The Egyptians, according to Celsus, believed that there were thirty-six demons or divinities in the air, to each of whom was attributed a separate part or organ of the human body. In the event of disease affecting one of these parts the priest-physician invoked the demon, calling him by his name, and requiring him in a special form of words to cure the afflicted part.
Solomon was credited among many Eastern people with having discovered many of the secrets of controlling diseases by magical processes. According to Josephus he composed and bequeathed to posterity a book of these magical secrets. Hezekiah is said to have suppressed this work because it was leading the people to pray to other powers than Jehovah. But some of the secrets of Solomon were handed down in certain families by tradition. Josephus relates that a certain Jew named Eleazor drew a demon from the nose of a possessed person in the presence of the Emperor Vespasian and a number of Roman officers, by the aid of a magic ring and a form of invocation. In order to prove that the demon thus expelled had a real separate existence, he ordered it to upset a vessel of water which stood on the floor. This was done. Books professing to give Solomon’s secrets were not uncommon among Christians as well as Jews. Goethe alluded to such a treatise in “Faust” in the line
Für solche halbe Höllenbrut, Ist Salomoni’s Schlüssel gut.
Throughout their history the Jewish people have studied and practised magic as a means of healing. According to the Book of Enoch the daughters of men were instructed in “incantations, exorcisms, and the cutting of roots” by the sons of God who came to earth and associated with them. The Greeks and Romans always held Jewish sorcery in the highest esteem, and the Arabs accepted their teaching with implicit confidence. The Talmud is full of magical formulas, and the Kaballah, a mystic theosophy which combined Israelitish traditions with Alexandrian philosophy, and began to be known about the tenth century, was unquestionably the foundation of the sophistry of Paracelsus and his followers.
In the Middle Ages, and in some communities until quite recent times, belief in the occult powers of Jews, which they had themselves inculcated, was firm and universal, and became the reason, or at least the excuse, for much of the persecution they had to suffer. For the punishment of sorcery and witchcraft was not based on a belief that fraud had been practised, but resulted from a conviction of the terrible truth of the claims which had been put forward.
The Jews of Western Europe have lost or abandoned many of the traditional practices which have been associated with their popular medicines from time immemorial. But in the East, especially in Turkey and Syria, quaint prayers and antiquated materia medica are still associated as they were in the days of the Babylonian captivity. Dogs’ livers, earthworms, hares’ feet, live ants, human bones, doves’ dung, wolves’ entrails, and powdered mummy still rank high as remedies, while for patients who can afford it such precious products as dew from Mount Carmel are prescribed. Invocations, prayers, and superstitious practices form the stock in trade of the “Gabbetes,” generally elderly persons who attend on the sick. They have a multitude of infallible cures in their repertoires. Powdered, freshly roasted earthworms in wine, or live grasshoppers in water, are given by them for biliousness. For bronchial complaints they write some Hebrew letters on a new plate, wash it off with wine, add three grains of a citron which has been used at the Tabernacle festival, and give this as a draught. Dogs’ excrements made up with honey form a poultice for sore eyes, mummy or human bones ground up with honey is a precious tonic, and wolves’ liver is a cure for fits. But the administration of these remedies must be accompanied by the necessary invocation, generally to the names of patriarchs, angels, or prophets, but often mere gibberish, such as “Adar, gar, vedar, gar,” which is the formula for use with a toothache remedy.
The phylacteries still worn by modern Jews at certain parts of their services, now perhaps by most of them only in accordance with inveterate custom, have been in all ages esteemed by them as protecting them against evil and demoniac influences. They are leathern receptacles, which they bind on their left arms and on their foreheads in literal obedience to the Mosaic instructions in the passages transcribed, and contained in the cases, from Exodus c. 13, v. 1–10, and c. 13, v. 11–16, Deuteronomy c. 6, v. 4–9, and c. 9, v. 13–21. To a modern reader these passages appear to protest against superstitions and heathenish beliefs and practices, but the rabbis and scribes taught that these and the mesuza, the similar passages affixed to the doorposts, would avert physical and spiritual dangers, and they invented minute instructions for the preparation of the inscriptions. A scribe, for example, who had commenced to write one of the passages, was not to allow himself to be interrupted by any human distraction, not even if the king asked him a question.
All the eastern nations trusted largely to amulets of various kinds for the prevention and treatment of disease. Galen quotes from Nechepsus, an Egyptian king, who lived about 630 B.C., who wrote that a green jasper cut in the form of a dragon surrounded by rays, applied externally would cure indigestion and strengthen the stomach. Among the books attributed to Hermes was one entitled “The Thirty-six Herbs Sacred to Horoscopes.” Of this book Galen says it is only a waste of time to read it. The title, however, as Leclerc has pointed out, rather curiously confirms the statement attributed to Celsus which is found in Origen’s treatise, “Contra Celsum,” to which allusion has already been made.
Amulets are still in general use in the East. Bertherand in “Medicine of the Arabs” says the uneducated Arab of to-day when he has anything the matter with him goes to his priest and pays him a fee for which the priest gives him a little paper about two inches square on which certain phrases are written. This is put up in a leathern case, and worn as near the affected part as is possible. The richer Arab women wear silver cases with texts from the Koran in them. But it is essential that the paper must have been written on a Friday, a little before sunset, and with ink in which myrrh and saffron have been dissolved.