Oft our complexions do the soul declare,
And tell what passions in the features are.
Hence ’tis we look, the wond’rous cause to find,
How body acts upon impassive mind.”
Addison, on the power and pleasure of the imagination (Spect. vol. vi.) concludes, from the pleasure and pain it administers here below, that God, who knows all the ways of afflicting us, may so transport us hereafter with such beautiful and glorious visions, or torment us with such hideous and ghastly spectres, as might even of themselves suffice to make up the entire of Heaven or Hell of any future being.
St. Vitus’ dance was cured by visiting the tomb of the saint, near Ulm, every May. Indeed, there is some reason in this assertion; for exercise and change of scene and air will cure many obstinate diseases. The bite of the Tarantula is cured by music; and what is more wonderful still, persons bitten by this noxious animal are only to be cured by certain tunes; thus, for instance, one might be cured with “Nancy Dawson,” while another could only reap a similar benefit from “Moll in the wood,” or “Off she goes.”
The learned Dr. Willis, whom we have already mentioned, in his treatise on Nervous diseases, does not hesitate to recommend Amulets in epileptic disorders. “Take,” says he, “some fresh Pæony roots, cut them into square bits, and hang them round the neck, changing them as often as they dry. In all probability the hint from this circumstance was taken for the Anodyne necklaces, which was in such strong requisition some time ago, and which produced so much benefit to the proprietors; as the doctor, a little further on, prescribes the same root for the looseness, fevers, and convulsions of children during the time of dentition, mixed, to make it appear more miraculous, with some elk’s hoof.
Turner, whose ideas on hydrophobia are so absurd, where he asserts, that the symptoms may not appear for forty years after the bite; and who asserts, “that the slaver or breath of such a dog is infectious; and that men bit, will bite like dogs again, and die mad; although he laughs at the Anodyne necklace, argues much in the same manner. It is not so very strange that the effluvia from external medicines entering our bodies, should effect such considerable changes, when we see the efficient cause of apoplexy, epilepsy, hysterics, plague, and a number of other disorders, consists, as it were in imperceptible vapours.
Lapis Ætites (blood stone) hung about the arm, by some similar secret means is said to prevent abortion, and to facilitate delivery, when worn round the thigh. Dr. Sydenham, in the iliac passion, orders a live kitten to be laid constantly on the abdomen; others have used pigeons split alive, and applied to the soles of the feet with success, in pestilential fevers and convulsions. The court of king David thought that relief might be obtained by external agents; otherwise they would not have advised him to seek a young virgin; doubtless thereby imagining that the virgin of youth would impart a portion of its warmth and strength to the decay of age. “Take the heart and liver of the fish and make a smoke, and the devil shall smell it and flee away.” (Tobit, c. vi.)
During the plague of London, arsenic was worn as an amulet against infection. During this melancholy period, Bradley says, that Bucklersbury was not visited with this scourge, which was attributed to the number of druggists and apothecaries living there.