The principle underlying the doctrine of sympathetic powders was explained by Sir Kenelm thus: “In time of common contagion they use to carry about them the powder of a toad, and sometimes a living toad or spider shut up in a box; or else they carry arsenic, or some other venomous substance, which draws unto it the contagious air, which otherwise would infect the party; and the same powder of toad draws unto it the poison of a pestilential cold. The scurf or farcy is a venomous and contagious humour within the body of a horse; hang a toad about the neck of the horse in a little bag, and he will be cured infallibly; the toad, which is the stronger poison, drawing to it the venom which was within the horse.”[925]
The same author says that persons of ill breath can be cured by holding their mouths open at a cesspool, the greater stink having the power to draw away the less.[926]
In the reign of Charles II. a gentleman named Valentine Greatrakes, of a good family and education, “felt an impulse that the gift of curing the king’s evil was bestowed upon him.” He published an account of his cures of this and other diseases, ague, epilepsy, and palsy, and some other complaints more or less connected with the nervous system, in a letter to the Hon. Robert Boyle. He seems to have performed his cures, which were by some persons considered miraculous, by a kind of massage, or “by the Stroaking of the Hands.” The cures were simply the effect of an excited imagination.[927]
CHAPTER IV.
BATHS AND MINERAL WATERS.
Miraculous Springs.—The Pool of Bethesda.—Herb-baths.
Especially in Germany mineral waters achieved great popularity in the treatment of diseases in the seventeenth century.
In ancient times, according to Pliny, Paulus Ægineta, and others, mineral waters were recognised as possessing curative effects, and the temples of health were frequently erected in contiguity to these powerful aids to treatment. Savages are everywhere fully aware of the value of such medicinal waters, and avail themselves of their benefits. Hot springs, wherever they occur, are highly esteemed by the natives. Humboldt states that on Christianity being introduced into Iceland, the natives refused to be baptized in any but the waters of the geysers.[928] Hooker tells us that in the hot springs of Yeuntong, which burst from the bank of the Lachen, in the Himalayas, the natives remain three days at a time, bathing in the saline and slightly sulphuretted waters. No better treatment for certain forms of skin diseases could be followed.[929] Such a course of treatment is carried out now at the baths of Leuk, in Switzerland, amongst other places. There the patients take their meals and play cards, chess, draughts, etc., while up to their necks in the warm medicinal waters. Hooker tells us, again, of the use of hot baths amongst the Sikkim Bhoteeas. The bath consists of a hollowed prostrate tree trunk, the water of which is heated by throwing in hot stones with bamboo tongs. They can raise the temperature to 114°, the patient submitting to this at intervals for several days, never leaving till wholly exhausted.[930]
Dr. Mead[931] thinks that the Pool of Bethesda, spoken of in the Gospel of St. John, chap, v., was a medicinal bath, whose virtues principally resided in the mud which settled at the bottom. It was necessary, therefore, that the pool should be “troubled,” that is to say, stirred up, so that the person bathing therein might derive benefit from the metallic salts, “perhaps from sulphur, alum, or nitre,” which settled at the bottom. Celsus and Pliny recommend medicinal baths for nervous disorders. Pliny particularly advises aluminous baths for paralytics, and adds that “They use the mud of those fountains with advantage, especially if, when it is rubbed on, it be suffered to dry in the sun.”[932]
Many curious instances of the superstitious uses made of holy wells in the treatment of disease, in which customs the elements of magic ritual are not difficult to discover, are given in Gomme’s Ethnology in Folklore, pp. 97-99.