The savage Australians have “a last and most disgusting remedy ... deemed infallible in the most extreme cases.... ‘Mulierem ob juventutem firmitatemque corporis lectam sex vel plures viri in locum haud procul a castris remotum deducant. Ibique omnes deinceps in illa libidinem explent. Tum mulier ad pedes surgere jubetur quo facilius id quod maribus excepit effluere possit. Quod in vase collectum ægrotanti ebibendum præbent.’ The aborigines have unbounded faith in this truly horrible dose, and enumerate many, many instances where it has effected marvellous cures. We, however, have known of its having been administered in several cases without the remotest revivifying result. It may be that this fluid is—in fact some savants positively assert that it is so—the very essence of life, as well as containing the germs thereof, and that administering a draught thereof to a patient slowly but surely dying from exhaustion, consequent upon a long fit of illness (the illness itself having died out or been cured) might have the wonderful effect detailed so positively by the natives; but this is a question for physicians to decide.”—(“The Abor. of Victoria and Riverina,” Melbourne, 1889, p. 55, P. Beveridge, received through the kindness of the Royal Soc., Sydney, N. S. Wales, F. B. Kyngdon, Secretary.)
“Impetigine conferunt ... sperma.”—(Avicenna, vol. i. p. 330, a 10.)
For gout Avicenna prescribed “Sanguis menstruus,” “Sperma hominis” (vol. i. p. 330, a 12; idem, a 13); “Sanguis menstruus calidus” (vol. i. p. 388, b 9); also “Stercus caprarum” (vol. i. p. 390, a 13). Consult also what has been said of this secretion under “Love-philters.”
HUMAN BLOOD.
The medicinal employment of human blood is described by Pliny (lib. xxviii. cap. 105).
Beckherius says that human blood was employed in the treatment of epilepsy. Faustina, the wife of the philosophical emperor, Marcus Antoninus, anxious to have a child, drank the warm blood of a dying gladiator, and then shared her husband’s bed, and at once became pregnant, and brought forth the cruel Commodus. Human blood was also used in effecting “sympathetic cures.”—(“Medic. Microcos.” pp. 122, 128.)
But it was essential that the human blood so employed should be pure and undefiled; lovers who wished to increase the affection of their mistresses, were recommended to try an infusion of their own blood into the loved one’s veins. The blood of man and also that of some animals, notably the dog, sheep, etc., were employed in mania, delirium, cancer, etc. The method of transfusion was preferred. Epileptics would sometimes drink a draught of the warm blood caught gushing from the neck of a decapitated criminal; the blood of a man, just decapitated, drunk warm, cured epilepsy and restrained uterine hemorrhage.—(Etmuller, vol. ii. p. 272.)
Grimm alludes to the fact that the blood of innocent maids and boys was used as a remedy for leprosy; that of malefactors, in epilepsy.—(“Teut. Mythol.” vol. iii. p. 1173.)
See the discussion of this matter under the caption of “Human Skulls.” Consult the work “Blood-Covenant,” by Dr. H. C. Trumbull.