ague; and however this may be accounted for, whether by the imagination
or the disease subsiding of its own accord, many have been apparently
cured by them, when the Peruvian bark had previously failed. Agues, says
Dr. Willis, resisting Amulets have often been applied to the wrist with
success. ABRACADABRA written in a conical form, _i. e._ in the shape of
an Isoceles triangle, beginning with A, then A B, A B R, and so on, and
placed under each other, will have a good effect. The herb Lunaria,
gathered by moonlight, we are assured by very respectable authorities,
has performed some surprising cures. Naaman, we are told (numero deus
impare gaudet) was cured by dipping seven times in the river Jordan. An
old gentleman, of eighty years of age, who had nearly exhausted his
substance upon physicians, was cured of a strangury, by a new glass
bottle that had never been wet inside, only by making water in it, and
burying it in the earth. There were also certain formalities performed
at the pool of Bethseda for the cure of diseases. Dr. Chamberlayne’s
Anodyne necklace for a long time was the _sina qua non_ of mothers and
nurses, until its virtue was lost by its reverence being destroyed; and
those which have succeeded it have nearly run their race. The Grey
Liverwort was at one time thought not only to have cured hydrophobia,
but, by having it about the person, to have prevented 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 eel skins tied round the
limbs, to prevent this spasmodic affection; and also by laying the
sticks across on the floor in going to bed, have also performed cures
this way. Numerous are the charms, amulets, and incantations, used even
in the present day for the removal of warts. We are told by Lord Verulam
(vol. iii. p. 234,) that when he was at Paris he had above an hundred
warts on his hands; and that the English Ambassador’s lady, then at
court, and a woman far above all superstition, removed them all only by
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.
As Lord Verulam is allowed to have been as great a genius as this
country ever produced, it may not be irrelevant to the present subject,
to give, in his own words, what he has observed relative to the power of
Amulets. After deep metaphysical observations in 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
superstition depend on natural causes. Charms have not their power from
contracts with evil spirits, but proceed wholly from strengthening the
imagination; in the same manner that images and their influence, have
prevailed in religion; being called from a different way of use and
application, sigils, incantations, and spells.
_Effect of the Imagination on the Mind, &c._
Imagination, indubitably, has a powerful effect on the mind, and in all
these miraculous cures is by far the strongest ingredient. Dr. Strother
says, the influence of the mind and passions works upon the body in
sensible operations like a medicine, and is of far the greater force
upon the juices than exercise. The countenance, he observes, 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. “Our looks discover our passions; there being
mystically in our faces, says Dr. Brown, certain characters, which carry
in them the motto of our souls, and therefore probably work secret
effects in other parts,” or, as Garth, in his “Dispensatory,” so
beautifully illustrates the idea:
“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 passions in the features are.
Hence ’tis we look, the wond’rous cause to find,
How body acts upon impassive mind.”
Addison, on the power and pleasure of the imagination (Spect. vol. vi.)
concludes, from the pleasure and pain it administers here below, that
God, 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 of Heaven or Hell of any future being.
St. Vitus’ dance was cured by visiting the tomb of the saint, near Ulm,
every May. Indeed, there is some reason in this assertion; for exercise
and change of scene and air will cure many obstinate diseases. The bite
of the Tarantula is cured by music; and what is more wonderful still,
persons bitten by this noxious animal are only to be cured by certain
tunes; thus, for instance, one might be cured with “Nancy Dawson,” while
another could only reap a similar benefit from “Moll in the wood,” or
“Off she goes.”
The learned Dr. Willis, whom we have already mentioned, in his treatise
on Nervous diseases, does not hesitate to recommend Amulets in epileptic
disorders. “Take,” says he, “some fresh Pæony roots, cut them into
square bits, and hang them round the neck, changing them as often as
they dry. In all probability the hint from this circumstance was taken
for the Anodyne necklaces, which was in such strong requisition some
time ago, and which produced so much benefit to the proprietors; as the
doctor, a little further on, prescribes the same root for the looseness,
fevers, and convulsions of children during the time of dentition, mixed,
to make it appear more miraculous, with some elk’s hoof.
Turner, whose ideas on hydrophobia are so absurd, where he asserts, that
the symptoms may not appear for forty years after the bite; and who
asserts, “that the slaver or breath of such a dog is infectious; and
that men bit, will bite like dogs again, and die mad; although he laughs
at the Anodyne necklace, argues much in the same manner. It is not 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.
Lapis Ætites (blood stone) hung about the arm, by some similar secret
means is said to prevent abortion, and to facilitate delivery, when worn
round the thigh. Dr. Sydenham, in the iliac passion, orders a live
kitten to be laid constantly on the abdomen; others have used pigeons
split alive, and applied to the soles of the feet with success, in
pestilential fevers and convulsions. The court of king David thought
that relief might be obtained by external agents; otherwise they would
not have advised him to seek a young virgin; doubtless thereby imagining
that the virgin of youth would impart a portion of its warmth and
strength to the decay of age. “Take the heart and liver of the fish and
make a smoke, and the devil shall smell it and flee away.” (Tobit, c.
vi.)
During the plague of London, arsenic was worn as an amulet against
infection. During this melancholy period, Bradley says, that
Bucklersbury was not visited with this scourge, which was attributed to
the number of druggists and apothecaries living there.
During the plague at Marseilles, which Belort attributed to the _larvæ_
of worms _infecting the saliva, food, and chyle_; and which, he says,
_were hatched by the stomach, took their passage into the blood, at a
certain size, hindering the circulation, affecting the juices_ and solid
parts, advised amulets of mercury to be worn in bags suspended at the
chest and nostrils, either as a safeguard or as a means of cure; by
which method, through the _admissiveness_ of the pores, effluvia
specially destructive of all venemous insects, were received into the
blood. “An illustrious prince,” continues Belort, “by wearing such an
amulet, escaped the small-pox.”
An Italian physician (Clognini) 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.”
Other philosophers have ascribed the power of mercury in these cases, to
an elective faculty given out by the warmth of the body; which attracts
the infectious particles outwards. For, say they, all bodies are
continually emitting effluvia more or less around them, and some whether
they be external or internal. The Bath waters change the colour of
silver in the pockets of those who use them; mercury the same;
cantharides applied externally (or taken inwardly) affects the urinary
organ; and camphor, in the same manner, is said to be an antiphrodesiac.
Quincey informs us, that by only walking in a newly-painted room, a
whole company had the smell of turpentine in their urine. Yawning and
laughing are infectious; so is 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 infectious; if so, 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, or inhaled
by the nose. One word for all; amulets, medicated or not, are precarious
and uncertain; and, now a-day, are seldom resorted to, much less
confided in.
Baglivi refines on the doctrine of effluvia, by ascribing his cures of
the bite of the tarantula to the peculiar undulation any instrument or
tune makes by its strokes in the air; which, vibrating upon the external
parts of the patient, is communicated to the whole nervous system, and
produces that happy alteration in the solids and fluids which so
effectually contributes to the cure. The contraction of the solids, he
says, impresses new mathematical motions and directions to the fluids;
in one or both of which, is seated all distempers, and without any other
help than a continuance of faith, will alter their quality, a philosophy
as wonderful and intricate as the nature of the poison it is intended to
expel; but which, however, supplies this observation, that, if the
particles of sound can do so much, the effluvia of amulets may do more.
The Moors of Barbary, and generally throughout the Mahomedan dominions,
the people are remarkably attached to charms, to which and nature they
leave the cure of almost every distemper; and this is the more strongly
impressed on them from the belief in predestination; which, according to
this sect, stipulates the evils 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 conceive that the interference of
secondary means would avail them nothing, an opinion said to have been
entertained by King William, but 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 its occupation, and when actuated with religious
enthusiasm, nothing could stand them in any service.
“A long and intense passion on one object,” observes an old navy
surgeon[15], “whether of pride, love, anger, fear, or envy, we see have
brought on some universal tremors; on others, convulsions, madness,
melancholy, consumption, hecticks, 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. Any thing frightful, sudden, and
surprising, upon soft, timorous natures, not only shews itself in the
countenance, but produces sometimes very troublesome consequences; for
instance, a parliamentary fright will make even grown men sh-t
themselves, scare them out of their wits, turn the hair grey. Surprise
removes the hooping-cough; looking from precipices, or seeing wheels
turn swiftly, gives giddiness, &c. Shall then these little accidents or
the passions, (from caprice or humour perhaps,) produce those effects,
and not be able to do any thing 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, lust a
flagrancy to the eyes, palpitation, and priapism; so amulets, under
strong imagination, is carried with more force to a distempered part;
and, under these circumstances, its natural powers exert better to a
discussion.
“The cures compassed in this manner are not more admirable than many of
the distempers themselves. Who can apprehend by what impenetrable method
the bite of a mad dog[16] or tarantula should produce their symptoms?
The touch of a torpedo, numbness? or a woman impress the marks of her
longings and her frights on her fœtus? 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 the surprise exceed the
invention, and keep up the humour by a long roll of cures and vouchers:
by these and such means many distempers, especially of _women, that are
ill all over, or know not what they ail_, have been cured, I am apt to
think, more by a fancy to the physician than his prescription; which
hangs on the file like an amulet. 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 assistance.”
Our inability upon all occasions to appreciate the efforts of nature in
the cure of disease, must always render our notions, with respect to the
powers of art, liable to numerous errors and multiplied deceptions.
Nothing is more natural, and at the same time more erroneous, than to
attribute the cure of a disease to the last medicine that had been
employed; the advocates of amulets and charms[17] have ever been thus
enabled to appeal to the testimony of what they are pleased to call
experience, in justification of their superstitions; and cases which in
truth ought to have been considered lucky escapes, have been
triumphantly puffed off as skilful cures; and thus have medicines and
practitioners alike acquired unmerited praise or unjust censure.
HISTORY OF POPULAR MEDICINES, ETC.—HOW INFLUENCED BY SUPERSTITION.
“Did Marcus say ’twas fact? then fact it is.
No proof so valid as a word of his.”
Devotion to authority and established routine has always been the means
of opposing the progress of reason, the advancement of natural truths,
and the prosecution of new discoveries; whilst, with effects no less
baneful, has it perpetuated many of the stupendous errors which have
been already enumerated, as well as others no less weighty, and which
are reserved for future discussion.
To give currency to some inactive substance as possessing extraordinary,
nay wonderful medicinal properties, requires only the sanction of a few
great names; and when established upon such a basis, ingenuity,
argument, and even experiment, may open their impotent batteries. In
this manner have all the _nostra_ and patent medicines got into repute
that ever were held in any estimation. And the same devotion to
authority which induces us to retain an accustomed remedy upon the bare
assertion and presumption either of ignorance or partiality, will, in
like manner, oppose the introduction of a novel practice with asperity,
unless indeed it be supported by authorities of still greater weight and
consideration.
The history of various articles of diet and medicine, will amply prove
how much their reputation and fate have depended upon authority. For
instance, it was not until many years after ipecacuanha had been
imported into England, that Helvetius, under the patronage of Louis XIV.
succeeded in introducing it into practice: and to the praise of
Katherine, queen of Charles II. we are indebted for the general
introduction of tea into England. Tobacco, notwithstanding its
fascinating powers, has suffered romantic vicissitudes in its fame and
character; it has been successively opposed and commended by physicians,
condemned and eulogized by priests and kings[18], and proscribed and
protected by governments, whilst, at length, this once insignificant
production of a little island, or an obscure district, has succeeded in
diffusing itself through every climate, and in subjecting the
inhabitants of every country to its dominion. The Arab cultivates it in
the burning desert;—the Laplander and Esquimaux risk their lives to
procure a refreshment so delicious in their wintry solitude;—the seaman,
grant him but this luxury, and he will endure with cheerfulness every
other privation, and defy the fury of the raging elements;—and, in the
higher walk of civilized society, at the shrine of fashion, in the
palace and in the cottage, the fascinating influence of this singular
plant, commands an equal tribute of devotion and attachment. Nor is the
history of the potatoe less extraordinary or less strikingly
illustrative of the imperious influence of authority. In fact, the
introduction of this valuable plant received, for more than two
centuries, an unprecedented opposition from vulgar prejudice, which all
the philosophy of the age was unable to dissipate, until Louis XV. wore
a bunch of the flowers of the potatoe in the midst of his court, on a
day of mirth and festivity. The people then, for the first time,
obsequiously acknowledged its utility, and began to express their
astonishment at the apathy which had so long prevailed with regard to
its general cultivation.
The history of the warm bath furnishes us with another curious instance
of the vicissitudes to which the reputation of our valuable resources
are so uniformly exposed. That, in short, which for so many ages was
esteemed the greatest luxury in health, and the most efficacious remedy
in disease, fell into total disrepute in the reign of Augustus, for no
other reason than because Antonius Musa had cured the emperor of a
dangerous malady by the use of the cold bath. The coldest water,
therefore, was recommended on every occasion. This practice, however,
was but of short duration. The popularity of the warm bath soon lost all
its premature and precocious popularity; for, though it had restored the
emperor to health, it shortly afterwards killed his nephew and
son-in-law Marcellus; an event which at once deprived the remedy of its
credit, and the physician of his popularity.[19]
An illustration of the overbearing influence of authority, in giving
celebrity to a medicine, or in depriving it of that reputation to which
its virtues entitle it, might be furnished in the history of the
Peruvian bark. This heroic remedy was first brought to Spain in the year
1632, where it remained seven years before any trial was made of its
powers. An ecclesiastic of Alcala was the first to whom it was
administered, in the year 1639; but even at this period, its use was
limited, and it would have sunk into oblivion, but for the supreme power
of the Roman church, by whose protecting auspices it was enabled to gain
a temporary triumph over the passions and prejudices which opposed its
introduction. Innocent the Tenth, at the intercession of Cardinal de
Lugo, who was formerly a Spanish jesuit, ordered that its nature and
effects should be duly examined, and on its being reported both innocent
and salutary, it immediately rose into public notice. Its career,
however, was suddenly arrested by its having unfortunately failed in the
autumn 1652 to cure Leopold, Archduke of Austria, of a quartan
intermittent: from this circumstance it had nearly fallen into
disrepute.
As years and fashion revolve, so have these neglected remedies, each in
its turn, risen again into favour and notice; whilst old receipts, like
old almanacks, are abandoned, until the period may arrive that will once
more adapt them to the spirit and fashion of the times. Thus it happens,
that most of the new discoveries in medicine have turned out to be no
more than the revival and readoption of ancient practices.
During the last century, the root of the male fern was retailed as a
secret nostrum, by Madame Nouffleur, a French empiric, for the cure of
the tapeworm: the secret was purchased for a considerable sum of money
by Lewis XV. The physicians then discovered, that the same remedy had
been administered in that complaint by Galen.
The history of popular remedies for the cure of gout, also furnishes
ample matter for the elucidation of this subject.
The celebrated powder of the Duke of Portland, was no other than the
_diacentaureon_ of Cœlius Aurelianus, or the _antidotos ex duobus
centaureæ generibus_ of Ætius, the receipt for which a friend of his
Grace brought with him from Switzerland; into which country, in all
probability, it had been introduced by the early medical writers, who
had transcribed it from the Greek volumes, soon after their arrival into
the western parts of Europe.
The active ingredient of a no less celebrated remedy for the same
disease, the _eau médicinale_, a medicine brought into fashion by M.
Husson, whose name it bears, a military officer in the service of the
King of France, about fifty years ago, has been discovered to be the
_colchicum autumnale_, or _meadow saffron_. Upon investigating the
virtues of this medicine, it was observed that similar effects in the
cure of the gout were ascribed to a certain plant, called
Hermodactyllus, by Oribasius[20] and Ætius[21], but more particularly by
Alexander of Tralles, a physician of Asia Minor, whose prescription
consisted of hermodactyllus, ginger, pepper, cummin-seed, aniseed, and
scammony, which, he says, will enable those who take it, to walk
immediately. An inquiry was immediately instituted after this unknown
plant, and upon procuring a specimen of it from Constantinople, it was
actually found to be a species of colchicum.
The use of Prussic acid in the cure of consumptions, lately proposed by
Dr. Majendie, a French physiologist, is little else than the revival of
the Dutch practice in this complaint; for we are informed by Lumæus, in
the fourth volume of his “_Amenitates Acadamicæ_,” that distilled laurel
water was frequently used in Holland in the cure of pulmonary
consumption. The celebrated Dr. James’s fever powder was evidently not
his original composition, but an Italian nostrum, invented by a person
of the name of Lisle, a receipt for the preparation of which is to be
found at length in _Colborne’s complete English Dispensary for the year
1756_. The various secret preparations of opium which have been lauded
as the discovery of modern times, may be recognised in the works of
ancient authors.
ALCHYMY[22].
The science, if it deserves to be distinguished by the name of Alchymy,
or the transmutation of metals into gold, has doubtless been an
imposition, which, striking on the feeblest part of the human mind, has
so frequently been successful in carrying on its delusions.
The Corrina of Dryden (Mrs. Thomas) during her life, has recorded one of
these delusions of Alchymy. From the circumstances, it is very probable
the sage was not less deceived than his patroness. An infatuated lover
of this delusive art met one who pretended to have the power of
transmuting lead to gold; that is, in their language, the _imperfect_
metals to the _perfect_ one. This Hermetic philosopher required only the
materials and time, to perform his golden operations. He was taken to
the country residence of his patroness, a long laboratory was built, and
that his labours might not be impeded by any disturbance, no one was
permitted to enter into it. His door was contrived to turn on a pivot;
so that, unseen and unseeing, his meals were conveyed to him without
distracting the sublime contemplations of the sage.
During a residence of two years he never condescended to speak but two
or three times in the year to his infatuated patroness. When she was
admitted into the laboratory, she saw with pleasing astonishment,
stills, immense cauldrons, long flues, and three or four Vulcanian
fires, blazing at different corners of this magical mine: nor did she
behold with less reverence the venerable figure of the dusty
philosopher. Pale and emaciated with daily operations and nightly
vigils, he revealed to her, in unintelligible jargon, his progress; and
having sometimes condescended to explain the mysteries of the Arcana,
she beheld or seemed to behold, streams of fluid, and heaps of solid
ore, scattered around the laboratory. Sometimes he required a new still,
and sometimes vast quantities of lead. She began now to lower her
imagination to the standard of reason. Two years had now elapsed, vast
quantities of lead had gone in, and nothing but lead had come out. She
disclosed her sentiments to the philosopher; he candidly confessed he
was himself surprised at his tardy processes; but that now he would
exert himself to the utmost, and that he would venture to perform a
laborious operation, which hitherto he had hoped not to have been
necessitated to employ. His patroness retired, and the golden visions of
expectation resumed all their lustre.