Etmuller also shows that these skulls were ground up and administered to epileptic patients, many modes of preparation and administration being given.
Flemming wrote that human skull was considered a potent remedy in all ailments for which practitioners would administer human brain,—that is, in nerve troubles and in epilepsy. Preferably, the skull should be taken from a corpse which had died a violent death,—“Quæ e cadavere violenta morte extincto est desumta.” It was an ingredient in many preparations bearing the high-sounding titles of “majesterium epilepticum,” “specificum cephalicum,” etc. As a powder, ground raw or calcined, it was sometimes administered as a febrifuge and in paralysis.—(“De Remediis,” p. 10.)
Mr. W. W. Rockhill states that the Lamas of Thibet use skulls in their religious ceremonies, but reject those which smell like human urine. “Blood of a dead man’s skull” used to check hemorrhage.—(Pettigrew, “Med. Superst.,” p. 113.)
“There is a divination-bowl,—an uncanny object, made of the inverted cranium of a Buddhist priest.”—(“Tidbits from Tibet,” in the “Evening Star,” Washington, D. C., Nov. 3, 1888, describing the W. W. Rockhill collection in the National Museum.)
Before the coming of the whites the savages of Australia employed human skulls as drinking-vessels,—“human skulls with the sutures stopped up with a resinous gum.”—(“Native Tribes of S. Australia,” Adelaide, 1879, received through the kindness of the Royal Society, Sydney, New South Wales, F. B. Kyngdon, Secretary.)
“The powder of a man’s bones, and particularly that made from a skull found in the earth, was esteemed in Scotland as a cure for epilepsy. As usual, the form runs that the bones of a man will cure a man, and the bones of a woman will cure a woman. Grose notes the merits of the moss found growing upon a human skull, if dried and powdered and taken as snuff, in cases of headache.” (Black, “Folk-Medicine,” p. 96.) He also informs us that the same beliefs and the same remedy obtained in England and Ireland.
“Among the articles which may be regarded more as household furniture ... are the dried human skulls, which are found wrapped in banana-leaves in the habitation of nearly every well-regulated Dyak family. They are hung up on the wall, or depend from the roof. The lower jaw is always wanting, as the Dyak finds it more convenient to decapitate his victim below the occiput, leaving the lower jaw attached to his body.”—(“Head-Hunters of Borneo,” Carl Bock, London, 1881, p. 199.)
The careful manner in which the Mandans preserved the skulls of their dead, as narrated by Catlin, is recalled to mind.
MOSS GROWING ON HUMAN SKULLS.
The medicinal use of the moss growing on the skulls of those who had died violent deaths is mentioned by Von Helmont.—(“Oritrika,” p. 768.)