And suffire that hete a while as hoot as he may a-bide;
Se that place be couered welle over and close on every side;
And what dissese ye be vexed with, grevaunce outher peyn,
This medicyne shalle make yow hoole surely, as men seyn.”[948]
George Herbert, in his Priest to the Temple, enumerates the duties of the parson’s wife, and extols the virtues of these homely remedies. “For salves, his wife seeks not the city, but prefers her gardens and fields before all out-landish gums; and surely hyssop, valerian, mercury, adder’s tongue, melilot, and St. John’s wort, made into a salve, and elder, comphrey, and smallage, made into a poultice, have done great and rare cures.”
CHAPTER V.
WITCHCRAFT AND MEDICINE.
Comparative Witchcraft.—Laws against Sorcery.—Magic in Virgil and Horace.—Demonology.—Images of Wax and Clay.—Transference of Disease.—Witchcraft in the Koran.—White Magic and Black.—Coral and the Evil Eye.—“Overlooking” People.—Exorcism in the Catholic Church.
Comparative Witchcraft.
“Witches and impostors,” said Bacon, “have always held a competition with physicians.” The History of Medicine, therefore, demands some notice of the strange delusions which have exerted the most terrible influence over the minds of men in all ages and in all stages of civilization. Nothing in the history of the human species is older than the belief in magic, and it will be found that the practices of the savage in this connection have their analogies amongst ourselves at the present day. Gipsy craft, fortune telling, dream interpretation, spiritualism, the miracles of the theosophists, may all be traced in the customs and practices of savage tribes. They are survivals which will not be got rid of probably for centuries to come. Education, so far from delivering us from the bondage, has curiously enough in many cases served but to rivet the chains more firmly. In the chapters on the demon theory of disease, much light has been thrown on the origin of our belief in the influence of spirits good and bad. Trials in England connected with witchcraft were most numerous in the seventeenth century. The most interesting is that of the Suffolk witches, when Sir Matthew Hale was the judge and Sir Thomas Browne the medical expert witness. This excellent and learned physician testified that certain children, said to have been bewitched, suffered from fits, heightened to great excess by the subtlety of the devil co-operating with the witches. The report alleges that after conviction of the accused the children immediately recovered.