She drew the splinter from the wound,
And with a charm she stanch'd the blood.
The strength of imagination in effecting wonderful cures has been observed
in all ages; and Avicenna declares, "that he prefers confidence before
art, precepts, and all remedies whatsoever." Our learned Burton says,
"that this strong imagination or conceit is _Astrum Hominis_, and the
rudder of this our ship, which reason should steer, but overborne by
phantasie, cannot manage, and so suffers itself and the whole vessel of
ours to be overruled and often overturned."
Nothing could be more absurd than the notions regarding some of these
supposed cures: a ring made of the hinge of a coffin had the power of
relieving cramps; which were also mitigated by having a rusty old sword
hung up by the bedside. Nails driven in an oak-tree prevented the
toothache. A halter that had served in hanging a criminal was an
infallible remedy for a headache, when tied round the head; this affection
was equally cured by the moss growing on a human skull, dried and
pulverized, and taken as a cephalic snuff. A dead man's hand could dispel
tumours of the glands by stroking the parts nine times, but the hand of a
man who had been cut down from the gallows was the most efficacious. To
cure warts, one had nothing to do but to steal a piece of beef from the
butcher, with which the warts were to be rubbed; then inter it in any
filth, and as it rotted, the warts would wither and fall.
The chips of a gallows on which several persons had been hanged, when worn
in a bag round the neck, would cure the ague. A stone with a hole in it,
suspended at the head of the bed, would effectually stop the nightmare;
hence it was called a _hag-stone_, as it prevents the troublesome witches
from sitting upon the sleeper's stomach. The same amulet tied to the key
of a stable-door, deterred witches from riding horses over the country.
Rickety children were cured by being drawn through a cleft tree, which was
afterwards bound up, and as the split wood united, the child acquired
strength. Creeping through a perforated stone to cure various disorders
was a Druidical rite, still practised in the East. In the parish of Marden
there is a stone with a hole in it, fourteen inches in diameter, through
which children are drawn for the rickets; and, in the North, infants are
made to pass through a hole cut in a _groaning_ cheese the day of their
christening.
Second sight, which, as an hereditary faculty, was deemed a malady, was
cured in the Isle of Man, according to Mr. Aubrey's account, by baptizing
a child upon the first sight of its head. This ceremony exempts the
succeeding generation from the troublesome gift.
It is a melancholy reflection that, at various periods, impostors have
impiously called in Scriptural aid to promote their sordid or ambitious
views. Chiromancers have quoted the Bible in support of their doctrines
and adduced the following lines of Job,--"He sealeth up the hand of every
man, that all men may know his works:" while, in the like manner, the Holy
Inquisition of Spain and Portugal justified their atrocities on the score
of the parable of the marriage of the king's son, in the 22nd of St.
Matthew.
Unlawful cures, as they were called, being thus anathematized, lawful
remedies were resorted to, and the patient was first ordered to pray with
due devotion before he took his physic; or, as Burton observes, not one
without the other, but both together; for, as he adds, to pray alone, and
reject ordinary means, is to do like him in Aesop, that, when his cart was
stalled, lay flat on his back, and cried out "Help, Hercules!" However,
Hyperius maintains that no physicians can hope for success unless "with a
true faith they call upon God and teach their patients to do the like."
Comineus, when he addressed the Christian princes after the overthrow of
Charles of Burgundy, bade them "first pray with all submission and
penitency, confess their sins, and then take physic."
Another question of importance that led to much controversy was, whether
it were lawful to seek the aid of the saints; the learned Burton's remarks
on this controverted point are so curious that they are worth relating.
"They (the papists) have a proper saint for almost every peculiar
infirmity: for poisons, gout, agues, Petronella; St. Romanus, for such as
are possessed; St. Vitus for madmen, &c.; and as, of old, Pliny reckons up
gods for all diseases. All affections of the mind were heretofore
accounted gods: Love and Sorrow, Virtue, Honour, Liberty, Contumely,
Impudency, had their temples; Tempests, Seasons, _Crepitus Ventris_, _Dea
Vacuna_, _Dea Cloacina_. Varro reckons up thirty thousand gods; Lucian
makes Podagra, the gout, a goddess, and assigns her priests and ministers.
'Tis the same devil still, called heretofore, Apollo, Mars, Venus, &c.;
the same Jupiter, and those bad angels, are now worshipped and adored by
the name of St. Sebastian, St. Barbara, &c.; and our Lady succeeds Venus
in many offices; and God often winks at these impostures, because they
forsake his word, and betake themselves to the devil, as they do, that
seek after holy water, crosses," &c.
Amidst this violent denunciation against popery and devilment, evil
spirits and saints, it is somewhat singular to find a spirit of anomalous
perversity which justifies suicide to rid ourselves of disease and
suffering; and these very sanctimonious censors quote ancient and modern
authorities to sanction a practice which every Christian must condemn. Let
us pursue the disquisition of our learned bookworm Burton:--"Another doubt
is made by philosophers, whether it be lawful for a man in such extremity
of pain and grief to make away himself, and how those men that do so are
to be censured. The Platonists approve of it, that it is lawful in such
cases upon a necessity. Plotinus (_L. de Beatitud._) and Socrates himself
defend it (_in Plato's Phaedon_): _If any man labour of an incurable
disease, he may despatch himself, if it be to his good_. Epictetus and
Seneca say, _Quamcunque veram esse viam ad libertatem_;--any way is
allowable that leads to liberty. _Let us give God thanks no man is
compelled to live against his will. Quid ad hominem claustra, carcer,
custodia? liberum ostium habet._ Death is always ready at hand: _Vides
illum precipitem locum, illud flumen?_ There is liberty at hand. _Effugia
cervitutis et doloris sunt_, as that Laconian lad cast himself headlong,
_Non serviam, aiebat puer_; to be freed of misery. Wherefore hath our
mother earth brought out poisons (saith Pliny) in so great a quantity, but
that men in distress might make away themselves? which kings of old had
ever in readiness, _ad incerta fortunae venenum sub custode promptum_. Many
worthy men and women, _quorum memoria celebratur in ecclesia_, sayeth
Leminctius, killed themselves to save their chastity and honour, when Rome
was taken. Jerome vindicates the same, and Ambrose commendeth Pelagia for
so doing. Eusebius admired a Roman matron for the same fact, to save
herself from the lust of Maxentius the tyrant. Adelhelmus, the Abbot of
Malmesbury, calls them, _beatas virgines quae sic, &c._ Sir Thomas More, in
his Utopia, commends voluntary death if one be _sibi aut aliis molestus;
especially if to live be a torment to him_, let him free himself with his
own hand from this tedious life, or from a prison, or suffer himself to be
freed by others." However, be it said in justice to our worthy Burton, he
condemns this practice as "a false and pagan position, founded in prophane
stoical paradoxes and wicked examples;" and although he denounces most
fulminating anathemas on papists, he concludes by saying, "we ought not to
be rash and rigorous in our censures, as some are; Charity will judge and
hope best; God be merciful unto us all!"
But why should we marvel at the credulity and superstition of our
forefathers, when we daily observe equal absurdities? Fanaticism and
bigotry will ever strive to speculate on human weakness, and endeavour to
surround with impenetrable mists every rebel to their power who gropes for
the shrine of reason and of truth. Johanna Southcote had her votaries, and
Prince Hohenlohe is still considered by many a pious person, as a
vicarious instrument of divine mercy. No miraculous recovery recorded in
the dark ages can surpass the tenebral absurdity of the following relation
of one of his cures:
Miss O'Connor was a nun in a convent near Chelmsford, and in December
1820, being about thirty years old, was suddenly attacked by a violent
pain in the right hand, which extended with much swelling and inflammation
up the arm. The whole limb became red, swollen, extremely painful, and
entirely useless. Every remedy, both topical and directed to the system,
was tried in vain for a year and a half. There was no suppuration, nor any
formation of pus; but the malady continued obdurate, and yielded to no
application. The resources of the flesh having manifestly failed, Mrs.
Gerard, the worthy superior, very properly betook herself to those of the
spirit. She made a request through a friend to Prince Hohenlohe to assist
the patient in this her extreme case; when the following precious
document, which it would be impious to translate into heretical English,
was received:
"_Pour la Religeuse Novice d'Angleterre._
"Le trois du mois de Mai, a huit heures, je dirai, conformement a
votre demande, pour votre guerison, mes prieres. Joignez-y a la meme
heure, apres avoir confesse et communie, les votres, avec cette
ferveur angelique et cette confiance pleniere que nous devons a notre
Redempteur J. C.: excitez au fond de votre coeur les vertus divines
d'un vrai repentir, d'un amour Chretien, d'une croyance sans bornes
d'etre exauce, et d'une resolution inebranlable de mener une vie
exemplaire, afin de vous maintenir en etat de grace. Agreez
l'assurance de ma consideration.
"PRINCE ALEXANDRE HOHENLOHE.
"Bamberg, Mars 16, 1822."
It is to be regretted that this letter, which was no doubt a circular to
his proselytes, with necessary blanks to be filled up _pro re nata_, as
the doctors have it, was not drawn out in better French. Howbeit, on the
appointed day, asserts Dr. Baddely (the lady's unsuccessful medical
attendant), Miss O'Connor went through the religious process prescribed by
her princely physician. Mass being said, Miss O. not finding the immediate
relief she expected from her faith, or faithfully expected, exclaimed
somewhat impatiently, not having the fear of Job before her eyes, "Thy
will be done, O Lord, since thou hast not thought me worthy of this cure;"
when behold! _immediately_ after she felt an extraordinary sensation
throughout the whole arm to the end of the fingers. The pain _instantly_
left her, the swelling gradually subsided, and Dr. B., who no doubt was
the pet physician of the nuns, declares that the hand shortly resumed its
natural size and shape.
Now, Miss O'Connor was most likely a young lady from Ireland, where this
miraculous cure was re-echoed in every chapel. The protestants were
naturally offended by a report which seemed to impugn the sanctity of the
reformed religion, and they thought it incumbent on them, for the welfare
of church and state, to get up a miracle of their own which would cast
Prince H., Nun O., and Dr. B. in the shade. The following statement was
therefore published and certified upon oath by sundry most respectable and
most worthy Orangemen:
"I pledge you the word and honour of an Orangeman that the following
facts, sworn to by all present, occurred yesterday evening. A party of
gentlemen dined with me, and after dinner a vase, containing some orange
lilies, was placed upon the table by my directions. We drank several
toasts; but on the glorious and immortal memory being given, an _unblown
lily_, which the party had remarked, _expanded its leaves and bloomed
before us_ in all its splendour!" How appropriate are the lines of Otway
when applied to the propagators of such absurdities, who dare to call upon
our faith to give credence to their impostures.
You want to lead
My reason blindfold like a hamper'd lion
Check'd of its noble vigour; then, when baited
Down to obedient tameness, make it crouch
And show strange tricks, which you call signs of faith:
So silly souls are gull'd, and you get money.
A curious anecdote is related of Lord Chief Justice Holt. When a young
man, he happened, with some of his merry companions, to run up a score at
a country inn, which they were not able to pay. In this dilemma they
appealed to Holt, to get them out of the scrape. Our young lawyer had
observed that the inn-keeper's daughter looked very ill, and, passing
himself for a medical student, asked her father what ailed her, when he
was informed that she suffered from an ague. Holt immediately gathered
various plants, mixed them up with great ceremony, and after rolling them
up in parchment, scrawled upon the ball some cabalistic characters. The
amulet, thus prepared, he suspended round the neck of the young woman,
and, strange to say, the ague did not return. After this cure the doctor
offered to pay the bill, to which the grateful landlord would not consent,
allowing Holt and his party to leave the house.
Many years after, when on the bench, a woman was brought before him,
accused of witchcraft--the very last person tried upon such a charge. Her
only defence was, that she possessed a ball invariably efficacious in the
cure of agues. The charm was produced, handed to the judge, who recognised
the identical ball which he had prepared in his youthful frolics.
Not only did these victims of superstition firmly believe that evil
spirits had the power of inflicting disease, and afterwards salve the
mischief, but they were also invested with the privilege of killing and
subsequently restoring to life. The story related of the truly learned
Agrippa, who was falsely represented as a necromancer, is curious.
Agrippa had occasion one time to be absent for a few days from his
residence in Louvain. During his absence he intrusted his wife with the
key of his museum, but with an earnest injunction that no one on any
account should be allowed to enter it; Agrippa happened at that time to
have a boarder in his house, a young fellow of insatiable curiosity, who
constantly importuned his hostess, till at length he obtained from her the
forbidden key. The first thing that attracted his attention was a book of
spells and incantations. He spread the volume before him, and, thinking no
harm, began to read aloud. He had not long continued this occupation, when
a knock was heard at the door of the chamber. The youth took no notice,
but continued reading. Presently there followed a second and a louder
knock, which somewhat alarmed the reader. The space of a minute having
elapsed, and no answer been made, the door opened and a demon entered.
"For what purpose am I called?" said the unwelcome visitor in a stern
voice: "What is it you demand to have done?" The youth was seized with the
greatest alarm and struck speechless. The demon then rushed upon him,
seized him by the throat, and strangled him, indignant no doubt in having
been interrupted in some more interesting pursuit to no purpose.
At the expected time Agrippa came home, and to his great surprise found a
number of devils capering about, and playing strange antics on the roof of
his house. By his art he caused them to desist from their gambols, of
which he demanded the cause. The chief of them then related to him what he
had done, how he had been disturbed and insulted, and how he had thought
proper to revenge himself. Agrippa became much alarmed at the probable
consequences of this unfortunate adventure, and he ordered the demon,
without loss of time, to reanimate his victim, and walk about the streets
with him, that the public might behold him alive. The infernal spirit
reluctantly obeyed, and went forth with the student in the marketplace and
promenades. This excursion over, however, he maliciously allowed his
companion to fall down, when life once more flitted from his body. For a
time it was thought that the student had been killed by a sudden attack of
illness; but, presently, the marks of strangulation became evident, and
the truth came out. Agrippa was thus suddenly obliged to quit the town,
and seek refuge in a distant state.
It was further related of this supposed wizard, that he was always
accompanied by a familiar spirit in the shape of a black dog; and that
when he lay on his deathbed he was earnestly exhorted to repent of his
sins. Struck with remorse, he took hold of the dog, and removed from his
neck a collar studded with cabalistic nails, exclaiming, "Begone, wretched
animal, that has been the cause of my perdition!" and lo! the dog
immediately ran away, and, plunging into the river Soane, disappeared. It
is to be regretted that historians do not relate whether the water hissed
or not when the canine devil took his last leap.
It merits notice, that the mystic and medicinal celebrity of various
substances have to this hour survived the traditions of their
superstitious origin; coral, for instance, which was considered as
possessed of the power of keeping off evil spirits, and rendering effete
the malefices of the evil eye, was constantly worn as an amulet; and
Paracelsus informs us that it should be worn round the necks of infants,
as an admirable preservative against fits, sorcery, charms, and poisons.
We still find necklaces of this substance suspended by fond mothers and
nurses round the necks of infants. In the West Indies these chaplets are
worn by the negroes as a magic protection against Obiism, and they even
affirm that the colour of the coral is affected by the state of health of
the wearer, and becomes paler when he is ill.
The irrational belief in the mysterious powers of certain remedies went so
far in former days, that when they were applied to the weapon that had
inflicted an injury, their indirect sympathetic action was considered as
effectual as if they had been used to heal the wound. The sympathetic
powder of Sir Kenelm Digby, which was nothing else but pulverized green
vitriol, was eulogized in a discourse pronounced by its inventor, at
Montpellier, in 1658. Our James I. purchased this wonderful discovery from
Sir Kenelm, who pretended that he had obtained it from a Carmelite friar,
who had learned it in America and Persia. This superstitious practice is
alluded to by Walter Scott, in the "Lay of the Last Minstrel:"
But she has ta'en the broken lance,
And wash'd it from the clotted gore,
And salved the splinter o'er and o'er.
Dryden has also illustrated this absurdity in his "Enchanted Island,"
where Ariel says,
Anoint the sword which pierced him, with this
Weapon-salve, and wrap it close from air
Till I have time to visit it again.
Sir Kenelm's sympathetic powder was applied in the same manner; the weapon
being covered with ointment and dressed three times a day. But it was not
mentioned that at the same time the wound was to be brought together, and
bound up with clean linen bandages for seven days. This wonderful cure was
then simply the process of what surgeons call healing by first intention,
which means uniting the lips of the wound without suppuration. Dr. Paris
apprehends that this secret was suggested to the worthy knight by the
cures operated by the rust of the spear of Telephus, which, according to
Homer, healed the injuries it had occasioned; and this rust was most
probably verdigris.
To this day the Irish peasantry, and even many of the superior classes,
firmly believe in the malevolent and destructive effect of the evil eye,
when cast upon man or beast. Hence the absurd custom that prevails,
especially in the western provinces, of adding "God bless it," to any
expression of admiration; and if perchance a Sassenagh traveller exclaimed
"What a sweet child!" or, "What a fine cow!" without the adjunctive
benediction, he would be suspected of malefice, and the priest forthwith
summoned to save the devoted victim of sorcery. In Scotland dairy-maids
drive cattle with a switch of the mountain ash, or roan-tree, considered
as held sacred since the days of Druidism; and in some districts the sheep
and lambs are made to pass through a hoop of its wood on the first day of
May.
The toad was also considered to be possessed of marvellous qualities for
the cure of various maladies, more especially the stone that was supposed
to be occasionally found in the reptile's head, and which was called
_Crapaudina_. Lupton, in his seventh book of "Notable Things," thus
instructs us how to obtain it. "You shall knowe whether the tode stone be
the ryght and perfect stone or not. Holde the stone before a tode, so that
he may see it; and if it be a ryght and true stone, the tode will leape
towarde it and make as though he would snatch it, he envies so much that
man should have this stone." This famous toadstone is simply one of the
fossil teeth of various fishes, and is chiefly formed of phosphate of
lime. Its high polish and convexity has often induced lapidaries to have
it set in rings and other jewels, to which marvellous powers were
attached.
Pulverized toads were not only employed in medicine with supposed
advantage, but were also considered a slow but certain poison. Solander
relates, that a Roman woman, desirous of poisoning her husband gave him
this substance; but instead of attaining her criminal desire, it cured him
of a dropsy that had long perplexed him. Boccaccio relates the story of
Pasquino and Simona, two young lovers, who, wandering in a garden,
plucked some sage-leaves, with which Pasquino rubbed his teeth and gums.
In a few minutes he fell ill and expired. Simona accused of being his
assassin, was brought before a magistrate, who ordered an immediate
investigation of the matter, when, on proceeding to the garden, Simona,
after relating the particulars of the case, took some leaves from the same
plant and used them in a similar manner. In a few minutes the lovers were
reunited in death; when it was discovered that a large toad was under the
root of the plant to which it had communicated its deadly venom.
Regarding unlawful cures, have we not seen vaccination, when first
introduced, condemned from the very pulpit as an impious interference in a
disease which seemed to have been assigned to mankind by the Creator as an
inevitable doom? Did not these desperate bigots even pronounce that we
were not warranted to seek in the brute creation a human remedy or
preservative? What is still more worthy of remark, is the coincidence of a
similar idea in India, where the greatest obstacle vaccination encountered
arose from a belief that the natural smallpox was a dispensation of a
malicious deity, called _Mah-ry-Umma_, or rather that the disease was an
incarnation of the goddess herself into the person who was affected by it:
the fear of irritating her, and of exposing themselves to her resentment,
necessarily rendered the natives averse to vaccination, until it was
impressed upon their easy belief, that _Mah-ry-Umma_ had altered her mind,
and chosen this new and milder mode of manifesting her visits to her
votaries.
Could there ever have existed a more superstitious belief than that which
vested in the regal touch a healing power? Yet from Edward the Confessor
to the accession of the House of Hanover, it was generally thought in
these realms that our kings could cure scrofula with their anointed
fingers!
Dr. Paris's truly philosophic remarks on this subject, in his valuable
work, entitled Pharmacologia, are worthy of quotation:--"Credulity,
although it is nearly allied to superstition, yet differs from it widely.
Credulity is an unbounded belief in what is possible, although destitute
of proof, and perhaps of probability; but superstition is a belief in what
is wholly repugnant to the laws of the physical and moral world. Credulity
is a far greater source of error than superstition; for the latter must be
always more limited in its influence, and can exist only, to any
considerable extent, in the most ignorant portions of society; whereas
the former diffuses itself through the minds of all classes, by which the
rank and dignity of science are degraded, its valuable labours confounded
with the vain pretensions of empiricism, and ignorance is enabled to claim
for itself the prescriptive right of delivering oracles, amidst all the
triumph of truth and the progress of philosophy. Credulity has been justly
defined _belief without reason_, while scepticism, its opposite, is
_reason without belief_, and the natural and invariable consequence of
credulity; for it may be observed that men who believe without reason are
succeeded by others whom no reasoning can convince."