A Mrs. Joanna Stephens was the proprietor of a lithontriptic, which for a long time had a great repute, and was even thought worthy the attention of parliament, who voted her five thousand pounds for making known the composition of it, a favourable report of its efficacy having been given by the gentlemen who were appointed trustees to examine into its pretensions. Subsequent experience has shown that it is not so well adapted to the ends proposed, being a medley of soap and ill-prepared alkaline substances, very nauseous and oppressive to the stomach.
The recent and valuable discovery of lithotrity, now practised by Baron Heurteloup and others, namely, the application of mechanical power for the destruction of the stone, without the use of the knife, is likely to be of more signal advantage than internal remedies, and, though it is candidly stated by its supporters not to be applicable in every case, yet it may frequently be performed without either pain or inconvenience.
The anodyne necklace, which was the result of some ridiculous superstition respecting the efficacy of Sir Hugh’s bones, is still gravely offered for sale, to facilitate the cutting of the teeth. In 1717, a “philosophical treatise” was published, wherin it says, “The effluvia and atoms, driven off by the heat of the body, bear such a tendency to the ailing part, as the loadstone does to iron, and that they will never leave off acting till they have given ease, and consequently it is a thing most capable of curing sympathetically the diseases of a human body, of any thing in the whole world. Since this famed necklace has been published, the bills of mortality have so decreased, as to be less than ever they have been known to be.”
But the summum bonum, with which this series of medical deceptions may appropriately be closed, was the “universal medicine, or virtues of the magnetical antimonial cup, addressed to the houses of parliament by John Evans, minister and preacher of God’s word. It is warranted to be alone the phœnix and miracle of all physical miracles: the elixir of life, balsam of nature. It containeth mystically and essentially the quintessence of all minerals and vegetables, and magnetically sympathiseth with all animals.”
In spite, however, of such admirable never-failing specifics, which, it would seem, ought to have exterminated every malady from the face of the earth, diseases, hydra-headed, still baffle their assailants, and return to the charge with renewed force and provoking obstinacy. But the matter is too serious for the subject of a joke. If even practitioners who have conscientiously studied their profession are unavoidably in some degree open to the old charge of “pouring medicines, of which they know little, into a body of which they know less,” what must be said, or what ought to be the punishment, of such villanous pretenders as those who have been described in this chapter,—men without talent or education, and who seem to think that, like charity, impudence covers a multitude of sins!
CONCLUDING CHAPTER.
MISCELLANEOUS.
Superstition of the Hindoos—The Malays—Asiatic superstitions—The Chinese—Miracle of the Blessed Virgin—Stratagem of an architect—Michael Angelo’s Cupid—Statue of Charles I.—Ever-burning sepulchral lamps—Lamp in the tomb of Pallas—The art of mimicry—Superiority of the ancients—Fable of Proteus—Personation of the insane Ajax—Archimimes at funerals—Demetrius the cynic converted—Acting portraits and historical pictures—War dances of the American Indians—The South Sea Bubble—Gay the poet—Law’s Mississippi scheme—Numerous bubbles—Speculations in 1825.
Such has been the extent of the credulity of the human mind, that it would require many volumes to enumerate the whole of its singular vagaries. Our object in compiling such a work cannot be accomplished without greatly condensing those accounts which historians and travellers have communicated; we therefore devote the concluding chapter to summary notices of several matters, that to enlarge upon would defeat the intent of this publication.
The religion of India is based upon the grossest superstition; divided into castes, the persons of the Brahmins are sacred; the food of the Hindoos is entirely of vegetables, as it was in the time of Alexander; widows were burned alive to insure their eternal happiness; one hundred and fifty thousand persons assemble yearly at the temple of Juggernaut in honour of a blind deity, precipitating themselves voluntarily before its wheels, where they are crushed to death, thus instantly as they believe, entering a blessed immortality.