One can scarcely credit that at any period there could have existed men of science and genius who believed that there were supernatural means of curing disease, did we not even to the present day find imbeciles who verily dread the malpractices of the devil and his vicarious agents. Ancient writers divided their cures into lawful and unlawful. The former were obtained from divine aid; the latter from sorcerers, witches, magicians, wizards, and cunning men, who treated all maladies by spells, cabalistic words, charms, characters, images, amulets, ligatures, philters, incantations, &c.; by which means, according to Cardan, Artesius, Picatrix, and sundry wise men, the aforesaid sorcerers and witches could prevent fire from burning, find out thieves and stolen goods, show absent faces in a glass, make serpents lie still, stanch blood, salve gout, biting of mad dogs, toothache, et omnia mundi mala. “Many doubt,” says Nicholas Taurellus, “whether the devil can cure such diseases he hath not made, and some flatly deny it; however, common experience confirms, to our astonishment, that magicians can work such feats, and that the devil, without impediment, can penetrate through all the parts of our body, and cure such maladies by means to us unknown.” Some of these means were rather singular; for St. Austin mentions as one of these processes, “Agentes cum patientibus conjungunt, colligere semina rerum eaque materiæ applicare;” and learned divines, moreover inform us, that to resist exorcisms these witches and magicians had St. Catherine’s wheel imprinted on the roof of their mouths, or on some other part. Taurellus asserts, that to doubt it is to run into a sceptical extreme of incredulity. Godelman affirms that Satan is an excellent physician; Langius maintains that Jupiter Menecrates was a magician; and Marcellus Donatus pays the same compliment to Solomon, who, he says, “cured all the diseases of the mind by spells, charms, and drove away devils, and that Eleazar did the same before Vespasian.” Galen, in his book “de Medicamentis facilè purandis,” observes after a preparation, “hæc enim suffita, dæmonus abigunt.”
This fact being clearly ascertained, the next question was whether it was lawful in a desperate case to crave the help of the evil one on the principle
Flectere si nequeunt Superos, Acheronta movebunt.
Paracelsus rather impiously argues that we might, as it matters not, he says, “whether it be God or the devil, angels or unclean spirits, (immundi spiritus,) that cure him, so that he be eased. If a man fall in a ditch, what matter is it whether a friend or an enemy help him out? If I be troubled with such a malady, what care I whether the devil himself, or any of his ministers, by God’s permission, redeem me?”—and he therefore concludes, that diseases brought on by malefices can only be cured by incantations. However, this doctrine was denounced as abominable by Remigius, Bodinus, Godelmannus, Erastus, and various divines and schoolmen; and Delrio plainly declares, “mori præstat quàm superstitiosè canari.” Therefore pontificial writers and sages recommend adjuration and exorcism by “fire, suffumigations, lights, cutting the air with swords (gladiorum ictus), sacred herbs, odours,” &c., though some hungry devils can only be cast out by fasting.
Witches and impostors, says Lord Bacon, have always held a competition with physicians. Galen complains of this superstition, and observes that patients placed more confidence in the oracles of Esculapius and their own idle dreams than in the prescriptions of doctors. The introduction of precious stones into medical practice owed its origin to a superstitious belief that, from their beauty, splendour, and high value, they were the natural receptacles for good spirits. Mystery, in the dark ages, and, alas! even now, increases the confidence in remedial means; reveal their true nature, the charm is dissolved: “Minus credunt quæ ad suam salutem pertinent si intelligunt,” said Pliny. One cannot but wonder when we behold men pre-eminent in deep learning and acute observation becoming converts to such superstitious practices. Lord Bacon believed in spells and amulets; and Sir Theodore Mayence, who was physician to three English sovereigns, and supposed to have been Shakspeare’s Dr. Caius, believed in supernatural agency, and frequently prescribed the most disgusting and absurd medicines, such as the heart of a mule ripped up alive, a portion of the lungs of a man who had died a violent death, or the hand of a thief who had been gibbeted on some particular day. Nauseous medicines have ever been deemed the most efficacious, on the reasoning that as every thing medicinal is nauseous, every thing that is nauseous must be medicinal. The ancients firmly believed that blood can be stanched by charms; the bleeding of Ulysses was stopped by this means; and Cato the Censor has given us an incantation for setting dislocated bones. To this day charms are supposed to arrest the flow of blood:
Tom Pots was but a serving-man,
But yet he was a doctor good,
He bound his kerchief on the wound,
And with some kind words he stanch’d the blood.
Sir Walter Scott says, in the “Lay of the Last Minstrel,”—
She drew the splinter from the wound,
And with a charm she stanch’d the blood.
The strength of imagination in effecting wonderful cures has been observed in all ages; and Avicenna declares, “that he prefers confidence before art, precepts, and all remedies whatsoever.” Our learned Burton says, “that this strong imagination or conceit is Astrum Hominis, and the rudder of this our ship, which reason should steer, but overborne by phantasie, cannot manage, and so suffers itself and the whole vessel of ours to be overruled and often overturned.”
Nothing could be more absurd than the notions regarding some of these supposed cures: a ring made of the hinge of a coffin had the power of relieving cramps; which were also mitigated by having a rusty old sword hung up by the bedside. Nails driven in an oak-tree prevented the toothache. A halter that had served in hanging a criminal was an infallible remedy for a headache, when tied round the head; this affection was equally cured by the moss growing on a human skull, dried and pulverized, and taken as a cephalic snuff. A dead man’s hand could dispel tumours of the glands by stroking the parts nine times, but the hand of a man who had been cut down from the gallows was the most efficacious. To cure warts, one had nothing to do but to steal a piece of beef from the butcher, with which the warts were to be rubbed; then inter it in any filth, and as it rotted, the warts would wither and fall.