No natural exhalation in the sky,
No scope of Nature, no distempered day,
No common wind, no customed event,
But they will pluck away his natural cause,
And call them meteors, prodigies and signs.
Abortions, presages and tongues of heaven.
I shall endeavor to give a list of various specifics that were recommended long ago and are still in vogue wherever ignorance abounds. I am indebted to various authors of books on magic and superstition for various references to ancient customs. The excellent "Collectanea" of Vincent MacLean has saved me a great deal of trouble and labor in the looking up of old customs and credulities.
For every evil invented by the devil, God has created a remedy. The cure was not always known, because the ingredients of the medicine were very numerous and varied. In order to obtain the remedy in its full efficiency, the portions that made up the various concoctions were to be in exact proportion, otherwise the medicament would prove futile. The numberless combinations possible were to be tried out, and those that proved beneficial were treasured. Certain localities did a roaring trade in the sale of the specific for which it was noted. In the modern times the nostrum and patent-medicine has replaced these Meccas of healing, and the descendants of the ancient sufferers and believers are now helping to fill the coffers of the quacks.
As a method of curing himself, man has attempted to rid himself of his disease by transferring it to the stranger or the foe. In Germany a plaister from a sore may be left at a cross-way to transfer the disease to a passer-by. "I am told on medical authority," writes a certain author,[1] "that the bunches of flowers which children offer to travelers in southern Europe are sometimes intended for the ungracious purpose of sending some disease away from their houses." The contagiousness of ailments were known in olden times, and this desire to cure themselves by transferring the malady to somebody else was often the cause for the outbreak of violent epidemics in the whole neighborhood. Sometimes, instead of passing off the sickness to a human being, they attempted to give it to some animals, and thus rid themselves of the affection. A child that was suffering from scarlet fever was treated by taking some of the hair of the patient and giving it, concealed in the food, to an ass, which was to contract the fever and thus cure the patient. A similar procedure was in vogue for the treatment of measles; the hair from the nape of the neck of the child was given to a dog. A patient that had rickets was passed over the back and under the belly of a donkey nine times, uttering no word but the successive numbers. The good-women advised anybody that had convulsions or fits to try this simple remedy:
- ↑ Tylor, "Primitive Culture," II., 137.
