Culpeper, in his translation of the Pharmacopœia (1653), ridicules the remedies enumerated in that work. Thus the College of Physicians employ “the fat, grease, or suet of a duck, goose, eel, bore, heron, thymallos (‘if you know where to get it,’ says Culpeper), dog, capon, bever, wild cat, stork, hedgehog, hen, man, lyon, hare, kite, or jack (if they have any fat, I am persuaded ’tis worth twelve pence the grain), wolf, mouse of the mountains (if you can catch them), pardal, hog, serpent, badger, bear, fox, vulture (if you can catch them), album græcum, east and west benzoar, stone taken out a man’s bladder, viper’s flesh, the brain of hares and sparrows, the rennet of a lamb, kid, hare, and a calf and a horse too (quoth the colledg) [they should have put the rennet of an ass to make medicine for their addle brains], the excrement of a goose, of a dog, of a goat, of pidgeons, of a stone horse, of swallows, of men, of women, of mice, of peacocks,” etc., etc.
There was, says Southey,[914] a water of man’s blood which in Queen Elizabeth’s day was a new invention, “whereof some princes had very great estimation, and used it for to remain thereby in their force, and, as they thought, to live long.” They chose a strong young man of twenty-five, dieted him for a month on the best meats, wines and spices, and at the month’s end they bled him in both arms as much as he could “tolerate and abide.” They added a handful of salt to six pounds of this blood, and distilled it seven times, pouring water upon the residuum after every distillation. An ounce of this was to be taken three or four times a year. As the life was thought to be in the blood, it was believed it could thus be transferred.
Dr. O. Möller says that in Denmark, even now in some few places, human excrements are not entirely obsolete as epispastic applications in inflammation of the breast.[915]
Dr. Baas says[916] that urine is taken in the Rhine provinces in fevers instead of quinine. This was recommended by the surgical writer Schmidt in 1649. In the seventeenth century the old pharmacies of Germany contained, amongst other disgusting remedies, frog-spawn water, mole’s blood, oil of spiders, snake’s tongue, mouse dung, spirits of human brain, urine of a new-born child, etc.[917] The dung of screech-owls was prescribed for melancholy, as also was the dung of doves and calves boiled in wine, ox-dung, etc. Dog-dung and fleas boiled with sage was a medicine for gout, and death-sweat was used as a cure for warts.[918]
Mould from the churchyard is used in some parts of Ireland and in Shetland medicinally. Clay or mould from a priest’s grave boiled with milk is given as a decoction for the cure of disease.[919] The dew collected from the grave of the last man buried in a churchyard has been used as a lotion for goitre. It is so employed at Launceston.[920] In Shetland a stitch in the side was treated by applying mould dug from a grave and heated, the mould was to be taken from and returned to the grave before sunset.[921] In Lincolnshire a portion of a human skull taken from the grave was grated and given to epileptics for the cure of fits. A similar custom prevailed in Kirkwall, at Caithness, and the Western islands—the patient was made to drink from a suicide’s skull.[922]
In the year 1852 I saw amongst the more precious drugs in the shop of a pharmaceutical chemist at Leamington a bottle labelled in the ordinary way with the words, “Moss from a Dead-Man’s Skull.” This has long been used superstitiously, dried, powdered, and taken as snuff, for headache and bleeding at the nose.[923]
Sympathetical Cures.
A curious chapter in the history of surgery is found in the popular belief in “sympathetical cures,” which prevailed in the reigns of James I. and Charles I. Sir Kenelm Digby professed to have introduced a method of curing wounds by the “powder of sympathy.” Dr. Pettigrew,, in his Superstitions of Medicine and Surgery, says that a Mr. James Howel, endeavouring to part some friends who were fighting a duel, received a severe wound in his hand. The king sent one of his own surgeons to attend him; but as the wound did not make good progress, application was made to Sir Kenelm Digby, who first inquired if the patient had any article which had the blood upon it. Mr. Howel sent for the garter with which his hand had been bound; then a basin of water having been brought, Sir Kenelm dissolved therein some powder of vitriol, and immersed the bloody garter in the solution. The patient was instructed to lay aside all his plasters and keep the wound clean and in a moderate temperature. All the while the garter lay in the solution of vitriol. The patient did well; probably if it had been applied to the injured part it would have made it worse. In the course of five or six days the wound was cicatrized and a cure effected. Sir Kenelm professed to have learned the secret from a Carmelite friar. It was communicated to the king’s physician, Dr. Mayerne, and before long every country barber knew of it. Sir Kenelm Digby discoursed on the matter before an assembly of nobles and learned men at Montpellier in France, and endeavoured to explain the action of his powder by all sorts of conjectures, as emanation of light, the action of impinging rays, etc. He tried to prove that the spirit which emanated from the vitriol became incorporated with the blood, and there met the exhalation of hot spirits from the inflamed part.
Infinitely simpler, however, was the process of cure. Nature, left to herself, did the whole of the work. It seemed, as Dr. Pettigrew says, that it had hitherto been the practice of surgeons to place every obstacle in the way of the union of severed parts of the body. What with ointments and various more or less filthy applications, the edges of the wound were kept apart, and so the healing process was retarded.
Of a kindred character to the “powder of sympathy” was the “weapon salve” of the period. Instead of anointing the wound, the knife, axe, or other instrument which caused it was smeared with ointment and the weapon was then carefully wrapped up and put away. Dryden refers to this same “weapon salve” in the “Tempest,” Act V. sc. 1. Dr. Pettigrew says that the practice was at one time very general.[924]