MOSS GROWING ON THE HEAD OF A STATUE.
“It is asserted that a plant growing on the head of a statue gathered in the lappet of any one of the garments, and then attached with a red string to the neck, is an instantaneous cure for the headache.” (Pliny, lib. xxiv. c. 106.) This would seem to be germane to the idea of moss growing on the human skull.
WOOL.
“The ancient Romans attributed to wool a degree of religious importance even; and it was in this spirit that they enjoined that the bride should touch the door-posts of her husband’s house with wool.”—(Pliny, lib. xxix. cap. 10.)
In Cumberland, England, a reputed cure for earache is the application of a bit of wool from a black sheep, moistened in cow’s urine. Possibly it is a modified form of this latter notion that is found at Mount Desert, where it is said that the wool must be wet in new milk; while in Vermont, to be efficacious, it is thought that the wool must be gathered from the left side of the neck of a perfectly black sheep. In other localities, negro’s wool is a reputed cure for the same pain.
It seems almost incredible, whatever their origin, that remedies of so offensive a character as many of those above given can still retain a place even in the rudest traditional pharmacopœia; but there seems to be in the uneducated human mind a sort of reverence for or faith in that which is in itself disagreeable or repulsive. This idea apparently rules instead of rational judgment in the selection of many popular remedies in the shape of oils of the most loathsome description, such as “skunk-oil,” “angle-worm oil” (made by slowly rendering earth-worms in the sun), “snake-oil” of various kinds, etc.—(“Animal and Plant Lore,” Mrs. Fanny D. Bergen, in “Popular Science Monthly,” New York, September, 1888, p. 658.)
In the application of human blood and human skulls just presented, one feature must be patent to the most superficial student; in the treatment of epilepsy, the blood or the skull was, preferentially, to be that of a dying gladiator or a criminal. There was evidently a reason for this, beyond mere expediency.
Gladiatorial games were instituted as sacred games, in which the victims to be offered in sacrifice were determined by the destiny of the combat. Long after man’s better reason and better nature had revolted against the loathsome rites of human sacrifice, religion and custom still held him in their clutches. He would not offer up his own progeny, as of yore, but he still continued to immolate captives taken in war, as so many gladiators had been, or offenders against the laws.
The victim generally shared with the sacrificing priest the honor of representing the deity in whose name his life was to be taken. Consequently he became holy; everything belonging to him became “medicine,” and in no disease could it be administered more efficaciously than in epilepsy,—the essentially “sacred disease” (morbus sacer) sent direct from the gods.
Moreover, criminals executed for violations of the laws of conquering nations, or for infractions of the discipline, or contempt of the doctrines of a triumphant religion, might, by the conquered rustics, who still cherished a half-concealed veneration for the old rulers and supplanted rites, be looked upon as martyrs, whose bones, blood, and crania would relieve disease and drive away misfortune.