals. In Arcadia the yew-tree is a fatal poison to persons sleeping beneath it, but driving a copper nail into the tree makes it harmless.[340]Pliny says that gold is medicinal in many ways and in particular is applied to wounded persons and to infants as a safeguard against witchcraft.[341]Earth itself is often used to work marvels, but usually some particular portion, such as that between cart ruts or that thrown up by ants, beetles, and moles, or in the right footprint where one first heard a cuckoo sing.[342]However, the rule that an object should not touch the ground is enforced in many other connections[343]than the plucking of herbs, and Pliny twice states that the earth will not permit a serpent who has stung a human being to re-enter its hole.[344]In his discussion of metals Pliny does not allude to transmutation or alchemy, unless it be in his accounts of various fraudulent practices of workers in metal and how Caligula extracted gold from orpiment. But the following directions for preparing antimony show howclosely akin to magic the procedure in ancient metallurgy might be. The antimony should be coated with cow-flap and burnt in furnaces, then quenched in woman’s milk and pounded in mortars with an admixture of rain-water.[345]
Virtues of human parts.
Various parts and products of the human body are credited with remarkable virtues as the mention just made of woman’s milk suggests. Other passages recommend more especially the milk of a woman just delivered of a male child, but most of all that of the mother of twins.[346]Sed nihil facile reperiatur mulierum profluvio magis monstrificum, as Pliny proceeds to illustrate by numerous examples.[347]Great virtues are also attributed to the urine, particularly of a chaste boy.[348]A few other instances of remedies drawn from the human body are ear-wax or a powdered tooth against stings of scorpions and bites of snakes,[349]a man’s hair for the bite of a dog, the first hairs from a boy’s head for gout.[350]Diseases of women are prevented by wearing constantly in a bracelet the first tooth a boy loses, provided it has not touched the ground. Simply tying two fingers or toes together is recommended for tumors in the groin, catarrh, and sore eyes.[351]Or the eyes may be touched thrice with water in which the feet have been washed. Scrofula and throat diseases may be cured by the touch of the hand of one who has died an early death, although some authorities do not insist upon the circumstance of early death but direct that the corpse be of the same sex as the patient and that the diseased spot be touched with the back of the left dead hand.
Virtues of human saliva.
Of all fluids and excretions of the human body the saliva is perhaps used most often in ancient and medieval medicine, as the custom of spitting once or thrice in administering other remedies or performing ceremonies goes to prove. The spittle of a fasting person is the more efficacious. In a chapter devoted particularly to the properties of humansaliva Pliny lists many diseases and woes which it alleviates.[352]In this connection he makes the following absurd assertion which he nevertheless declares is easily tested by experiment. “If a person repents of a blow given from a distance or hand-to-hand, let him spit into the palm of the hand with which he struck, and the person who has been struck will feel no resentment. This is often proved by beasts of burden who are induced to mend their pace by this method after the use of the whip has failed.” Pliny adds, however, that some persons try to increase the force of their blows by thus spitting on the hands beforehand. He also mentions as counter-charms against sorcery the practices of spitting into one’s urine or right shoe, or when crossing a dangerous spot.
The human operator.
The importance of the human operator as a factor in the performance of marvels, be they medical or magical, is attested by the frequent injunctions of chastity, virginity, nudity, or a state of fasting upon persons concerned in Pliny’s procedure. Sometimes they are not to glance behind them, sometimes they are to speak to no one during the operation. Pliny also mentions men who have a special capacity for wonder-working, such as Pyrrhus, the touch of whose toe had healing power,[353]those whose eyes exert strong fascination, whole tribes of serpent-charmers and venom-curers, and others whose mere presence addles the eggs beneath a setting hen.[354]The power of words spoken by men will be considered separately under the head of incantations.
Absence of medical compounds.
While Pliny attributes the most extreme medicinal virtues to simples, he excludes from hisNatural Historythe strange and elaborate compounds which were nevertheless so popular in the pharmacy of his age. Of one simple,laser, he says that it would be an immense task to attempt to list all the uses that it is supposed to have in compounds.[355]His position is that the simple remedies alone are the direct work of nature, while the mixtures, tablets, pills, plasters,washes are artificial inventions of the apothecaries. Once when he describes a compound called “Hermesias” which aids in the generation of good and beautiful children, it seems to be borrowed by Democritus from themagi.[356]Furthermore, Pliny thinks that health can be sufficiently preserved or restored by nature’s simple remedies. Compounds are the invention of human conjecture, avarice, and impudence. Such conjecture is often false, not sufficiently taking into account the natural sympathies and antipathies of the numerous ingredients. Often compounds are inexplicable. Pliny also deplores resort to imported drugs from India, Arabia, and the Red Sea, when there are homely remedies at hand for the poorest man.[357]
Sympathetic magic.
We have just heard Pliny refer to the sympathies and antipathies of natural simples, and he often explains the marvelous effects of natural objects upon one another by this relation of love and hatred, friendship or repugnance, discord or concord which exists between them, which the Greeks call sympathy or antipathy, and which Heracleitus was perhaps the first philosopher to insist upon.[358]Some modern students of magic have tried to account for all magic on this theory, and Pliny states that medicine and medicines originated from it.[359]
Antipathies between animals.
This relationship exists between animals,—deer and snakes, for example. So great a force is it that stags track snakes to their holes and extract them thence despite all resistance by the power of their breath. This antipathy continues after death, for the sovereign remedy for snake-bite is the rennet of a fawn killed in its mother’s womb, while serpents flee from a man who wears the tooth of a deer. But antipathy may change to sympathy, for Pliny adds that in some cases certain parts of deer treated in certain ways attract serpents.[360]This force of antipathy is indeed capable of taking the strangest turn. Bed-bugs, foul and disgusting as they are, heal the bite of snakes, especially asps, and sows can eat the poisonous salamander.[361]The antipathy between goats and snakes would seem almost as potent as that between deer and snakes,[362]since we are told that snake-bitten persons recover more quickly, if they frequent the stalls where goats are kept or wear as an amulet the paunch of a she-goat.
Love and hatred between inanimate objects.
There is also “the hatred and friendship of deaf and insensible things.”[363]Instances are the magnet’s attraction for iron and the fact that adamant can be broken only by the blood of a he-goat, two stock examples of occult influence and natural marvels which continued classic in the medieval period.[364]Pliny indeed regards this last as the clearest illustration possible of the potency of sympathy and antipathy, since a substance which defies iron and fire, nature’s two most violent agents, yields to the blood of a foul animal.[365]
Sympathy between animate and inanimate objects.
There is furthermore sympathy and antipathy between animate and inanimate objects. So marvelous is the antipathy of the tamarisk tree for the spleen alone of internal organs, that pigs who drink from troughs of this wood are found when slaughtered to be without spleen, and hence splenetic patients are fed from vessels of tamarisk.[366]The spleenless pig, it may be interpolated, is another commonplace of ancient and medieval science. Smearing the hives with cow dung kills other insects but stimulates the bees who have an affinity for it (cognatum hoc iis),[367]probably, although Pliny does not say so, on the theory that they arespontaneously generated from it. That the wild cabbage is hostile to dogs is evidenced by the statement of Epicharmus that it cures the bite of a mad dog but kills a dog if he eats it when given to him with meat.[368]Snakes hate the ash-tree so, that if they are hemmed in by its foliage on one side and fire on the other, they flee by preference into the flames.[369]Betony, too, is so antipathetic to snakes that they lash themselves to death when a circle of it is drawn about them.[370]Scorpions cannot survive in the air of Sicily.[371]Perhaps antipathy is also the explanation of Pliny’s absurd statement that loads of apples and pears, even if there are only a few of them, are very heavy for beasts of burden.[372]Here, however, the condition may be remedied and perhaps a relationship of sympathy established by showing the beasts how few fruit there really are or by giving them some to eat. That sympathy may even attach to places or religious circumstances Pliny infers from the belief that the priestess of the earth at Aegira, when about to descend into the cave and predict, drinks without injury bull’s blood which is supposed to be a fatal poison.[373]
Like cures like.
That like cures like, or more precisely and paradoxically that the cause of the disease will cure its own result, is another notion which Pliny’s medicine shares with magic. This is seen in the use of parts of the mad dog to cure its bite,[374]or in rubbing thighs chafed by horse-back riding with the foam from a horse’s mouth.[375]The bite of the shrew-mouse, too, is best healed by imposition of the very animal which bit you, but another shrew-mouse will do and they are kept ready in oil and mud for this purpose.[376]The sting of thephalangiummay be cured by merely looking at another insect of that species, whether it be dead or alive.
From cases in which the cure for the disease is identical with its cause it is but a short step to remedies similar toor in some way associated with the ailment. It seems obvious to Pliny that stone in the bladder can be broken by the herb on which grow what look exactly like pearls. “In the case of no other herb is it so evident for what medicine it is intended; its species is such that it can be recognized at once by sight without book knowledge.”[377]Similarlyophites, a marble with serpentine streaks, is used as an amulet against snake-bite.[378]Mithridates discovered that the blood of Pontic ducks should be mixed in antidotes because they live on poison.[379]Heliotrope seed looks like a scorpion’s tail; if scorpions are touched with a sprig of heliotrope they die, and they will not enter ground which has been circumscribed by it.[380]To accelerate a woman’s delivery her lover should take off his belt and gird her with it, then untie it, saying that he has bound her and will unloose her, and then he should go away.[381]An epileptic may be cured by driving an iron nail into the spot where his head rested when he fell in the fit.[382]
The principle of association.
Other instances of association are when the remedy employed is some part of an animal who is free from the disease in question or marked by an opposite state of health. Goats and gazelles never have ophthalmia, hence various portions of their bodies are prescribed for eye diseases.[383]Eagles can gaze at the sun, therefore their gall is efficacious in eye-salves.[384]The bird called ossifrage has a single intestine which digests anything; the end of this intestine serves as an amulet against colic, and indigestion may be cured by merely holding the crop of the bird in one hand.[385]But do not hold it too long or your flesh will waste away. The virus of mares is an ingredient in a candle which makes heads of horses seem to appear when it burns;[386]while ink of thesepiais used in a candle which causes Ethiopians to be seen when it is lighted.[387]These magic candles are borrowedby Pliny from the works of Anaxilaus, and we shall find them a feature of medieval collections of experiments. Earth from a cart-wheel rut is thought a remedy against the bite of the shrew-mouse because that creature is too torpid to cross such a rut;[388]and Pliny believes that none of the virtues attributed to moles by the magicians is more probable than that they are an antidote to the bite of the shrew-mouse, which shuns even ruts, whereas moles burrow freely through the soil.[389]Pliny finds incredible the assertion made by some that a ship will move more slowly if it has the right foot of a tortoise aboard,[390]but the logic of the magic seems evident enough.
Magic transfer of disease.
In Pliny’s medicine there are a number of examples of what may be called magic transfer, in which the aim of the procedure is not to cure the disease outright but to rid the patient of it by transferring it from him to some other animal or object. Intestinal disease may be transferred to puppies who have not yet opened their eyes by pressing them to the body and giving them milk from the patient’s mouth. They will die of the disease, when its cause and exact nature may be determined by dissecting them. But finally they must be buried.[391]Griping pains in the bowels will also pass to a duck that is held against the abdomen. One may be rid of a cough by spitting in a frog’s mouth or cure catarrh by kissing a mule,[392]although in these cases we are left uninformed whether the disease passes to the animal. But if a person who has been stung by a scorpion whispers the news in the ear of an ass, the ill will be transferred to the ass.[393]A boil may be removed by rubbing nine grains of barley around it, each grain thrice with the left hand, and then throwing them all into the fire.[394]Warts are banished by touching each with a grain of the chickpea and then tying the grains up in a linen cloth and throwing them behind one.[395]If a root of asphodel is applied to sores and then hungup in smoke, the sores will dry up along with the root.[396]To cure scrofulous sores some bind on as many earthworms as there are sores and let them dry up together.[397]A tooth will cease aching if the herberigeronis dug up with iron and the patient thrice alternately touches the tooth with the root and spits, and if he then replaces the herb in the same spot and it lives.[398]If this last is a case of magic transfer, perhaps we may trace the same notion in some of the numerous instances in which Pliny directs that an animal shall be released alive after some part of it has been removed or some other medicinal use made of it.
Amulets.
A common characteristic of magic force and occult virtue is that it will often act at a distance or without any physical contact or direct application. This is manifested in the practice of carrying or wearing amulets, or, what is the same thing, of ligatures and suspensions, in which objects are hung from the neck or bound to some part of the body in order to ward off danger from without or cure internal disease. Instances of such practices in theNatural Historyare well nigh innumerable. Roots are suspended from the neck by a thread;[399]the tongue of a fox is worn in a bracelet;[400]for quinsy the throat is wound thrice with a thong of dog-skin and catarrh is relieved by winding the same about the fingers.[401]A tooth stops aching when worms are taken from a certain prickly plant, put with some bread in a pill-box, and bound to the arm on the same side of the body as the aching tooth.[402]Two bed-bugs bound to the left arm in wool stolen from shepherds are a charm against nocturnal fevers; against diurnal fevers, if wrapped in russet cloth instead.[403]The heart of a vulture is an amulet against snakes, wild beasts, robbers, and royal wrath.[404]The traveler who carries the herbartemisiafeels no fatigue.[405]Injurious drugs cannot cross one’s threshold and do injury inone’s household, if a sea-star is smeared with the blood of a fox and attached to the lintel or door-post with a copper nail.[406]Not only is a wreath of herbs worn for headache,[407]but a sprig of poplar held in the hand prevents chafing between the thighs.[408]Often objects are placed under one’s pillow, especially for insomnia,[409]but any psychological effect is precluded in the case where this is to be done without the patient’s knowledge.[410]All sorts of specifications are given as to the color and kind of string, cloth, skin, box, nail, ring, bracelet, and the like in which should be placed, or with which should be bound on, the various gems, herbs, and parts of animals which serve as amulets. But when we are told that a remedy for headache which always helps many consists of a little bone from a snail found between two cart ruts, passed through gold, silver, and ivory, and attached to the body with dog-skin; or that one may bind on the head with a linen cloth the head of a snail decapitated with a reed when feeding in the morning especially at full moon;[411]we feel that we have passed beyond mere amulets, ligatures, and suspensions to more elaborate minutiae of magic procedure.
Position or direction.
Position or direction is often an important matter in Pliny’s, as in magic, ceremonial. It perhaps comes out most frequently in his specification of right or left. An aching tooth should be scarified with the left eye-tooth of a dog; a spider which is placed with oil in the ear should be caught with the left hand;[412]epilepsy may be cured if a virgin touches the sufferer with her right thumb;[413]for ophthalmia of the right eye suspend the right eye of a frog from the patient’s neck, and the left eye for the left eye;[414]for lumbago tear off an eagle’s feet away from the joint, and use the right foot for the right side and the left for pain in the left side.[415]But we have met other examples already, andalso cases of the use of the upper or lower part of this or that according to the corresponding location of an aching tooth in the upper or lower jaw.[416]Tracing circles with and about objects, facing towards this or that point of the compass, the prohibition against glancing behind one, and the stress laid upon finding things or killing animals between the ruts of cart wheels, are other examples of taking into consideration position and direction which we have already met with incidentally to the treatment of other topics. The prescription of a plant which has grown on the head of a statue and of another which has taken root in a sieve thrown into a hedge[417]also seem to take mere position largely into account, more so than the accompanying recommendation of an herb growing on the banks of a stream and of another growing upon a dunghill.[418]
The time element.
The element of time is also important. Operations should be performed before sunrise, early in the morning, at night, and so on. The moon is especially regarded in such directions.[419]When we are informed that sufferers from quartan fever should be rubbed all over with the fat of a tortoise, we are also told that the tortoise will be fattest on the fifteenth day of the moon and that the patient should be anointed on the sixteenth.[420]But this waxing and waning of the tortoise with the moon is primarily a matter of astrology and planetary influence, under which heading we shall also later speak of Pliny’s observance of the rising of the dog-star.
Observance of number.
Observance of number is another feature in Pliny’s ceremonial, of which we have already met instances. He also alludes to the writings of Pythagoras on the subject and ascribes to Democritus a work on the number four. Pliny’s recipes frequently recommend that the operation be thrice repeated. In the case of curing scrofula by the ashes of vipers he prescribes three fingers thereof taken in drink forthrice seven days.[421]In another application of a Gallic herb with old axle-grease which has not touched iron, not only must the patient spit thrice to the right, but the remedy is more efficacious if three men representing three different nations anoint the right side with it.[422]The virtue of the number one is not, however, entirely slighted. Importance is attached to the death of a stag from a single wound.[423]Sometimes three and one are joined in the same operation, as when child-birth is aided by hurling through the house a stone or weapon by which three animals, a man, a boar, and a bear, have been killed with single blows. One of the discoveries of Pythagoras which seldom fails is that an odd number of vowels in a child’s given name portends lameness, blindness, and like incapacitation on the right side of its body, and an even number, injuries on the left side.[424]In a crown of smilax for headache there should be an odd number of leaves,[425]and in a diet of snails prescribed for stomach trouble an odd number are to be eaten.[426]For a head-wash ten green lizards are boiled in tensextariiof oil,[427]and for an application to prevent eyelashes from growing again when they have been pulled out fifteen frogs are impaled on fifteen bulrushes.[428]The person who has tied on a certain amulet is thereafter excluded from the patient’s sight for five days.[429]And so on.
Relation between operator and patient.
This last item suggests a further intangible factor in Pliny’s procedure, the doing of things to or for the patient without his knowledge. But this and any other incorporeal relationships existing between operator and patient should perhaps be classed under the head of sympathy and antipathy.
Incantations.
Closely akin to the power of numbers is that of words. Pliny once says of an incantation employed to avert hail-storms that he would not dare in seriousness to insert itswords, although Cato in his work on agriculture prescribed a similar formula of meaningless words for the cure of fractured limbs.[430]But Pliny does not object to the repetition of incantations or prayers if the words spoken have some meaning. He informs us thatocimumis sown with curses and maledictions and that when cummin seed is rammed down into the soil, the sowers pray it not to come up.[431]In another case the sower is to be naked and to pray for himself and his neighbors.[432]In a third case in which a poultice is to be applied to an inflammatory tumor, Pliny says that persons of experience regard it as very important that the poultice be put on by a naked virgin and that both she and the patient be fasting. Touching the sufferer with the back of her hand she is to say, “Apollo forbids a disease to increase which a naked virgin restrains.” Then, withdrawing her hand, she is to repeat the same words thrice and to join with the patient in spitting on the ground each time.[433]Indeed, in another passage Pliny states that it is the universal custom in medicine to spit three times with incantations.[434]Perhaps the power of the words is thought to be increased or renewed by clearing the throat. Words were also occasionally spoken in plucking herbs. Ring-worm or tetter is treated by spitting upon and rubbing together two stones covered with a dry white moss, and by repeating a Greek incantation which may be translated, “Flee, Cantharides, a wild wolf seeks your blood.”[435]Abscesses and inflammations are treated with the herbresedaand a Latin translation which seems irrelevant, if not quite senseless, and which may be translated, “Reseda, make disease recede. Don’t you know, don’t you know what chick has dug up these roots? May they have neither head nor feet.”[436]In the book following this passage Pliny raises the general question of the power of words to heal diseases.[437]He gives many instances of belief in incantations from contemporary popular superstition, from Roman religion, and from the annals of history. He does not doubt that Romans in the past have believed in the power of words, and thinks that if we accept set forms of prayer and religious formulae, we must also admit the force of incantations. But he adds that the wisest individuals believe in neither.