“Amulets and things to be borne about I find prescribed, taxed by some, approved by others. Look for them in Mizaldus, Porta, Albertus, etc. A ring made with the hoof of an ass’s right forefoot, carried about, etc. I say, with Renodeus, they are not altogether to be rejected. Piony doth help epilepsies. Pretious stones most diseases. A wolf’s dung carried about helps the cholick. A spider an ague, etc. Such medicines are to be exploded that consist of words, characters, spells, and charms, which can do no good at all, but out of a strong conceit, as Pomponatious proves, or the devil’s policy, that is the first founder and teacher of them.”Burton: “Anatomy of Melancholy.”
“Amulets and things to be borne about I find prescribed, taxed by some, approved by others. Look for them in Mizaldus, Porta, Albertus, etc. A ring made with the hoof of an ass’s right forefoot, carried about, etc. I say, with Renodeus, they are not altogether to be rejected. Piony doth help epilepsies. Pretious stones most diseases. A wolf’s dung carried about helps the cholick. A spider an ague, etc. Such medicines are to be exploded that consist of words, characters, spells, and charms, which can do no good at all, but out of a strong conceit, as Pomponatious proves, or the devil’s policy, that is the first founder and teacher of them.”
Burton: “Anatomy of Melancholy.”
Charms, enchantments, amulets, incantations, talismans, phylacteries, and all the armoury of witchcraft and magic have been intimately mixed up with pharmacy and medicine in all countries and in all ages. The degradation of the Greek term pharmakeia from its original meaning of the art of preparing medicine to sorcery and poisoning is evidence of the prevalence of debasing superstitions in the practice of medicine among the cultivated Greeks. Hermes the Egyptian, Zoroaster the Persian, and Solomon the Hebrew were famous among the early practitioners and teachers of magic. These names served to conjure with. Those who bore them were probably wise men above the averagewho were above such tricks as were attributed to them. But it suited the purpose or the business of those who made their living out of the superstitions of the people to pretend to trace their practices to universally revered heroes of a dim past.
Not that the whole of the magical rites associated with the art of healing were based on conscious fraud. The beliefs of savage or untutored races in demons which cause diseases is natural, it may almost be said reasonable. What more natural when they see one of their tribe seized with an epileptic fit than to assume the presence of an invisible foe? Or if a contagious plague or small-pox or fever attacks their village, is it not an inevitable conclusion that angry spirits have attacked the tribe, perhaps for some unknown offence? From such a basis the idea of sacrifice to the avenging fiend follows obviously. In some parts of China if a person accidentally kicks a stone and soon afterwards falls ill the relatives go to that stone and offer fruit, wine, or other treasures, and it may be that the patient recovers. In that case the efficacy of the treatment is demonstrated, and only those who do not desire to believe will question it; if the patient should die the proof is not less conclusive of the demon’s malignity.
In some primitive peoples, among the New Zealand natives, for example, it is believed that a separate demon exists for each distinct disease; one for ague, one for epilepsy, one for toothache, and so forth. This too, seems reasonable. Each of those demons has something which will please or frighten him. So amulets, talismans, charms come into use. The North American Indians, however, generally attribute all disease to one evil spirit only. Consequently, their treatment of all complaints is the same.
The Egyptians, according to Celsus, believed that there were thirty-six demons or divinities in the air, to each of whom was attributed a separate part or organ of the human body. In the event of disease affecting one of these parts the priest-physician invoked the demon, calling him by his name, and requiring him in a special form of words to cure the afflicted part.
Solomon was credited among many Eastern people with having discovered many of the secrets of controlling diseases by magical processes. According to Josephus he composed and bequeathed to posterity a book of these magical secrets. Hezekiah is said to have suppressed this work because it was leading the people to pray to other powers than Jehovah. But some of the secrets of Solomon were handed down in certain families by tradition. Josephus relates that a certain Jew named Eleazor drew a demon from the nose of a possessed person in the presence of the Emperor Vespasian and a number of Roman officers, by the aid of a magic ring and a form of invocation. In order to prove that the demon thus expelled had a real separate existence, he ordered it to upset a vessel of water which stood on the floor. This was done. Books professing to give Solomon’s secrets were not uncommon among Christians as well as Jews. Goethe alluded to such a treatise in “Faust” in the line
Für solche halbe Höllenbrut, Ist Salomoni’s Schlüssel gut.
Für solche halbe Höllenbrut, Ist Salomoni’s Schlüssel gut.
Für solche halbe Höllenbrut, Ist Salomoni’s Schlüssel gut.
Für solche halbe Höllenbrut, Ist Salomoni’s Schlüssel gut.
Throughout their history the Jewish people have studied and practised magic as a means of healing. According to the Book of Enoch the daughters of men were instructed in “incantations, exorcisms, and thecutting of roots” by the sons of God who came to earth and associated with them. The Greeks and Romans always held Jewish sorcery in the highest esteem, and the Arabs accepted their teaching with implicit confidence. The Talmud is full of magical formulas, and the Kaballah, a mystic theosophy which combined Israelitish traditions with Alexandrian philosophy, and began to be known about the tenth century, was unquestionably the foundation of the sophistry of Paracelsus and his followers.
In the Middle Ages, and in some communities until quite recent times, belief in the occult powers of Jews, which they had themselves inculcated, was firm and universal, and became the reason, or at least the excuse, for much of the persecution they had to suffer. For the punishment of sorcery and witchcraft was not based on a belief that fraud had been practised, but resulted from a conviction of the terrible truth of the claims which had been put forward.
The Jews of Western Europe have lost or abandoned many of the traditional practices which have been associated with their popular medicines from time immemorial. But in the East, especially in Turkey and Syria, quaint prayers and antiquated materia medica are still associated as they were in the days of the Babylonian captivity. Dogs’ livers, earthworms, hares’ feet, live ants, human bones, doves’ dung, wolves’ entrails, and powdered mummy still rank high as remedies, while for patients who can afford it such precious products as dew from Mount Carmel are prescribed. Invocations, prayers, and superstitious practices form the stock in trade of the “Gabbetes,” generally elderly persons who attend on the sick. They have a multitude of infallible cures in their repertoires.Powdered, freshly roasted earthworms in wine, or live grasshoppers in water, are given by them for biliousness. For bronchial complaints they write some Hebrew letters on a new plate, wash it off with wine, add three grains of a citron which has been used at the Tabernacle festival, and give this as a draught. Dogs’ excrements made up with honey form a poultice for sore eyes, mummy or human bones ground up with honey is a precious tonic, and wolves’ liver is a cure for fits. But the administration of these remedies must be accompanied by the necessary invocation, generally to the names of patriarchs, angels, or prophets, but often mere gibberish, such as “Adar, gar, vedar, gar,” which is the formula for use with a toothache remedy.
The phylacteries still worn by modern Jews at certain parts of their services, now perhaps by most of them only in accordance with inveterate custom, have been in all ages esteemed by them as protecting them against evil and demoniac influences. They are leathern receptacles, which they bind on their left arms and on their foreheads in literal obedience to the Mosaic instructions in the passages transcribed, and contained in the cases, from Exodus c. 13, v. 1–10, and c. 13, v. 11–16, Deuteronomy c. 6, v. 4–9, and c. 9, v. 13–21. To a modern reader these passages appear to protest against superstitions and heathenish beliefs and practices, but the rabbis and scribes taught that these and the mesuza, the similar passages affixed to the doorposts, would avert physical and spiritual dangers, and they invented minute instructions for the preparation of the inscriptions. A scribe, for example, who had commenced to write one of the passages, was not to allow himself to be interrupted by any human distraction, not even if the king asked him a question.
All the eastern nations trusted largely to amulets of various kinds for the prevention and treatment of disease. Galen quotes from Nechepsus, an Egyptian king, who lived about 630B.C., who wrote that a green jasper cut in the form of a dragon surrounded by rays, applied externally would cure indigestion and strengthen the stomach. Among the books attributed to Hermes was one entitled “The Thirty-six Herbs Sacred to Horoscopes.” Of this book Galen says it is only a waste of time to read it. The title, however, as Leclerc has pointed out, rather curiously confirms the statement attributed to Celsus which is found in Origen’s treatise, “Contra Celsum,” to which allusion has already been made.
Amulets are still in general use in the East. Bertherand in “Medicine of the Arabs” says the uneducated Arab of to-day when he has anything the matter with him goes to his priest and pays him a fee for which the priest gives him a little paper about two inches square on which certain phrases are written. This is put up in a leathern case, and worn as near the affected part as is possible. The richer Arab women wear silver cases with texts from the Koran in them. But it is essential that the paper must have been written on a Friday, a little before sunset, and with ink in which myrrh and saffron have been dissolved.
In the Third Report of the Wellcome Research Laboratories at the Gordon Memorial College, Khartoum (London: Baillière, Tindall, & Cox, 1908), Dr. R. G. Anderson writes an interesting chapter on the medical superstitions of the people of Kordofan, and gives a number of illustrations of amulets and written charms actually in use by the Arabs of that country. “To the native,” says Dr. Anderson, “no process is too absurdfor belief, and often, within his limits, no price too high to accomplish a cure.” Most of them wear talismans of some kind. Some of them spend a great part of their scanty earnings on charms to cure some chronic disease, stone in the bladder, for example. The son of the late Mahdi presented to Dr. Anderson a charm which his father wore round the arm above the elbow, designed against evil spirits and the evil eye. It consisted of a square case containing a written charm, and a bag filled with a preparation of roots. The charms worn by the natives generally consist of quotations from the Koran, often repeated many times and with signs of the great prophets interspersed. The principal of these signs are the following:—
Solomon.Enoch.David.Lot.Seth.
Solomon.
Enoch.
David.
Lot.
Seth.
“Lohn” (or Writing Board).
“Lohn” (or Writing Board).
The annexed illustration has been kindly lent by Mr. Wellcome (on behalf of the Gordon Memorial College) from the Report mentioned above. It represents a “Lohn,” or writing board on which Koranic phrases or mystic inscriptions have been written by Fikis (holy men). When the writing is dry it is washed off and the fluid is taken internally or applied externally.
Abracadabra was the most famous of the ancient charms or talismans employed in medicine. Its mystic meaning has been the subject of much ingenious investigation, but even its derivation has not been agreed upon. The first mention of the term is found in the poem “De Medicina Praecepta Saluberrima,” by Quintus Serenus Samonicus. Samonicus was a noted physician in Rome in the second and third centuries. He was a favourite with the Emperor Severus, and accompanied him in his expedition to BritainA.D.208. Severus died at York inA.D.211, and in the following year his son Caracalla had his brother Geta, and 20,000 other people supposed to be favourable to Geta’s claims, assassinated. Among the victims was Serenus Samonicus. The poem, which is the only existing work of Serenus, consists of 1,115 hexameter lines which illustrate the medical practice and superstitions of the period when it was written. The lines in which the word “Abracadabra,” and the way to employ it are introduced are these:—
Inscribis chartae, quod dicitur Abracadabra,Saepius: et subter repetas, sed detrahe summae,Et magis atque magis desint elementa figurisSingula, quae semper rapies et coetera figes,Donec in angustam redigatur litera conum.His lino nexis collum redimire memento.
Inscribis chartae, quod dicitur Abracadabra,Saepius: et subter repetas, sed detrahe summae,Et magis atque magis desint elementa figurisSingula, quae semper rapies et coetera figes,Donec in angustam redigatur litera conum.His lino nexis collum redimire memento.
Inscribis chartae, quod dicitur Abracadabra,Saepius: et subter repetas, sed detrahe summae,Et magis atque magis desint elementa figurisSingula, quae semper rapies et coetera figes,Donec in angustam redigatur litera conum.His lino nexis collum redimire memento.
Inscribis chartae, quod dicitur Abracadabra,
Saepius: et subter repetas, sed detrahe summae,
Et magis atque magis desint elementa figuris
Singula, quae semper rapies et coetera figes,
Donec in angustam redigatur litera conum.
His lino nexis collum redimire memento.
In a paper on Serenus Samonicus by Dr. Barnes of Carlisle, contributed to theSt. Louis Medical Review, the following translation of the above passage is given. A semitertian fever of a particular character is the disease under discussion.
“Write several times on a piece of paper the word 'Abracadabra,’ and repeat the word in the linesbelow, but take away letters from the complete word and let the letters fall away one at a time in each succeeding line. Take these away ever, but keep the rest until the writing is reduced to a narrow cone. Remember to tie these papers with flax and bind them round the neck.”
The charm was written in several ways all in conformity with the instructions. Dr. Barnes gives these specimens:
After wearing the charm for nine days it had to be thrown over the shoulder into a stream running eastwards. In cases which resisted this talisman Serenus recommended the application of lion’s fat, or yellow coral with green emeralds tied to the skin of a cat and worn round the neck.
Serenus Samonicus is believed to have been a disciple of a notorious Christian heretic named Basilides, who lived in the early part of the second century, and was himself the founder of a sect branching out of the gnostics. Basilides had added to their beliefs some fanciful notions based on the teachings of Pythagoras and Apollonius of Tyre, especially in regard to names and numbers. To him is attributed the invention of the mystic word “abraxas,” which in Greek numeration represents the total 365, thus:—a—1, b—2, r—100,a—1, x—60, a—1, s—200. This word is supposed to have been a numeric representation of the Persian sungod, or if it was invented by Basilides, more likely indicated the 365 emanations of the infinite Deity. It has been generally supposed that abracadabra was derived from abraxas.
There are, however, other interpretations. Littré associates it with the Hebrew words, Ab, Ruach, Dabar; Father, Holy Ghost, Word. Dr. King, an authority on the curious gnostic gems well-known to antiquarians, regards this explanation as purely fanciful and suggests that Abracadabra is a modification of the term Ablathanabla, a word frequently met with on the gems alluded to, and meaning Our Father, Thou art Our Father. Others hold that Ablathanabla is a corruption of Abracadabra. An ingenious correspondent ofNotes and Queriesthinks that a more likely Hebrew origin of the term than the one favoured by Littré would be Abrai seda brai, which would signify Out, bad spirit, out. It is agreed that the word should be pronounced Abrasadabra. Another likely origin, suggested by Colonel C. R. Conder in “The Rise of Man” (1908), p. 314, is Abrak-ha-dabra, a Hebrew phrase meaning “I bless the deed.” The triangular form of the charm was no doubt significant of the Trinity in Unity.
Pythagoras taught that holding dill in the left hand would prevent epilepsy. Serapion of Alexandria (B.C.278) prescribed for epilepsy the warty excrescences on the forelegs of animals, camel’s brain and gall, rennet of seal, dung of crocodile, blood of turtle, and other animalproducts. Pliny alludes to a tradition, that a root of autumnal nettle would cure a tertian fever, provided that when it is dug the patient’s name and his parent’s names are pronounced aloud; that the longest tooth of a black dog worn as an amulet would cure quartan fever; that the snout and tips of the ears of a mouse, the animal itself to run free, wrapped in a rose coloured patch, also worn as an amulet, would similarly cure the same disease; the right eye of a living lizard wrapped in a piece of goat’s skin; and a herb picked from the head of a statue and tied up with red thread, are other specimens of the amulets popular in his time. But Pliny appears to doubt if all these treatments can be trusted. He mentions one, that is that the heart of a hen placed on a woman’s left breast while she is asleep will make her tell all her secrets, and this he characterizes as a portentous lie. Mr. Cockayne quoting this, remarks dryly, “Perhaps he had tried it.” Alexander of Tralles recommends a number of amulets, some of which he mentions he has proved. Thus for colic he names the dung of a wolf with some bits of bone in it in a closed tube worn on the right arm or thigh; an octagonal iron ring on which are engraved the words “Flee, flee, ho, ho, Bile, the lark was searching” good for bilious disorders; for gout, gather henbane when the moon is in Aquarius or Pisces before sunset with the thumb and third finger of the left hand, saying at the time an invocation inviting the holy herb to come to the house of blank and cure M. or N.; with a lot more.
The Greeks named the Furies Eumenides, good people, evidently with the idea of propitiating them. For a similar reason fairies were known as good folk by our ancestors.
It would be as tedious as it would be useless to relate at any length the multitude of silly superstitions which make up the medicinal folk-lore of this and other countries. Methods of curing warts, toothache, ague, worms, and other common complaints are familiar to everyone. The idea that toothache is caused by tiny worms which can be expelled by henbane, is very ancient and still exists. A process from one of the Anglo-Saxon Leechdoms converted into modern English by the Rev. Oswald Cockayne may be quoted as a sample:—
“For tooth worms take acorn meal and henbane seed and wax, of all equally much, mingle them together, work into a wax candle and burn it, let it reek into the mouth, put a black cloth under, and the worms will fall on it.”
Marcellus, a late Latin medical author whose work was translated into Saxon, gave a simpler remedy. It was to say “Argidam, Margidum, Sturdigum,” thrice, then spit into a frog’s mouth and set him free, requesting him at the same time to carry off the toothache.
Another popular cure for toothache in early England was to wear a piece of parchment on which the following charm was written:—“As St. Peter sat at the gate of Jerusalem our Blessed Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, passed by and said, What aileth thee? He said Lord, my teeth ache. He said, Arise and follow me and thy teeth shall never ache any more.”
Sir Kenelm Digby’s method was less tempting. He directed that the patient should scratch his gum with an iron nail until he made it bleed, and should then drive the nail with the blood upon it into a woodenbeam. He will never have toothache again, says this sage.
For warts the cures are innumerable. They are all more or less like this: Steal a piece of meat from a butcher’s stall or basket, bury it secretly at a gateway where four lanes meet. As the meat decays the warts will die away. An apple cut into slices and rubbed on the warts and buried is equally efficacious. So is a snail which after being rubbed on the warts is impaled on a thorn and left to die.
A room hung with red cloth was esteemed in many countries to be effective against certain diseases, small-pox especially. John of Gaddesden relates how he cured Edward II’s son by this device. The prejudice in favour of red flannel which still exists, for tying a piece of it round sore throats is probably a remnant of the fancy that red was specially obnoxious to evil spirits. The Romans hung red coral round the necks of their infants to protect them from the evil eye. This practice, too, has come down to our day.
Among other charms and incantations quoted by Mr. Cockayne in his account of Saxon Leechdoms we find that for a baby’s recovery “some would creep through a hole in the ground and stop it up behind them with thorns,” “if cattle have a disease of the lungs, burn (something undeciphered) on midsummer’s day; add holy water, and pour it into their mouths on midsummer’s morrow; and sing over them: Ps. 51, Ps. 17, and the Athanasian Creed.” “If anything has been stolen from you write a copy of the annexed diagram and put it into thyleft shoe under the heel. Then thou shalt soon hear of it.”
It was widely believed that disease could be transferred by means of certain silly formalities. This was a very ancient notion. Pliny explains how pains in the stomach could be transferred to a duck or a puppy. A prescription of about two hundred years ago for the cure of convulsions was to take parings of the sick man’s nails, some hair from his eyebrows, and a halfpenny, and wrap them all in a clout which had been round his head. This package must be laid in a gateway where four lanes meet, and the first person who opened it would take the sickness and relieve the patient of it. A certain John Dougall was prosecuted in Edinburgh in 1695 for prescribing this treatment. A more gruesome but less unjust proceeding was to transfer the disease to the dead. An example is the treatment of boils quoted from Mr. W. G. Black’s “Folk Medicine.” The boil was to be poulticed three days and nights, after which the poultices and cloths employed were to be placed in the coffin with a dead person and buried with the corpse. In Lancashire warts could be transferred by rubbing each with a cinder which must be wrapped in paper and laid where four roads meet. As before, the person who opens this parcel will take the warts from the present owner. In Devonshire a child could be cured of whooping cough by putting one of its hairs between slices of bread and butter and giving these to a dog. If the dog coughed, as was probable, the whooping cough was transferred.
The powers of witches were extensive but at the same time curiously restricted. When Agnes Simpson was tried in Scotland in 1590 she confessed that to compass the death of James VI she had hung up a black toad for nine days and caught the juice which dropped from it. If she could have obtained a piece of linen which the king had worn she could have killed him by applying to it some of this venom, which would have caused him such pain as if he had lain on sharp thorns or needles.
Another means they had of inflicting torture was to make an effigy in wax or clay of their victim and then to stick pins into it or beat it. This would cause the person represented the pain which it was desired to inflict.
It would merely try the patience of the reader to enumerate even a tithe of the absurd things which have been and are being used by people, civilised and savage, as charms, talismans, and amulets. The teraphim which Rachel stole from her father Laban, the magic knots of the Chaldeans, the gold and stone ornaments of the Egyptians, which they not only wore themselves but often attached to their mummies—a multitude of these going back as far as the flint amulets of the predynastic period, are to be seen in the British Museum—the precious stones whose virtues were discovered by Orpheus, the infinite variety of gold and silver ornaments adopted by the Romans with superstitious notions, the fish, ichthys, being the initials of the Greek words for Jesus Christ, the Lord, our Saviour, engravedon stones and worn by the early Christians, the Gnostic gems, the coral necklaces, the bezoar stones, the toad ashes, the strands of the ropes used for hanging criminals, the magnets of the middle ages and of modern times, and a thousand other things, credited with magical curative properties, might be cited. Besides these there are myriads of forms of words written or spoken, some pious, some gibberish, which have been used and recommended both with and without drugs.
Schelenz in “Geschichte der Pharmacie” (1904) quotes from Jakob Mærlant of Bruges, “the Father of Flemish science” (born about 1235) the recommendation of an “Amulettring” on the stone of which the figure of Mercury was engraved, and which would make the wearer healthy, “die mæct sinen traghere ghesont.” (See Cramp Rings, p. 305.)
How widespread has been the belief in the power of amulets and charms may be gathered from a few instances of such superstitions among famous persons. Lord Bacon was convinced that warts could be cured by rubbing lard on them and transferring the lard to a post. The warts would die when the lard dried. Robert Boyle attributed the cure of a hæmorrhage to wearing some moss from a dead man’s skull. The father of Sir Christopher Wren relates that Lord Burghley, the Lord Treasurer of England in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, kept off the gout by always wearing a blue ribbon studded with a particular kind of snail shells round his leg. Whenever he left it off the pain returned violently. Burton in the “Anatomy of Melancholy” (1621) says St. John’s Wort gathered on a Friday in the horn of Jupiter, when it comes to his effectual operation (that is about full moon in July), hung aboutthe neck will mightily help melancholy and drive away fantastical spirits.
Pepys writing on May 28, 1667, says, “My wife went down with Jane and W. Hewer to Woolwich in order to get a little ayre, and to lie there to-night and so to gather May Dew to-morrow morning, which Mrs. Turner hath taught her is the only thing to wash her face with; and I am content with it.” But Mrs. Turner ought to have explained to Mrs. Pepys that to preserve beauty it was necessary to collect the May Dew on the first of the month.
Catherine de Medici wore a piece of an infant’s skin as a charm, and Lord Bryon presented an amulet of this nature to Prince Metternich. Pascal died with some undecipherable inscription sewn into his clothes. Charles V always wore a sachet of dried silkworms to protect him from vertigo. The Emperor Augustus wore a piece of the skin of a sea calf to keep the lightning from injuring him, and the Emperor Tiberius wore laurel round his neck for the same reason when a thunderstorm seemed to be approaching. Thyreus reports that in 1568 the Prince of Orange condemned a Spaniard to be shot, but that the soldiers could not hit him. They undressed him and found he was wearing an amulet bearing certain mysterious figures. They took this from him, and then killed him without further difficulty. The famous German physician, Frederick Hoffman, tells seriously of a gouty subject he knew who could tell when an attack was approaching by a stone in a ring which he wore changing colour.