The Anglo-Saxon clergy sanctioned the use of the relics of saints as having curative virtues in nearly all diseases. A hair from a saint's beard, moistened in holy water and taken inwardly, was a favorite remedy for fever.[116:1]
Direct healing power was also ascribed to the tombs of saints, and indeed to anything pertaining to the latter. In the popular view, sacred relics were not only potent to heal, but also brought good fortune. This was true in medieval times, but the early heathen nations had no such beliefs.[116:2] In a recent article in the "Century Magazine," March, 1908, entitled "Christianity and Health," Rev. Samuel McComb, D.D., averred that the relic of a dead superstition may achieve as much, in the cure of physical disorders, as faith in the living God.
The ecclesiastical miracles in the Middle Ages, and the healing wonders in our own time, attested as they are by the highest medical authorities, show what curative power lies in the mere psychological state of trust and confidence. Dr. A. T. Schofield says,[116:3] in explanation of the many seemingly miraculous cures worked at Lourdes and elsewhere, that all the causative changes take place in the unconscious mind, yet the patient is wholly ignorant of anything but the results in the body. Therefore, in such cases, radical cures may be effected instantaneously.
In a lecture on "Temples and Cults in Babylon and Assyria," during his Lowell Institute course at Boston, January 18, 1910, Dr. Morris Jastrow, Jr., spoke of incantation as a popular custom in ancient times.
It is difficult, he said, to draw the line between public and private cults. Divination by means of the liver was an official cult and bore only on public affairs, and there was in its determination a ritual. Astrology, on the contrary, was largely a private affair, and needed but an observation of the heavens, which was done without religious ceremony. When, however, a cult became very popular, the priests were not slow to add its ceremonies to their own.
A most important cult of this nature was incantation. This was against disease and misfortune. Disease was caused by a witch or demon who took possession of the sick one, and cure depended on the ability to get rid of the demon. The elements of fire and water had much to do with the combating of disease, and the two chief deities appealed to were Ea, god of water, and Marduk, god of the sun and fire. In both cases the idea was one of purification. Extended rituals were recited, questions were asked by the priests that demanded almost confessions for their replies.
The physicians of ancient Egypt blended science and superstition in their prescriptions. While fully appreciating the benefit of a stimulus to the patient's imagination, they did not, however, neglect the employment of medicinal remedies.
In a papyrus medical treatise of the sixteenth century b. c., discovered at Thebes in the winter of 1872-73, by the German Egyptologist George Ebers, are to be found numerous incantations and conjurations. Nevertheless the same treatise affords evidence of a careful preparation of complex recipes.[118:1] Some of the prescriptions in this document are considered by Miss Amelia B. Edwards to be of mythological origin, while others appear to have been derived from the medical lore of Syria.[118:2]
Egyptian medical papyri contain both prescriptions for remedies to be used for various ailments, and conjurations for the expulsion of demons, together with petitions for the present intervention of deities.[118:3]
The Chaldean magi also employed many formulas and incantations for repelling evil spirits and for the cure of disease. Specimens of such formulas are to be seen on clay tablets exhumed from the ruins of ancient Nineveh. They consist chiefly in a description of some disease, with the expression of a desire for deliverance from it, and a command enforcing its departure.[119:1] During the preparation of their medicines the ancient Egyptians offered prayers and invocations, of which the following is a specimen:
