Though Dr. Max Bartels' (397) recent treatise—the best book that has yet appeared on the subject of primitive medicine—has no chapter consecrated to the child as healer and physician, and Mr. Black's Folk-Medicine (401) contains but a few items under the rubric of personal cures, it is evident from data in these two works, and in many other scattered sources, that the child has played a not unimportant rôle in the history of folk-medicine. Among certain primitive peoples the healing art descends by inheritance, and in various parts of the world unbaptized children, illegitimate children, and children born out of due time and season, or deformed in some way, have been credited with special curative powers, or looked upon as "doctors born."
In Spain, to kiss an unbaptized child before any one else has done so, is a panacea against toothache (258. 100). In north-eastern Scotland, "a seventh son, without a daughter, if worms were put into his hand before baptism, had the power of healing the disease (ring-worm) simply by rubbing the affected part with his hand. The common belief about such a son was that he was a doctor by nature" (246. 47). In Ireland, the healing powers are acquired "if his hand has, before it has touched anything for himself, been touched with his future medium of cure. Thus, if silver is to be the charm, a sixpence, or a three-penny piece, is put into his hand, or meal, salt, or his father's hair, 'whatever substance a seventh son rubs with must be worn by his parents as long as he lives.'" In some portions of Europe, the seventh son, if born on Easter Eve, was able to cure tertian or quartan fevers. In Germany, "if a woman has had seven sons in succession, the seventh can heal all manner of hurt,"—his touch is also said to cure wens at the throat (462. III. 1152). In France, the marcou, or seventh son, has had a great reputation; his body is said to be marked with a fleur-de-lis, and the cure is effected by his simply breathing upon the diseased part, or by allowing the patient to touch a mark on his body. Bourke calls attention to the fact that among the Cherokee Indians of the southeastern United States is this same belief that the seventh son is "a natural-born prophet with the gift of healing by touch" (406. 457). In France similar powers have also been attributed to the fifth son. The seventh son of a seventh son is still more famous, while to the twenty-first son, born without the intervention of a daughter, prodigious cures are ascribed.
Nor is the other sex entirely neglected. In France a "seventh daughter" was believed to be able to cure chilblains on the heels (462. III. 1152), and in England, as recently as 1876, the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter claimed great skill as an herb-doctor.
In northeastern Scotland, "a posthumous child was believed to possess the gift of curing almost any disease by looking on the patient" (246. 37), and in Donegal, Ireland, the peasants "wear a lock of hair from a posthumous child, to guard against whooping-cough," while in France, such a child was believed to possess the power of curing wens, and a child that has never known its father was credited with ability to cure swellings and to drive away tumours (462. III. 1152).
Twins, in many countries, have been regarded as prodigies, or as endowed with unusual powers. In Essex, England, "a 'left twin' (i.e. a child who has survived its fellow-twin) is thought to have the power of curing the thrush by blowing three times into the patient's mouth, if the patient is of the opposite sex" (469. 307). Among the Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia, twins are said to be able to cure disease by swinging a rattle, and in Liberia (Africa) they are thought to possess great healing powers, for which reason most of them become doctors (397. 75).
In Sweden, "a first-born child that has come into the world with teeth can cure a bad bite." In Scotland, "those who were born with their feet first possessed great power to heal all kinds of sprains, lumbago, and rheumatism, either by rubbing the afflicted part, or by trampling on it. The chief virtue lay in the feet" (246. 45). In Cornwall, England, the mother of such a child also possessed the power to cure rheumatism by trampling on the patients. The natives of the island of Mas, off the western coast of Sumatra, consider children born with their feet first specially gifted for the treatment of dislocations (397. 75). Among the superstitions prevalent among the Mexicans of the Rio Grande region in Texas, Captain Bourke mentions the belief: "To cure rheumatism, stroke the head of a little girl three times—a golden-haired child preferred" (407. 139). The Jews of Galicia seek to cure small-pox by rubbing the pustules with the tresses of a girl, and think that the scrofula will disappear "if a Bechôr, or first-born son, touches it with his thumb and little finger" (392 (1893). 142).
The power of curing scrofula—touching for the "King's Evil"—possessed by monarchs of other days, was thought to be hereditary, and seems to have been practised by them at a tender age. In England this "cure" was in vogue from the time of Edward the Confessor until 1719, when, according to Brewer, the "office" disappeared from the Prayer-book. The French custom dated back to Anne of Clovis (A.D. 481). In the year of his coronation (1654 A.D.), when Louis XV. was but eleven years old, he is said to have touched over two thousand sufferers (191. 308).
Blood of Children.
In the dark ages the blood of little children had a wide-spread reputation for its medicinal virtue. The idea that diseased and withered humanity, having failed to discover the fountain of eternal youth, might find a new well-spring of life in bathing in, or being sprinkled with, the pure blood of a child or a virgin, had long a firm hold upon the minds of the people. Hartmann von Aue's story, Der arme Heinrich, and a score of similar tales testify of the folk-faith in the regeneration born of this horrible baptism—a survival or recrudescence of the crassest form of the doctrine that the life dwells in the blood. Strack, in his valuable treatise on "Human Blood, in Superstition and Ceremonial," devotes a brief section to the belief in the cure of leprosy by means of human blood (361. 20-24). The Targumic gloss on Exodus ii. 23—the paraphrase known as the Pseudo-Jonathan—explains "that the king of Egypt, suffering from leprosy, ordered the first-born of the children of Israel to be slain that he might bathe in their blood," and the Midrasch Schemoth Rabba accounts for the lamentation of the people of Israel at this time, from the fact that the Egyptian magicians had told the king that there was no cure for this loathsome disease, unless every evening and every morning one hundred and fifty Jewish children were slain and the monarch bathed twice daily in their blood. Pliny tells us that the Egyptians warmed with human blood the seats in their baths as a remedy against the dreaded leprosy.
According to the early chroniclers, Constantine the Great, on account of his persecution of the Christians, was afflicted with leprosy, which would yield neither to the skill of native nor to that of foreign physicians. Finally, the priests of Jupiter Capitolinus recommended a bath in the blood of children. The children were gathered together, but "the lamentations of their mothers so affected the Emperor, that he declared his intention of suffering the foul disease, rather than be the cause of so much woe and misery." Afterwards he was directed in a dream to Pope Sylvester, was converted, baptized into the Church, and restored to health (361. 22).