The toad was also considered to be possessed of marvellous qualities for the cure of various maladies, more especially the stone that was supposed to be occasionally found in the reptile’s head, and which was called Crapaudina. Lupton, in his seventh book of “Notable Things,” thus instructs us how to obtain it. “You shall knowe whether the tode stone be the ryght and perfect stone or not. Holde the stone before a tode, so that he may see it; and if it be a ryght and true stone, the tode will leape towarde it and make as though he would snatch it, he envies so much that man should have this stone.” This famous toadstone is simply one of the fossil teeth of various fishes, and is chiefly formed of phosphate of lime. Its high polish and convexity has often induced lapidaries to have it set in rings and other jewels, to which marvellous powers were attached.
Pulverized toads were not only employed in medicine with supposed advantage, but were also considered a slow but certain poison. Solander relates, that a Roman woman, desirous of poisoning her husband gave him this substance; but instead of attaining her criminal desire, it cured him of a dropsy that had long perplexed him. Boccaccio relates the story of Pasquino and Simona, two young lovers, who, wandering in a garden, plucked some sage-leaves, with which Pasquino rubbed his teeth and gums. In a few minutes he fell ill and expired. Simona accused of being his assassin, was brought before a magistrate, who ordered an immediate investigation of the matter, when, on proceeding to the garden, Simona, after relating the particulars of the case, took some leaves from the same plant and used them in a similar manner. In a few minutes the lovers were reunited in death; when it was discovered that a large toad was under the root of the plant to which it had communicated its deadly venom.
Regarding unlawful cures, have we not seen vaccination, when first introduced, condemned from the very pulpit as an impious interference in a disease which seemed to have been assigned to mankind by the Creator as an inevitable doom? Did not these desperate bigots even pronounce that we were not warranted to seek in the brute creation a human remedy or preservative? What is still more worthy of remark, is the coincidence of a similar idea in India, where the greatest obstacle vaccination encountered arose from a belief that the natural smallpox was a dispensation of a malicious deity, called Mah-ry-Umma, or rather that the disease was an incarnation of the goddess herself into the person who was affected by it: the fear of irritating her, and of exposing themselves to her resentment, necessarily rendered the natives averse to vaccination, until it was impressed upon their easy belief, that Mah-ry-Umma had altered her mind, and chosen this new and milder mode of manifesting her visits to her votaries.
Could there ever have existed a more superstitious belief than that which vested in the regal touch a healing power? Yet from Edward the Confessor to the accession of the House of Hanover, it was generally thought in these realms that our kings could cure scrofula with their anointed fingers!
Dr. Paris’s truly philosophic remarks on this subject, in his valuable work, entitled Pharmacologia, are worthy of quotation:—“Credulity, although it is nearly allied to superstition, yet differs from it widely. Credulity is an unbounded belief in what is possible, although destitute of proof, and perhaps of probability; but superstition is a belief in what is wholly repugnant to the laws of the physical and moral world. Credulity is a far greater source of error than superstition; for the latter must be always more limited in its influence, and can exist only, to any considerable extent, in the most ignorant portions of society; whereas the former diffuses itself through the minds of all classes, by which the rank and dignity of science are degraded, its valuable labours confounded with the vain pretensions of empiricism, and ignorance is enabled to claim for itself the prescriptive right of delivering oracles, amidst all the triumph of truth and the progress of philosophy. Credulity has been justly defined belief without reason, while scepticism, its opposite, is reason without belief, and the natural and invariable consequence of credulity; for it may be observed that men who believe without reason are succeeded by others whom no reasoning can convince.”
VOICE AND SPEECH.
Blumenbach has given us a most ingenious definition of this wonderful function. The voice, properly speaking, is a sound formed by means of expiration in the larynx, which is a most beautifully constructed organ, fixed upon the top of the windpipe, like a capital upon a column. It is composed of various cartilages, united in the form of a little box, and supplied with numerous muscles, that, moving altogether or separately, produce the variations of sound.
The part of the larynx most concerned in producing the voice is the glottis, or narrow opening of the windpipe, having the epiglottis suspended over it like a valve. The air expired from the lungs strikes upon the glottis, and thus becomes sonorous. The change that the glottis undergoes in the modulation of the voice has been matter of much controversy. Aristotle and Galen compared the glottis to a wind instrument; Ferrein assimilated it to a chorded one. This latter hypothesis was objected to, on the principle that a chord, to vibrate, should not only be in a state of tension, but dryness; characters which this organ does not possess, being constantly lubrified with mucus, and in a state of greater or lesser relaxation. Fulgentius considers the human voice to be composed of ten parts: the four first are the front teeth, so useful for the appulse of the tongue in forming sounds, without which a whistle would be produced instead of a voice; the fifth and sixth are the lips, which he compares to cymbals striking against each other; the seventh the tongue, which serves as a plectrum to articulate sounds; the eighth is the palate, the concavity of which forms the belly of the instrument; the ninth the throat, which performs the part of a flute; and the tenth the lungs, which supply the place of bellows.
That every degree of action in the glottis is due to the muscles of the larynx is proved by the experiment of tying or dividing the recurrent nerves, when the voice is destroyed or weakened.