Alexander of Tralles, a Greek physician of the sixth century, recommended a verse of Homer for the cure of colic. In our advanced stage of culture, we should hardly be content with such a carminative, but should rather employ one of the modern aromatic remedies of the pharmacopœia. In the classic age, however, as well as at later epochs, the use of verbal charms for the cure of disease was forbidden under severe penalties. The case is recorded of a woman of Achaia, who was stoned to death for attempting to cure a fever by the repetition of spells. This was in the fourth century, during the reign of Valentinian.[123:1]
The Greeks invoked Asklepios, the god of Medicine, and his daughters Hygeia, the goddess of Health, and Panacea, the All-Healer, who personified attributes of their father. Apollo, too, under the title of Pæan, was worshipped as a health-deity and physician of the gods. He was addressed both as a healer and destroyer; as one who inflicted diseases, but who likewise vouchsafed remedies for their cure. But there appears to have been no incompatibility between the offering of prayers to these heathen deities, and the use of magical spells, formulas and verses. For religion, the healing art, and magic seem to have been inextricably blended in the early days of Greece and Rome, notwithstanding the teachings of Hippocrates, who first strove to liberate medicine from the superstition which enslaved it.
The complex character of therapeutic methods in vogue among the ancient classical peoples, finds a modern parallel in the case of American aborigines. In various tribes the functions of priest, doctor, and wizard are assumed by one and the same person.[124:1] Under the influence of civilization the leech and parson have their distinct professions, and the rôle of the magician loses much of its importance. In the present advanced stage of culture, many physicians devote themselves to particular branches of their art, and each human organ, when ailing, may invoke assistance from its own special Esculapian.
The Romans of the fourth century, says Edward Gibbon,[124:2] "dreaded the mysterious power of spells and incantations, of potent herbs and mysterious rites, which could extinguish or recall life, inflame the passions of the soul, blast the works of creation, and extort from reluctant demons the secrets of futurity." They held firmly to the belief that this miraculous power was possessed by certain old hags and enchantresses, who lived in poverty and obscurity. The modern popular ideas about witches having compacts with evil spirits, whereby the former are enabled to operate supernaturally, appear to be of very ancient origin, as is evident from the folk-lore of different peoples.
Magical arts, wrote Gibbon, although condemned alike by popular opinion and by the laws of Rome, were continually practised, because they tended to gratify the most imperious passions of men's hearts.
Among pagan nations prayers were somewhat akin to incantations, and were not always regarded as petitions; but their value was supposed to inhere in the power of the uttered words, a power which even the gods were unable to withstand.[125:1] The mystic verses by means of which Athenian physicians anciently invoked supernatural aid, were called carmina, charms,[125:2] their magical nature was incompatible with a purely devotional spirit, and they were therefore incantations rather than prayers. Invocations of deities and magic spells have one point in common; both are appeals to spirits believed to possess supernatural powers. This very kinship may render verbal charms the more obnoxious to devout people, on the same principle which led Lord Bacon to declare superstition to be the more repulsive on account of its similitude to religion, "even as it addeth deformity to an ape to be so like a man." In the prayers offered by the Romans to their deities, the choice of apt phrases was considered to be of greater importance than the mental attitude of the petitioner, because of the prevalent belief in the efficacy of appropriate words per se.
Hence, we are told, when prayers for the welfare of the State were publicly recited by a magistrate, it was customary for a high-priest to dictate suitable expressions, lest an unhappy selection of words provoke divine anger.[126:1] Popular credence attributed to the classic writer Marcus Varro (b. c. 116-28), sometimes called "the most learned of the Romans," the faculty of curing tumors by the direct expression of mental force, namely, by means of words.[126:2]
The Romans believed that the magical power of prayers was enhanced if they were uttered with a loud voice. Hence a saying attributed to Seneca: "So speak to God as though all men heard your prayers." Of great repute among the healing-spells of antiquity was the cabalistic word Abracadabra, which occurs first in a medical treatise entitled "Præcepta de Medicina," by the Roman writer Quintus Serenus Samonicus, who flourished in the second century. An inverted triangular figure, formed by writing this word in the manner hereinafter described, was much valued as an antidote against fevers; cloth or parchment being the material originally used for the inscription.
Thou shalt on paper write the spell divine,
Abracadabra called, on many a line,
Each under each in even order place,
But the last letter in each line efface;
As by degrees the elements grow few,
Still take away, but fix the residue,
Till at the last one letter stands alone,
And the whole dwindles to a tapering cone.
Tie this about the neck with flaxen string,
Mighty the good 't will to the patient bring.
Its wondrous potency shall guard his bed,
And drive disease and death far from his head.[127:1]
Another favorite therapeutic spell, no less venerable than Abracadabra, was the mystical word Abraxas, which was first used by Basilides, a leader of the Egyptian Gnostics in the second century. This word, engraved on an antique precious stone, sometimes accompanied by a magical emblem and meaningless inscription, was commonly used as a medical amulet, and was well adapted to fire the imagination of ignorant patients.