it would now be a waste of time to go into particulars respecting the
various compositions of the sympathetical curers; the manner in which
their vitriol was to be prepared by exposure for three hundred and
sixty-five days to the sun, the unguents of human fat and blood, mummy,
moss of dead man’s skull, bull’s blood and fat, and other disgusting
ingredients.”—(“Medical Superstitions,” Pettigrew, Philadelphia, 1844, p.
206.)
For ague, “let the urine of the sick body, made early in the morning,
be softly heated nine daies continually untill all be consumed into
vapour.”—(Reginald Scot, “Discoverie,” p. 196.)
In Great Britain and Ireland, “ague in a boy is cured by a cake made of
barley-meal and his urine, and given to a dog to eat; the dog, in the
case cited, had a shaking fit, and the boy was cured.” (“Folk-Medicine,”
Black, p. 35. In a footnote there is added, “Pettigrew, ‘Superstitions
connected with the practice of Medicine and Surgery,’ p. 77.”) Madame
de Scudery mentions a similar cure for fever in a letter of date 20th
of October, 1677, to the Comte de Bussy. Speaking of an abbé of fame,
“On dit qu’il ne fait que prendre pour toutes les fièvres de l’urine des
malades dans laquelle il fait durcir un œuf hors de sa coque, après quoi
il le donne à manger à un chien qui prend en même temps la fièvre du
malade qui par ce moien en guérit. C’est une question de fait que je n’ay
pas éprouvée.”—(“Notes and Queries,” 5th series, vol. viii. p. 126.)
The following are given as cures by “transplantation.” “Seven or nine—it
must be an odd number—cakes, made of the newly emitted urine of the
patient, with the ashes of ash wood, and buried for some days in a
dunghill, will, according to Paracelsus, cure the yellow jaundice.” In
the journal of Dr. Edward Browne, transmitted to his father, Sir Thomas
Browne, we read of “a magical cure for the jaundice: Burn wood under a
laden vessel filled with water; take the ashes of that wood, and boyle
it with the patient’s urine; then lay nine long heaps of the boyld
ashes upon a board in a rank, and upon every heap lay nine spears of
crocus.”—(“Medical Superstitions,” Pettigrew, Philadelphia, Penn., 1844,
p. 103.)
We are likewise informed of “the cure of jaundice by the burying in a
dunghill a cake made of ashes and the patient’s urine. Ague in a boy was
cured by a similar cake made of barley-meal and his urine, and given to a
dog to eat; the dog had a shaking fit, and the boy was cured.”
“Boys were cured of warts by taking an elder-stick and cutting as many
notches in it as there were warts, and then rubbing it upon the warts,
and burying it in a dunghill.”—(Idem, p. 104.)
“Blisters on the tongue are caused by telling fibs. When they show no
disposition to leave, the following process is adopted. Three small
sticks are cut from a tree, each about the length of a finger, and as
thick as a pencil; these are inserted in the mouth, and buried in a
dung-hill; the next day the operation is repeated, as well as on the
third day; after which the three sets of sticks are allowed to remain in
the manure, and as they decay the complaint will disappear.”—(“Folk-Lore
of the Pennsylvania Germans,” Hoffman, p. 28.)
“The following procedure for the cure of bronchitis is still practised in
Berks County. Make a gimlet hole in the door-frame, at the exact height
of the patient’s head, into which insert a small tuft of his hair, and
close the hole with a peg of wood; then cut off the projecting portion
of the peg. As the patient grows in height beyond the peg, so will the
disease be outgrown.”—(Idem, p. 28.)
“Gout may be transferred from a man to a tree, thus: Pare the nails of
the sufferer’s fingers, and clip some hair from his legs. Bore a hole in
an oak, stuff the nails and hair in the hole, stop up the hole again, and
smear it with cow’s dung.”—(“The Golden Bough,” Frazer, vol. ii. p. 153,
quoting Grimm. Bavaria.)
A curious method of relieving and eradicating all kinds of colic by
“transplantation” is related and described by Schurig. The excrement
voided during one of the paroxysms should be buried in an unfrequented
spot. The grass growing on the soil where the ordure had been deposited
would be eaten by domestic cattle, which would acquire the disease,
relieving the sufferer. “Excrementa tempore paroxysmi reddita sepeliantur
in locum a viatorum frequentia separatum. Gramen quod enascitur super
terram cui stercora commissa fuerint, bovi vel agno pabuli loco offertur,
quod ubi comederit, colica transplantatur ab homine in brutum, et nunquam
ipsum reaffliget.” (Schurig, “Chylologia,” p. 785.) Other people took the
patient’s excrement, dried it in the open air, mixed it with sweet wine,
and gave it to the sick man to drink. “Sunt qui illud idem exceptum in
ære exsiccant, cum vino edulcorant et patienti propinant.”—(Idem, p. 785.)
Nurses were cautioned not to let the excrement of the babies under their
care touch the hot coals or cinders of the fire; they should throw all
the excrement in at once, or not at all. If we are to understand that
this excrement was to be habitually thrown into the kitchen fire, a most
charming idea is conveyed of the Arcadian simplicity of European life
several centuries back.
“Hoc loco monendæ quoque sunt nutrices vel aliæ mulierculæ infantulis
administrantes ne infantum excrementibus contegat, aut post modum omnia
simul in ignem projiciunt. Exinde enim plurima symptomata exoriri
solent.”—(Schurig, p. 995.)
The case is cited of a physician suffering from marasmus, or emaciation.
“He took an egg and boiled it hard in his own urine; he then with a
bodkin perforated the shell in many places and buried it in an ant-hill,
where it was to be kept to be devoured by the emmets; and as they
wasted the egg he found his distemper to abate.”—(Pettigrew, “Med.
Superstitions,” p. 102.)
“Among medical men ... the Galenist of much repute, of whom Boyle writes,
was induced, when other means of cure failed, to boil an egg in his own
urine. The egg was afterwards buried in an ant-hill, and as the egg
wasted the physician found his distemper go and his strength increase.
In Staffordshire a correspondent says that to cure jaundice a bladder is
often filled with the patient’s urine and placed near the fire; as the
water dries up the jaundice goes, and, were it necessary, other instances
could be given of this superstition.”—(Black, “Folk-Medicine,” p. 56.)
The following “sympathetic” cure is from Steller’s “Kamtchatka” (pp. 362
and 367): When a man is suffering from incontinence of urine, a wreath is
made of the soft herb “eheu;” in the centre of this some fish-spawn is
placed, and then the sufferer makes his water upon it.—(Translated by Mr.
Bunnemeyer.)
Ordure alone or mixed with urine, made into a sausage by being put
into a hog’s bladder, and hung up in the chimney, was of “magical
use” in the treatment of yellow jaundice. Christian Franz Paullini’s
own son was cured by mixing his own ordure with asses’ urine in this
manner. The following are some of the extracts from Schurig referred
to in this paragraph: “Ab Incantatione introductis doloribus externe
impositum sulphur hoc occidentale magni usus esse dicitur.... Alii
addunt allium, atque elapsis post impositionem viginti quatuor horis
fumo culinari hæc committunt.... Contra ejusmodi dolores a veneficio
alliis placent cataplasmata ex stercore maleficiati in vesicam porcinam
injecto et in Caminum ad suffumigandum suspenso.... In veneficio arcendo
notum est, quod stercus humanum sit magni usus si scilicet parti ex
veneficio dolenti applicetur stercus humanum vel solum, vel cum allio,
vel asafœtida; sic enim est ut alii qui perpetravit veneficium sapiant
omnia stercus humanum et allium, adeo ut necessum habeant solvere
veneficium.... Pro icteri cura magica stercus, vel perse, vel cum urina
mixtum, vesicæ suillæ indunt atque in camino suspendunt, Christianus
Franciscus Paullini cujusdam meminit, qui filii sui icterici stercus cum
urina asini commixtum modo tractavit.”—(Schurig, “Chylologia,” pp. 787,
788.)
When cures were to be effected by the method called by some authors
“insemination” each disease seemed to require its special plant. Thus
yellow jaundice required swallow-wort and juniper berries; dropsy,
absinthe (worm-wood) and box-elder; pleurisy, the poppy; the plague, the
plant known as scordium (this plant smells like garlic), etc.—(Frommann,
“Tract. de Fascinat.,” p. 1030.)
The following problem is presented for solution or for such explanation
as competent scholars may find it possible to give.
We know that every disease was looked upon as an infliction from some
angry god; on the other hand, we know also that for each disease
there was some god, in later days some saint, to whom the afflicted
might appeal; we know also that certain plants were sacred to certain
divinities. Therefore the question to be answered is, Were the plants
hereinbefore specified those which were sacred to those gods who had
charge of those diseases respectively? The examination to be complete
should include all that may now survive among European peasantry of
the worship of Roman, Phœnician, Celtic, Teutonic, or even Egyptian or
Etruscan, deities.
Grimm recites the names of the trees employed for the cure of different
diseases,—epilepsy, peach-blossoms; ague, elder-tree; gout, fir-tree;
ague, willow; gout, young pine-tree.—(“Teut. Mythology.”)
Why was Apollo supposed to love the laurel and the cornel cherry, “Pluto
the cypress and the maiden-hair,—a moisture-loving fern, which we may
take for granted could not be very plentiful in his chosen realm,—Luna
the dittany, Ceres the daffodil, Jupiter the oak, Minerva the olive,
Bacchus the vine, and Venus the myrtle-shade?”—(Extract from an article
entitled “Flowers as Emblems,” in “Standard,” London, copied in “Sun,”
New York, May 12, 1889.)
“A sick man’s perspiration from the brow wiped off with bread, and given
to a dog, will cure the patient.”—(Sagen-Märchen, “Volksaberglauben aus
Schwaben,” Freiburg, 1861, p. 494.)
As a certain cure for witchcraft take the excrement of the patient, put
it in a pig’s bladder, and hang it up in the chimney; or let him take
some of his own excrement, inwardly, dissolved in vinegar; or apply
human excrement to the bewitched part, then put that excrement in a
pig’s bladder, and hang it up in the chimney to smoke for three or four
days.—(Paullini, pp. 260, 261.)
By the French, urine was considered a certain cure for fever. Such an
amount of superstition attached to the panacea that the prescription may
well be given in full:—
“Knead a small loaf with urine voided in the worst stage of his fever by
a person having the quaternary ague. Bake the loaf, let it cool, and give
it to be eaten by another person. Repeat the same during three different
attacks, and the fever will leave the patient and go to the person who
has eaten the bread.”
Another one runs in these terms:—
“Take an egg, boil it hard, and break off the shell. Prick the egg
in different places with a needle, steep it in the urine of a person
afflicted with fever, and then give it to a man if the patient be a man,
to a woman if a woman, and the recipient will acquire the fever, which
will abandon the patient.”[85]
This remedy Thiers traces back to the Romans, quoting from Horace in
support of his assertion.
The second recipe finds its parallel in the “Chinook olives,” described
in the first pages of this work.
The fact that human ordure was the panacea by which all the effects of
witchcraft could be undone, and all charms and incantations frustrated,
can easily be shown from the citations to be found in Schurig.
“Occidental sulphur,” applied externally to the pains occasioned by
incantations was said to be very efficacious. Others added garlic,
and twenty-four hours after exposed the mixture to the smoke of the
kitchen-fire. Others again took the ordure of the bewitched person, made
sausage of it, and hung it up to be smoked in the kitchen-fire.
Various instances are given of the efficacy of human ordure in undoing
the work of witches; it was to be applied alone or mixed with garlic or
assafœtida.
Take a liver, cut in pieces, and secretly place in the urinal of the
patient; if the patient unconsciously use the chamber for defecation he
will recover—(“Sagen-Märchen, Volksaberglauben,” etc., Drs. Birlinger and
Buck, p. 481.)
The method of curing fevers by imbedding clippings of the finger and toe
nails of the patient in wax and affixing to another person’s door-post,
is mentioned by Pliny (lib. xxxviii. c. 24).
The same are given, with the others already noted, by
Frommann.—(“Tractatus de Fascinatione,” p. 1003 _et seq._)
Etmuller says that the oak was the tree most highly commended; to secure
a good set of teeth, one of the milk teeth was buried in an oak; to
restore falling hair, some of the patient’s hair; to cure gout, some of
his toe-nail clippings, etc.—(Etmuller, vol. i. p. 127.)
“In Donegal, the sufferer should seek a straw with nine knees, and cut
the knots that form the joints of every one of them, any superfluous
knots being thrown away; then bury the knot in a midden or dung-heap; and
as the joints rot, so will the warts.”—(“Folk-Medicine,” p. 57.)
Grose says, “To cure warts, steal a piece of beef from a butcher’s shop
and rub your warts with it; then throw it down the necessary-house, or
bury it; and as the beef rots, your warts will decay.”—(Brand, “Pop.
Ant.” vol. iii. p. 276, art. “Physical Charms.”)
The American cures for warts in which the sufferer is enjoined to steal a
piece of meat, etc., are a perfect “survival” from the above, while the
“cure” given by Mark Twain, in his story of “Huckleberry Finn”—
“Barley-corn, barley-corn, Indian meal shorts,
Spunk water, spunk water, swallow these warts,”
may be classed as a “distorted survival.”
“A piece of meat is cut from one of the arms of the menaced man (i. e.
menaced with death), and a lock of hair from the opposite side of his
head, and cast into the fire; and he is rubbed with artemisia, dipped
in water, as this plant is the food of the ghosts. These rites, omitting
the cutting of the flesh and hair, must be performed on four successive
nights.”—(“Death and Funeral Customs among the Omahas,” Francis La
Flesche, in “Jour. of Amer. Folk-Lore,” Jan.-March, 1889, p. 4.)
“The Orkney islanders will wash a sick person and then throw the water
down a gateway in the belief that the sickness will leave the patient and
be transferred to the first person who passes through the gate.”—(“The
Golden Bough,” Frazer, vol. ii. p. 153.)
These cures by “transplantation” are still to be found in full vigor
among the descendants of the immigrants from Westphalia and the
Palatinate who made their homes in the State of Pennsylvania.
For the cure of jaundice: “Hollow out a carrot, fill it with the
patient’s urine, and hang it, by means of a string, in the fireplace.
As the urine is evaporated, and the carrot becomes shrivelled, the
disease will leave the patient. In this there is an evident belief in the
connection between the properties and color of the carrot and the yellow
skin of the patient having jaundice. To this class may belong the belief
respecting the use of a band of red flannel for diphtheria, and yellow or
amber beads for purulent discharges from the ears.”—(“Folk-Med. of the
Penn’a Germans,” Hoffman, Amer. Phil. Society, 1889.)
Reference should be had to Black’s notes upon a similar custom
in Staffordshire, where, instead of a carrot, a bladder is
filled.—(“Folk-Medicine,” p. 56.)
“Convulsions in a child are sometimes due to the influence of the
fairies.” Mooney describes a cure effected by a mother who “picked
from the roadside ten small white pebbles, known as ‘fairy stones.’
On reaching home, she put nine of these stones into a vessel of urine
and threw the tenth into the fire. She also put into the vessel some
chicken-dung and three sprigs of a plant (probably ivy or garlic) which
grew on the roof above the door. She then stripped the child and threw
into the fire the shirt and other garments which were worn next the skin.
The child was then washed from head to foot, wrapped in a blanket and put
to bed. There were nine hens and a rooster on the rafters above the door.
In a short time the child had a violent fit and the nine hens dropped
dead upon the floor. The rooster dropped down from his perch, crew three
times, and then flew again to the rafters. If the woman had put the tenth
stone with the others, he would have dropped dead with the hens. The
child was cured.”—(“Med. Mythol. of Ireland,” James Mooney, “Amer. Phil.
Soc.” 1887.)
Mooney remarks upon the above: “This single instance combines in itself
a number of important features in connection with the popular mythology;
the dung, the urine, the plant above the door, the chickens, the fire
and the garment worn next the skin, and introduces also a new element
into the popular theory of disease, viz.: the idea of vicarious cure,
or rather of vicarious sacrifice. This belief, which is general, is
that no one can be cured of a dangerous illness, unless, as the people
express it, ‘something is left in its place’ to suffer the sickness and
death.”—(Idem.)
In the case of a “changeling child,” the mother was ordered to leave
it “on the dung-hill to cry and not to pity it.”—(Hazlitt’s edition of
“Fairy Tales,” London, 1875, p. 372.)
“At Sucla-Tirtha, in India, an earthen pot containing the accumulated
sins of the people, is annually set adrift on the river.”—(“The Golden
Bough,” Frazer, p. 192, vol. ii.)
See notes under “Catamenial Fluid,” from Etmuller.
XLVI.
THE USE OF THE LINGAM IN INDIA.
In connection with the Lingamic ritual in India, there remain usages now
degenerated into symbolism, which cannot be interpreted in any other
sense than as “survivals” of very obscene and disgusting practices in the
primitive life of that region. In describing the sacrifice called Poojah,
Maurice says: “The Abichegam makes a part of the Poojah. This ceremony
consists in pouring milk upon the lingam. This liquor is afterwards kept
with great care, and some drops are given to dying people that they may
merit the delights of the Calaison.” The “salagram of the Vishnuites
is the same as the lingam of the Seevites.” “Happy are those favored
devotees who can quaff the sanctified water in which either has been
bathed.”—(“Ind. Ant.” vol. v. pp. 146, 179.)
Dulaure describes the rites of the Cochi-couris, in which the sacred
water of the Ganges is first poured upon the lingam; it is then preserved
to be dealt out in drops to the faithful; it is specially serviceable in
soothing the last hours of the dying. The Lingam is the Phallic symbol.
The water or milk sanctified by it may represent a former employment of
urine, such, as will be shown, as prevailed all over Europe. The use of
lingam water is perhaps analogous to that of mistletoe water, previously
noted.
In speaking of the “mysteries” of the goddess “Cotitta,” a popular Venus
of the isle of Chios, Dulaure says: “Les initiés, qui se livraient à
tous les excès de la débauche, y employaient le Phallus d’une manière
particulière; ils étaient de verre et servaient de vases à boire.” He
quotes Juvenal, satire 2, verse 95, as saying of the extreme license
of these mysteries: “vitreo bibit ille Priapo.”—(“Des Divinités
Génératrices.”)
Does not the preceding paragraph, in the lines from the Roman satirist,
conceal under a very gauzy veil, a dirty proceeding akin to the urine
dance of the Zuñis?
Frommann quotes the above lines from Juvenal, without attempting to enter
upon an explanation of them. (See “Tract. de Fascinatione,” p. 333.) Rev.
Lewis Evans, a Fellow of Wadham’s College, Oxford, translates them as
follows in his edition of “Juvenal:”—
“Another drains a Priapus-shaped glass.”
But Gifford renders it:—
“Swill from huge glasses of immodest mould.”
Montfaucon says that in the Festivals of Priapus “celebrated by the
women ... the priestess sprinkles Priapus with water.”—(“l’Antiquité
expliquée,” lib. i. part 2, c. xxviii.; in the first volume is a
representation of a phallic vase with human ears attached.)
“Verser quelques gouttes sur la tête dans la bouche des
agonisants.”—(Dulaure, “Des. Div. Generat.,” Paris, 1825, pp. 105, 106,
111.)
“In a manuscript of the church of Beauvais about the year 500, it is said
that the chanter and canons shall stand before the gates of the church,
which were shut, holding each of them urns full of wine with glass
cups, of whom one canon shall begin the Kalends of January.”—(Fosbroke,
“British Monachism,” p. 81.)
In out of the way nooks and corners in Europe, intelligent observers may
still stumble upon traces of the religious observances alluded to in
Juvenal; Mr. Macaulay, of Philadelphia, Penn’a, who lived for a time near
Monaco, in the Riviera, imparts the information that, in that section of
Italy he had personally noticed such a peculiar custom; i. e. that of
assembling each family on Christmas eve, in a semicircle, round the fire;
the youngest boy urinated on the blazing log; then the father took a
glass goblet, filled with white wine, and sprinkled the log with an olive
branch; finally, all sipped from the goblet, the contents of which Mr.
Macaulay said he had been told were undoubtedly symbolical of urine.
Among people farther to the north, the same worship of fire by offering
food and drinking a libation still obtains without any offensive features.
In Sweden and Norway “early in the morning, the good wife has been
up, making her fire and baking; she now assembles her servants in a
half-circle before the oven door, they all bend the knee, take one bit of
cake, and drink the fire’s health; what is left of cake or drink is cast
into the flame.”—(Grimm, “Teut. Mythol.” vol. ii. p. 629.)
“Our German sagen and märchen have retained the feature of kneeling
before the oven and praying to it.... The unfortunate, the persecuted,
resort to the oven and bewail their woe, they reveal to it some secret
which they dare not confess to the world.”—(Idem, p. 629.)
“A leur Coleda, les Serbes font brûler une bûche de chêne, l’arrosent
de vin, la frappent en faisant voler les étincelles, et crient: ‘Autant
d’étincelles, autant de chèvres et de brebis.’”—(“Les Primitifs,” Réclus,
p. 111.)
The resemblance to the customs of the East Indies was, in places, even
closer than as above indicated.
Inman tells of sterile women who drank “priapic wine,” i. e. wine poured
upon an upright conical stone representing the lingam, and then collected
and allowed to turn sour.—(Inman, “Ancient Faiths,” etc., vol. i. p. 305,
article “Asher.”)
The same statement is to be found in Hargrave Jennings’ work,
“Phallicism,” London, 1884, p. 256, but it seems to be repeated from
Inman and Dulaure. Campbell reports that “among the principal relics of
the Church at Embrun was the statue of Saint Foutin. The worshippers of
this idol poured libations of wine upon its extremity, which was reddened
by the practice. This wine was caught in a jar and allowed to turn sour.
It was then called ‘holy vinegar,’ and was used by the women as a lotion
to anoint the yoni.”—(“Phallic Worship,” Robert Allen Campbell, St.
Louis, Mo., 1888, p. 197.)
Among the Apache Indians of Arizona, the Zuñis, Moquis, and Pueblos, the
author has seen large arrow or spear shaped pieces of flint which had
been obtained under peculiar circumstances, were regarded as possessed
of great virtues, and were worn round the necks by the women, generally
by those who professed “medicine” powers. Fragments of these flints
were ground to fine powder, and administered to women while pregnant,
to ensure safe delivery; all that was learned of these stones will be
presented in another work; the veneration paid them seems to be closely
associated with the worship of lightning. Vallencey, in his “Collectanea
de Rebus Hibernicis,” No. xiii. 17, says: “In the Highlands of Scotland,
a large chrystal, of a figure somewhat oval, was kept by the priests
to work charms by; water poured upon it at this day is given to cattle
against diseases; these stones are now preserved by the oldest and most
superstitious in the country.”—(Brand, “Pop. Antiq.” vol. iii. p. 60,
art. “Sorcerer.”)
XLVII.