“Time has preserved to us a figure of this ridiculous Divinity, which represents a very young child in the posture of that indecent action whence this god has his name.”—(Abbé Banier, “Mythology,” English translation, 1740, vol. ii. pp. 52 et seq.)[55]
“Their Beetle-gods out of their privies; yea, their Privies and Farts had their unsavorie canonization and went for Egyptian deities.... So, Hierome derideth their dreadfull deitie, the Onion, and a stinking Fart, Crepitus ventris inflati que Pelusiaco religio est, which they worshipped at Pelusium.”—(Purchas, vol. v. p. 641.)
It may be well to bear in mind that the heathen idea of the power of a god was entirely different from our own. The deities of the heathen were restricted in their powers and functions; they were assigned to the care of certain countries, districts, valleys, rivers, fountains, etc. Not only that, they were capable of aiding only certain trades, professions, etc. They were not able to cure all diseases, only particular kinds, each god being a specialist; consequently, each was supposed to take charge of a section of the human body. This was the case with the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, and others. In mediæval times the same rule obtained, only in place of gods, we find saints assigned to these functions. Brand, Pop. Antiq. vol. i. p. 356, et seq., gives a list of the saints, and the functions ascribed to each. On page 366 of the work just cited, it will be seen that Saint Erasmus was in charge of “the belly, with the entrayles.” Keeping this in view, we can better understand the peculiar ceremonies connected with the worship of Bel-Phegor; he was, no doubt, the deity to whom the devotee resorted for the alleviation of ailments connected with the rectum and belly, much as he would, at a later date in the history of religion, have invoked Saint Phiacre to relieve him “of the phy or emeroids, of those especially which grow in the fundament.” (See in Brand, loc. cit. p. 362.) On the same principle that the worshipper was wont to hang up in the temples of Esculapius wax and earthen representations of the sore arms, legs, and other members which gave him pain, the worshipper of Bel-Phegor would offer him the sacrifice of the flatulence and excrement, testimonies of the good health for which gratitude was due to the older deity.
“The Egyptians divided the human body into thirty-six parts, each of which they believed to be under the particular government of one of the decans or aerial demons who presided over the triple divisions of the twelve signs; and we have the authority of Origen for saying that when any part of the body was diseased, a cure was effected by invoking the demon to whose province it belonged.”—(“Medical Superstitions,” Pettigrew, Philadelphia, 1844, p. 47.)
The ascription of particular signs of the Zodiac to the care of different members of the human anatomy is in line with the same religious idea; because the signs of the Zodiac, especially the Animal signs, were once Animal Gods.
Hone, in his “Every-Day Book,” has a therapeutical hagiology, too long to be here repeated.
“Melton says, ‘The saints of the Romanists have usurped the place of the Zodiacal constellations in their governance of the parts of man’s body,’ and that ‘for every limb they have a saint.’” Thus Saint “Erasmus rules the belly with the entrayles in the place of Libra and Scorpius.”—(“Medical Superstitions,” Pettigrew, Philadelphia, 1844, p. 54.) Next follows a long list of saints, with the particular functions assigned to each, beginning first with the list to be found in Hone, which Pettigrew extends.—(“Saint Giles and Saint Hyacinth against Sterility,” idem, pp. 55, 56.)
“In later times, according to Herodotus, a particular and minute division of labor characterized the Egyptians; the science of medicine was distributed into different parts; every physician was for one disease, not more; so that every place was full of physicians, for some were doctors for the eyes, others for the head; some for the teeth, others for the belly; and some for occult disorders. There were also physicians for female disorders. The sons followed the professions of their fathers, so that their numbers must necessarily have been very great.”—(Idem, p. 44.)
As the Egyptian priests were the doctors of that country, it is perfectly in accord with the eternal fitness of things that we should find them, even after they had been differentiated into different professions, restricted to the treatment of special diseases, much as the gods whom the priests once represented had been restricted.[56]