The other reason for the reputation for truth is, that, for credulous folk, unlucky omens are too terrible to be put to the test. If they were freely tried, they would be detected as a mental tyranny, a popular fraud; and in a few generations would be remembered by the rustic classes, only as the learned now remember the foolish excitement of their forefathers in science, seeking the Elixir of Life and the Philosopher’s Stone. If dinner-parties of thirteen were to become the fashion, we should not see, as we often see now, the cautious arrangements of Christmas invitations, or even the timid compromise of bringing in a side-table to accommodate the thirteenth. But which of the credulous would dare to test these things? It reminds the writer of a doubt—still unsolved—whether the taste of parsley would cause a parrot to drop down dead. Parsley as a parrot-poison was heard of in childhood, not as a superstition, but as a physical fact. What if it were true? The if was too terrible. We had visions of our feathered gray ‘Prince Charlie’ seizing the green stuff in his hooked beak, and rolling off the perch in mortal agonies. So we disbelieved, but coward-like avoided the chance, just as all the world avoids thirteen at table.
As to superstitious cures, some of them contain slight elements of medicinal value; but most depend upon that influence upon the nerves which is well known to be capable of giving energy for a time and allaying pain. Some of the old cures were decidedly disagreeable and troublesome. The native of Devonshire who wanted to get rid of a wart was solemnly enjoined to steal a piece of meat, and after rubbing the wart with it, throw it over his left shoulder over a wall. The Hertfordshire villager, when afflicted with ague, might be cured if he would go to Berkhampstead, where oak-trees grew at the cross-roads; and after pegging himself by a lock of hair to the trunk of one of these trees, he was to give a vigorous jump, and rid himself at once of the ague and the tuft of hair. The loss of the hair was so painful, and the loss of the ague so doubtful, that the Berkhampstead folks many years ago ceased to go to ‘the cross-oaks.’ The ague, the toothache, and dog-bites were the subject of many charms. In the former two maladies, a nervous impression might go far to cure; and in the last, a charm against hydrophobia would protect the simple believer from the great peril that is in a brooding fear of madness. The ludicrous cures were a legion in themselves. It seems heartlessly unkind to give a poor dog the measles; but many an old nurse took a lock of hair from the nape of the sick child’s neck, made a sort of sandwich of it between bread-and-butter, and watched at the door to transfer, or fancy she had transferred, the measles to a stray dog—probably a stray dog, because only an ill-fed animal would take her bread. Equally unkind was it to strive to give our dumb friend the whooping-cough; but by the same process, with a bunch of hair and a piece of meat, the nurse could be guilty of that absurdity as well.
Have any of our readers ever encountered a toad with the whooping-cough? The Cheshire toads ought to be sometimes found crowing and whooping and in need of change of air; for the superstitious Cheshire woman whose child has the cough, knows that she has only to poke a toad’s head into her child’s mouth to transfer the whooping-cough to the toad. Query, Is the disease also transferred—and in that case, what are the alarming results—when the victim of whooping-cough gets rid of it by being passed nine times under and over a donkey? The cure for rickets is to pass the child under and over the donkey nine-times-nine turns. This was actually done in London as late as 1845; when a man and a woman, solemnly counting, passed the unfortunate child under and over the unsuspecting moke eighty-one times, in the midst of an admiring crowd. If there was one pass more or less, the charm would fail—a broad enough hint of the excuses that could be made when such cures as these were sought in vain. The eighty-one turns must have confused the counters’ arithmetic, as no doubt the child had personal objections, and lifted its voice aloud; and sore must have been the trial even to the patience of a donkey.
So, to sum up, we would suggest that superstitions keep their false character for truth, firstly, because those who observe them therein prove their own leaning towards ill-luck; secondly, because forecasts are vague, and interpretations can be traced somehow in the chances of life; thirdly, because the penalty of ill omens is so dreaded, that the credulous shrink from putting them to the test; fourthly, because there are nervous cures, and love-charms, and dreams, in which anxious consciousness points right—the wish being father to the thought; fifthly, victims of superstition are secretly pleased when (by chance) an unlucky omen comes true, and have a satisfaction even in relating their misfortunes; while, since no one tells of the cases that do not come true, every chance fulfilment is a new rivet in the chain that ought long ago to have fallen to pieces.
NOXIOUS MANUFACTURES.
There is just now a most wholesome activity in regard to the national health, and the public are peculiarly interested in the various details of our sanitary machinery. Of this, by no means the least important department is that instituted under the Alkali Works Regulation Act, 1881, or, in other words, the inspection of noxious works and factories. In connection with the pollution of rivers, this is an old grievance; but too little has hitherto been done to realise or to remedy the evil in its general effects upon the public health. So greatly, too, have works prejudicial to health increased of late years, that their inspection has been decided upon none too soon. Probably, it will never be known how far the death-rate has been influenced by this cause. It is, however, one of the unavoidable penalties of civilisation that we should live under unwholesome conditions of life.
A multitude of influences injurious to health spring into active existence with the development of commerce and the growth of luxury. Most of these are evident enough. All the elements, indeed, are equally guilty. The earth, air, fire, and water, are allied against civilised humanity; and modern science is constantly bringing to light disagreeable facts in this connection. We have long lived in the comfortable belief that Mother Earth was the great purifier. The reverse is, it seems, nearer the truth. Years after the germs of infection have been consigned to the ground, they have been disinterred, and found to be not a whit diminished in virulence. Archæologists should, we are told, beware of handling newly found relics, lest, perchance, they should contract some archaic disease. Even mummies, it appears, in spite of their venerable respectability, are objects of legitimate suspicion! Fire, too, has a dreary catalogue of sins to answer for. It not only robs us of much of the oxygen, of which those of us who live in the towns have so scanty a supply, but it gives us in exchange unconsumed carbon in quantities which fill the air with smut. In smoke alone it furnishes us with food for reflection—and digestion—and probably will continue to do so for some time to come.
Again, water is the most insidious enemy of all. The most indispensable of the elements—and we are reminded of our obligations to it pretty frequently—it is credited with doing the greatest harm. In league with unnatural substances, it has developed such an affinity for noxious matter that it appears that nothing short of boiling can possibly enable us to drink it with any security. To most people, cold boiled water will not seem a very attractive beverage, but it has the advantage of being in many ways a safe one.
The air, too, is anything but true to the trust committed to her charge. We have long confidingly believed in her good-will. Our sewers, drains, and chimneys discharge their pestilent exhalations into the air; but instead of carrying these away into space, she receives them only to bestow them upon us again.
The outlook is indeed gloomy, and unless we make some progress in sanitary science, it is not a little difficult to see how we are to continue to support the burden of civilised existence.