Nasty recipes: illusory lights.
The last two items are very characteristic of Albert’s section on quadrupeds, where the medicinal and other properties of such parts as stercus, virga, and testiculus are incessantly mentioned, and are sometimes used in charms, as in the following: “Si virga lupi in alicuius nomine viri vel mulieris ligetur, non poterit coire donec nodus ille solutus fuerit.”[1845] The saliva of a fasting human being cures abscesses and removes scars and blotches.[1846] It kills serpent or scorpion, if it falls into its mouth or wound so as to reach its inner parts. If the tip of an arrow or sword has touched the lips of a fasting man, it inflicts a poisonous wound, say those who have tested it. Others say that if the wax and dirt from dogs’ ears are smeared on wicks of new cotton, and these are placed in a crucible in green oil and lighted, the heads of persons present will appear entirely bald.[1847] This sort of half-magical, half-chemical experiment with various combustible or illuminating compositions, which are supposed to produce optical or other illusions, is not infrequently met with in medieval manuscripts, especially alchemical ones, and we shall in a later chapter encounter further specimens thereof in works ascribed to Albert himself.
Dragons.
Albert is rather unusually sceptical concerning dragons, which are generally the theme of so many marvelous stories. That a dragon is large enough to crush an elephant with a twist of its tail, that the Ethiopians eat the flesh of dragons to cool themselves, that dragons are afraid of thunder and therefore enchanters imitate it with drums in order to capture dragons and ride on them through space,[1848]—all such assertions Albert treats as rumors rather than tested facts. He also suggests that meteors or flaming vapors have been mistaken for dragons flying through the air and breathing forth fire. We have already, however, heard his tale of a serpent with a human face.
The basilisk.
Albert still believes, moreover, that the mere glance and hiss of the basilisk are fatal. But while the reptile’s glance will kill as far as its vision extends, its hiss is not fatal as far as it can be heard but only as far as it is propagated by the basilisk’s breath.[1849] Albert rejects as neither true nor reasonable Pliny’s assertion that if a man sees a basilisk first, his glance is fatal to it. “Nor do Avicenna and Semerion, philosophers who tell what they have experienced, mention this.” But Albert repeats Pliny’s story of the horseman who was killed by touching with the end of his long lance a corpse slain by a basilisk. He rejects, however, as false and impossible the notion that the basilisk is generated from a cock’s egg, and the books of wise philosophers do not support the assertion that there is a flying variety of basilisk. But scattering the ashes of a basilisk expels spiders and other venomous creatures, and hence in antiquity its ashes were scattered in temples. Hermes says that silver rubbed with its ash takes on the splendor and weight and solidity of gold; Hermes also teaches that the basilisk is generated in glass, but Albert interprets this as an allusion to some alchemical elixir by which metals are transmuted.
Remedies for falcons and mad dogs.
Very amusing are the detailed recipes for every ailment of the birds in the chapters on the infirmities of falcons. [1850] These appear to be culled chiefly from the works on falconry of the Emperor Frederick and of King William, one of the Norman line which preceded him in the kingdom of Sicily. To make the birds fierce one is advised to feed them flesh soaked in urine. If a falcon develops a cataract, one should inject into its eye a mixture of pulverized fennel seed and the milk of a woman bearing a male child. Several prayers and incantations are recommended for use when taking up the falcon in the morning, when releasing it in fowling, and in order to preserve it from injury from eagles. In the last case the words to be repeated are, “Leo conquers of the tribe of Judah, root of David, Alleluia.” Albert adds, however, “But these last items,” meaning probably the incantations, “are not so reasonable as the first,” meaning probably the more purely medicinal directions. Equally diverting is a cure of a mad dog borrowed by Albert from a king of Valencia. For nine days the hound should be so immersed in hot water that his hind legs barely touch the ground while his fore legs are held erect. After that his head should be shaved and his hair well plucked out so that the skin is wounded. Then he should be anointed with beet juice and ducked often and soaked in the same juice. “And if he eats anything, give him some pith of the elder tree, for it will do him good. And if this treatment fails to benefit him within the space of seven days, kill him, for he is incurable.”[1851]
Habits and remedies of animals.
Albert’s treatise on animals not only ascribes marvelous properties and medicinal virtues to various portions of their carcasses, but also continues to some extent the tradition of crediting them with semi-human intelligence and medical knowledge. Albert discredits, however, the report of the adultery of the lioness with the leopard and her craftiness in concealing it, and he also rejects as contrary to the wise provision of nature the statement that the lion suffers continually from quartan fever.[1852] But he believes that a sick lion cures itself by eating an ape or drinking the blood of a dog. Even the tortoise (tortuca?), although it seems to Albert a sort of reptile and lacking in “noble virtues of the soul,” yet from mere natural sagacity eats wild origanum after it has eaten the viper in order to overcome the chill of the venom by the heat of the herb.[1853] And someone in Aristotle’s time learned by experience that it will not eat a viper except in a place where this herb is available, and that if the herb is removed while it is eating the viper it will die from want of it. Avicenna tells a similar experience of an old man who was an experienced hunter and deserving credence. He saw a bird of slow movement and weak flight fighting with a viper. As often as it was wounded, it would retreat, eat some of a certain herb, and then return renewed to the fight. The observer covertly removed the herb and when the bird returned again and failed to find it, it raised a great outcry and died. From the old hunter’s description of the plant’s shape and color Avicenna judged it to be wild lettuce (lectuca agrestis).