[92] The African deity, Obatala, is symbolized by a whitened gourd provided with a cover, which is placed in the temples.—(“Fetichism,” Rev. P. Baudin, New York, 1885, p. 14.)
[93] John de Laet, lib. vi. chap. vii. p. 202.
[94] See Francis Parkman’s “Jesuits in North America,” the works of John Gilmary Shea, and Kipp’s “Jesuit Missions.”
[95] Pliny contains a number of references to plants to which mystic properties were attached, which could only be dug up after a circle had been traced about them with a sword, prayers recited in certain postures, etc.—(See among others, the “Mandragora,” in lib. xxv. c. 94.)
[96] Copious references to color-symbolism will be found in the works of Von Helmont (p. 1060); Frazer, “Totemism;” J. Owen Dorsey; Dr. W. J. Hoffman; Black, “Folk-Medicine;” Pettigrew, “Medical Superstitions;” Andrew Lang, “Myth, Ritual, and Religion;” Garrick Mallery, and many others; also in an article entitled “Notes on the Cosmogony and Theogony of the Mojaves of the Colorado River,” published in the “Journal of American Folk-Lore,” July-September, 1889, by the author of this volume. In the last it is shown that the idea in the aboriginal mind is that each color is a medicine, and that the rainbow, being a combination of them all, is a panacea; but it should be pointed out that, even in the days of Dr. Joseph Lanzoni (1694) there were some bold medical scholars who openly derided such notions as absurd and irrational.
[97] There can scarcely be a doubt that pharmacy was, in its incipiency, distinctly and unequivocally religious in character. Grimm is full of the matter. He tells us that “the culling and fetching of herbs had to be done at particular times and according to long-established forms.... Shortly before sunrise when the day is young.... The viscum was gathered at new moon, Prima Luna.... Some had to be gathered in darkness, others plucked by the light of the moon, generally the new moon; others by a person fasting; others before hearing thunder that year.... In digging up an herb, the Roman custom was first to pour mead and honey round it, as if to propitiate the earth, then cut round the root with a sword, looking towards the east (or west), and the moment it is pulled out, to lift it on high without letting it touch the ground.... A great point was to guard against cold iron touching the root; hence gold or red-hot iron was used in cutting.... In picking or pulling up, the operator used the left hand in certain cases; he had to do it unbelted and unshod, and to state for whom and for what purpose it was done.” Grimm complains of the scantiness of German tradition on this point; yet, he finds that the “hyoscyamus,” or henbane, had to be taken from the ground by a naked virgin, using the little finger of the right hand and standing on the right foot. The French formulæ for such purposes require: “Quelques uns pour se garantir de maléfices ou de charmes vont cueillir de grand matin, à jeun, sans avoir lavé leurs mains, sans avoir prié Dieu, sans parler à personne, et sans saluer personne en leur chemin, une certaine plante, et la mettent ensuite sur la personne maléficiée ou ensorcelée. Ils portent sur eux une racine de chicorée, qu’ils ont touché à genoux avec de l’or et de l’argent le jour de la Nativité de Saint Jean Baptiste un peu avant le soleil levé, et qu’ils ont ensuite arrachée de terre avec un ferrement et beaucoup de cérémonies, après l’avoir exorcisée avec l’épée de Judas Machabée.” The herb was to be “neither fretted nor squashed.” “The Romans had a strange custom of laying a sieve in the road, and using the stalks of grass that grew up through it for medical purposes.” (Grimm, “Teut. Mythol.” vol. iii. p. 1195 et seq.) He fully describes the ceremony for gathering the mandrake, and also refers to the mistletoe, but adds nothing to the information in these pages. In many of the prescriptions given by Marcellus, which prescriptions were generally of a magical character (tempus, A.D. 380), there are injunctions to “observe chastity.”—(See “Saxon Leechdoms,” lib. i. pp. 20, 29.)
Again, in “Saxon Leechdoms,” vol. i. p. 11, we learn that certain medicinal plants were to be pulled in a prescribed manner, the name of the patient to be murmured at the same moment (quoting from Pliny, lib. xxi., xxii.; again, idem, vol. i. p. 14, quoting Pliny, lib. xii. c. 16.)
The herb mandrake could not be pulled for medicinal purposes except by a pure man. “Its virtue is so mickle and famous that it will immediately flee from an unclean man” (idem, vol. i. p. 245); again, in gathering the periwinkle, “when thou shalt pluck this wort, thou shalt be free from every uncleanness” (vol. i. p. 313).
The belief in regard to the manner of pulling the mandrake exists among the Turks: “The pacha told me of a curiosity to be seen at Orfa.... This curiosity consisted of two small figures, made of a peculiar shrub, partly trained and partly twisted and partly cut into the form of a man and woman, very rudely done, and stained over to give them the appearance of having grown in that shape.... The inhabitants, in order to obtain them, tied a dog by a string to each figure, and then went a long distance off. As soon as the dog pulled the string, and drew the creature out of the ground, the noise it made killed the dog.”—(“Assyrian Discoveries,” George Smith, New York, 1876, p. 161.)
[98] Hippocrates did not believe that epilepsy was a “divine” disease, sent by the gods; such an idea was, in his opinion, fostered by quacks for personal advantage.—(See the edition of his work by Francis Adams, Sydenham Society, London, 1849.)