Frommann believed with Von Helmont that there was nothing superstitious about such cures, because there were no rites and no incantations used. (Idem, p. 1033.) But later on, he mentions having heard a woman (who was trying one of these cures by rolling some of her son’s hair in wax and burying the wax ball in an incision in an apple-tree) recite certain words, which she declined to repeat for him when asked; hence he was in some doubt about her particular case (p. 1034). He quotes the English Count of Digby as stating that he knew of a nurse who carelessly allowed some of a baby’s excrement to be burned up in a fire; the result was the child suffered terribly from excoriation of the fundament (p. 1038). The way in which a cure was effected in this case was the “sympathetic” one of placing the baby’s excrements for three days in a basin filled with cold water, and exposing in a cold place (p. 1039).
Dropsy was cured by hanging the patient’s urine (enclosed in a pig’s bladder) up in a chimney, and neglecting all other remedies. “Urinam ejus recentem vesica suilla conclusam in camino suspendi, curavi.” (Idem, p. 1047.) A young virgin was cured of a tertian fever by giving to a hen bread made with the urine voided during the paroxysms. The girl recovered; the hen died. “Virginis cujusdam febre intermittente tertiana laborantis urinam calidam in paroxysmo redditam gallinæ familicæ cum pane mistam exhiberi curavi” (p. 1047).
See also notes from Samuel Augustus Flemming, under “Perspiration.”
Dr. Joseph Lanzoni did not believe that any good results followed the suspension above the earth, in a sow’s bladder, of human urine in cases of suppression of urine, as was often to be noticed among Jews and some of the religious orders. “Urinæ suppressionem minime referare vesicam suis suspensam, quæ non tetigit terram, quod nonnulli volunt, observavi in quodam Religioso et Hebræo.”—(“Phemer. Physic-Medic.,” Leipsig, 1694, vol. i. p. 49.)
Paullini taught that fevers of all kinds could be cured by pouring the patient’s urine into a fish-pond. “Such of the fish as drink of that water,” he says, “will receive the fever, which will leave the sick man.”
For the “sympathetic” cure of epilepsy, all the clothing worn by the patient during the paroxysm, even his shoes, were to be carefully burned, and the ashes cast into flowing water. More than this; if, during the attack, the patient had defecated, the ordure was collected, and with everything touched by it, burned up with the same care. “Hominis epilepticum insultum primum patientis sive junior sit, sive senior indumenta omnia et vestes indusium, calcei, tibialis, et similia sub dio comburantur, et in cinerem redigantur; cinis vero in aquam fluvialem secundum flumen projiciatur. Si autem jam ante homo epilepsia laboravit, ad alvi excrementa in ipso paroxysmo reddita attendatur; quæ si adest res commaculata cum ipsis excrementis modo jam dicto comburatur.”—(Schurig, “Chylologia,” p. 1013, quoting Frommann.)
Schurig gives the recipe of Johannes Philippus ab Hertodt for the preparation of a “sympathetic” powder, which serves to inform us as to the incoherent ideas of the practitioners of a couple of centuries ago. Freely translated, it reads, “Take of a healthy human mummy, moistened with a little urine; let it be dried in a place exposed to an east wind, but not to the sun, until it shall be reduced to powder; this is to be mixed with an equal weight of cream of tartar, and the ‘sympathetic powder of vitriol,’ prepared according to formula, in the dog-days; or of the salt of Hungarian vitriol, heated to whiteness in a furnace.” A pinch of this sympathetic powder should be sprinkled upon the feces of the sick person, or upon a cloth dipped in his urine, and then preserved in a cool place. Its efficacy was vouched for in the highest terms: “Effective curat omnia vulnera, ulcera, febres petechiales, et urina fabulum, periculosissimas hæmorrhagias puerperarum, arthriditem quamcunque, podagram et illam vagam dictam, pulmonis apostemata, hæmorrhoides nimias, narium fluxus immodicos, capitis dolores, catarrhos, fluxos albos mulierum, menstrua copiosa, morsus canis rabidi, vel alterium cujuscunque animalis, item mammas ulceratas.”—(Schurig, pp. 775, 776.)
Schurig adds a number of these cures for dysentery, such as placing the dejecta in the retort used for the distillation of vitriol, ... sprinkling such dejecta with salt, or with vitriol, or mixing them with hot ashes and live coals; preferably, the excrement to be thus employed should be the first ejected having a bloody tinge.
“The various modes of application of these remedies are too long for insertion here, but are valuable to the student as showing how deep-seated was the belief in the occult properties of the excreta themselves.”—(“Chylologia,” pp. 785, 786.)
The following is an old French “sympathetic” recipe for the cure of all kinds of colic: “Pour la colique ce sera ici la recette d’un vilain remède, mais pourtant sympathique en ceux qui sont tourmentés de la colique, car s’ils mettent sous la selle percée bien fermée de la fiente de vache fraichement recueillie, et qu’ils pissent et déchargent les excréments de leur ventre dessus, par sympathie sans difficulté ils auront du soulagement.”—(Lazarus Neyssonier, quoted by Schurig, “Chylologia,” pp. 784, 785.)