It will be noticed that parts of animals are credited in the examples
just quoted with remedial properties. This was a natural extension
of the doctrine. Metals, too, were credited with medicinal virtues
corresponding with their names or with the deities and planets with
which they had been so long associated. The sun ruled the heart, gold
was the sun’s metal, therefore gold was especially a cordial. The
moon, silver, and the head were similarly associated. Iron was a tonic
because Mars was strong.
“Have a care,” says Culpepper, “you use not such medicines to one part
of your body which are appropriated to another; for if your brain be
overheated and you use such medicines as cool the heart or liver you
may make mad work.”
But it was not quite so simple a thing as it may seem to be to select
the proper remedy, because there were conditions which made it
necessary to follow an antipathetical treatment. For instance, Saturn
ruling the bones caused toothache; but if Jupiter happened to be in
the ascendant, the proper drug to employ was one in the service of
the opposing planet. Modern astronomy has removed the heavenly bodies
so far from us that we have ceased to regard them in the friendly way
which once characterised our relations with them. To quote Culpepper
again: “It will seem strange to none but madmen and fools that the
stars should have influence upon the body of man, considering he being
an epitomy of the Creation must needs have a celestial world within
himself; for ... if there be an unity in the Godhead there must needs
be an unity in all His works, and a dependency between them, and not
that God made the Creation to hang together like a rope of sand.”