Curiosities of Medical Experience Part 14

Notwithstanding all these absurdities, it is undoubtedly true that certain articles of food have been considered as endowed with aphrodisiac properties; fish of various kinds, the mollusca and testaceous animals more especially. Juvenal attributes this quality to oysters, which, in this respect, with c.o.c.kles and muscles have become vulgarly proverbial:

Grandia quae mediis jam noctibus ostrea mordet.

Wallich informs us that the ladies of his time had recourse on such occasions to the brains of the _mustela piscis_. The _sepia octopus_ was also in great repute; and Plautus, in his _Casina_, brings on an old man who had just been purchasing some in the market. There is reason to believe that these ideas were not altogether as absurd as they may appear.

Fourcroy and Vauquelin have attributed this influence to the presence of phosphorus, which is well known to be highly exciting. In the East, various vegetable productions are considered in the same light. Their _hakims_ have numerous receipts for the purpose; amongst which we find several electuaries,--such as the _diacyminum_, the _diaxylaloes_, the confections of _Luffa Abunafa_, and the _chaschab abusidan_ of the Arabians, of which wonderful effects are related.

The laws of every country have provided against the offence of witchcraft, sorcery, conjuration, and enchantment. We find a statute of our first James, making it "felony, without benefit of the clergy, under the penalty of death, the act of all persons invoking any evil spirit, or consulting, covenanting with, entertaining, employing, feeding, or rewarding any evil spirits; or taking up dead bodies from their graves, to be used in any witchcraft, sorcery, charm, or enchantment; or killing or otherwise hurting, any person by such infernal arts. And if any person should attempt by sorcery to discover hidden treasures, or to restore stolen goods, or to _provoke unlawful love_, (lawful love did not come within these salutary provisions,) he or she should suffer imprisonment and pillory for the first offence, and death for the second." Strange to say, that act continued in force till very lately; and Blackstone observes, "that many poor wretches were sacrificed thereby to the prejudice of their neighbours, and their own illusions; not a few having, by some means or other, confessed the fact at the gallows."

Nothing could be more absurd, nay atrocious, than the means judicially resorted to at that period to detect witchcraft. Sir Robert Filmer mentions two tests by fire: the first by burning the house of the pretended witch: the other, by burning any animal supposed to have been bewitched by her. In both these cases the witch would confess her _malefices_!

Moreover, it was a.s.serted that a witch, even while enduring the pangs of torture, could only shed _three tears_, and those from the _left eye_; this was considered a sufficient proof of guilt by the judges of the day!

Swimming a witch was another expedient; in this ordeal the hag was stripped naked, and cross-bound, the right thumb to the left toe, and _vice versa_. Thus prepared, she was thrown into a pond or a river; in which, if guilty, she could not sink, for having by her compact with the Devil renounced the waters of baptism, the waters in return refused to receive her in their bosom.

Our wise legislators maintained that old women were generally selected by the evil ones for their malicious purposes, and they usually appeared to them in the form of a man wearing a black coat or gown; and sometimes, especially in the north, with a bluish band and turned-up linen cuffs: hard bargains were sometimes driven between the parties for the value of the harridan's soul. This was also the case according to Echard, in the negotiation between Oliver Cromwell and the Devil before the battle of Worcester. There were black, white, and gray witches: some of them fond of junketing and merry-making, and often would Satan play on a pipe or a cittern to make them dance; and not unfrequently would he become enamoured with their withered charms, when toads and horrible serpents were the hated progeny of this unhallowed union. Sinclair tells us, in his "Invisible World," of one Mr. Barton, who was burnt with his wife for witchcraft, and who confessed, before he was tied to the stake, that he had intrigued with the Devil in the shape of a comely lady, who had given him 15_l._ for his trouble. His wife confessed at the same time, that the Devil in the shape of a poodle dog used to dance before her, playing upon the pipes with a candle under his tail. The Devil, particularly in Scotland would ever and anon get up into a pulpit, and preach a sermon in a voice "_hough_ and _gustie_."

Burton gives us some curious traditions of these devilish amours, and quotes Philostratus's account of one Menippus Lycius, a young man twenty-five years of age, who going between Cenchreas and Corinth, met a phantom in the shape of a fair gentlewoman, which, taking him by the hand, carried him to her house in the suburbs of Corinth; and told him she was a Phoenician by birth, and, if he would tarry with her he should hear her sing and play, and drink such wine as never was drunk, and no man should molest him, but she, being fair and lovely, would live and die with him.

The young man tarried with her awhile to his great content, and at last married her; to whose wedding, amongst other guests, came Apollonius; who by some probable conjecture, found her out to be a serpent--a lamia. When she saw herself discovered, she wept, and desired Apollonius to be silent; but he would not be moved, and thereupon she, plate, house, and all that was in it vanished in an instant.

Florigerus also mentions the case of a young gentleman of Rome, "who on his wedding day went out walking with his bride and some friends after dinner; and towards the evening went to a tennis-court, and while he played he took off his ring, and placed it upon the finger of a bra.s.s _Venus statua_. The game finished, he went to fetch his ring; but Venus had bent her finger upon it, and he could not get it off. Whereupon, loth to make his companions tarry, he there left it, intending to fetch it the next day, went thence to supper, and so to bed; but in the night Venus had slipped between him and his wife, and thus troubled him for several successive nights. Not knowing how to help himself, he made his moan to one Palumbus, a learned magician; who gave him a letter, and bade him at such a time of the night, in such a cross way, where old Saturn would pa.s.s by with his a.s.sociates, to deliver to him the script: the young man, of a bold spirit, accordingly did it; and when the old fiend had read it, he called Venus to him, who was riding before him, and commanded her to deliver the ring, which forthwith she did."

Burton further quotes St. Augustine, Bodin, Paracelsus, and various other learned men, who firmly maintain that the Devil is particularly fond of a little flirtation with the ladies; and a Bavarian widower, who was sadly grieving for his beloved wife, was visited by Old Nick, who had a.s.sumed the form of the departed lady, and promised to live with him and comfort him on the condition that he would leave off swearing and blaspheming; he vowed it, married her, and she brought him several children; till one day, in an uxorious quarrel, he began to swear like a Pandour, whereupon she vanished, and never more was seen.

The preservatives against witchcraft were as absurd as the fear it inspired: some hair, parings of nails, or any part of a person bewitched, were put into a stone bottle, with crooked nails, then corked close, and hung up the chimney; this expedient occasioned most horrible tortures to the witch, until the bottle was uncorked. Witches, moreover, cannot pursue their victims beyond the middle of a running stream, provided the fugitives had been baptized. I have now a patient under my care who fancies himself bewitched, and a.s.serts that the only way to guard against the evil is by driving a nail in the impress left by a witch's foot on the threshold, when she will discontinue her visits.

By an act of George II. these offences were considered as misdemeanors, and punished with a year's imprisonment, and standing four times in the pillory. There is no doubt that, notwithstanding the absurdity of such delusions and impostures, legislators must endeavour to secure the ignorant against these impositions, which are frequently of a perilous nature, and have been often known to occasion serious accidents, and even death. Many of the substances thus administered are of a most dangerous description, and these enchantments are not unfrequently resorted to with sinister intentions. It is related of the Asiatic women, that, under the pretext of giving these philters, they sometimes times prepare a beverage from the seeds of the _Datura Metel_, which produces a lethargic stupefaction of a convenient nature. The mischief that has frequently arisen from the exhibition of the _Lytta vesicatoria_ has been observed and recorded by every medical pract.i.tioner. The _Diablotini_, a kind of incentive sugar-plums of the Italians, have been known to occasion the most serious accidents; and the celebrated French actor Mole lost his life in one of these experiments. Yet penal enactments, in such cases, must be resorted to with much circ.u.mspection; for prohibition too frequently promotes the evils which it is designed to check.

Montesquieu observes, that the ridiculous stories that are generally told, and the many impositions that have been discovered in all ages, are enough to demolish all faith in such a dubious crime, if the contrary evidence were not also extremely strong. Unquestionably, we have too many instances of criminal acts of superst.i.tion in which supernatural agency is believed; but did this philosophic writer mean to say that we have evidence of actual witchcraft and sorcery? It is with some degree of regret that we find our learned Blackstone avow his belief in these matters, and we borrow his own words on the subject: "To deny the possibility, nay, the actual existence of witchcraft and sorcery, is at once flatly to contradict the revealed Word of G.o.d, in various pa.s.sages both of the New and Old Testament; and the thing itself is a truth to which every nation in the world hath in its turn borne testimony, either by examples seemingly well attested, or by prohibitory laws which at least suppose the possibility of a commerce with evil spirits. The civil law punishes with death not only the sorcerers themselves, but also those who consult them; imitating in the former the express law of G.o.d, 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!'" Without calling into doubt the records of supernatural agency in Holy Writ, evident manifestations of the power and the will of the Divinity at that period, it may fairly be asked--Can we promulgate such opinions in the present times, when miraculous events do not seem to be permitted by our Creator in His inscrutable wisdom, without incurring the risk of plunging the ignorant in all the dark horrors of the early ages? Montesquieu himself has justly remarked, "that the most unexceptionable conduct, the purest morals, and the constant practice of every duty in life, are not a sufficient security against the suspicion of crimes like these." And yet, because, forsooth, there may be made to appear _examples seemingly attested_, and that on the faith of such an attestation the most absurd and cruel _prohibitory laws_ have been enacted by every _nation in the world, on the supposition of the possibility of such a crime_, however ignorant and brutalized by superst.i.tion these nations are or may have been, man is not only authorized by the Scriptures to persecute some poor miserable fool or vagrant impostor unto death, but he is sanctioned in founding this barbarous persecution on the laws of G.o.d! The mind sickens at such doctrines. It is grievous to find a man like our Addison sharing in such preposterous notions; notions which would induce a doubtful by-stander not to interfere with a mob of miscreants who were drowning some unfortunate old woman "for a witch."

"There are," says Addison, "some opinions in which a man should stand _neuter_, without engaging his a.s.sent to one side or the other. It is with this temper of mind that I consider the subject of witchcraft. When I consider whether there are such persons in the world as those we call witches, my mind is divided between the two opposite opinions; or rather, to speak my thoughts freely, I believe in general that _there is_, and has been, such a thing as witchcraft, but, at the same time, can give no credit to any particular instance of it."

Are we then still to believe that there may exist some supernatural hag, that can

--------Untie the winds, and let them fight Against the churches-------- Control the moon, make ebbs and flows, And deal in her command without her power?

or who, with the influence given to them by our poet Rowe,

By force of potent spells, of b.l.o.o.d.y characters, And conjurations horrible to hear, Call fiends and spectres from the yawning deep, And set the ministers of h.e.l.l to work,

with the liver of a blaspheming Jew, the nose of a Turk, the lips of a Tartar, the finger of a birth-strangled babe, and ditch-delivered by a drab, &c. &c.? If we are to believe in witches with Blackstone and Addison, we must give credence to all these mystic means by which they _work_ their _way_. All these _means_ have been _seemingly attested_, and led, from the just horror they inspired, to those _prohibitory laws_ enacted by _every nation_; as if the laws of man could be of any avail in resisting the _admitted_ supernatural powers with which these witches, sorcerers, magicians, &c. must have been invested by the Deity to perform their terrific operations! If we deny this authority we are Manicheans.

VENTRILOQUISM.

This peculiar faculty was well known to the ancients. Hippocrates verily believed that there did exist individuals who could draw a voice from their belly. He speaks of the wife of Polimarchus, who, being affected with a quinsy, spoke in this manner; hence this power was called _Engastrimysm_. Plato gives the history of Euricles, who mentions three persons whom St. Chrysostom and Oec.u.menius considered to be endowed with a heavenly gift. Caelius Rhodiginus describes an old woman of Rovigo who used to deliver her oracles in the like manner, and who was never so eloquent as when stripped to the skin, when she would answer most accurately all the questions put to her by a familiar who attended upon her, and was called Cincinnatulus. Anthony Vandael, a physician of Harlem, considered ventriloquism as a supernatural power, enabling the voice to proceed "ex ventre inferiore et partibus genitalibus;" and he describes a woman of seventy-three years of age, called Barbara Jacobi, who used to ventriloquise with an imp of the name of Joachim, who would weep most piteously, or fall into roars of laughter, and sometimes danced and sung with remarkable grace and elegance, according to the depressing or the exhilarating nature of Mrs. Jacobi's communications. In the Septuagint the Hebrew word _Ob_ is rendered by _Engastrimythos_; and it was supposed that the Pythoness who evoked Samuel had recourse to this power. Oleaster, Grand Inquisitor of Portugal, in a work published at Lisbon in 1656, mentions a woman of the name of Cecilia who was brought before the court, and expressed herself in a ventriloquial voice, which she said was that of one Peter John, who had been dead for many years; but Peter John pleaded in vain for his hostess, for, despite his abdominal eloquence, she was sentenced to be transported. Whether Peter John accompanied her in exile is not stated. In 1643, d.i.c.kinson mentions a man at Oxford, who was called the King's Whisperer, and who expressed himself most clearly without opening the mouth or moving the lips. This faculty has frequently been employed in various speculations. In the sixteenth century, Borden relates the story of a valet of Francis I., named Brabant, who thus persuaded the mother of a young girl he courted to grant her consent to their marriage as speedily as possible, if she wished her husband's soul to get out of the torments of purgatory: after marriage, however, he was disappointed in his pecuniary expectations, and he applied his powers of ventriloquism to terrify a rich banker of Lyons, of the name of Corner, to bestow a fortune upon his wife; for which purpose he a.s.sumed the voice of Corner's father, who supplicated him to give the money as the only means of sending his poor consuming soul to paradise.

One of the most celebrated ventriloquists was a grocer of St. Germains, one St. Gilles; but he applied the faculty he possessed to benevolent purposes. Being called to reclaim a newly-married young man from a disgraceful connexion, which rendered his wife most unhappy, his supernatural voice, supposed to come from heaven, succeeded; and he was equally fortunate in bringing to a sense of propriety one of the most sordid misers of his time.

St. Gilles was not so felicitous in a trick he played to some monks, vainly attempting to prove the absurdity of their superst.i.tious notions.

One of the community had lately died, and, according to custom, the deceased was laid out in the church, and his brethren, grouped around him, were pouring forth prayers for the repose of his soul, when St. Gilles, throwing his voice into the coffin, returned them all the thanks of the departed friar for their supplications in his behalf. The astonished monks were most edified at this miraculous event; and their prior, who knew St.

Gilles to be a freethinker, endeavoured to impress upon his mind the wonder that he himself had performed, and to inveigh most earnestly against the impiety and incredulity of modern philosophers, who entertained sceptic ideas concerning miracles. After a long exhortation, our ventriloquist burst into a fit of laughter, and avowed the deception he had practised: to convince the brotherhood of the veracity of his a.s.sertion, he gave them various specimens of his skill,--but to no purpose; he was called an infidel, a scoffer, an atheist, and, had it been in Spain, the stake would in all probability have rewarded his perilous frolic, or his stiff-necked impiety in refusing to believe in his own miracles.

It is now pretty generally admitted that ventriloquism simply consists in a slow and gradual expiration, preceded by a strong and deep inspiration, by which a considerable quant.i.ty of air is introduced into the lungs, which is afterwards acted upon by the flexible powers of the larynx and the trachea: any person therefore, by practice, can obtain more or less expertness in this exercise; in which, although not apparently, the voice is still modified by the mouth and the tongue. Mr. Lespagnol, in a very able dissertation on this subject, has demonstrated that ventriloquists have acquired by practice the power of exercising the veil of the palate in such a manner, that, by raising or depressing it, they dilate or contract the inner nostrils. If they are closely contracted, the sound produced is weak, dull, and seems to be more or less distant; if, on the contrary, these cavities are widely dilated, the sound is strengthened by these tortuous infractuosities, and the voice becomes loud, sonorous, and apparently close to us. Thus any able mimic who can with facility disguise his voice, with the aid of this power of modifying sounds, may in time become a ventriloquist.

CHAUCER'S DESCRIPTION OF A PHYSICIAN. THE DOCTOR OF PHYSIC.

With us there was a doctour of phisike; In all this world, ne was there none him like To speake of phisike and of surgerie, For he was grounded in astronomie.

He kept his patient a full great dell In houses: by his magike naturell Well couth he fortune the a.s.sendent Of his image for his pacient.

He knew the cause of every malady, Whether it were of cold, heate, moist, or dry.

And whereof engendered was each humour.

He was a very parfit practisour; The cause I knew, and of his haime the roote, Anon he gave to the rich man his boot.

Full ready had he his apoticaries To send him drugs and his lectuaries; For each of them made other for to winne, Their friendship was not new to beginne.

Well he knew the old Esculapius, And Diascorides, and eke Ruffus, And Hippocrates, and Galen, Serapion, Rasis, and Avicen, Aberrois, Damascene, and Constantin, Bernard, Galisden, and Gilbertin Of his diet measurable was he, For it was of no superfluitie; But of great nourishing and digestible.

His study was but little on the Bible.

In sanguine and in percepolad withall Lined with taffata and with sendall; And yet he was but easy of dispence.

He kept that he won in time of pestilence; For gold in phisike is a cordial, Therefore he loved gold speciall.

It appears from this quaint and satirical picture, that, in our Chaucer's days, astrology formed part of a physician's study. It also plainly proves that a disgraceful collusion prevailed between medical pract.i.tioners and their apothecaries, mutually to enrich each other at the expense of the patient's purse and const.i.tution. The poet, moreover, seems to tax the faculty with irreligion: that unjust accusation was not uncommon; hence the old adage, "Ubi tres medici, duo athei." To the disgrace of many illiberal persons of the present age, we have known some of our most able and praiseworthy physiologists charged with materialism.

DaeMONOMANIA.

This disease is perhaps the most distressing species of insanity; since, with the exception of the miserable belief of being possessed by the evil spirit, the patient is often in full possession of his other faculties, and will even endeavour to reason with his attendants, with some apparent plausibility, on the very aberration that const.i.tutes the malady.

The word 'daemon' among the ancients was not considered as specific of an evil spirit; on the contrary, it signified genius, intellect, mind.

[Greek: Daimonion], from [Greek: daimon], meant wisdom, science. The first notions of daemons were probably brought from Chaldea, whence they spread amongst the Persians, Egyptians, and Greeks. Gales maintains that the original inst.i.tution of daemons was an imitation of the Messiah. The Phoenicians called them _Baalim_. So far do these early opinions prevail, that among the Anabaptists we find a sect called Daemoniac, who believe that devils shall be saved at the end of the world.

Plato gave the name of daemons to the benevolent spirits who regulated the universe. The Chaldeans and Jews considered them as the causes of all human maladies. Saul was agitated by an evil spirit, and Job and Joram suffered under a similar visitation.

Daemonomania differs widely from the mental disease called Theomania. In the latter state of insanity the patient fancies that he is placed in communication with the Deity or his angels; in the former, he feels convinced that he has become the prey of the destroyer of mankind.

Under the head of "Unlawful Cures," instances are related of the firm belief in the power of evil spirits to cause various diseases. Perhaps the origin of daemonomania may be traced to fanatical persecution; never was the malady so common as during the denunciations of Calvin, when torture was frequently resorted to, to make the victims of bigotry renounce a supposed pact with the devil. D'Agessau was right when, in advising the parliament of Paris to repeal all statutes against sorcery, he recommended that daemoniacs should be handed over to the physician, instead of the priest or the executioner.

The sufferings which daemoniacs say they endure must be excruciating; so powerful is moral influence over our physical sensations. They will tell you that the devil is drawing them tight, and suffocating them with a cord; that he is pinching and lacerating their entrails, burning and tearing their heart, pouring hot oil or molten lead in their veins, while internal flames are consuming them. Their strength is exhausted, their digestive functions impaired, their appearance soon becomes miserable in the extreme, their countenances pale and haggard: the wretched creatures endeavour to conceal themselves during their scanty meals, or their attempts to enjoy a broken slumber; they are persuaded that they no longer possess a corporeal existence that requires refection or repose,--the evil spirit has borne away their bodies, the devil requires no earthly support; they even deny their s.e.x: they are doomed to live for ever in constant agony. These unfortunate creatures are mostly women. One of them a.s.serts, with horrid imprecations, that she has been the devil's wife for a million of years, and had borne him a numerous family; her body is nothing but a sack made of a devil's skin, and filled with their offsprings in the shape of devouring snakes, toads, and venomous reptiles. She exclaims that her husband constantly urges her to commit murder, theft, and every imaginable crime; and sometimes with bitter tears supplicates her keeper to put on a strait waistcoat, to prevent her from doing evil. Another woman, forty-eight years of age, a.s.sures us that she has two devils who have taken up their residence in both her hips, and have grown up to her ears: one of them is black and yellow, the other black, both in the shape of cats. She fills her ears with snuff and grease to satisfy their diabolical cravings. She eats with voracity, but is a perfect skeleton in appearance; the devils consume all, and leave her nothing. They constantly bid her to go and drown herself; but she cannot obey them, since eternity is her doom. They are scarcely sensible of painful agents, and are unconscious of heat, cold, or the inclemency of the weather. Their perspiration, frequently profuse, exhales a most unpleasant odour; hence the vulgar fancy that they smell of the lower regions. This circ.u.mstance is the usual consequence of many nervous affections, and arises, most probably, from the foulness of the breath, a natural result of impaired digestion, and from a peculiar acrimony of the cutaneous secretions.

Pinel relates the case of a missionary whose enthusiastic aberrations led him into the horrible belief, that he could only be saved from eternal torments, by what he called a _baptism of blood_. This fatal mania induced him to attempt the life of his wife, who was fortunate to escape from the danger, after he had immolated two of his children, to secure their salvation! Tried for this crime he was sentenced to perpetual confinement in Bicetre. In his dungeon he fancied himself the _fourth person in the trinity_, maintained that he was sent upon earth to baptize with blood, and all the power of the universe could not affect his life. During ten years' confinement this miserable wretch, betrayed the same insanity whenever religious subjects were touched upon, in all other matters, he reasoned most soundly. His lucid intervals at last became so long in their duration and calm, that it was questioned whether he might not be liberated--until on a Christmas eve, his sanguinary monomania resumed all its intensity, and having by some means or other obtained possession of a leather-cutter's knife, he inflicted a desperate wound on one of his keepers, and cut the throat of two patients who were near them; many other inmates of the establishment would, no doubt, have been sacrificed by the desperate maniac had he not been secured. This case might decidedly be considered one of true daemonomania.

It has been generally remarked that cases of daemonomania are more common amongst women than in men. Their greater susceptibility to nervous affections, their warmth of imagination and strong pa.s.sions, which habit and education compel them to restrain, produce a state of concentration that must cause increased excitement, and render them more liable to those terrific impressions that const.i.tute the disease. These terrors, from false notions of the Deity, make them antic.i.p.ate in this world the sufferings denounced in the next. One woman has been known to become daemonomaniac after an intense perusal of the Apocalypse, and another by the constant reading of the works of Thomas a Kempis. Women, moreover, at certain critical periods are subject to great mental depression, which they have not the power to relieve by exciting pursuits, like men.

Melancholy succeeds a dull sameness. Religion, viewed in a false light, becomes her refuge; more especially at an advanced period of life, when loss of youth and beauty is bitterly felt, as galled vanity compares the present with the past. Hysteric symptoms are now developed: the pa.s.sions, which are too frequently increased even to intensity, rather than cooled, by years, prompt her to rebellious thoughts that religion and virtuous feelings strive to restrain; and these powerful agents, acting upon a predisposition morbidly impressionable from ignorance or the errors of education, accelerate the invasion of this cruel malady. Jacobi informs us, that this is still the character which, in some catholic countries, insanity connected with superst.i.tion frequently a.s.sumes.