Thaumaturgia Part 12

Haile be thou holy herbe, Growing in the ground.

And in the mount Calvaire First wert thou found.

Thou art good for many a sore, And healest many a wound, In the name of sweet Jesus I take thee from the ground.

We are told that Naaman was cured by dipping seven times in the river Jordan. Certain formalities were also performed at the pool of Bethesda.

Dr. Chamberlayne's anodyne necklaces, were, for a length of time, objects of the most anxious maternal solicitude, until their occult virtues became lost by the reverence for them being destroyed; and those which succeeded them have long since run their race or nearly so.

The grey limewort was at one time supposed to have been a specific in hydrophobia--that it not only cured those labouring under this disorder, but by carrying it about the person, it was reputed to possess the extraordinary power of preventing mad dogs from biting them. Calvert paid devotions to St. Hubert for the recovery of his son, who was cured by this means. The son also performed the necessary rites at the shrine, and was cured not only of the hydrophobia "but of the worser phrensy with which his father had instilled him." Cramp-rings were also used; and eelskins to this day are tied round the legs as a preventive of this spasmodic affection; and by laying sticks across the floor, on going to bed, cramp has also been prevented.

Numerous are the charms and incantations used at the present day for the removal of warts, many cases of which are not a little surprising. And we are told by Lord Verulam, who is allowed to have been as great a genius as this country ever produced, that, when he was at Paris, he had above a hundred warts on his hands; and that the English amba.s.sador's lady, then at court, and a woman far above superst.i.tion, removed them all by only rubbing them with the fat side of the rind of a piece of bacon, which they afterwards nailed to a post, with the fat side towards the south. In five weeks, says my Lord, they were all removed. The following are his Lords.h.i.+p's observations, in his own words, relative to the power of amulets. After deep metaphysical observations on nature, and arguing in mitigation of sorcery, witchcraft, and divination, effects that far outstrip the belief in amulets, he observes "We should not reject all of this kind, because it is not known how far those contributing to superst.i.tion, depend on natural causes. Charms have not the power from contract with evil spirits, but proceed wholly from strengthening the imagination: in the same manner that images and their influence, have prevailed on religion, being called from a different way of use and application, sigils, incantations, and spells."

ECCENTRICITIES, CAPRICES, AND EFFECTS, OF THE IMAGINATION.

A certain writer, apologizing for the irregularities of great genii, delivers himself as follows: "The gifts of imagination bring the heaviest task upon, the vigilance of reason; and to bear those faculties with unerring rect.i.tude or invariable propriety, requires a degree of firmness and of cool attention, which does not always attend the higher gifts of the mind. Yet, difficult as nature herself seems to have reduced the task of regularity to genius, it is the supreme consolation of dullness, to seize upon those excesses, which are the overflowings of faculties they never enjoyed."[111] Are not the _gifts of imagination_ mistaken here for the strength of pa.s.sions? Doubtless, where strong pa.s.sions accompany great parts, as perhaps they often do, the imagination may encrease their force and activity: but, where pa.s.sions are calm and gentle, imagination of itself should seem to have no conflict but speculatively with reason. There, indeed, it wages an eternal war; and, if not contracted and strictly regulated, it will carry the patient into endless extravagancies. The term patient is here properly used, because men, under the influence of imagination, are most truly distempered. The degree of this distemper will be in proportion to the prevalence of imagination over reason, and, according to this proportion, amount to more or less of the whimsical; but when reason shall become, as it were, extinct, and imagination govern alone, then the distemper will be madness under the wildest and most fantastic modes. Thus, one of those invalids, perhaps, shall be all sorrow for having been most unjustly deprived of the crown; though his vocation, poor man! be that of a school-master. Another, like Horace's madman, is all joy; and it may seem even cruelty to cure him.

The operations and caprices of the imagination are various and endless; and, as they cannot be reduced to regularity or system, so it is highly improbable that any certain method of cure should ever be found out for them. It has generally been thought, that matter of fact might most successfully be opposed to the delusions of imagination, as being proof to the senses, and carrying conviction unavoidably to the understanding; but we rather suspect, that the understanding or reasoning faculty, has little to do in all these cases: at least so it should seem from the two following facts, which are by no means badly attested.

Fienus, in his curious little book, _de Viribus Imaginationis_, records from Donatus the case of a man, who fancied his body encreased to such a size, that he durst not attempt to pa.s.s through the door of his chamber.

The physician believing that nothing could more effectually cure this error of imagination, than to shew that the thing could actually be done, caused the patient to be thrust forcibly through it: who, struck with horror, and falling suddenly into agonies, complained of being crushed to pieces, and expired soon after.[112]

The other case, as related by Van Swieten, in his commentaries upon Boerhaave, is that of a learned man, who had studied, till be fancied his legs to be of gla.s.s: in consequence of which he durst not attempt to stir, but was constantly under anxiety about them. His maid bringing one day some wood to the fire, threw it carelessly down; and was severely reprimanded by her master, who was terrified not a little for his legs of gla.s.s. The surly wench, out of all patience with his megrims, as she called them, gave him a blow with a log upon the parts affected; which so enraged him, that he instantly rose up, and from that moment recovered the use of his legs.--Was reason concerned any more here; or was it not rather one blind impulse acting against another?

Imagination has, unquestionably, a most powerful effect upon the mind, and in all these miraculous cures, is by far the strongest ingredient.

Dr. Strother says, "The influence of the mind and pa.s.sions works upon the mind and body in sensible operations like a medicine, and is of far the greater force than exercise. The countenance betrays a good or wicked intention; and that good or wicked intention will produce in different persons a strength to encounter, or a weakness to yield to the preponderating side." Dr. Brown says, "Our looks discover our pa.s.sions, there being mystically in our faces certain characters, which carry in them the motto of our souls, and, therefore, probably work secret effects in other parts." This idea is beautifully ill.u.s.trated by Garth in his Dispensatory, in the following lines:--

"Thus paler looks impetuous rage proclaim, And chilly virgins redden into flame.

See envy oft transformed in wan disguise, And mirth sits gay and smiling in the eyes, Oft our complexions do the soul declare, And tell what pa.s.sions in the features are.

Hence 'tis we look the wond'rous cause to find, How body acts upon impa.s.sive mind."

On the power and pleasure of the imagination, from the pleasures and pains it administers here below, Addison concludes that G.o.d, who knows all the ways of afflicting us, may so transport us hereafter with such beautiful and glorious visions, or torment us with such hideous and ghastly spectres, as might even of themselves suffice to make up the entire heaven or h.e.l.l of any future being.

DOCTRINE OF EFFLUVIA--MIRACULOUS CURES BY MEANS OF CHARMS, AMULETS, ETC.

Dr. Willis, in his Treatise on nervous disorders, does not hesitate to recommend amulets in epileptic disorders. "Take," says he, "some fresh peony roots, cut them into square bits, and hang them round the neck, changing them as often as they dry." It is not improbable that the hint was taken from this circ.u.mstance for the anodyne necklaces, which, some time ago, were in such repute, as the Doctor, some little way further on, prescribes the same root for the looseness, fevers, and convulsions of children, during the time of teething, mixed, to make it appear more miraculous, with some elk's hoof.

St. Vitus's dance is said to have been cured by the afflicted person paying a visit to the tomb of the saint, near Ulm, every May. Indeed, there is no little reason in this a.s.sertion; for exercise and change of air will change many obstinate diseases. The bite of the tarantula is cured by music; and this only by certain tunes. Turner, whose ideas are so extravagantly absurd, where he a.s.serts, that the symptoms of hydrophobia may not appear for forty years after the bite of the dog, and who maintains that "the slaver or breath of such a dog is infectious;" and that men bitten by mad dogs, will bite like dogs again, and die mad; although he laughs at the anodyne necklaces, argues much in the same manner. It is not, indeed, so very strange that the effluvia from external medicines entering our bodies, should effect such considerable changes, when we see the efficient cause of apoplexy, epilepsy, hysterics, plague, and a number of other disorders, consists, as it were, in imperceptible vapours.--Blood-stone (Lapis Aet.i.tes) fastened to the arm by some secret means, is said to prevent abortion.

Sydenham, in the iliac pa.s.sion, orders a live kitten to be constantly applied to the abdomen; others have used pigeons split alive, applied to the soles of the feet, with success, in pestilential fevers and convulsions. It was doubtless the impression that relief might be obtained by external agents, that the court of king David advised him to seek a young virgin, in order that a portion of the natural heat might be communicated to his body, and give strength to the decay of nature.

"Take the heart and liver of the fish and make a smoke, and the devil shall smell it and flee away." During the plague at Ma.r.s.eilles, which Belort attributed to the larvae of worms infecting the saliva, food, and chyle; and which, he says, "were hatched by the stomach, took their pa.s.sage into the blood, at a certain size, hindering the circulation, affecting the juices and solid parts." He advised amulets of mercury to be worn in bags suspended at the chest and nostrils, either as a safeguard, or as means of cure; by which method, through the _admissiveness_ of the pores, effluvia specially destructive of all venomous insects, were received into the blood. "An ill.u.s.trious prince,"

Belort says, "by wearing such an amulet, escaped the small-pox."

Clognini, an Italian physician, ordered two or three drachms of crude mercury to be worn as a defensive against the jaundice; and also as a preservative against the noxious vapours of inclement seasons: "It breaks," he observes, "and conquers the different figured seeds of pestilential distempers floating in the air; or else, mixing with the air, kills them where hatched." By others, the power of mercury, in these cases, has been ascribed to an elective faculty given out by the warmth of the body, which draws out the contagious particles. For, according to this entertained notion, all bodies are continually emitting effluvia, more or less, around them, and some whether they are internal or external. The Bath waters, for instance, change the colour of silver in the pocket of those who use them. Mercury produces the same effect; Tartar emetic, rubbed on the pit of the stomach, produces vomiting. Yawning and laughing are infectious; so are fear and shame.

The sight of sour things, or even the idea of them, will set the teeth on edge. Small-pox, itch, and other diseases, are contagious; if so, say they, mercurial amulets bid fair to destroy the germ of some complaints when used only as an external application, either by manual attrition, or worn as an amulet. But medicated or not, all amulets are precarious and uncertain, and in the cure of diseases are, by no means, to be trusted to.

The Barbary Moors, and generally throughout the Mahommedan dominions, the people are strikingly attached to charms, to which, and nature, they leave the cure of almost every disorder; and this is the most strongly impressed upon them from their belief in predestination, which, according to their creed, stipulates the evil a man is to suffer, as well as the length of time it is ordained he should live upon the land of his forefathers; consequently they imagine that any interference from secondary means would avail them nothing, an opinion said to have been entertained by William III, but one by no means calculated for nations, liberty, and commerce; upon the principle that when the one was entrenched upon, men would probably be more sudden in their revenge, and dislike physic and occupation; and when actuated with religious enthusiasm, nothing could stand them in any service.

The opinion of an old navy surgeon,[113] on the subject, is worth recording here. "A long and intense pa.s.sion on one object, whether of pride, love, fear, anger, or envy, we see have brought on some universal tremors; on others, convulsions, madness, melancholy, consumption, hectics, or such a chronical disorder as has wasted their flesh, or their strength, as certainly as the taking in of any poisonous drugs would have done. Anything frightful, sudden, or surprising, upon soft, timorous natures, not only shews itself in the continuance, but produces sometimes very troublesome consequences--for instance, a parliamentary fright will make even grown men _bewray_ themselves, scare them out of their wits, turn the hair grey. Surprise removes the hooping cough; looking from precipices or seeing wheels turn swiftly will give giddiness. Shall then these little accidents, or the pa.s.sions, (from caprice or humour, perhaps,) produce those effects, and not be able to do anything by amulets? No; as the spirits, in many cases, resort in plenty, we find where the fancy determines, giving joy and gladness to the heart, strength and fleetness to the limbs, and violent palpitations. To amulets, under strong imagination, is carried with more force to a distempered part, and, under these circ.u.mstances, its natural powers exert better to a discussion.

"The cures compa.s.sed in this manner," says our author, "are not more admirable than many of the distempers themselves. Who can apprehend by what impenetrable method the bite of a mad dog, or tarantula, can produce these symptoms? The touch of a torpedo numbness? If they are allowed to do these, doubtless they may the other; and not by miracles, which Spinoza denies the possibility of, but by natural and regular causes, though inscrutable to us. The best way, therefore, in using amulets, must be in squaring them to the imagination of patients: let the newness and surprise exceed the invention, and keep up the humour by a long scroll of cures and vouchers; by these and such means, many distempers have been cured. Quacks again, according to their boldness and way of addressing (velvet and infallibility particularly) command success by striking the fancies of an audience. If a few, more sensible than the rest, see the doctor's miscarriages, and are not easily gulled at first sight, yet, when they see a man is never ashamed, in time, jump in to his a.s.sistance."

There is much truth and pertinence in some of the above remarks, and they apply nearly to the general practice of the present day. The farces and whims of people require often as much discrimination on the part of the physician as the disease itself. Those who know best how to flatter such caprices, are frequently the best paid for their trouble. Nervous diseases are always in season, and it is here that some professional dexterity is pardonable. Nature, when uninterrupted, will often do more than art; but our inability upon all occasions to appreciate the efforts of nature in the cure of diseases, must always render our notion, with respect to the powers faith, liable to numerous errors and deceptions.

There is, in fact, nothing more natural, and at the same time more erroneous, than to lay the cure of a disease to the door of the last medicine that had been prescribed. By these means the advocates of amulets and charms, have ever been enabled to appeal to the testimony of what they are pleased to call experience in justification of their pretensions, and egregious superst.i.tions; and cases which, in truth, ought to have been cla.s.sed, or rather designated, as lucky escapes, have been triumphantly pulled off as skilful cures; and thus, medicines and medical pract.i.tioners, have alike received the meed of unmerited praise, or the stigma of unjust censure. Of all branches of human science, medicine is one of the most interesting to mankind: and, accordingly as it is erroneously or judiciously cultivated, is evidently conducive to the prejudice or welfare of the public. Of how great consequence is it, then, that our endeavours should be exerted in stemming the propagation of errors, whether arising from ignorance, or prompted by motives of base cupidity, in giving a.s.sistance to the disseminations of useful truths, and to the perfection of ingenious discoveries.

FOOTNOTES:

[110] Lib. viii. chap. 2. 5.

[111] Langhorne's Life of Mr. Collins

[112] Reverii Praxis Medica, p. 188.

[113] John Ailkin, author of the Navy Surgeon, 1742. Sec Demonologia, p.

64 et seg.

CHAPTER XIII.

ON TALISMANS--SOME CURIOUS, NATURAL ONES, ETC.

The Egyptian amulets are not so ancient as the Babylonian talismans, but in their uses they were exactly similar. Some little figures, supposed to have been intended as charms, have been found on several mummies, which, at various times, have been brought to Europe. Plutarch informs us that the soldiers wore rings, on which the representation of an insect resembling our beetle, was inscribed; and we learn from Aelian, that the judges had always suspended round their necks a small figure of Truth formed of emeralds. The superst.i.tious belief in the virtues of talismans is yet far from being extinct, the Copths, the Arabians, the Syrians, and, indeed, almost all the inhabitants of Asia, west of the Ganges, whether Christians or mahometans, still use them against possible evils.

There is little distinction between talismans, amulets and the gree-grees of the Africans as regards their pretended efficacy; though there is some in their external configuration. Magical figures, engraven or cut under superst.i.tious observances of the characterisms and configurations of the heavens, are called talismans; to which astrologers, hermetical philosophers, and other adepts, attribute wonderful virtues, particularly that of calling down celestial influences.[114]

The talismans of the Samothracians, so famous of old, were pieces of iron formed into certain images, and set in rings. They were reputed as preservatives against all kinds of evils. There were other talismans taken from vegetables, and others from minerals. Three kinds of talismans were usually distinguished 1st. the _astronomical_ known by the signs or constellations of the heavens engraven upon them, with other figures, and some unintelligible characters; 2nd. the _magical_, bearing very extraordinary figures, with superst.i.tious words and names of angels unheard of; 3rd. the _mixt_ talismans, which consist of signs and barbarous words; but without any superst.i.tious ones, or names of angels.

It has been a.s.serted and maintained by some Rabins, that the brazen serpent raised by Moses in the wilderness, for the destruction of the serpents that annoyed the Israelites, was properly a talisman. All the miraculous things wrought by Apollonius Tyanaeus are attributed to the virtue and influence of _talismans_; and that wizard, as he is called, is even said to be the inventor of them. Some authors take several Runic medals,--medals, at least, whose inscriptions are in the Runic characters,--for talismans, it being notorious that the northern nations, in their heathen state, were much devoted to them, M. Keder, however has shown, that the medals here spoken of are quite other things than talismans.

It appears from the Evangelists[115] that, when St. Paul, after he had been s.h.i.+pwrecked, and escaped to the island of Malta, a viper fastened on his hand as he was laying a bundle of sticks, he had gathered, on the fire; and that, by a miracle, and to the great astonishment of the spectators, inhabitants of the island, he not only suffered no harm, but also cured, by the divine power, the chief of the island, and a great number of others, of very dangerous maladies. There remain still in that island, as so many trophies gained by the Apostle over that venemous beast, a great many small stones representing the eyes and tongues of serpents, and considered for several centuries past, as powerful amulets against different sorts of distempers and poisons. As the virtue of these stones is still much boasted of by the Maltese, and as some, on the contrary, maintain that they are the petrified teeth of a fish called lamia, it will not be irrelevant here to relate some observations from the best authors on this interesting subject, so much to our purpose.

It is said that those eyes and tongues of serpents are only found by the Maltese when they dig into the earth, which is whitish throughout the island, or draw up stone, especially about the cave of St. Paul. This stone is so soft, that, like clay, it may be cut through with any sharp instrument, and made to receive easily different figures, for building the walls of their houses and ramparts; but, when it has been imbibed with a sufficient quant.i.ty of rain or well water, it changes into a flint that resists the cutting of the sharpest instrument: whence the houses that are built of it in the two cities, appear as hewn out of one solid rock, and become harder, the more they are exposed to the inclemencies of the weather. This hardness may, with good reason, be ascribed to the salt of nitre, which contracts a certain viscidity from the rain wherewith it is mixed, and which easily penetrates into these stones, because their substance is spongy and cretaceous, and adheres to the tongue as hartshorn.

It is in these stones that not only the eyes and tongues of serpents are found, but also their viscera and other parts: as lungs, liver, heart, spleen, ribs, and so resembling life, and with such natural colours, that one may well doubt whether they are the work of nature or art; the figure of the eyes and tongues is very different. Some are elliptic, but, for the greater part round: some represent an hemisphere, others a segment, others an hyperbola. The glossopetrae are naturally of a conic figure, representing acute, obtuse, regular, and irregular cones. They are also of different colours, especially the eyes; for some of them are of an ash-colour, others liver colour, some brown, others blackish; but these, as most rare, are most esteemed. Bracelets are frequently made of them and set in gold: some representing an entire eye with a white pupil, and these are the most beautiful. Several are likewise found of an orange colour.

The virtues attributed by the Maltese to those eyes and tongues, and to the white earth which is found in the island, particularly in St. Paul's cave, and which is kept for use by the apothecaries, as the American bole, are very singular; for they reckon them not only a preservative against all sorts of poison, and an efficacious remedy for those who have taken poison, but also good in a number of diseases. They are taken internally, infused in water, wine, or in any other convenient liquor; or let to lie for some hours in vessels made of the white earth; or the white earth is taken itself dissolved in those liquors. The eyes set as precious stones in rings, and so as to touch immediately the flesh, are worn by the inhabitants on the fingers; but the tongues are fastened about the arm, or suspended from the neck.

Paul Bucconi, a Sicilian n.o.bleman, treated this notion of the eyes and tongues of serpents as a mere vulgar error; and maintains that they either const.i.tute a particular species of stone produced in the earth, or in the stones of the island of Malta, as in their matrix; or that they are nothing more than the petrified teeth of some marine fish; which is also the opinion of Fabius Columna, Nicholas Steno and other physicians and anatomists.

It seems to this n.o.ble author that the glossopetrae should be cla.s.sed in the animal kingdom, because, being burnt, they are changed into cinders as bones, before they are reduced into a calx or ashes, whilst calcined stones are immediately reduced into a calx. He further says, that the roots of the glossopetrae are often found broken in different ways, which is an evident argument that they have not been produced by nature, in the place they are digged out of, because nature forms other fossils, figured entirely in their matrix, without any hurt or mutilation. Add to this, that the substance is different in different parts of the glossopetrae; solid at the point, less solid at the root, compact at the surface, porous and fibrous in the interior: besides, the polished surface, contrary to the custom of nature, which forms no stone, whether common or precious, is polished; and, lastly, the figure that varies different ways, as well as the size, being found great, broad, triangular, narrow, small, very small, pyramidal, straight, curved before, behind, to the right and to the left, in form of a saw with small teeth, furnished with great jags or notches, and frequently absolutely pyramidal without notches; all these particulars favour his opinion. But, as he thence believes he has proved that the glossopetrae should not be cla.s.sed amongst stones, so also what he has said may prove that they are the natural teeth of those fishes, which are called, by lithographers, lamia, aquila, requiem, (shark) etc. and therefore there scarce remains any reason for a further doubt on this head.

There are representations of curiosities, which we shall give an account of from the Ephemerides of the Curious. It is customary to see at Batavia, in the island of Java, the figure of serpents impressed on the sh.e.l.ls of eggs, Andrew Cleyerus, a naturalist of considerable note, says, that when he was at Batavia in 1679, he had seen himself, on the 14th of September, an egg newly laid by a hen, of the ordinary size, but representing very exactly, towards the summit of the other part of the sh.e.l.l, the figure of a serpent and all its parts, not only the lineaments of the serpent were marked on the surface, but the three dimensions of the body were as sensible as if they had been engraved by an able sculptor, or impressed on wax, plaister or some other like matter. One could see very plainly the head, ears, and a cloven tongue starting out of the throat; the eyes were sparkling and resplendent, and represented so perfectly the interior and exterior of the parts of the eye, with their natural colours, that they seemed to behold with astonishment the eyes even of the spectators. To account for this phenomenon, it may be supposed that, the hen being near laying, a serpent presented itself to her sight, and that her imagination, struck thereby, impressed the figure of the serpent on the egg that was ready to press out of the ovarium.

An egg equally wonderful, was laid by a hen at Rome on the 14th. of December, 1680. The famous comet that appeared then on the head of Andromeda, with other stars, were seen represented on its sh.e.l.l.

Sebastian Scheffer says, that he had seen an egg with the representation of an eclipse on it. Signor Magliabecchi, in his letter to the academy of the Curious, on the 20th. of October 1682, has these words; "Last month I had sent me from Rome, a drawing of an egg found at Tivoli, with the impression of the sun and the transparent comet with a twisted tail."

There are also representations of Indian nuts, or small cocos, with the head of an ape. The nut has been exactly engraved in the Ephemerides of the Curious, both as to size and form, and covered with its sh.e.l.l, as expressed there by cyphers and other figures which represent the same nut stripped of its covering, and exhibiting the head of an ape. This nut seems pretty much like the foreign fruit described by Clusius, Exoticorum lib. a, which John Bauhin (Hist. Plant. Universal Lib. 3) retaining the description of Clusius, calls, "a nut resembling the areca," and which C. Bauhin (Pinac. lib. II, sect. 6) calls, the fruit of the fourteenth of Palm-tree, that bears nuts, or a foreign fruit of the same sort as the areca.