Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery

Among the various subjects which belong to the province of medical folk-lore, one of the most interesting relates to amulets and protective charms, which represent an important...

A talisman may be described as an emblematical object or image, accredited with magical powers, by whose means its possessor is enabled to enlist the aid of supernatural beings....

There were Phylacteries for the head, reaching from one ear to the other, and tied behind with a thong; and Phylacteries for the hand, fastened upon the left arme, above the elb...

Words, when well chosen, have so great a force in them, that a description often gives us more lively ideas than the sight of the things themselves. The reader finds a scene dra...

At the present day the remarkable benefit which often results from hygienic and mental influences combined is well shown in the so-called Kneipp cure, originated by Sebastian Kn...

_Doctor._ Ay, sir; there are a crew of wretched souls That stay his cure: their malady convinces The great assay of art; but at his touch-- Such sanctity hath heaven given his h...

As illustrative of the power of the imagination, the so-called blue-glass mania, which prevailed extensively in this country, affords a striking example. About the year 1868, Ge...

It has been truly said that temples were the first hospitals, and priests the earliest physicians.[97:1] In the temples of Esculapius, in Greece, a main object of the various my...

With bandage firm Ulysses' knee they bound; Then, chanting mystic lays, the closing wound Of sacred melody confessed the force; The tides of life regained their azure course. _T...

Neither doth fansy only cause, but also as easily cure diseases; as I may justly refer all magical cures thereunto, performed, as is thought, by saints, images, relicts, holy wa...

Ovid (B. C. 43-A. D. 18), in his "Metamorphoses," wrote these lines: "By means of incantations I break in twain the viper's jaws." In very early times physicians were regarded a...

The discovery of the script of the ancient Germans, supposed to be of Egyptian or Phenician origin, was attributed to Wodan, who was regarded as the chief expert in magical writ...

Metallo-therapy has been defined as a mode of treating various affections, chiefly those of a nervous character, by the external application of metals. It was recommended by Gal...

Although curative attributes were ascribed to the magnet in ancient times, and the same belief prevailed in the Middle Ages, the noted charlatan Paracelsus (1493-1541) was the f...

From early times it was a universal custom to place at the beginning of a medical prescription certain religious verses or superstitious characters, which formed the invocation,...

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...

Preposterous ass! that never read so far To know the cause why music was ordained. Was it not to refresh the mind of man, After his studies, or his usual pain?-- _The Taming of...

Dr. Herbert Lilly, in a monograph on musical therapeutics, expresses the opinion that musical sounds received by the auditory nerve, produce reflex action upon the sympathetic s...

Here also they have, every night in summer, a world of Montebanks, _Ciarlatani_, and such stuff, who together with their remedies, strive to please the People with their little...

An English physician, who practised during the early part of the reign of King James I, described the charlatan of that period as shameless, a mortal hater of all good men, an a...