Thaumaturgia Part 18

"_Poiet_. These, as well as the omens of death-watches, dreams, etc.

are founded upon some accidental coincidences; but spilling of salt, on an uncommon occasion, may, as I have known it, arise from a disposition to apoplexy, shown by an incipient numbness in the hand, and may be a fatal symptom; and persons dispirited by bad omens sometimes prepare the way for evil fortune, for confidence of success is a great means of insuring it. The dream of Brutus before the battle of Philippi probably produced a species of irresolution and despondency which was the princ.i.p.al cause of his losing the battle; and I have heard that the ill.u.s.trious sportsman, to whom you referred just now, was always observed to shoot ill, because he shot carelessly, after one of his dispiriting omens.

"_Hal._ I have in life met with a few things which I have found it impossible to explain, either by chance coincidences, or by natural connections, and I have known minds of a very superior cla.s.s affected by them--persons in the habit of reasoning deeply and profoundly."

The number of remarkable events that happened on some particular days, have been the princ.i.p.al means of confirming both pagans and Christians in their opinions on this subject. For instance, Alexander who was born on the sixth of April, conquered Darius, and died on the same day. The Emperor Basia.n.u.s Caracalla was born, and died on the sixth day of April.

Augustus was adopted on the 19th of August, began his consulate, conquered the Triumviri, and died the same day. The christians have observed that the 24th of February was four times fortunate to Charles the fifth. That Wednesday was a fortunate day to Pope Sixtus the fifth; for on a Wednesday he was born, on that day made a monk, on the same day made a general of his order, on that day created a Cardinal, on that day elected Pope, and also on that day inaugurated. That Thursday was a fatal day to Henry the eighth, King of England, and his posterity, for he died on a thursday; King Edward the sixth on a Thursday; Queen Mary on a Thursday; and Queen Elizabeth on a Thursday.

The French have observed that the feast of Pentecoste had been lucky to Henry III, King of France for on that day he was born, on that day elected King of Poland, and on that day he succeeded his brother Charles IX, on the throne of France.

There are critical days observed by physicians, in continued fevers, a doctrine which has been confirmed by the united testimony of De Haen and Cullen; and these are the 3rd. 5th. 7th. 9th. 11th. 14th. 17th. and 20th. By critical days are meant, any of the above days, on which the fever abates or terminates favourably, or on which it is exacerbated or terminates fatally.

Natural astrology is confined to the study of exploring natural effects, in which sense it is admitted to be a part of natural philosophy. It was under this view that Mr. Goad, Mr. Boyle, and Dr. Mead, pleaded for its use. The first endeavours to account for the diversity of seasons from the situations, habitudes and motions of the planets: and to explain an infinity of phenomena by the contemplation of the stars. The Honourable Mr. Boyle admitted, that all physical bodies are influenced by the heavenly bodies; and Doctor Mead's opinion, in his treatise concerning the power of the sun and moon, etc. is in favour of the doctrine. But these predictions and influences are ridiculed and entirely exploded by the most esteemed modern philosophers, of which the reader may have a learned specimen in Rohault's, Tractat. Physic, part II. c. 27.

The diseases of men, women, and children were supposed at times to be more immediately caused by the influence of the seven planets. In order to comprehend this exploded doctrine, we shall here set down the pretended governing and days, at what time they are supposed to have the most influence:

[Symbol: Sol] Sol, or the sun governs on Sunday.

[Symbol: Luna] Luna, or the moon, Monday.

[Symbol: Mars] Mars, Tuesday.

[Symbol: Mercury] Mercury, Wednesday.

[Symbol: Jupiter] Jupiter, Thursday, [Symbol: Venus] Venus. Friday.

[Symbol: Saturn] Saturn, Sat.u.r.day.

Saturn reigning, is said to cause cold diseases, as the gout, leprosy, palsy, quartan agues, dropsies, catarrhs, colds, rheumatisms, etc.

Jupiter causes cramps, numbness, inflammations of the liver, head-aches, pains in the shoulders, flatulency, inflammatory fevers, and all diseases caused by putrefaction, apoplexy, and quinsies.

Mars, acute fevers and tartan agues, continual and intermitting fevers, imposthumes, erisepelas, carbuncles, fistulas, dysentery, and similar hot and dry diseases.

Sol causes rheums in the eyes, coldness in the stomach and liver, syncope, catarrhs, pustular eruptions, hysterics, eruptions on the lower extremities.

Venus causes sores, lientery, hysteria, sickness at the stomach, from cold and moist causes, disorders of the liver and lungs.

Mercury causes hoa.r.s.eness and distempers in the senses, impediments in the speech, falling sickness, coughs, jaundice, vomiting, catarrhs.

The moon causes palsy, cholic, dropsy, imposthumes, dysenteries, and all diseases arising from obstructed circulation.

The means laid down for the prevention of these diseases are rational enough, at least some of them, such as temperance, moderate bleeding (whether or not indicated we are not told,) the use of laxatives at seasonable times, when a friendly planet, opposite to the malignant planet you were born under, has dominion, by which the effect of its influence will be much abated, and a power given to nature to oppose its malevolency, which, "if well heeded, may be a main prevention of dangerous diseases." Thus every planet in the heavens carries with it a diseased aspect, without, as it would appear, possessing any repelling or sanative powers to correct or ward off the sickly influence it is supposed to entertain over the life and limbs of frail mortals; that, in the sense of this absurd doctrine, or rather jargon, when Jupiter has dominion, it will be necessary to bleed and take calomel to guard against (not to attack it when it has taken place) inflammation of the liver; and when Mars presides, to send immediately for Van Butchel to frighten away an imaginary fistula--absurd and ridiculous nonsense, too prevalent even at the present day; for what can bleeding and physicking at the spring and fall of the year be called but operations without reason, under suppositious stellar influence. "Observe also to gather all your physic herbs in the hour of the friendly planet, that temporises with what you were born under, and in so doing they will have more strength, power, and virtue to operate in the medicines; but neither physic nor bleed on the third of January, the last of April, the first of July, the first of August, and the last and second day of October; for those astrologers, with whom physicians join, conclude it perilous, by reason of the bad influence then reigning; and if it change not the distemper into another worse, it will augment it, and put the party in great danger of death, _if he or she in this case be not lucky to escape_." It would be a waste of words to offer a single comment on such egregious stuff--"do not bleed on the third of January," nor on such and such a day, (as if there could be stated times for bleeding beyond those which are indicated by the presence of disease, and requiring such evacuation,) is a practice we believe peculiar only to astrologers, and those who believe in such demonological cant. It is no less, however, a singular fact that men distinguished in every other respect for their learning, should most particularly have indulged in the superst.i.tion of judicial astrology. At the present time a belief in such subjects can only exist with those who may be said to have no belief at all; for mere traditional sentiments can hardly be said to amount to a belief.

It was astronomy that gave rise to judicial astrology, which, offering an ample field to enthusiasm and imposture, was eagerly pursued by many who had no scientific purpose in view. It was connected with various juggling tricks and deceptions, affected an obscure jargon of language, and insinuated itself into every thing in which the hopes and fears of mankind were concerned. The professors of this pretended science were at first generally persons of mean education, in whom low cunning supplied the place of knowledge. Most of them engaged in the empirical practice of physic, and some through the credulity of the times, even arrived at a degree of eminence in it; yet although the whole foundation of their art was folly and deceit, they nevertheless gained many proselytes and dupes, both among the well-informed and the ignorant.

About the middle of the seventeenth century, the pa.s.sion for horoscopes and expounding the stars prevailed in France among people of the first rank. The new-born child was usually presented naked to the star-expounder, who read the first lineaments on its forehead, and the transverse lines in its hands, and thence wrote down its future destiny.

It has been reported of several persons famous for their astrological skill, that they have suffered a voluntary death merely to verify their own predictions. It is curious to observe the shifts to which these wise men were frequently put when their predictions were not verified. Great winds at one time were predicted by a famous adept in the art, but no unusual storms having happened, to save the reputation of the art, the prediction was applied figuratively to some revolutions in the state, of which there were instances enough at that time.

The life of the famous Lilly the astrologer, and the Sidrophel of Butler, written by himself, is a curious work, containing much artless narrative, but at the same time, so much palpable imposture, that it is difficult to know when he is speaking what he really believes to be the truth. In a sketch of the state of astrology in his day, the adepts whose characters he has drawn were the lowest miscreants of the town.

They all, indeed, speak of each other as rogues and impostors; among whom were Booker, George Wharton, and Gadbury, who gained a livelihood by practising on the credulity of even men of learning so late as 1650 to the 18th century. In Ashmole's life an account of these artful impostors may be read. Most of them had taken the air in the pillory, and others had conjured themselves up to the gallows.

To the astrologers of the 17th century, the quacks and impostors of the beginning of the 19th are only equal. Quackery and astrology, the latter of which often served as a mask to the former, appear to have been at one time a kind of Castor and Pollux; quackery, however, it would seem has outlived astrology, for there are more who would swallow the nostrum of the quack than the flatulent bolus of the fortune-tellers. Both still have their votaries. One Grigg, a poulterer in Surrey, was set in the pillory at Croyden, (Temp. Edw. IV,) and again in the Borough, for cheating people out of their money by pretending to cure them with charms, by simply looking at the patients, or by practices still more absurd and questionable. Of such doctors there is no lack. This kind of practice offers one of the finest fields for deception of any species of empirical delusion held out to the public at the present day. Such indeed is the infatuation and credulity of the ignorant that, we are confidently a.s.sured, a notorious German quack had within one year so many half-guinea applications that he netted 2000; and that the gla.s.s bottles in which the precious nostrums were conveyed from the sanctum sanctorum of the mendacious empiric in high Germany, who made his debut in this country by hawking about Dutch drops, amounted to as many two-pences. To those of either s.e.x, who are weak-minded enough to trust their lives to the rash artifices of an ignorant pretender who affects to discover an occult quality in the const.i.tution of the patient denoting the existence of some internal complaint beyond that which less equivocal symptoms sufficiently present to the eye and knowledge of the regular pract.i.tioner--we can only say that we conceive them to be justly punished in the loss of their money, and the consequent ruin of their health.

In Stow's Chronicle we find that one of these said gentlemen was set on horseback, his face towards the tail, which he held in his hand in the manner of a bridle, while with a collar significative of his offence, dangling about his neck, he made a public entree into the city of London, conducted by Jack Ketch, who afterwards did himself the honour of scourging and branding the impostor, previous to banishment, which completed his sentence. In the reign of James I, a terrible sweep was made among the quacks and advertising gentry. The council dispatched a warrant to the magistrates of the city of London, to take up all reputed quacks, and bring them before the censors of the college, to examine how properly qualified they were to be trusted, either with the limbs or lives of his majesty's lieges. This is all that is required at the present day. Let the legislature controul this department instead of the college of physicians, who, as a body, can boast of as large an allowance of licensed ignorance as any corporate set of men in existence. We say nothing of surgery, for this branch of knowledge leaves the world generally something to look at, hence so few pretenders to it; but physic buries all its blemishes with the unfortunate victim.

The country, even in this age of progressing wisdom, is deluged with quack medicines, which credulous people say are not directed against the const.i.tution, but only against the pocket, and that they are too insipid to do either good or harm; but were this the case, there would have been no occasion for the exemplary punishments with which it is recorded quacks of all sorts have at various times been visited. Be it known, there can be no such thing invented by man as an universal remedy to prevent or cure all kinds of diseases; because that which would agree with one const.i.tution would disagree with another differently organised; and a quack nostrum, such as we see daily advertised, may certainly agree at one stage of a disease, but might go far in killing the patient at another. Besides, all these boasted specifics have been found to be either inert, ineffectual, or dangerous, and every pretender to them, in times less enlightened by the general march of intellect, has been convicted either of gross ignorance or dishonesty. No one can vouch with certainty for any particular kind of medicine,--that it will agree with this or that individual, until acquainted with his peculiar const.i.tution; consequently it is the height of absurdity to prescribe physic for a man without a knowledge of such circ.u.mstances to direct him. Amulets, talismans, charms, and incantations, are innocent and innoxious, and may impose only on credulity without any other untoward consequence, leaving the patient in the same state in which he was found; but so much cannot be said for quacks and quack-medicines which frequently remove their deluded victims far beyond the reach of either physic or philosophy.

Butler is said to be the author of the following character of a quack; and who can read it without being astonished at the prophetic intelligence with which it abounds, and which, unfortunately, admits of a too close a.n.a.logy with some very recent and untoward events, in the annals of modern empiricism. "He is a medicine-monger, probationer of receipts, and Doctor Epidemic; he is perpetually putting his medicines upon their trial, and very often finds them GUILTY OF MANSLAUGHTER, but still they have some trick or other to come off, and avoid burning by the hand of the hangman. He prints his trials of skill, and challenges death at so many several weapons; that, though he is sure to be foiled by every one, he cares not: for, _if he can but get money, he is sure to get off_; for it is but posting up diseases for poltroons in all the public places of the town, and daring them to meet him again, and his credit stands as fair with the rabble, as ever it did. He makes nothing * * * * * * * * * * *;--but will undertake to cure them and tie one hand behind him, with so much ease and freedom, that his patients may surfeit and get drunk as often as they please, and follow their business without any inconvenience to their health or occasions; and recover with so much secrecy, that they shall never know how it comes about. He professes "no cure no pay," as well he may, for if nature does the work, he is paid for it; if not, he neither wins nor loses; and like a cunning rook lays his bets so artfully, that, let the chance be what it will, he either wins or saves. He cheats the rich for their money, and the poor for charity, and, if either succeed, both are pleased, and he pa.s.ses for a very just and conscientious man: for as those that pay nothing ought at least to speak well of their entertainments, their testimony makes way for those who are able to pay for both. He finds he has no reputation among those that know him, and fears he is never like to have, and, therefore, posts up his bills, to see if he can thrive better amongst those who know nothing of him. He keeps his post continually, and will undertake to maintain it against all the plagues of Egypt. He sets up his trade upon a pillar, or the corner of a street--These are his warehouses, where all he has is to be seen, and a great deal more; for he that looks further finds nothing at all."

ABSURDITIES OF PARACELSUS, AND VAN HELMONT.

Although some of the first chemists were men of sense and learning, yet after that chemistry began to be fashionable and much in vogue, there were some of its professors, who although men of an uncommon turn of genius, were as great enthusiasts, both in the chemical and medical arts, as any other men ever were in religion. They not only pretended to trans.m.u.te some of the baser metals into gold, contrary to the nature of things--and if they could have succeeded in that impossible work, it would have rendered gold as plentiful, cheap, and less valuable than iron, because it is less fit for instruments and mechanical uses--but they also pretended infallibly to cure all diseases, by some of their new invented chemical machines;--a thing equally as impossible as the other, and shewed their ignorance of the causes and nature of diseases.

As those who are the most ignorant are generally the greatest boasters, we find that none of them were more so, than that vain, boasting, paradoxical enthusiast Paracelsus, who had acquired great riches by curing a certain disease with a mercurial ointment, the knowledge of which secret he is said to have stolen from Jacobus Berengarius, of Caipo, in his travels thither. He was withal so illiterate, that he said philosophy could be taught in no language but high Dutch; but the true reason was, that he neither understood philosophy nor any other language. He also boasted that he was in possession of a nostrum which would prolong man's life to the age of Methusaleh, though he died himself at the age of forty-seven. He lived in the fifteenth century.

The cures he wrought were deemed so surprising in that age, that he was supposed to have recourse to supernatural aid. In a picture of him at Lumley Castle, he is represented in a close black gown, with both hands on a great sword, on whose hilt is inscribed the word Azot. This was the name of his _familiar_ spirit, that he kept imprisoned in the pummel, to consult on emergent occasions. The circ.u.mstance is thus alluded to by Butler:--

Bombastes kept the Devil's Bird Shut in the pummel of his sword; And taught him all the cunning pranks, Of past and future mountebanks.

Paracelsus was succeeded by his scholar van Helmont, who had much more learning, but was as great an enthusiast, both in the chemical and medical arts as his master, and embraced most of his paradoxical opinions; and, having more technical terms, he frequently used them rather to dazzle and confound the understandings of his readers, than to inform their judgments. By thus giving his writings a mystical air of wisdom, he rendered them obscure, and sometimes unintelligible; consequently, more easily imposed them upon the public and vulgar, as sublime and useful truths. He also vainly boasted that he could cure any fever in four days' time, by sweating the patient with one draught of his famous nostrum, the _Praecipitatus Diaph.o.r.eticus Paracelsi_; and further adds, "that no man can deserve the name of a physician, who cannot cure any fever in four days' time." He, however, admits, that he sometimes added a little theriaca (treacle) and wine to it; which last, he says, "is not only a great cordial, but as a vehicle, is a proper messenger to be sent on such an errand, as it knows the road, is well received wherever it goes, and readily admitted into the most private apartments of the human body." Hence we believe that wine is not only a good natured, but an intelligent being; though it sometimes deprives men of their senses for a time, when they take too much of it: and hence we see also a specimen of our author's method of reasoning and writing.

Van Helmont, like his great master, also boasted, that he could cure all inflammatory and other fevers, and even a pleurisy, without either bleeding, vomiting, purging, clysters, or blisters; and he quarrelled so much with the two last, that he calls clysters "a beastly remedy,"

and says that blisters were invented by a wicked spirit, whom he calls Moloz, though Beelzebub might have been as good a name, since Dr.

Baynard wittily observed, that he believed he was only a great cantharid. And both Helmont and the Doctor were so far right, that blistering was then, as well as now, much abused; and in truth they are much oftener applied than is either necessary or useful.

Thus these two eminent chemists, and too many of their followers, frequently imposed their writings upon the unguarded reader, and themselves upon the vulgar, for men of profound knowledge in the medical art, and as great adepts in chemistry: and being puffed up with the high opinion entertained of their new art, or new medicines, and their own great wisdom, they rejected the philosophical theory of medicine by Galen and Avicenna, then so much in vogue. They were right in doing this, and might have done great service to mankind, if they had not set up their own imaginary chemical theory in its place, which was neither founded upon observations, nature, nor reason, and had no existence but in their own vain imaginations. Thus they supposed a malignity which caused all diseases, as well inflammatory as other fevers, and which was to be forced out of the body by sweating, with their hot therapeutics; they, therefore, attacked all fevers with this chemical ammunition, and attempted to carry them with fire and storm, prescribing the praecipitatus diaph.o.r.eticus and sweating regimen, which must have been fatal to many, and no doubt would have been so to many more, if van Helmont had not allowed his patients to dilute the medicine with a thin diet, which rendered the calorific method less fatal. But, as the learned Dr. Friend judiciously remarks, if any did escape after that hot regimen, it was through a fiery trial.

Thus the chemists, without any rational theory, or regard to nature, and what she indicated or did;--without duly considering how the morbid matter, which caused the disease, was to be concocted and fitted to be carried off by some critical evacuation; or how to a.s.sist nature to bring that crisis on, according to the Hippocratic method;--without considering the benefit of the rational, cooling, antiphlogistic practice of the Arabians--they introduced their sudorific regimen instead; and this regimen was soon after brought into use in England, and most other countries, where it continued to be the practice for many years afterwards, as may be seen by the authors of those times, until the judicious and honest Dr. Sydenham wisely rejected and exploded it, introducing the rational method of Hippocrates and the cooling regimen of the Arabians, which he seems rather to have taken _ex ipsa re et ratione_ from nature and reason, than from the works of the Arabian physicians, with which he appears not to have been acquainted, as he never mentions them.

Van Helmont had several other famous nostrums, with which he pretended to perform wonders, as quacks have done in all ages, and as some do now: for empiricism was never more in fashion than at the present day, and the chemical art has supplied them with many more arcana and nostrums than the ancients had in all their antidotes and theriacas, etc. since chemistry was made subservient to medicine. Van Helmont, nevertheless was a learned man, and acquired a great name and reputation, at least for some time; but, as neither his theory nor his practice were founded on nature and reason, nor conformable to them, the more judicious physicians soon saw their errors, as well as the fallacy of his new invented chemical terms and unmeaning phrases, which only contained the shadow and not the substance of the medical science; therefore both his chemical theory and hot regimen, together with his writings, sunk soon after his death, into a state of merited oblivion.

Notwithstanding that the science of chemistry was greatly improved by these extraordinary men, who invented or discovered many useful remedies, which they introduced into the practice of medicine in a no less extraordinary manner, and thereby pointed out the way for others to follow them; yet we must allow that the more able and learned chemists have greatly enriched and improved the materia medica since, by making many curious experiments, and thereby discovering several new and very efficacious medicines, not only from the semi-metals, mercury and antimony, and the various chemical preparations from them, but from the more perfect metals, and some other mineral bodies, as well as from a great variety of remedies which are prepared both from vegetable and animal substances, as salts, oils, essences, spirits, tinctures, elixirs, extracts and many more needless here to be mentioned, but all of which are known to physicians. For all these we are indebted to the chemists who first invented and introduced them into practice; although the use and application, as well as the methods of administering them to the sick, to cure various other diseases than those they were first used for, has been greatly improved by several learned and ingenious physicians.

FOOTNOTES:

[142] See Demonologia, by J.S.F. p. 40.

[143] See Magazine of Natural History, April, 1830.

CHAPTER XXI.

MODERN EMPIRICISM.

In one respect we have but very little occasion to extol our own enlightened age at the expence of those ages which are so frequently and justly termed _dark_. We allude to the bold and artful designs of imposture, and particularly _medical imposture_. Daily are seen illiterate and audacious empirics sporting with the lives of a credulous public, that seem obstinately resolved to shut their ears against all the suggestions of reason and experience. The host of empirics, mountebanks, and self-dubbed hygeists, which infest the metropolis, and the tinctures, cordials, pills, balms, and essences, so much extolled by their retailers, and swallowed by the public, are indeed so many proofs of the credulity of the age, that to say the least, the march of intellect has evidently made a _faux-pas_ in this direction.

The celestial beds, the enchanting magnetic powers introduced into this country by Messmer, a German quack, and his numerous disciples, the prevailing indifference to all dietetic precepts, the singular imposition practised on many females, in persuading them to wear the inert acromatic belts, the strange infatuation of the opulent in paying five guineas for a pair of _metallic tractors_, not worth sixpence, the tables for blood-letting, and other absurdities still inserted in popular almanacs, (against all the rules of common sense)--all these yield in nothing to the absurdities and superst.i.tious notions conveyed through the medium of astrology, dreams, and other ludicrous though by far more imposing and interesting channels. The temple of the gulls is now thronged with votaries as much as that of superst.i.tion formerly was; human reason is still a slave to the most tyrannical prejudices; and certainly, there is no ready way to excite general attention and admiration, than to deal in the mysterious and the marvellous. The visionary system of Jacob Bohman has latterly been revived in some parts of Germany. The ghosts and apparitions which had disappeared from the times of Thomasius and Swedenborg, have again left their graves, to the great terror of fanaticism. New prophets announce their divine mission, and, what is worse, find implicit believers! The _inventors_ of _secret_ medicines are rewarded by patents, and obtain no small celebrity; while some of the more conscientious, but less fortunate adepts, endeavour to amuse the public with popular systems of medicine.

One of the most dazzling and successful inventors in modern times, was Messmer, who commenced his career of medical knight-errantry at Vienna.

His house was the focus of high life, the rendezvous of the gay, where the young and opulent were enlivened and entertained with continual concerts, routs, and illuminations. At a great expence, he imported into Germany the first _Harmonica_ from this country: he established cabinets of natural curiosities, and laboured constantly and secretly in his chemical laboratory; so that he acquired the reputation of being a great alchemist, a philosopher studiously employed in the most useful and important researches. In 1766, he first publicly announced the object and nature of his secret labours:--all his discoveries centered in the _magnet_, which, according to his hypothesis, was the best and safest remedy hitherto proposed against all diseases incident to the human body.