Chapter 27

ON AMULETS, CHARMS, TALISMANS--PHILTERS, THEIR ORIGIN AND IMAGINARY EFFICACY, ETC.

Amulets are certain substances worn about the neck or other parts of the body, under the superstitious impression of preventing diseases, of curing, or removing them.

The origin of amulets may be traced to the most remote ages of mankind. In our researches to discover and fix the period when remedies were first employed for the alleviation of bodily suffering, we are soon lost in conjecture or involved in fable. We are unable, indeed, to reach the period in any country, when the inhabitants were destitute of medical resources, and even among the most uncultivated tribes we find medicine cherished as a blessing and practised as an art. The feelings of the sufferer, and the anxiety of those about him, must, in the rudest state of society, have incited a spirit of industry and research to procure ease, the modification of heat and cold, of moisture and dryness; and the regulation and change of diet and habit, must intuitively have suggested themselves for the relief of pain; and when these resources failed, charms, amulets, and incantations, were the natural expedients of the barbarians, ever more inclined to indulge the delusive hope of superstition than to listen to the voice of sober reason.

Traces of amulets may be discovered in very early history, though Dr. Warburton is evidently in error when he fixes the origin of these magical instruments to the age of the Ptolomies, which was not more than three hundred years before Christ. This assertion is refuted by Galen, who informs us the Egyptian King Nechepsus, who lived 630 years before Christ, had written, that a green jasper cut into the form of a dragon surrounded with rays, if applied externally, would strengthen the stomach and organs of digestion. This opinion, moreover, is supported by scripture: for what were the earrings which Jacob buried under the oak of Sechem, as related in Genesis, but amulets. And Josephus in his antiquities of the Jews,[110] informs us that Solomon discovered a plant efficacious in the cure of epilepsy, and that he employed the aid of a charm, for the purposes of assisting its virtues. The root of the herb was concealed in a ring, which was applied to the nostrils of the demoniac; and Josephus remarks that he saw himself a Jewish priest practise the art of Solomon with complete success in the presence of the Emperor Vespasian, his sons and the tribunes of the Roman army. From this art of Solomon, exhibited through the medium of a ring or seal, we have the Eastern stories which celebrate the seal of Solomon, and record the potency of his sway over the various orders of demons or of genii, who were supposed to be the invincible tormentors or benefactors of the human race.

Nor were such means confined to dark and barbarous ages. Theophrastus pronounced Pericles to be insane in consequence of seeing him with an amulet suspended from his neck. And in the declining era of the Roman Empire, we find this superstitious custom so general that the Emperor Caracalla was induced to make a public edict, ordering, that no man should wear any superstitious amulets about his person.

All remedies working as it were sympathetically, and plainly unequal to the effect, may be termed amulets; whether used at a distance by another person, or carried immediately about the patient. By the Jews, amulets were called _kamea_, and by the Greeks _phylacteries_. The latins called them _amuleta_ or _ligatura_; the catholics _agnus dei_, or consecrated relics; and the natives of Guinea _fetishes_. Various kinds of substances are employed by different people, and which they venerate and suppose capable of preserving them from danger and infection, as well as to remove disease when present. Plutarch says of Pericles, an Athenian general, that when a friend come to see him, and inquired after his health he reached out his hand and shewed him his amulet; by which he meant to intimate the truth of his illness, and, at the same time, the confidence he placed in these popular remedies.

Amulets are still prevalent in catholic countries at the present day; the Spaniards and Portuguese maintain their popularity. Among the Jews they are equally venerated. Indeed, there are few instances of ancient superstition some portion of which has not been preserved, and not unfrequently have they been adopted by men of otherwise good understanding, who plead in excuse, that they are innoxious, cost little, and if they can do no good, they can do no harm.

Lord Bacon, whom no one can suspect of ignorance, says, that if a man wear a bone ring or a planet seal, strongly believing, by that means, that he might obtain his mistress, and that it would preserve him unhurt at sea, or in a battle, it would probably make him more active and less timid; as the audacity they might inspire would conquer and bind weaker minds in the execution of a peculiar duty.

AMULETS USED BY THE COMMON PEOPLE.

A variety of things are worn about the person by the common people for the cure of ague; and, upon whatever principle it may be accounted for, whether by the imagination or a natural termination of the disease, many have apparently been cured by them, where the Peruvian bark, the boasted specific, had previously failed. Dr. Willis says that charms resisting agues have often been applied to the wrist with success. ABRACADABRA, written in a peculiar manner, that is, in the form of a cone, it is said, has cured the ague; the herb lunaria, gathered by moon-light, has, on some high authorities, performed surprising cures. Perhaps it was gathered during the invocating influence of the following charm, which may be found in the 12th book, chap. XIV. p. 177 of "Scot's discovery of witchcraft," which is headed thus:--

"_Another charme that witches use at the gathering of their medicinal herbs._"

Haile be thou holy herbe, Growing in the ground. And in the mount Calvaire First wert thou found. Thou art good for many a sore, And healest many a wound, In the name of sweet Jesus I take thee from the ground.

We are told that Naaman was cured by dipping seven times in the river Jordan. Certain formalities were also performed at the pool of Bethesda. Dr. Chamberlayne's anodyne necklaces, were, for a length of time, objects of the most anxious maternal solicitude, until their occult virtues became lost by the reverence for them being destroyed; and those which succeeded them have long since run their race or nearly so.

The grey limewort was at one time supposed to have been a specific in hydrophobia--that it not only cured those labouring under this disorder, but by carrying it about the person, it was reputed to possess the extraordinary power of preventing mad dogs from biting them. Calvert paid devotions to St. Hubert for the recovery of his son, who was cured by this means. The son also performed the necessary rites at the shrine, and was cured not only of the hydrophobia "but of the worser phrensy with which his father had instilled him." Cramp-rings were also used; and eelskins to this day are tied round the legs as a preventive of this spasmodic affection; and by laying sticks across the floor, on going to bed, cramp has also been prevented.

Numerous are the charms and incantations used at the present day for the removal of warts, many cases of which are not a little surprising. And we are told by Lord Verulam, who is allowed to have been as great a genius as this country ever produced, that, when he was at Paris, he had above a hundred warts on his hands; and that the English ambassador's lady, then at court, and a woman far above superstition, removed them all by only rubbing them with the fat side of the rind of a piece of bacon, which they afterwards nailed to a post, with the fat side towards the south. In five weeks, says my Lord, they were all removed. The following are his Lordship's observations, in his own words, relative to the power of amulets. After deep metaphysical observations on nature, and arguing in mitigation of sorcery, witchcraft, and divination, effects that far outstrip the belief in amulets, he observes "We should not reject all of this kind, because it is not known how far those contributing to superstition, depend on natural causes. Charms have not the power from contract with evil spirits, but proceed wholly from strengthening the imagination: in the same manner that images and their influence, have prevailed on religion, being called from a different way of use and application, sigils, incantations, and spells."

ECCENTRICITIES, CAPRICES, AND EFFECTS, OF THE IMAGINATION.

A certain writer, apologizing for the irregularities of great genii, delivers himself as follows: "The gifts of imagination bring the heaviest task upon, the vigilance of reason; and to bear those faculties with unerring rectitude or invariable propriety, requires a degree of firmness and of cool attention, which does not always attend the higher gifts of the mind. Yet, difficult as nature herself seems to have reduced the task of regularity to genius, it is the supreme consolation of dullness, to seize upon those excesses, which are the overflowings of faculties they never enjoyed."[111] Are not the _gifts of imagination_ mistaken here for the strength of passions? Doubtless, where strong passions accompany great parts, as perhaps they often do, the imagination may encrease their force and activity: but, where passions are calm and gentle, imagination of itself should seem to have no conflict but speculatively with reason. There, indeed, it wages an eternal war; and, if not contracted and strictly regulated, it will carry the patient into endless extravagancies. The term patient is here properly used, because men, under the influence of imagination, are most truly distempered. The degree of this distemper will be in proportion to the prevalence of imagination over reason, and, according to this proportion, amount to more or less of the whimsical; but when reason shall become, as it were, extinct, and imagination govern alone, then the distemper will be madness under the wildest and most fantastic modes. Thus, one of those invalids, perhaps, shall be all sorrow for having been most unjustly deprived of the crown; though his vocation, poor man! be that of a school-master. Another, like Horace's madman, is all joy; and it may seem even cruelty to cure him.

The operations and caprices of the imagination are various and endless; and, as they cannot be reduced to regularity or system, so it is highly improbable that any certain method of cure should ever be found out for them. It has generally been thought, that matter of fact might most successfully be opposed to the delusions of imagination, as being proof to the senses, and carrying conviction unavoidably to the understanding; but we rather suspect, that the understanding or reasoning faculty, has little to do in all these cases: at least so it should seem from the two following facts, which are by no means badly attested.

Fienus, in his curious little book, _de Viribus Imaginationis_, records from Donatus the case of a man, who fancied his body encreased to such a size, that he durst not attempt to pass through the door of his chamber. The physician believing that nothing could more effectually cure this error of imagination, than to shew that the thing could actually be done, caused the patient to be thrust forcibly through it: who, struck with horror, and falling suddenly into agonies, complained of being crushed to pieces, and expired soon after.[112]

The other case, as related by Van Swieten, in his commentaries upon Boerhaave, is that of a learned man, who had studied, till be fancied his legs to be of glass: in consequence of which he durst not attempt to stir, but was constantly under anxiety about them. His maid bringing one day some wood to the fire, threw it carelessly down; and was severely reprimanded by her master, who was terrified not a little for his legs of glass. The surly wench, out of all patience with his megrims, as she called them, gave him a blow with a log upon the parts affected; which so enraged him, that he instantly rose up, and from that moment recovered the use of his legs.--Was reason concerned any more here; or was it not rather one blind impulse acting against another?

Imagination has, unquestionably, a most powerful effect upon the mind, and in all these miraculous cures, is by far the strongest ingredient. Dr. Strother says, "The influence of the mind and passions works upon the mind and body in sensible operations like a medicine, and is of far the greater force than exercise. The countenance betrays a good or wicked intention; and that good or wicked intention will produce in different persons a strength to encounter, or a weakness to yield to the preponderating side." Dr. Brown says, "Our looks discover our passions, there being mystically in our faces certain characters, which carry in them the motto of our souls, and, therefore, probably work secret effects in other parts." This idea is beautifully illustrated by Garth in his Dispensatory, in the following lines:--

"Thus paler looks impetuous rage proclaim, And chilly virgins redden into flame. See envy oft transformed in wan disguise, And mirth sits gay and smiling in the eyes, Oft our complexions do the soul declare, And tell what passions in the features are. Hence 'tis we look the wond'rous cause to find, How body acts upon impassive mind."

On the power and pleasure of the imagination, from the pleasures and pains it administers here below, Addison concludes that God, who knows all the ways of afflicting us, may so transport us hereafter with such beautiful and glorious visions, or torment us with such hideous and ghastly spectres, as might even of themselves suffice to make up the entire heaven or hell of any future being.

DOCTRINE OF EFFLUVIA--MIRACULOUS CURES BY MEANS OF CHARMS, AMULETS, ETC.

Dr. Willis, in his Treatise on nervous disorders, does not hesitate to recommend amulets in epileptic disorders. "Take," says he, "some fresh peony roots, cut them into square bits, and hang them round the neck, changing them as often as they dry." It is not improbable that the hint was taken from this circumstance for the anodyne necklaces, which, some time ago, were in such repute, as the Doctor, some little way further on, prescribes the same root for the looseness, fevers, and convulsions of children, during the time of teething, mixed, to make it appear more miraculous, with some elk's hoof.

St. Vitus's dance is said to have been cured by the afflicted person paying a visit to the tomb of the saint, near Ulm, every May. Indeed, there is no little reason in this assertion; for exercise and change of air will change many obstinate diseases. The bite of the tarantula is cured by music; and this only by certain tunes. Turner, whose ideas are so extravagantly absurd, where he asserts, that the symptoms of hydrophobia may not appear for forty years after the bite of the dog, and who maintains that "the slaver or breath of such a dog is infectious;" and that men bitten by mad dogs, will bite like dogs again, and die mad; although he laughs at the anodyne necklaces, argues much in the same manner. It is not, indeed, so very strange that the effluvia from external medicines entering our bodies, should effect such considerable changes, when we see the efficient cause of apoplexy, epilepsy, hysterics, plague, and a number of other disorders, consists, as it were, in imperceptible vapours.--Blood-stone (Lapis Aetites) fastened to the arm by some secret means, is said to prevent abortion. Sydenham, in the iliac passion, orders a live kitten to be constantly applied to the abdomen; others have used pigeons split alive, applied to the soles of the feet, with success, in pestilential fevers and convulsions. It was doubtless the impression that relief might be obtained by external agents, that the court of king David advised him to seek a young virgin, in order that a portion of the natural heat might be communicated to his body, and give strength to the decay of nature. "Take the heart and liver of the fish and make a smoke, and the devil shall smell it and flee away." During the plague at Marseilles, which Belort attributed to the larvae of worms infecting the saliva, food, and chyle; and which, he says, "were hatched by the stomach, took their passage into the blood, at a certain size, hindering the circulation, affecting the juices and solid parts." He advised amulets of mercury to be worn in bags suspended at the chest and nostrils, either as a safeguard, or as means of cure; by which method, through the _admissiveness_ of the pores, effluvia specially destructive of all venomous insects, were received into the blood. "An illustrious prince," Belort says, "by wearing such an amulet, escaped the small-pox."

Clognini, an Italian physician, ordered two or three drachms of crude mercury to be worn as a defensive against the jaundice; and also as a preservative against the noxious vapours of inclement seasons: "It breaks," he observes, "and conquers the different figured seeds of pestilential distempers floating in the air; or else, mixing with the air, kills them where hatched." By others, the power of mercury, in these cases, has been ascribed to an elective faculty given out by the warmth of the body, which draws out the contagious particles. For, according to this entertained notion, all bodies are continually emitting effluvia, more or less, around them, and some whether they are internal or external. The Bath waters, for instance, change the colour of silver in the pocket of those who use them. Mercury produces the same effect; Tartar emetic, rubbed on the pit of the stomach, produces vomiting. Yawning and laughing are infectious; so are fear and shame. The sight of sour things, or even the idea of them, will set the teeth on edge. Small-pox, itch, and other diseases, are contagious; if so, say they, mercurial amulets bid fair to destroy the germ of some complaints when used only as an external application, either by manual attrition, or worn as an amulet. But medicated or not, all amulets are precarious and uncertain, and in the cure of diseases are, by no means, to be trusted to.

The Barbary Moors, and generally throughout the Mahommedan dominions, the people are strikingly attached to charms, to which, and nature, they leave the cure of almost every disorder; and this is the most strongly impressed upon them from their belief in predestination, which, according to their creed, stipulates the evil a man is to suffer, as well as the length of time it is ordained he should live upon the land of his forefathers; consequently they imagine that any interference from secondary means would avail them nothing, an opinion said to have been entertained by William III, but one by no means calculated for nations, liberty, and commerce; upon the principle that when the one was entrenched upon, men would probably be more sudden in their revenge, and dislike physic and occupation; and when actuated with religious enthusiasm, nothing could stand them in any service.

The opinion of an old navy surgeon,[113] on the subject, is worth recording here. "A long and intense passion on one object, whether of pride, love, fear, anger, or envy, we see have brought on some universal tremors; on others, convulsions, madness, melancholy, consumption, hectics, or such a chronical disorder as has wasted their flesh, or their strength, as certainly as the taking in of any poisonous drugs would have done. Anything frightful, sudden, or surprising, upon soft, timorous natures, not only shews itself in the continuance, but produces sometimes very troublesome consequences--for instance, a parliamentary fright will make even grown men _bewray_ themselves, scare them out of their wits, turn the hair grey. Surprise removes the hooping cough; looking from precipices or seeing wheels turn swiftly will give giddiness. Shall then these little accidents, or the passions, (from caprice or humour, perhaps,) produce those effects, and not be able to do anything by amulets? No; as the spirits, in many cases, resort in plenty, we find where the fancy determines, giving joy and gladness to the heart, strength and fleetness to the limbs, and violent palpitations. To amulets, under strong imagination, is carried with more force to a distempered part, and, under these circumstances, its natural powers exert better to a discussion.

"The cures compassed in this manner," says our author, "are not more admirable than many of the distempers themselves. Who can apprehend by what impenetrable method the bite of a mad dog, or tarantula, can produce these symptoms? The touch of a torpedo numbness? If they are allowed to do these, doubtless they may the other; and not by miracles, which Spinoza denies the possibility of, but by natural and regular causes, though inscrutable to us. The best way, therefore, in using amulets, must be in squaring them to the imagination of patients: let the newness and surprise exceed the invention, and keep up the humour by a long scroll of cures and vouchers; by these and such means, many distempers have been cured. Quacks again, according to their boldness and way of addressing (velvet and infallibility particularly) command success by striking the fancies of an audience. If a few, more sensible than the rest, see the doctor's miscarriages, and are not easily gulled at first sight, yet, when they see a man is never ashamed, in time, jump in to his assistance."

There is much truth and pertinence in some of the above remarks, and they apply nearly to the general practice of the present day. The farces and whims of people require often as much discrimination on the part of the physician as the disease itself. Those who know best how to flatter such caprices, are frequently the best paid for their trouble. Nervous diseases are always in season, and it is here that some professional dexterity is pardonable. Nature, when uninterrupted, will often do more than art; but our inability upon all occasions to appreciate the efforts of nature in the cure of diseases, must always render our notion, with respect to the powers faith, liable to numerous errors and deceptions. There is, in fact, nothing more natural, and at the same time more erroneous, than to lay the cure of a disease to the door of the last medicine that had been prescribed. By these means the advocates of amulets and charms, have ever been enabled to appeal to the testimony of what they are pleased to call experience in justification of their pretensions, and egregious superstitions; and cases which, in truth, ought to have been classed, or rather designated, as lucky escapes, have been triumphantly pulled off as skilful cures; and thus, medicines and medical practitioners, have alike received the meed of unmerited praise, or the stigma of unjust censure. Of all branches of human science, medicine is one of the most interesting to mankind: and, accordingly as it is erroneously or judiciously cultivated, is evidently conducive to the prejudice or welfare of the public. Of how great consequence is it, then, that our endeavours should be exerted in stemming the propagation of errors, whether arising from ignorance, or prompted by motives of base cupidity, in giving assistance to the disseminations of useful truths, and to the perfection of ingenious discoveries.

FOOTNOTES:

[110] Lib. viii. chap. 2. 5.

[111] Langhorne's Life of Mr. Collins

[112] Reverii Praxis Medica, p. 188.

[113] John Ailkin, author of the Navy Surgeon, 1742. Sec Demonologia, p. 64 et seg.