I shall mention several curious charms or amulets that were prevalent in the various countries of the orient and Occident. Among the Chinese, iron nails which have been used in scaling up a coffin are considered quite efficacious in keeping away evil influences. They are carried in the pocket or are braided into the queue. Sometimes such a nail is beat out into a long rod or wire and is incased in silver. A large ring is then made of it to be worn on the ankles or wrist of a boy till he is sixteen years old. Such a ring is often prepared for the use of a boy if he is an only son. Daughters wear such wristlets or anklets only a few years, or for even a shorter time.[1]
Galen mentions an amulet belonging to an Egyptian king, who is said to have lived 630 B.C. It was composed of a green jasper cut in the form of a dragon, and surrounded with rays. This was applied to strengthen the stomach and organs of digestion.
The Hebrews have quite a variety of amulets or charms, each of which has a specific virtue. In the middle ages, the quack necromancers did a thriving business among the Jews that had settled in Spain. Maimonides, the great physician, wrote vigorously against them.
Believe not in the magician or the necromancer; they do but blaspheme the name of God.[2]
Still many of the old superstitions have remained with the Jews. When a gentile physician goes into the lying-in room of the Hebrew woman he will notice placards on all the four walls, written in the ancient biblical tongue. These papers invoke the aid of the great angels for protection against the evil spirits that may attack either the newborn infant or the mother.
A mystic charm worn even at the present day bears the inscription Abracadabra. The word abra which is twice repeated in this amulet is derived from the initial letters of four Hebrew words: Ab, Ben, Ruach Acodesch, which signify Father, Son and Holy Ghost. During the times of the Crusades and for a long period afterwards, the very rich or the very noble carried about them, or kept hidden in a holy shrine, amulets made from a piece of wood from the true cross. As somebody has well said,
A grove of a hundred oaks would not have furnished all the wood sold in little morsels as remnants of the true cross; and the tears of Mary, if collected together, would have filled a very large cistern.[3]
Sometimes the charms worn were not so harmless, and had no sentimentality or mystery to grant them fascinating potence. Very frequently, horrifying things and repulsive substances were carried about to ward off illness. In Egypt[4] the finger of a Christian or Jew, cut off
