The medicine-bag is attached to the belt or carried in the hand. No other possession could be compared with it in value, and money could not buy one. It is buried with its owner.
As already hinted, the medicine-bag is not considered of medical import only; it is believed to have a power over all injurious influences. By “medicine” the Indian has reference to everything he cannot understand. Catlin and others are doubtless right in their opinion that it came from the French word for doctor, médecin. It is the manito or manitou of the Algonkin, the oki of the Iroquois, and the teotl of the Aztec. And, curious to observe, these words also mean serpent.
I may also explain here that the “medicine-man” is not alone the physician; he deals with the mysterious generally. There were three kinds: the Jossakeeds, or seers or prophets; the Medas, or medical practitioners; and the Wabenos, a class that indulged in night orgies.
In Miss Emerson’s book it is said that “the dress of the Medas of the celebrated Mandan Indians, whose tribe is now extinct, was a medley of the animal and vegetable kingdom. All anomalies in nature were used as of great medical effect in the construction of this professional guard. The skin of the yellow bear usually formed the most important feature of the dress, and to this was sometimes attached the skins of snakes and the hoofs of deer, goats, and antelopes.”[505] The appearance of such a “doctor” was surely sufficient to frighten away most of the evil spirits which were the source of human ills.
CHAPTER XVII.
PHARMACISTS’ SYMBOLS.
The art of the pharmacist is old; it is assuredly of prehistoric origin. The reader of Dioscorides or of Pliny is astonished at the number of herbs and other things used as medicines and the complexness of many popular prescriptions. Referring to the pharmacist, it is curiously observed, in “Ecclesiasticus,” that “of his works there shall be no end.”[506] In other days than ours there was evidently a morbid taste for the multiplication of remedies of doubtful worth,—a deplorable infirmity of many physicians.
It is stated by Ebers, in his “Egyptian Princess,” that each of the Egyptian temples had its laboratory and apothecary. There is a list of two hundred drugs which were kept in the temple of Edfu. But just when the preparation and sale of medicines became a special business cannot be stated. In early times it was customary for the physician to compound his own prescriptions, as is done in rural places yet. Mr. Fort remarks that “toward the conclusion of the third century the first indications present themselves of the existence of a class of [Roman] citizens to whose vigilant care was confided the preparation of medicaments ordered by attendant physicians.”[507] The same writer says: “The storage of medicinal supplies seems to have approximated the pharmacy in the twelfth century, although even earlier the word apothecary appears to have been interchangeable with the booth where assorted wares were offered at public sale.”[508] At the end of the twelfth century the Bishop of London was named apothecarius, or pharmacist, to King Henry,—a fact which proves that the art of Bolus was then, at least, highly esteemed.
Now, although the establishment of the pharmacist has mysteries in abundance connected with it, the special symbols pertaining to the business are but few. The chief and most characteristic one is the mortar and pestle. In Larwood and Hotten’s interesting book it is said: “One of the signs originally used exclusively by apothecaries was the mortar and pestle, their well-known implements for pounding drugs.”[509] In an attractive form and generally gilded, it is to be seen at nearly all pharmacies in this country. Only occasionally is it pictured. I know an instance in Philadelphia where Cupid is represented in connection with it; but this is as absurd an addition as the negro youth who is using the pestle in another. An eagle—the national bird—is sometimes represented hovering over it. The pestle used for grinding corn was deified by the Romans under the name of Pilumnus. In connection with the mortar it is highly spoken of in the sacred books of the Hindus.