HUMAN SKULL.—BRAIN.—MOSS GROWING ON HUMAN SKULL.—MOSS GROWING ON STATUE.—LICE.
Democritus thought, in his Memoirs, quoted by Pliny, that “the skull of a malefactor is most efficacious.... While, for the treatment of others, that of one who has been a friend or guest is required.” (Pliny, lib. xxviii. c. 2.) ... “Skull of a man who has been slain,” and “whose body remains unburnt.... Skull of a man who has been hanged.”—(Idem.)
“Xenocrates, who, says Galen, flourished two generations or sixty years before him, writes with an air of confidence on the good effects to be obtained by eating of the human brain, flesh, or liver; by swallowing in drink the burnt or unburnt bones of the head, shin, or fingers of a man, or the blood.”—(“Saxon Leechdoms,” lib. i. p. 18.)
“Against a boring worm ... burn to ashes a man’s head-bone or skull; put it on with a pipe.”—(Idem, vol. ii. p. 127, article “Leech Book.”)
Paracelsus gives the recipe for distilling “The Oyle of the Skull of a Man.... Take the skull of a man that was never buried, and beate it into powder.” (“The Secrets of Physicke,” Theophrastus Paracelsus, Eng. transl. London, 1633, p. 97.) “The dose is three grains against the falling sickness.”—(Idem.)
Schurig notes that the human skull is a remedy for the falling sickness.—(See “Chylologia.”)
The skull of a man was used for diseases of men; that of a woman, for diseases of women.—(See “Rare Secrets in Physicke,” collected by the Comtesse of Kent, London, 1654, p. 3.)
Beckherius prescribed it in cephalic affections, epilepsy, paralysis, apoplexy, vertigo, etc., taken in powder, or raw, simply or in combination.—(“Medicus Microcosmus,” p. 199 et seq.)
But the skull was, preferentially, “Cranii humani nunquam sepulti” (p. 217); or, “Cranii humani violenter mortui” (p. 266). Moss from such a skull was also used medicinally (idem, p. 237). If possible, it should be that of a man who had been executed on a scaffold, “patibula.”
“Powder of a man’s bones, burnt, chiefly of the skull that is found in the earth, given, cureth the epilepsy. The bones of a man cureth a man, the bones of a woman, cureth a woman.” But the patient had to abstain from wine for nine days.—(“The Poor Man’s Physician,” John Moncrief, Edin. 1716, p. 70.)
“Os hominis adustum,” a cure for epilepsy (Avicenna, vol. i. p. 330 a 18); “Mumia” (idem, vol. i. p. 357, a 55); “Ossa hominis in potu data” (idem, vol. i. p. 371, a 6).
Epilepsie. “Take pilles made of the skull of one that is hanged.”—(Reg. Scot. “Discoverie,” p. 175.)
The skulls of ancestors were used as drinking cups by the Tibetans, according to Rubruquis, in Purchas (vol. i. p. 23).
“Among primitive people the head is peculiarly sacred.”—(“The Golden Bough,” Frazer, vol. i. p. 187.)
Dr. Bernard Schaff gives the following formula for the cure of fevers: “Take a human skull from among those not enclosed in tombs, and calcine it in a crucible or in the open fire; administer in doses of from one scruple to half a dram an hour or two before the paroxysm of the fever.” He adds that among the common people the belief prevailed that the skull should be obtained at the early dawn of day, about the time of the winter solstice, and with the ceremonies (sacris) peculiar to that season, that it should be picked up in silence; but for his part he does not believe in such things.
“Recipitur cranium humanum ex ipsis quoque sepulchrorum claustris depromptum (vulgus addit tempore matutino ante Solis ortum sub sacris angeronæ, hoc est, ore tacito, aufferatur, quod tamen, cum aliquam sapere videatur superstitionem, imitari nolui) et vel igne aperto, vel in crucibulo, calcinatur, usquedem colorem acquirat cineritium pulverisatum hocce cranium adhibetur a ℈ i. ad ʒ; i. vel ii. horas ante paroxysmi principio.”—(“Ephem. Phys. Medic.,” Leipzig, 1694, vol. ii. p. 93.)
The skull of a malefactor who had died on the scaffold or wheel, and which had been exposed in the open air long enough to make it perfectly dry and white, was considered a specific in epilepsy, being much superior for that purpose to the skulls obtained from graveyards.
Soldiers thought that if they drank from a human skull before going into battle they would secure immunity from the weapons of the enemy. This belief undoubtedly came into Europe with the Scythians.
“Milites putant, si quis ex cranio humano hauriat potum fore ut sit immunis ab insultis armorum.”—(Etmuller, vol. ii. p. 268, 269.)
Etmuller also shows that these skulls were ground up and administered to epileptic patients, many modes of preparation and administration being given.
Flemming wrote that human skull was considered a potent remedy in all ailments for which practitioners would administer human brain,—that is, in nerve troubles and in epilepsy. Preferably, the skull should be taken from a corpse which had died a violent death,—“Quæ e cadavere violenta morte extincto est desumta.” It was an ingredient in many preparations bearing the high-sounding titles of “majesterium epilepticum,” “specificum cephalicum,” etc. As a powder, ground raw or calcined, it was sometimes administered as a febrifuge and in paralysis.—(“De Remediis,” p. 10.)
Mr. W. W. Rockhill states that the Lamas of Thibet use skulls in their religious ceremonies, but reject those which smell like human urine. “Blood of a dead man’s skull” used to check hemorrhage.—(Pettigrew, “Med. Superst.,” p. 113.)
“There is a divination-bowl,—an uncanny object, made of the inverted cranium of a Buddhist priest.”—(“Tidbits from Tibet,” in the “Evening Star,” Washington, D. C., Nov. 3, 1888, describing the W. W. Rockhill collection in the National Museum.)
Before the coming of the whites the savages of Australia employed human skulls as drinking-vessels,—“human skulls with the sutures stopped up with a resinous gum.”—(“Native Tribes of S. Australia,” Adelaide, 1879, received through the kindness of the Royal Society, Sydney, New South Wales, F. B. Kyngdon, Secretary.)
“The powder of a man’s bones, and particularly that made from a skull found in the earth, was esteemed in Scotland as a cure for epilepsy. As usual, the form runs that the bones of a man will cure a man, and the bones of a woman will cure a woman. Grose notes the merits of the moss found growing upon a human skull, if dried and powdered and taken as snuff, in cases of headache.” (Black, “Folk-Medicine,” p. 96.) He also informs us that the same beliefs and the same remedy obtained in England and Ireland.
“Among the articles which may be regarded more as household furniture ... are the dried human skulls, which are found wrapped in banana-leaves in the habitation of nearly every well-regulated Dyak family. They are hung up on the wall, or depend from the roof. The lower jaw is always wanting, as the Dyak finds it more convenient to decapitate his victim below the occiput, leaving the lower jaw attached to his body.”—(“Head-Hunters of Borneo,” Carl Bock, London, 1881, p. 199.)
The careful manner in which the Mandans preserved the skulls of their dead, as narrated by Catlin, is recalled to mind.