HUMAN SKULL.—BRAIN.—MOSS GROWING ON HUMAN SKULL.—MOSS GROWING ON STATUE.—LICE.
Democritus thought, in his Memoirs, quoted by Pliny, that “the skull of a malefactor is most efficacious.... While, for the treatment of others, that of one who has been a friend or guest is required.” (Pliny, lib. xxviii. c. 2.) ... “Skull of a man who has been slain,” and “whose body remains unburnt.... Skull of a man who has been hanged.”—(Idem.)
“Xenocrates, who, says Galen, flourished two generations or sixty years before him, writes with an air of confidence on the good effects to be obtained by eating of the human brain, flesh, or liver; by swallowing in drink the burnt or unburnt bones of the head, shin, or fingers of a man, or the blood.”—(“Saxon Leechdoms,” lib. i. p. 18.)
“Against a boring worm ... burn to ashes a man’s head-bone or skull; put it on with a pipe.”—(Idem, vol. ii. p. 127, article “Leech Book.”)
Paracelsus gives the recipe for distilling “The Oyle of the Skull of a Man.... Take the skull of a man that was never buried, and beate it into powder.” (“The Secrets of Physicke,” Theophrastus Paracelsus, Eng. transl. London, 1633, p. 97.) “The dose is three grains against the falling sickness.”—(Idem.)
Schurig notes that the human skull is a remedy for the falling sickness.—(See “Chylologia.”)
The skull of a man was used for diseases of men; that of a woman, for diseases of women.—(See “Rare Secrets in Physicke,” collected by the Comtesse of Kent, London, 1654, p. 3.)
Beckherius prescribed it in cephalic affections, epilepsy, paralysis, apoplexy, vertigo, etc., taken in powder, or raw, simply or in combination.—(“Medicus Microcosmus,” p. 199 et seq.)
But the skull was, preferentially, “Cranii humani nunquam sepulti” (p. 217); or, “Cranii humani violenter mortui” (p. 266). Moss from such a skull was also used medicinally (idem, p. 237). If possible, it should be that of a man who had been executed on a scaffold, “patibula.”
“Powder of a man’s bones, burnt, chiefly of the skull that is found in the earth, given, cureth the epilepsy. The bones of a man cureth a man, the bones of a woman, cureth a woman.” But the patient had to abstain from wine for nine days.—(“The Poor Man’s Physician,” John Moncrief, Edin. 1716, p. 70.)