Many Freak Medicines Which Were Used By the Ancients Are Paralleled By
Gruesome Compounds That Are Inflicted To-Day on Patients in China and
Some Parts of Europe—A Wonderful Lotion for Bald Heads.
The most unsavory concoctions of the modern pharmacy are as the nectar
of the gods when compared with the medicines of ancient times. It would
seem that physicians in those days taxed their ingenuity to its utmost
to invent the gruesome horrors which they prescribed.
Certainly the fiends who were usually supposed to be the cause of
sickness must have been a courageous lot of chaps if they withstood the
doses they were treated to.
What would one think nowadays of a doctor who prescribed the blood
from a black cat’s tail for skin troubles, live toads tied behind the
ear to stop bleeding, or powdered spiders as an unfailing remedy for
various diseases?
Mayerne, a French physician, who is said to have numbered among his
patients two French and three English sovereigns—Henry IV and Louis
XIII of France, and James I, Charles I, and Charles II of England—was
fond of dosing his patients with “pulverized human bones.”
A chief ingredient in his gout powder consisted of “raspings of a
human skull unburied.” In the composition of his celebrated “balsam of
bats” he employed “adders, bats, sucking whelps, earth-worms, hog’s
grease, the marrow of a stag, and the thigh-bone of an ox.”
Dr. Boleyn (of the same family as Queen Anne Boleyn), a physician in
the reign of Elizabeth, prescribed for a child suffering under a
certain nervous malady, “a small young mouse roasted.” The same doctor
stated that “snayles broken from the shelles and sodden in whyte wyne
with oyle and sugar are very holsome, because they be hoat and moist
for the straightness of the lungs and cold cough.”
Belief in the efficacy of charms and amulets was once universal with
the faculty, and precious stones were regarded as sovereign remedies.
The hyacinth and topaz hung about the neck or taken in drink were
certain “to resist sorrow and recreate the heart.” The sapphire was “a
great enemy to black choler,” and was believed to “free the mind and
mend manners.”
A certain kind of onyx was supposed to preserve the vigor and good
estate of the whole body. One physician went so far as to declare that
“in the body of a swallow there is a stone found called chelidonius,
which, if it be lapped in a fair cloth and tied to the right arm, will
cure lunatics, madmen, and make them amiable and merry.” Herbs were
also in great request, and daisy-tea was accounted a certain cure for
gout and rheumatism.
A formula for hair tonic which is given in the oldest book on medical
practise now known—a book written at Heliopolis, where Joseph once
served in the house of Potiphar—is described as a “means for
increasing the growth of the hair, prepared for Schesch, the mother of
Teta, the King of Upper and Lower Egypt.” Dogs’ teeth, overripe dates,
and asses’ hoofs were carefully cooked in oil and then grated.
As Teta lived before Cheops, this recipe for hair-oil is older than
the great pyramid at Gizeh, and is supposed to date back more than six
thousand years.
Three drops of the blood of an angry cat gave relief to the epileptic.
The heads of venomous serpents have held an important place in
medicine. A strong broth made from them and mixed with salt and spices
and one hundred other remedies was employed under the name of theriac
as a cure for every conceivable disease.
Curious survivals of this old belief in the efficacy of certain
reptiles and insects as cures for human ills occasionally come to
light, even in this advanced age. In New England, cobweb pills are
supposed to be good for the ague, and in the South a certain
knuckle-bone in a pig’s foot is a cure for rheumatism, if it be
carried in the pocket or worn suspended from a string around the neck.
The spider-web pill originated in China, where all species of insects
have certain positive or negative values in medicine.
Among the learned physicians of Pekin it is customary to give two or
three scorpions or spiders to a patient ill of fever.
In Ireland, the peasantry swallow small spiders alive to effect cures.
From these to the cobweb pill of the New England native was easy.
In Flanders, the live spider is fastened into the empty shell of a
walnut and worn around the neck of the patient. As the creature dies,
the fever decreases until it is gone entirely.
Among jewels, the ruby was considered good for derangements of the
liver, as well as for bad eyes.
The sapphire and emerald were credited with properties which rendered
them capable of influencing ophthalmic disorders, and there is a
superstitious belief that serpents are blinded by looking at the
latter stone.
Temperance advocates, if they have any regard for the beliefs of the
Greeks and Romans, might seriously consider the advisability of
distributing amethysts among drunkards, for it was supposed that these
stones prevented intoxication.
Most of our readers have no doubt heard of the precious jewel which
the toad carries in his brain-box, and so-called toad-stones, which
were in reality the teeth of fossil fish, were formerly worn in
finger-rings as a protection against poisons.
Although popularly supposed to be itself a deadly poison, the diamond
has from remote ages been credited with the power of protecting the
wearer from the evil effects of other poisons, a reputation which it
retained until comparatively recent times.
The superstitious use of jewels is not so intolerable to think of, and
certainly would be less offensive to practise, but it is evident that
the patient’s recovery during this period was owing to good luck
rather than to good management.