Written charms were also believed in as capable of effecting cures, or, at least, of preventing people from taking diseases. I have known people who wore written charms, sewed into the necks of their coats, if men, and into the headbands of petticoats if women. These talismans, in many cases, I have little doubt, did real good in this way, that they supplied their wearers with a courage which sufficed to brace up their nervous system—which drove out fear, in fact,—a very important condition for health, as physicians well know. These talismans were so generally and thoroughly believed in, and so numerous and apparently well-attested were the evidences of their beneficial effects, that in years not long past, medical men believed in their efficacy, and promulgated various theories to account for it.
It was also an accepted belief that diseases could be transferred to animals, and even to vegetables. Cures held to be so effected were, according to one medical theory, cures by "sympathy." A few instances, culled from a work published during the latter half of the seventeenth century (1663), entitled The Usefulness of Experimental Philosophy, will illustrate this theory:—A medical man had been very ill of an obstinate marasmar (?) which so consumed him that he became quite a skeleton, notwithstanding every remedy which he had tried. At length he tried a sympathetic remedy: he took an egg, and having boiled it hard in his own urine, he then with a bodkin perforated the shell in different parts, and then buried it in an ant-hill. As the ants wasted the egg he found his strength increase, and he soon was completely cured. A daughter of a French officer was so tormented by a paronychia (?) for four days together, that the pain kept her from sleeping; by the order of a medical man she put her finger into a cat's ear, and within two hours was delivered from her pain. And a councillor's wife was cured of a panaritium (?) which had vexed her for four days by the same means. In both cases the cat had received the pain in its ear and required to be held. The gout is cured by sympathy: by the patient sleeping with puppies, they take the disease, and the person recovers. A boy ill with the king's evil could not be cured, his father's dog took to licking the sores, the dog took the sores, and the boy was completely cured. A gentleman having a severe pain in the arm was cured by beating red coral with oak leaves, and applying it to the part affected till suppuration: a hole was then made in the root of an oak towards the east, and the mixture put into it and the hole plugged up with a peg of the same tree, and from that time the pain did altogether cease; and when afterwards the mixture was removed from the tree, immediately the torments returned worse than before. Sir Francis Bacon records a cure of warts: he took a piece of lard with the skin on it, and after rubbing the warts with it the lard was exposed out of a southern window to putrify, and the warts wore away as it putrified. Harvey tried to remove tumours and excrescences by putting the hand of a dead person that had died of a lingering disease upon them till the part felt cold. In general the application was effective.
This idea of cure by sympathy retained its hold on the people till this century, and is not yet entirely gone.
There was another theory, which we may call the magnetic theory. The philosophy of this theory contended that "The body when diseased resembled a gun; when loaded, it contains powder and ball, which, by the mere touch of a little spring, sets the whole machinery of the gun in motion, whereby the ball is expelled. So also the mere touch or outward contact of certain bodies or substances has power, like a magnet, to set in action the machinery of nature by which the disease is dispelled—sometimes slowly, but often suddenly like the bullet from the gun. Helmont had a little stone, which, by plunging in oil of almonds, imbued the oil with such sanative power that it cured almost any disease. It was sometimes applied inwardly, sometimes outwardly. A gentleman who had an unwieldy groom procured for him a small fragment of this stone, and, by licking it with the tip of his tongue every morning, in three weeks he was reduced in bulk round the waist by a span without affecting his general health. A gentleman in France who procured a small fragment of this stone cured several persons of inveterate diseases by letting them lick it. The stone Lapis Nephriticus bound upon the pulse of the wrist of the left hand prevents stone, hysterics, and stops the flux of blood in any part. A compound metal called electrum, which is a mixture of all metals made under certain constellations and shaped into rings and worn, prevents cramps and palsy, apoplexy, epilepsy, and severe pains; and in the case of a person in a fit of the falling sickness, a ring of this metal put on the ring finger is an immediate cure. A little yarrow and mistletoe put into a bag and worn upon the stomach, prevents ague and chilblains. A powder made of the common mistletoe, given in doses of three grains at the full of the moon to persons troubled with epilepsy, prevents fits; and if given during a fit it will effect an immediate and permanent cure. A woman with rupture of the bladder was reported to have been cured by wearing a little bag hung about her neck containing the powder made from a toad burnt alive in a new pot. The same prescription was also said to have cured a man of stone in the bladder."
Such theories left ample room for the creation of all sorts of cure charms, and when such ideas prevailed among the educated in the medical profession, we need not be surprised that they still survive among many uneducated persons, although two centuries have gone since. In 1714 one of the most eminent physicians in Europe, Boerhaave, wrote of chemistry and medicine:—"Nor even in this affair don't medicine receive some advantage; witness the cups made of regulus of antimony, tempered with other metals which communicate a medicinal quality to wine put in them, and it is ten thousand pities the famous Van Helmont should have been so unkind to his poor fellow creatures in distress as to conceal from us the art of making a particular metal which he tells us, made into rings, and worn only while one might say the Lord's Prayer, would remove the most exquisite hæmorrhoidal pains, both internal and external, quiet the most violent hysteric disorders, and give ease in the severest spasms of the muscles. 'Tis right, therefore, to prosecute enquiries of this nature, for there is very frequently some hidden virtues in these compositions, and we may make a vast number of experiments of this kind without any danger or inconvenience."
As it illustrates the theories just mentioned, we notice here the influence attributed to the wonderful Lee Penny. This famous charm is a stone set in gold. It is said to have been brought home by Lochart of Lee, who accompanied the Earl of Douglas in carrying Robert the Bruce's heart to the Holy Land. It is called Lee Penny, and was credited with the virtue of imparting to water into which it was dipped curative properties, specially influential to the curing of cattle when diseased, or preventing them taking disease. Many people from various parts of Scotland whose cattle were affected have made application within these few years for water in which this stone has been dipped. It is believed that this stone cannot be lost. It is still in the possession of the family of Lochart.
Ague, it was believed, could be cured by putting a spider into a goose quill, sealing it up, and hanging it about the neck, so that it would be near the stomach. This disease might also be cured by swallowing pills made of a spider's web. One pill a morning for three successive mornings before breakfast.
There were numerous cures for hooping-cough of a superstitious character, practised extensively during the earlier years of this century, and some are still recommended. The following are a few of these. Pass the patient three times under the belly, and three times over the back of a donkey. Split a sapling or a branch of the ash tree, and hold the split open while the patient is passed three times through the opening. Find a man riding on a piebald horse, and ask him what should be given as a medicine, and whatever he prescribes will prove a certain cure. "I recollect," says Jamieson, "a friend of mine that rode a piebald horse, that he used to be pursued by people running after him bawling,—
"Man wi' the piety horse,
What's gude for the kink host?"
He said he always told them to give the bairn plenty of sugar candy. Put a piece of red flannel round the neck of a child, and it will ward off the hooping cough. The virtue lay not in the flannel, but in the red colour. Red was a colour symbolical of triumph and victory over all enemies. Find a hairy caterpillar, put it into a bag, and hang it round the neck of the child. This will prove a cure. Take some of the child's hair and put it between slices of bread and butter, and give it to a dog; if in eating it, the dog cough, the child will be cured, and the hooping cough transferred to the dog. A very common practice at the present day is to take the patient into a place where there is a tainted atmosphere, such as a byre or a stable, a gas work, or chemical work. I have seen the gas blown on the child's face, so that it might breath some of it, and be set a coughing. If during the process the child take a kink, it is a good sign. This idea must, I think, be of modern origin.