“Another thing universally acknowledged, and one which I am ready to believe with the greatest pleasure, is the fact that if the door-posts are only touched with the menstruous fluid, all spells of the magicians will be neutralized.”—(Pliny, lib. xxviii. cap. 24.)
“Osthanes, who accompanied Xerxes, the Persian king, in his expedition against Greece, ... the first person, so far as I can ascertain, who wrote upon magic.” (Idem, lib. xxx. cap. 3.) He adds, speaking of magic: “Britannia still cultivates this art, and that with ceremonials so august that she might almost seem to have been the first to communicate them to Persia.”—(Idem, lib. xxx. cap. 4.)
For the relief of infants from phantasm, wrap some goat-dung in a cloth and hang it about the child’s neck. “Ad infantes qui fantasmatibus vexantur, capræ stercus in panno involutum, et collo suspensum remedium est infantibus qui fantasmata patiuntur.”—(Sextus Placitus, “De Capro.”)
“With Plinius was contemporary Joseph or Josephus. The tales about the mandrake, much later on, and found in the Saxon herbarium, are traceable to what he says of the Baaras,—an herb that runs away from the man that wants to gather it, and won’t stop until one throws on it οὖρον γυναικὸς ἢ τὸ ἔμμηνον αἷμα, for nastiness is often an element of mysteries; and even then it kills the dog that draws it out. It is not certain that mandrake berries are meant in Genesis, xxx. 14.”—(“Saxon Leechdoms,” vol. i. p. 16.)
Dulaure says that the repute in which mandrake was held was due to its resemblance to the human form, and to the lies told to the superstitious about it, one being that “ils disent qu’il est engendré dessous un gibet de l’urine d’un larron pendu.”—(“Des Différens Cultes,” Paris, 1825, vol. ii. p. 255, footnote.)
“For a man haunted by apparitions work a drink of a white hound’s thost or dung in bitter ley; wonderfully it healeth.” (“Saxon Leechdoms,” vol. i. p. 365.) This same “thost,” or dung, was recommended in the treatment of nits and other insects on children, for dropsy (internally), and to drive away the “Dwarves,” who were believed to have seized upon the patient afflicted with convulsions.
“Doors of houses are smeared with cow-dung and nimba-leaves, as a preservative from poisonous reptiles.”—(Moor’s “Hindu Pantheon,” London, 1810, p. 23.)
“In some parts of Western Africa, when a man returns home after a long absence, before he is allowed to visit his wife he must wash his person with a particular fluid, and receive from the sorcerer a certain mark on his forehead, in order to counteract any magic spell which a stranger woman may have cast upon him in his absence, and which might be communicated through him to the women of his village.”—(“The Golden Bough,” Frazer, vol. i. p. 157.)
We are not informed what this “particular fluid” was, but enough has been adduced concerning the African’s belief in the potency of human urine in cases similar to the above to warrant the insertion at this point.
“On returning from an attempted ascent of the great African mountain, Kilimanjaro, which is believed by the neighboring tribes to be tenanted by dangerous demons, Mr. New and his party, as soon as they reached the borders of the inhabited country, were disenchanted by the inhabitants, being sprinkled with ‘a professionally prepared liquor, supposed to possess the potency of neutralizing evil influences, and removing the spell of wicked spirits.’”—(Idem, vol. i. p. 151, quoting Charles New, “Life, Wanderings, and Labors in Eastern Africa.”)