Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery Part 14

These were gradually replaced by the letter R, or its astrological modification ?, which was equivalent to _Recipe_, Jupiter,--Take, O Jupiter! We are told that the astrological signs were thus brought into use during Nero's reign, and that the practice of Medicine was then and afterwards regulated by the government. It is not improbable that Christian physicians were obliged to follow the example of their heathen professional brethren in prefixing to their prescriptions invocations to Jupiter.[157:1]

Johann Michael Moscherosch (1600-1669), a learned German writer, offered a unique explanation of the meaning of the medical symbol ?, which he maintained to be equivalent to _Rec_, an abbreviation for _per decem_.

And he explained the significance of the latter as being that one prescription out of ten might be expected to prove beneficial to the patient. It is certain, wrote Dr. Otto A. Wall, in his volume, "The Prescription," that pharmacies for the dispensing of medicines on physicians' prescriptions were already in existence at the ancient Spanish city of Cordova, and at other large munic.i.p.alities under the control of the Arabs, previous to the twelfth century. And as early as 1233, pharmacy laws had already been pa.s.sed in the Two Sicilies. By that time, it appears probable that medical prescriptions were no longer mere superst.i.tious formulas, but that they contained directions for compounding material remedies having more or less medicinal virtues.

Modern medical prescriptions may be cla.s.sed as lineal descendants of the healing-spells of former ages. In the most ancient known pharmacopia, a papyrus discovered about the year 1858 in the Necropolis at Thebes, and believed to date from the sixteenth century B. C., no invocations or symbols are found, nor were the latter generally employed as prefixes to medical formulas prior to the first century A. D.; when their use appears to have originated among the Greeks and Romans, and the custom has continued until the present day.

At the time of the alchemists, in the sixteenth century, "the influence of the Church on the minds of men, or perhaps the fear of the Inquisition, led physicians to adopt an invocation to the Christian G.o.d; just as they abbreviated a prayer to crossing themselves with their fingers over their foreheads and b.r.e.a.s.t.s, so they contracted the invocation to the sign of the cross as a superscription."[158:1]

Thus instead of the sign ? some physicians began their prescriptions with the Greek letters ?. O.; or the letters J. D. for _Juvante Deo_, C. D. for _c.u.m Deo_, or N. D. for _Nomine Dei_.

Dr. Rodney H. True, lecturer on botany at Harvard College, in a paper on Folk Materia Medica, read at a meeting of the Boston branch of the American Folk-Lore Society, February 19, 1901, gave a list of therapeutic agents, mostly of animal origin, forming the stock in trade of a European druggist some two hundred years ago. This list includes the fats, gall, blood, marrow from bones, teeth, livers, and lungs of various animals, birds, and reptiles; also bees, crabs, and toads, incinerated after drying; amber, sh.e.l.ls, coral, claws, and horns; hair from deer and cats; ram's wool, partridge feathers, ants, lizards, leeches, earth-worms, pearl, musk, and honey; eyes of the wolf, pickerel, and crab; eggs of the hen and ostrich, cuttlefish bone, dried serpents, and the hoofs of animals.

With the development of materia medica in Europe, the use of animal drugs diminished; but during the last decade of the nineteenth century, extracts of animal organs were manufactured on a large scale, and found a ready market. Thus some of the articles mentioned are reckoned among remedial agents to-day, but most of them doubtless owed their virtues to mental action. Wolf's eyes in former times and bread pills nowadays may be cited as typical remedies, acting through the patient's imagination and possessing no intrinsic curative properties, yet nevertheless valuable articles of the pharmacopia from the standpoint of suggestive therapeutics. In a list of j.a.panese quack medicines, of the present time, we find mention of "Spirit-cheering" pills.[159:1]

In "A Booke of Physicke and Chirurgery, with divers other things necessary to be knowne, collected out of sundry olde written bookes, and broughte into one order. Written in the year of our Lorde G.o.d 1610,"

among many curious prescriptions we find the following: "A good oyntment against the vanityes of the heade. Take the juice of worm woode and salte, honye, waxe and incens, and boyle them together over the fire, and therewith anoynte the sick heade and temples." The volume referred to was the property of Mr. William Pickering, an apparitor of the Consistory Court at Durham, England.

A commentator on the above prescription observed that few c.o.xcombs, dandies, and heads filled with bitter conceits, would like to be anointed with this cure of self-sufficiency. The wax might make the plaster stick, but it might be feared that the honey and the incense would neutralize the good effects to be expected from the wormwood and salt. If, however, the phrase "vanityes of the head" be interpreted to mean a dearth of ideas, we may a.s.sume that the above prescription was intended as a stimulus to the imagination, and as such it might well have a therapeutic value.

Dr. William Salmon, a London pract.i.tioner, published in the year 1693 "A Short Manual of Physick, designed for the general use of Her Majestie's subjects, accommodated to mean capacities, in order to the Restauration of their Healths."

In this little volume we find a prescription for "an Elixer Universall, not particular for any distemper," as follows:

Rex Metallorum [gold] ? ss.

Pouder of a Lyon's heart ? iv.

Filings of a Unicorn's Horn ? ss.

Ashes of the whole Chameleon ? iss.

Bark of the Witch Hazle Two handfulls.

Lumbrici [Earth-worms] A score.

Dried Man's Brain ? v.

Bruisewort } Egyptian Onions } aa lbss.

Mix the ingredients together and digest in my _Spiritus Universalis_, with a warm digestion, from the change of the moon to the full, and pa.s.s through a fine strainer. This Elixer is temperately hot and moist, Digestive, Lenitive, Dissolutive, Aperative, Strengthening and Glutinative; it opens obstructions, proves Hypnotick and Styptick, is Cardiack, and may become Alexpharmick. It is not specially great for any one Single Distemper, but of much use and benefit in most cases wherein there is difficulty and embarra.s.sment, or that which might be done, doth not so clearly appear manifest and Open to the Eye.

The above elixir is a fine specimen of the product of a shrewd charlatan's fertile brain, and doubtless found a ready sale at an exorbitant price. The fact that one, at least, of its ingredients is mythical, probably enhanced its curative properties, in the minds of a gullible public. The horn of the unicorn was popularly regarded as the most marvellous of remedies. In reality, it was the tusk of a cetaceous animal inhabiting the northern ocean, and known as the sea-unicorn or narwhal. In the popular mind it was of value as an effective antidote against all kinds of poisons, the bites of serpents, various fevers, and the plague.

In describing a scene in the Arctic regions, Josephine Diebitsch Peary wrote as follows in her volume, "The Snow Baby" (1901):

Glossy, mottled seals swim in the water, and schools of narwhal, which used to be called unicorns, dart from place to place, faster than the fastest steam yacht; with their long, white ivory horns, longer than a man is tall, like spears, in and out of the water.

One of the teeth of the narwhal is developed into a straight, spirally fluted tusk, from six to ten feet long, like a horn projecting from the forehead. This horn is sometimes as long as the creature's body, and furnishes a valuable ivory. The narwhal also yields a superior quality of oil.[162:1]

Sir Thomas Browne in his "Pseudo-doxia Epidemica"[162:2] remarked that many specimens of alleged unicorn's horn, preserved in England, were in fact portions of teeth of the Arctic walrus, known as the morse or sea-horse. In northern lat.i.tudes these teeth are used as material wherewith to fashion knife-handles or the hilts of swords. The long horns, preserved as precious rarities in many places, are narwhal-tusks.

The belief in the medicinal virtues of unicorn's horn is comparatively modern, as none of the ancients, except the Italian writer aelian (about A. D. 200), ascribed to it any curative or antidotal properties. Sir Thomas Browne characterized this popular superst.i.tion of his time as an "insufferable delusion."

H. B. Tristam, in his "Natural History of the Bible," remarks that there is no doubt of the ident.i.ty of the unicorn of Scripture with the historic _urus_ or aurochs, known also as the _reem_, a strong and large animal of the ox-tribe, having two horns. This animal formerly inhabited Europe, including Great Britain, and survived until comparatively recent times, in Prussia and Lithuania. The belief in the existence of a one-horned quadruped is very ancient. Aristotle mentions as such the oryx or antelope of northern Africa. The aurochs was hunted and killed by prehistoric man, as is shown by the finding of skulls, pierced by flint weapons.[163:1]

In the Septuagint, the Hebrew word _reem_ was translated _monoceros_ in the Greek text. This is alleged by some authorities to be an incorrect rendering. The Vulgate has the Latin term _unicornis_, the one-horned.

In Lewysohn's "Zoologie des Talmuds" is to be found the following rabbinical legend: When the Ark was ready, and all the creatures were commanded to enter, the _reem_ was unable to pa.s.s through the door, owing to its large size. Noah and his sons were therefore obliged to fasten the animal by a rope to the Ark, and to tow it behind. And in order to prevent its being strangled, they attached the rope to its horn, instead of around its neck. . . . It was formerly thought that the legendary unicorn was in reality the one-horned rhinoceros, but this seems improbable. The fabulous creature mentioned by cla.s.sic writers as a native of India was described as having the size and form of a horse, with one straight horn projecting from its forehead. In the museum at Bristol, England, there is a stuffed antelope from Caffraria, which closely answers this description. Its two straight taper horns are so nearly united that in profile they appear like a single horn.

The unicorn of Heraldry first appeared as a symbol on one of the Anglo-Saxon standards, and was afterwards placed upon the Scottish shield. When England and Scotland were united under James I, the silver unicorn became a supporter of the British shield, being placed opposite the golden lion, in the royal arms of Great Britain.[164:1]

FOOTNOTES:

[155:1] Jonathan Pereira, _Selecta e Prescriptis_, p. 5.

[156:1] Ronsch, _Buch der Jubilaen_, p. 385.

[156:2] _Notes and Queries_, Tenth Series, June 4, 1904.

[156:3] F. Lenormant, _Chaldean Magic_, p. 81.

[157:1] Evidence of the old belief in planetary influence is found in our language in the words "jovial," "mercurial," "saturnine," "martial,"

"disastrous," and "ill-starred."

[158:1] Otto A. Wall, M.D., _The Prescription_, pp. 12-23. In this work much s.p.a.ce is devoted to the history and evolution of medical recipes.

[159:1] _Boston Herald_, February 27, 1908.

[162:1] _The Century Dictionary._

[162:2] Book iii, p. 130.

[163:1] _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, art. "Unicorn"; Rev. J. G. Wood, _Bible Animals_.

[164:1] F. S. W., _Dame Heraldry_, p. 175.

CHAPTER XV

REMEDIAL VIRTUES ASCRIBED TO RELICS

A relic has been defined as an object held in reverence or affection, because connected with some sacred or beloved person deceased. And specifically, in the Roman Catholic and Greek churches, a saint's body or portions of it, or an object supposed to have been a.s.sociated with the life or body of Christ, of the Virgin Mary, or of some saint or martyr, and regarded therefore as a personal memorial, worthy of religious veneration.[165:1]

The worship of relics and the belief in their healing properties appear to have originated in a very ancient custom which prevailed among the early Christians, of a.s.sembling at the tombs of martyrs, for the purpose of holding memorial services. The bones of saints also became objects of great veneration, and this doctrine was supported by the teachings of Saint Ambrose, Saint Augustine, Saint Jerome, and other Fathers of the Church, of the fourth and fifth centuries. The belief in the marvellous virtues attributed to sacred relics was sustained by such miracles as that recorded in 2 Kings, xiii, 21: "And it came to pa.s.s, as they were burying a man, that, behold, they spied a band of men; and they cast the man into the sepulchre of Elisha; and when the man was let down, and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood up on his feet."

Some authorities, however, ascribe the origin of the cult of relics to the words contained in Acts, v, 15: "Insomuch that they brought forth the sick into the streets, and laid them on beds and couches, that at the least the shadow of Peter pa.s.sing by might overshadow some of them."

In the year 325, Saint Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, the first Christian Emperor of Rome, made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where she was alleged to have discovered the wood of the true Cross. This, according to tradition, was found, with two other crosses and various sacred relics, under a temple of Venus, which stood near the Holy Sepulchre. And the true Cross was identified by means of a miraculous test; for when a sick woman was touched with two of the crosses, no effect was apparent; but upon contact with the true Cross, she was immediately restored to health.[166:1] Such is the legend.

Of the four nails found in the place where the Cross was buried, one was said to have been sent to Rome. Another the Empress Helena threw into the Gulf of Venice, to allay a storm; while the other two were sent by her to Constantine, who welded one of them to his helmet, as an amulet, and affixed the other to his horse's headstall.