CHAPTER IV.

Medicine formed a part of the Occult Science : it was not long exercised by the priests ; diseases were supposed to be sent by malevolent Genii, or the irritated Gods ; the cures were considered miracles, or works of magic — Credulity and the spirit of mystery attributed marvellous properties to inanimate substances ; and Charlatanism assisted this species of deception — Counterfeit cures— Extraordinary abstinences — Nutritious substances taken in an almost imperceptible form — Apparent Resurrections.
Carried away by our subject, we have already entered that province of science in which promises will always have the greatest power over the Imagination, namely, the science of the physician.
Medical science is, although it may be thwarted by unforseen anomalies, founded upon much positive knowledge. It has not, however, been able to overcome the diseases of the intellect in a manner equal to its influence over those of the body ; neither has it placed us upon our guard against those numerous secrets used by the Thaumaturgist to disarrange the play of our organs, to deceive our senses, and to terrify our imaginations.
Although originating in the temples, and revealed as an emanation from the Divine Intelligence, yet medicine did not infringe upon the province of other sacred sciences. In treating of it, we need not diverge from the empire of the wonder-workers ; for, every where, cures
h 2
1 00 MEDICINE A PART OF THE OCCULT SCIENCE.
were long esteemed miracles, and physicians were re- garded as priests or as magicians.*
Physicians, under some circumstances, were even looked upon as Gods. In Armenia,f under the name of Thicks or Haralez, the Gods were said to revive those heroes who died in battle, by sucking their wounds. Angitia,j the sister of Circe, established herself in Italy only in order that she might merit altars there, by ap- plying her salutary science to the diseases that desolated that country. Formerly in Greece, and even after the siege of Troy, the sons of the Gods and the heroes alone understood the secrets of medicine and surgery ;|| and even to a late period Esculapius, the son of Apollo, was there worshipped as a deity. §
In Egypt, Theurgy divided among thirty-six genii, in- habitants of the air, the care of the different parts of
* In the earliest periods of society the character of priest and physician is always combined in the same person. The Payes of Brazil are priests, exorcists, and physicians ; they cure diseases by sucking the affected part, and spitting into a pit, to return to the earth the evil principle, which they assert is the cause of disease. The Hebrew priests, according to the Mosaical account of the Jews, were also physicians ; the Aslepiadae, the priests of ^Esculapius, were the first physicians of the Greeks ; and the Druids those of the northern nations.
f Cirbied. Mémoires sur l'Arménie. Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires de France, tome n. p. 304.
X Solin. cap. vin.
|| Aelian. De Nat. Animal, lib. u. cap. xvni.
§ The original seat of the worship of ^Esculapius was at Epidaurus, where he had a splendid temple, adorned with a gold and ivory statue of the God, who was represented sitting, one hand holding a staff, the other resting on the head of a serpent, the emblem of sagacity and longevity ; and a dog couched at his feet. This temple was frequented by harmless serpents, in the form of
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the human body ; and the priests practised a separate invocation for each genii, which they used in order to obtain from them the cure of the particular member confided to their care.* It was from Egypt also that the formularies which taught the use of herbs in medicine originally came ; and these formularies were magical.f The magicians of the islands of Sena cured invalids by others deemed incurable.^ The Scandina- vian virgins were instructed at the same time in magic, medicine, and the treatment of wounds. || Diodorus, who has often attempted to extricate history from its medley of fables, looks upon the science of Medea and Circe as natural, as a profound study of all remedies and poisons ; and he relates that the former cured the son of Alcemenes of a furious madness. §
which the God was supposed to manifest himself. He had, also, temples at Rhodes, Cindos, Cos, and one on the hanks of the Tiber. According to Homer, his sons, Machaon and Padalirius, treated wounds and external diseases only ; and it is probable that their father practised in the same manner, as he is said to have invented the probe, and the bandaging of wounds. His priests, the Asclepiadse, practised, however, incantations ; and cured diseases by leading their patients to believe that the God himself delivered his prescriptions in dreams and visions ; for which im- postures they were roughly satirised by Aristophanes in his play of Plutus. It is probable that the preparations, consisting of abstinence, tranquillity and bathing, requisite for obtaining this divine intercourse, and, above all, the confidence reposed in the Asclepiadœ, were often productive of benefit. — Ed.
* Origen. Contr. Cels. lib. vin.
t Galen. De SimpL Médicam. Facult. lib. vi. prooem.
% Pomponius Mela. lib. in. cap. vi.
|| 0. V. de Bonstetten. La Scandinavie et les Alpes, p. 32.
§ Diod. Sic. lib. iv. cap. u. et xvi.
102 MEDICINE A PART OF THE OCCULT SCIENCE.
For a long time after the age of Hercules and the heroic times, invalids in Greece sought relief from their sufferings from the descendants of Esculapius in the temples of that God, which an enlightened policy had raised on elevated spots and salubrious vicinities.* Those men who pretended in right of their birth to hold the gift of curing, finally learnt the art of it, by preserving in the temples the history of those diseases, the cure of which had been sought from them.f They then added to their number disciples, whose discretion was secured by the trial of a severe initiation. By degrees the pro-
* Plutarch. Quœst. Roman. § lciv.
f The temple of Cos was rich in votive offerings, which gene- rally represented the parts of the body healed, and an account of the method of cure adopted. From these singular clinical records Hippocrates is reported to have constructed his treatise onDietetics. It is a curious fact, that many similar votive offerings of legs, arms, noses, &c. are hung up in the Cathedral of Aix la Chapelle, and some other continental churches, as records of cures performed by the holy relics in those sacred edifices. The crutches of the Countess Droste Vischering, also, are hungup in the Cathedral of Treves, in memory of the sudden and miraculous cure of a contraction of the knee-joint, which had long withstood all medical skill, by the mere sight of the seamless coat of our Saviour, before which she prostrated her- self, and was instantaneously cured. But although the crutches attest the cure, and the Countess walked from the church to her carriage, merely leaning on the arm of her grandmother, yet, like most other miraculous cures, it was only a temporary alleviation ; and her walking was an effort of sudden excitement, the result of mus- cular energy, produced by the.confidence of obtaining relief from the miraculous power of the holy coat. She became once more a cripple. These facts display the melancholy truth that many pagan customs were engrafted on Christianity, and are still employed by the Church of Rome to delude the ignorant and superstitious, in order to support her powers. — Ed.
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gress of philosophy raised the mysterious veil, behind which they would have still concealed the science. Hip- pocrates at last placed medicine on a real foundation, and taught its precepts in his immortal works. Its doctrines, till then imprisoned in the archives of the Asclepiadse, were given entire to swell the patrimony of perfectible civilization. From this moment the priests ought to have renounced their pretensions to the healing art,* but they were careful to prevent the science from being en- tirely divested of its heavenly and magical origin. The greater number of the thermal waters, more frequently used then than in the present day, remained consecrated to the Gods, to Apollo, to Esculapius, and, above all, to Hercules, who was surnamed Iatricos, or the able physician.f
* Coray. Prolégomènes of the French translation of Hippocrates' Treatise on Air, Water, and Places.
f The sacred character of healing springs, is a relic of classical and druidical superstition that still remains. In Fosbrooke's British Monachism (477) we learn that, " on a spot, called Nell's Point, is a fine well, to which great numbers of women resort on Holy Thursday, and having washed their eyes in the spring, they drop a pin into it. Once a year, at St. Mardrin's well, also lame persons went, on Corpus Christi evening, to lay some small offering on the altar, there to lie on the ground all night, drink of the water there, and on the next morning to take a good draught more of it, and carry away some of the water each in a bottle at their departure. a At Muswell Hill was formerly a chapel, called our Lady of Muswell, from a well there, near which was her image : this well was continually resorted to by way of pilgrimage.b At Walsingham a fine green road was made for the pilgrims, and there was a holy well and cross adjacent, at which pilgrims used to
a Antiq. Repertory, vol. n. p. 79.
b Simpson's Agreeable Historians, vol. n. p. 622.
104 MEDICINE A PART OF THE OCCULT SCIENCE.
Those philosophers who never left the temples incur- red accusations of dealing in magic, when by natural means they cured their fellow-beings of the evils which desolated their abodes : this happened to Empedocles. An endemic disease raged in Selinuntia ; Empedocles saw that it arose from the hurtful vapours exhaled from the stagnant waters of a sluggish river ; and to remedy the evil he changed the course of two brooks, and by conducting them into the bed of the river, he increased the current of the waters ; after which, as the river ceased to be stagnant, it ceased to exhale the pestilential miasma ; and, consequently, the plague disappeared. *
If, in the second century of our era, the Emperor Adrian succeeded in relieving himself for a time from an
kneel while drinking the water. * It is remarkable that the Anglo Saxon laws had proscribed this as idolatrous." Such springs were consecrated upon the discovery of the cures effected by them.0 In fact," Fosbrooke properly adds, " these consecrated wells merely imply a knowledge of the properties of mineral waters, but through ignorance, a religious appropriation of these properties to supernatural causes."
I may add to this record, that Holywell, in the county of Flint, derives its name from the Holy Well of St. Winifred, over which a chapel was erected by the Stanley family, in the reign of Henry the Seventh. The well was formerly in high repute as a medicinal spring. Pennant says that, in his time, Lancashire pilgrims were to be seen in deep devotion, standing in the water up to the chin for hours, sending up prayers, and making a prescribed number of turnings ; and this excess of piety was carried so far, as in several instances to cost the devotees their lives. — Ed.
* Diogen. Laert. in Empedocl.
a Beauties of England (old edit.), vol. n. p. 118.
b Brompton and Script. 123.
c Decern. Scriptures, 2417.
MEDICINE A PART OF THE OCCULT SCIENCE. 105
aquseous congestion which swelled his body,* it was said to have been effected by some magic art. Tatian, a sin- cere defender of Christianity, who lived about the same time, does not deny the wonderful cures effected by the priests of the temples of the Polytheists ; he only attempts to explain them by supposing that the Pagan Gods were actual demons, and that they introduced disease into the body of a healthy man, announcing to him, in a dream, that he should be cured if he implored their assistance ; and then, by terminating the evil which they themselves had produced, they obtained the glory of having worked a miracle.f
These opinions were not peculiar to a civilized people. Less enlightened nations have believed that diseases were signs of the vengeance or the malevolence of beings superior to humanity; consequently, priests and magi- cians were everywhere selected as physicians. Among the Nadoëssis and Chippeways the three titles of Priest, Physician, and Sorcerer were inseparable, and they are so still among the Osages.j The priest-magicians were the only physicians of Mexico. || In the heart of the Galibis nations, the Payes are priests, physicians, and ma- gicians; and they form a corporation, the admission into which can only be obtained by submitting to a very painful initiation. §
* Xiphilin. in Adrian. f Tatian. Assyr. Orat. ad. Grœcos. p. 157. X Carver. Travels in North America, p. 290. || Joseph Dacosta. Natural History of the Indies, book v. chap. xxvi.
§ Noël. Dictionnaire de la Fable. Article Piayes.
106 MEDICINE A PART OF THE OCCULT SCIENCE.
Christianity could not in Asia and Europe entirely destroy the prejudices which had prevailed under the reign of Polytheism. They reappeared with renovated strength in the dark ages ; when, in spite of the antipa- thy which the Jews inspired in the Christians, the Israelites were almost the only surgeons to princes and kings : and the remarkable cures they effected seemed the results of some mysterious influence. This opinion was strengthened by the sedulous concealment of their prescriptions, which were probably borrowed from the Arabians ; and they evidently were not unwilling that their Christian adversaries should deem them possessed of supernatural secrets. It was not long before some of the indiscreet supporters of Christianity brought forward miraculous cures to oppose to the influence of the Jews. Like the ancient temples, many of the Christian churches displayed within their walls holy springs, the waters of which were reputed to possess great healing virtues. The belief of the Christians in their healing powers partly origi- nated from a sincere confidence in their adopted faith, and partly from failure of any other resource. It may, how- ever, have been a legacy of Paganism, hastily accepted by men, who would rather sanctify an error than allow confidence to exist in a proscribed religion. Whatever might be the reason, when these healing springs were resorted to, the sick could derive no benefit from them unless they submitted to, the regulations of the priests. The diseases sometimes yielded to the regimen, to time, and to the calm that hope and a pious confidence, aided by the Imagination, produced ; sometimes, however, they resisted their influence, but the failures were attributed
MEDICINE A PART OF THE OCCULT SCIENCE. 107
to the sins and the want of faith in the patient : hence the miraculous virtue which was proved by cures in some cases, was not, therefore, nullified by the failures in others. The institutions were conformable to the opinion that all cures were effected by the direct interposition of the Divinity ; and they long survived it. The Christian physicians who, in conjunction with the Arabians and the Israelites began to spring up, formed part of the clergy5 long after the idea of anything supernatural in their art had exploded. " The professors of medicine," says Et. Pasquier, were formerly all Clerks ; and it was not till the year 1542 that the Legate in France gave them per- mission to marry.* Towards the same time Paracelsus, who during his travels in Africa and the East had acquired
* Et. Pasquier. Recherches de la France, liv. in. chap. xxix. — Until this period, the four instructing faculties of the University were condemned to celibacy, In 1552, the doctors in law obtained like the physicians, the permission to marry. But it was long- after the first dignities in this faculty were accorded. to the canons and priests. In many of the Protestant cantons of Switzerland, in the present day, it is necessary, before being promoted to the chair of the public establishments to give proof of theological talent. The pretext for this arrangement was, that these esta- blishments had been endowed at the expense of the ancient religious foundations. This motive would not, however, have been decisive without the established prejudice that the instructing body should belong to the church and the sacerdotal corporation
Richard Fitz-Nigel, who died Bishop of London, a. d. 1198, had
been apothecary to Henry the Second. The celebrated Roger
Bacon, who flourished in the 13th century, although a monk, yet
practised medicine. Nicolas de Famham, a physician to Henry
the Third, was created Bishop of Durham ; and many other doctors
of medicine were at various times elevated to ecclesiastical dis- cs
nities. — Ed .
aTiedmann. De Queeslione, &c, p. 122,
108 MEDICINE A PART OF THE OCCULT SCIENCE.
secrets which secured him great superiority over his competitors, renewed the example which had been given by Raymond Lully and other adepts, and presented him- self as instructed and inspired by a divinity.* Had his life been prolonged and his conduct less light, who would have dared to say that there might not have been found a public credulous enough to have recognized his assump- tions ?f
* Tiedmann. De Quœstione, &c. p. 113.
f The birth-place of Paracelsus is not accurately known, but it is supposed to have been Einsiedeln, in the canton of Schwyz. He was born in 1493. He was the son of a physician, who instructed him in alchemy and astrology, as well as medicine. He displayed early an ardent desire for knowledge ; not such, however, as is derived from books ; but such as he could pick up wherever it could be procured, without being very difficult of acquirement ; or without much nicety being shewn as to the source whence it came. For this purpose he travelled over the greater part of Europe, and also into Africa and Asia. He was chosen professor of medicine at Basil in 1526 ; and at his first lecture, he publicly burnt the works of Cel- sus and Avicenna, asserting that they were useless lumber. He was a man of the most irreligious character and immoral habits, a glutton, and a drunkard ; and in falsehood, vanity, and arrogance unequalled. He pretended to possess the philosopher's stone, asserted that he imprisoned a demon in the pummel of his sword, and that he had discovered the elixir of life. His medical writings are specimens of credulity and imposture. He was a believer in magic, and boasted of having conversed with Avicenna, in the vestibule of the infernal regions. He had, however, the merit of introducing into medicine the use of mercurials, and several metallic remedies, and greatly improved pharmaceutical chemistry. He left Basil, in less than a year, after his appointment ; and, after having undergone many hardships and vicissitudes, he died in great poverty at Salzburg, in the Tyrol, in 1541, in the 48th year of his age, giving the lie to the impudent boast of his possessing the elixir of life and the philosopher's stone. — Ed.
MEDICINE A PART OF THE OCCULT SCIENCE. 109
The habit of associating a supernatural power to the natural action of remedies, particularly those which were kept secret, has been preserved to the present day. The best physicians have proved that the only effectual remedy against the bite of a rabid animal is cauterization of the wound with a red hot iron : and this remedy has been employed for many centuries in Tuscany, and also in some provinces in France. But in the former place, the iron which they heat is one of the nails of the true cross;* and in the French provinces it is the key of Saint Hubert,f which is, however, only useful in the hands of those persons who can trace the illustriousness of their genealogy to this noble Saint. It is thus a kind of heir-loom or hereditary possession, similar to that assumed by the Psylli and the Marses, and the descen- dants of Esculapius.
We must again repeat what we have so often before stated, that it was originally rather a feeling of pious gratitude than a spirit of deception, which united the idea of an inspiration and the gift of the Divinity to the recipes and salutary operations of medical science. Upon the banks of the river Anigrus was a grotto dedicated to the nymphs. There resorted persons afflicted with herpes, who, after prayers and a previous friction, swam across the river, and by the favour of the nymphs were cured.
* Lullin-Châteauvieux. Lettres écrites d'Italie, torn. i. p. 129.
t Particularly in the village of La Saussotte, near Villenauxe, department of the Auhe, At the Abbey of St. Hubert, in the diocese of Liege, the intercession of the Saint is alone sufficient to effect the cure, provided it is seconded by some religious cere- monies, and a diet which will reassure the imagination. ( Voyage Littéraire de D. Martenne et de D. Durand. Part second. Paris, 1724, pp. 145—147.)
110 MEDICINE A PART OF THE OCCULT SCIENCE.
Pausanius,* who relates this apparent miracle, adds that the waters of the Anigrus exhaled a foetid odour; that is to say, they were charged with sulphuretted hydrogen gas, and were, therefore, antiherpetic. Our physicians succeed in curing it by means of the same agent, without the cere- monies, and without speaking of miracles.
But the ancient teachers and the rulers of the people were often obliged to speak of, and sanction salutary precepts, through the illusion of the marvellous, whether necessary to overcome, as in Esthonia and Livonia, the apathy of men stupified by slavery and misery, by com- manding them, in the name of the Gods, to combat the epizootics, which in their ignorance they deemed the effect of sorcery, by fumigating their stables with assafcetida ;f or whether, in the midst of a society rich and abandoned to pleasure, they attributed to a particular stone the pro- perty of preserving the purity of the voice, provided the singer, who would profit by its salutary virtue, lived in chastity.|
The pride and interest attached to exclusive posses- sion involved the concealment of the secrets which were valuable enough to be preserved, under a supernatural veil. || Juno recovered her virginity every year by bath-
* Pausanias, Eliac. lib. i. cap. v.
t Debray. Sur les Préjugés et les Idées Superstitieuses des Livoniens, Lettoniens et Esthoniens. — Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, tome xviii. p. 3.
X Solin. cap. xl.
|| This was very natural, at a period when the whole of the art of curing disease was supposed to depend on the possession of such secrets. The sick, on this account were carried on biers, and exposed on the highways, for the inspection of the passers by, and to obtain from them prescriptions.— Ed.
MEDICINE A PART OF THE OCCULT SCIENCE. 1 1 1
ing in the fountain of Canathos* and it is said that the women of the Argolides bathed there with the same hope. It is certain, however, that the Argians, in relating the prodigy, mention that, in order to be relied upon, some occult ceremonies practised in the worship of Junof were requisite. According to tradition, the Goddess immediately after her nuptials bathed in an Assyrian fountain, the waters of which immediately contracted a very delightful odour, j Does not this last trait denote that both in Syria and in Greece the property which had caused the myrtle to be dedicated to the Goddess of Love, and used by women to repair the exhaustion of child bearing, was known ?||
But we are informed, that the priest administered the beneficial effects with mysterious ceremonies only, offer- ing them as a miracle resulting from these ceremonies.
The books of the ancients are inexhaustible on the healing and magical properties of plants. The greater number have no doubt originated in the love of the marvellous; and many have obtained reputation from
* A fountain of Nauplia. — Ed.
t Pausanias. Corinthiac. cap. xxxviii. — Noel. Dictionnaire de la Fable, art. Canathos.
t Aelian. De Nat. Animal, lib. xn, cap. xxx. — The Greeks pre- tended to recognize Juno (Hera) in the Goddess of Assyria, the celestial virgin spouse of the Sun, who at the period when Gemini makes the equinox of the spring, was every year found a virgin by her husband, when the summer solstice led him again to her.
|| Rabelais (livre i. chap, xliv.) puts for this reason abundance of myrtle water in the baths of the ladies of the Abbey of Thé- lème. For myrtle water, in the first editions, published during the life of the author, the re-impressions have erroneously substi- tuted water of myrrh.
112 MEDICINE A PART OF THE OCCULT SCIENCE.
no greater reason than an inaccurate translation of the name of the plant. We must nevertheless observe, that modern writers have not been more reasonable upon this subject than the ancients. The herb scorzonera, for in- stance, derived its name from the exterior colour of its stalk, scorzo nero. It is quite evident that this name has been taken from scurzo, the Spanish for viper ; and the scorzonera, from that circumstance, is regarded as a powerful antidote for the bite of the viper.*
Charlatanism, in short, in order to conceal from view the action of natural agents, in medicines as in other branches of the Occult Sciences, attributed a magical efficacy to points of an insignificant nature. An adept, quoted by Fromann,f pointed out a remedy for con- sumption and the sweating sickness, which was in itself simple enough, but was not to be prepared with common fire. A saw was to be manufactured from an apple tree struck by lightning, and was to be used to saw the wood of the threshold of a door through which many people had passed, until the continued friction of the instru- ment upon the wood had produced a flame.j The extravagance of the proceeding inspired a pious con- fidence in those who resorted to the remedy, and the difficulty of executing it well, secured beforehand, in
* Dictionnaire de Furetière, art. Scorsonère. Plants were valu- able as remedies only when collected under the influence of cer- tain planets ; they were also required to be collected on certain days. This superstition, indeed, was upheld until the seventeenth century ; and directions were given for collecting the plants, in the Herbals of Turner, Culpepper, and Lovel. — Ed.
f Fromann. Tract, de Fascinatione, pp. 953 — 964.
\ Fromann. Tract, de Fascinatione, pp. 363 — 364.
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case of failure, the infallibility of the medicine. This instance is one of the strongest that can be cited, but it recals millions of others.
To cure dislocations, and displacements of the thigh- bone, Cato* prescribes the applications of splinters so disposed as to replace and support the injured member in its natural position. He then points out some words which are to be used during the operation. These un- intelligible words were possibly nothing more than the same direction expressed in another language : expres- sions upon which, though no longer understood, the magical efficacy of bandaging was supposed to depend.
The sacred words may, in a similar case, have been a prayer by which the use of any natural remedy was ac- companied, and to which the success was thought to be due. Men who pretended to be endowed with secret powers, taught that it was possible to stop a hemorrhage from the nose by repeating an Ave or a Pater, provided that, at the same time, the nostrils were compressed with the fmgers,f and linen steeped in cold water applied to the head. More frequently the pretended miracle origi- nated in the care which the Thaumaturgists took to make an inert substance the mask of an efficacious medicine.
The Kicahans, subjects of the Burmese, and who appear to have been driven by them to the mountains ot Assam, go out after every storm in search of aerolites, and if they find any, transmit them to their priest, who
* Cato De Re Rustled, cap. clx.
f Fromann. Tract, de Fascinatione, (4to. 1675), lib. i. cap.
XXIX.
VOL. II. I
1 1 4 MEDICINE A PART OF THE OCCULT SCIENCE.
preserves them as remedies sent by heaven for the cure of every disease.*
The miraculous powers of the Bezoars,f experienced and celebrated in Asia, for some time found credence in Europe ; yet these bezoars have no more effect than the aerolites upon the nervous system, and could only be used like the latter to disguise the use of more active substances.
A Greek inscription,! which we believe must have
* Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, 2nd series, vol. in. p. 229. The Parthian Magi carefully seek a stone which is only to be found in places struck by thunder. They doubtless attribute great vir- tues to it. — Plin. Hist. Nat. lib. xxxvu. cap. ix.
f The Bezoar is a concretion found in the intestines of the stag, and sometimes of the goat. It was formerly supposed to have the power, not only of curing diseases, but also of driving out poisons, whence the name, from the Persian words Pdd-zahr, " expelling poison ;" Pad meaning to remove or cure, and Zahr poison. The Hindoos and Persians have still great confidence in its curative powers, especially that one which is formed in the stomach of the Caprea Acyagros, the wild goat of Persia, which is sold for its weight in gold. The bezoar was, at one time, in as high estimation in Europe as in the East ; and its value as a remedy was enhanced by the marvellous manner in which it was supposed to be produced. "When the hart is sick," says Garner, " and hath eaten many serpents for his recoverie, he is brought unto so great a heate, that he hasteth to the water, and there covereth his body unto the very eares and eyes, at which distilleth many teares from which the stone (the bezoar) is gendered." Bezoars consist almost entirely of phosphate of lime ; and, as curative agents, afford an addition to the many thousand proofs of the influence of mind over the body, and how truly efficacious Imagination may prove in removing disease. — En.
X J. Gruter. Corp. Inscript. folio, Amstelodami, 1707, p. 71, insc. 1 .
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been anciently placed in the temple of Esculapius at Rome, and which perpetuates four cures effected by that God, presents us with four examples of the different ways in which credulity lends itself to the marvellous. There is nothing surprising in stopping a haemoptyses, spitting of blood, by the use of sweet kernels and honey* nor even in the oracle that ordered it, But when the God, in order to cure a pain in the side, prescribed a topical application, the principal ingredient of which was to be the cinders collected from his altar, it is easy to conjec- ture that his priests mingled some drug with those cin- ders. If a salve, in which the blood of a white cock was added to honey, produced beneficial results, we may be permitted to think that the colour of the bird was only of use to veil in mystery the composition of the remedy. A blind man, after some genuflections, placed the hand that had been extended upon the altar over his eyes, and suddenly recovered his sight. He had never lost it ; and he probably executed this juggling at some critical moment, when it was of importance to revive the declining reputation of Esculapius and his temple.
We could compile whole volumes with similar impos- tures. Worn by the sufferings of an incurable disease, Adrian invoked death, and it was feared he would have recourse to suicide: a woman appeared, who declared
* Under the term sweet kernels, is meant the bitter almond, or the kernels of the peach, both of which, when they are moistened, evolve hydrocyanic acid, which operating as a powerful sedative, would arrest the flow of blood. The honey, which is an excitant, was a bad addition. — En.
I 2
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that she had received in a dream an order to assure the Emperor he should soon be cured. Not having obeyed this order at first, she lost her sight : but, being warned by a second dream, she fulfilled her mission, and her eyes immediately re-opened to the light.* But although Adrian died some months afterwards, the witnesses of this trick were not the less disposed to believe in every other assumed miracle set before them.
The greatest of all prodigies to reasonable minds is, in my opinion, the belief in assumed miracles by the very men who have unmasked and unveiled the falsehood of such miracles. And, by a remarkable singularity, the superstitious man and the philoso- pher may each, in his own way, profit by a prodigy often repeated. The one sees in it a proof of the truth of his assertions, and the effect of the gifts of heaven, which display themselves in overcoming human reason ; the other, finding this contradiction everywhere, main- tains that it proves nothing, since, if it was applied to one real belief, it would allow a hundred false ones to triumph : and that its only principle is, therefore, the facility with which the human race ever abandon them- selves to those who attempt to deceive them.
Credulity is, in fact, the disease of every age and of every country. The haunts of those mendicants who deceive the public by obtaining their sympathy for the most deplorable deceptive infirmities, were formerly called in Paris Cours des Miracles, because, on entering those quarters of the city, these wretches deposited the cos- tumes of the different parts they acted. At once the
* Aelian, Spartian. in Adrian.
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blind saw, and the cripple recovered the use of his limbs. Nearly a dozen of these " Courts" exist in the French capital; and it is lamentable to add, that their inhabit- ants are sometimes employed by the priests and monks to give an authority to their relics, by vouching for the miraculous cures which these pretended invalids receive from their touch.* The name Cours des Miracles^ having become popular, proves that no one was ignorant of the impostures which were every day enacted there, and yet, daily, these sharpers find dupes ; and with a perfect knowledge of this habitual deception, superna- tural cures are still believed.
Obstinate and ingenious in deceiving herself, Credulity is found intrenched behind well-attested wonders, that have not been denied by experience. This is very well ! but let science take from these marvels what belongs to itself, it will quickly aid the honest man in detecting that which appertains to imposture.
It is not by opposing to the boasts of the charlatan an immense number of proofs of his errors, however credible, but it is by demonstrating that these marvels may have occurred in the order of nature, that we can cherish any hope of curing mankind of an infatuation which has already cost him very dear.
* When Louis XL was ill, he sent for the holy man of Calabria, and fell upon his knees before him, begging that his life might be prolonged. The holy vial was sent to him, and St. Peter's vest from Rome ; but, alas ! both confidence and faith were of no avail in this case. "The monarch," says Commines, " could command the beggar's knee, but not the health of it." — Ed.
t Sauvai. Antiquités de Paris, tome i. pp. 510 — 515, quoted by Dulaure. Physical, Civil, and Moral History of Paris. (1821, vol. iv. pp. 589—596.)
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When we hear accounts of those miraculous fasts, which men of superior intellect have endured for days and for weeks, we are tempted to class them with the Oriental tales,* in which similar inconceivable abstinences figure. But as these narrations are so numerous, can we attribute them wholly to a desire to deceive, and affirm that they are altogether without foundation?
Let us first of all remark that certain substances pos- sess, or have attributed to them, the property of suspend- ing the sensations of hunger and of thirst. Such, for instance, as the leaves of the tobacco plant, and the leaves of the Cocoa (a Peruvian plant). People have gone so far as to say that, if either of these plants be held in the mouth by a man, who has worked all day without eating, they will prevent him from suffering from hunger.f
Matthiolusf attributes to the Scythians the use of an herb agreeable to the taste, and so efficacious in supply- ing the place of nourishment, that its effects had some- times prolonged life for twelve whole days. Another herb sustained in a similar manner the strength
* Les Mille et un Jours. The Thousand and One Nights ; Nights 137 and 138.
f J. Acosta. Natural History of the Indies, etc. book iv, chap. xxii. — Opium has the same power of allaying the sensation of hunger. The Turkish courier, who performs long and fatiguing journeys without rest, on horseback, provides himself with a small bag of opium lozenges, Mash ■ Allah ; and, when greatly fatigued, he alights, opens his bag, takes a lozenge himself, and having also given two to his horse, remounts, and proceeds with as much alacrity as when he set out ; both horse and man are refreshed, and the sensation of hunger is subdued. — Ed.
X Matthiolus. Commentar. in Dioscorid. — E pistol. Nuncu- pator.
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of those indefatigable cavalier's horses. This apparent miracle may have been the result of a desire to deceive, and may have been effected by reducing substances eminently nutritious to a very small bulk.* To the use of such an art we may explain what was said of Abaris, that he had never been seen to eat or to drink ;f an art also which was successfully practised by Epimenides, the cotemporary of Solon, j is well known in the present day, and has very recently been brought to perfection by a learned man.§ It is nearly fifty years ago since the plan
* This opinion of our author is not very tenable ; and, although the period is much exaggerated, yet, it is not inconsistent with experience, that the sensation of hunger may be destroyed, and life sustained, by some description of herbs. — Ed.
t Iamblich. Vit. Pythag. § 27. — Abaris was a Scythian, the son of Seuthes ; he flourished during the Trojan war, and is supposed to have written some treatises in Greek. Many absurd fables are related concerning him ; among others, that he received a flying arrow from Apollo, which gave oracles, and transported him through the air wherever he pleased ; that he returned to the Hyperborean countries from Athens without eating, and that he made the Trojan Palladium with the bones of Pelops. — Ed.
X Plutarch. Sympos.
§ M. Gimbernat. Revue Encyclopédique, tome xxxv. p. 235. — More absurd stories are related of Epimenides than of Abaris. He was said to have entered into a cave, where he fell asleep, and slept for fifty- seven years ; so that, when he awoke, he found everything altered ; and he scarcely knew where he was ; a degree of ignorance which is surprising, as he is also reported to have been able to dismiss his soul from his body, and recal it at pleasure. During its absence, he affirmed that it had familiar intercourse with the Gods, and obtained the gift of prophecy. In plain language, he was a man of genius, a poet, and a learned man, capable of great abstraction; and, for the
120 MEDICINE A PART OF THE OCCULT SCIENCE.
of giving nourishment of this kind to mariners was attempted in France : its small bulk would have enabled a much greater quantity than of any other provision to have been embarked at a time ; it was, however, aban- doned, for although the men thus fed did not suffer from hunger, yet, they were found less capable of sustaining fatigue.
This would not be any inconvenience to the Thauma- turgists. A holy man, who lives without any, or very little excitement, commonly remains motionless in his cell, receiving the respect and adoration of those who seek him there ; and if, after a long period of trial, he should be found sinking from weakness, this circumstance would only increase the faith in the reality of his miracu- lous abstinence.
This difficulty, besides, could not have existed in ear- lier times. According to Edrisi,# the Berber tribes of the neighbourhood of Roun, prepared, with honey and roasted and bruised corn, so nourishing a paste, that a handful eaten in the morning enabled them to march
sake of justifying his pretensions of intercourse with the Gods, he lived in great retirement, and chiefly upon herbs. So high was his reputation for sanctity, that, during a plague in Attica, 596 b.c., the Athenians sent for him to perform a lustration, by which the Gods were appeased, and the plague ceased. He was a native of Crete ; and the Cretans paid him divine honours after his death. Notwithstanding his celebrity, however, he can only be regarded in the light of an impostor, living in an age of almost incredible credulity ; therefore every thing related of him must be received with doubt. — Ed.
* Géographie d'Edrisi, translated by M. Am. Jaubert, vol. i. p. 205.
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until evening without experiencing hunger. The Cale- donians and the Meates,# who formed the greatest part of the population of Great Britain, understood, says Xiphilin, a method of preparing their food in a way so capable of sustaining their strength, that having taken a quantity equal to the size of a bean, they felt neither hunger nor thirst. The Scythians, doubtless, possessed the art of a process similar to this, and even extended it to the food of their horses ; but the miraculous herbs mentioned by Matthiolus were merely intended to delude others as to the secret of their real nature. But this secret could not have been unknown, at least to the learned portion, among people much more civilized than the Caledonians and Scythians ; its existence, therefore, render such nar- rations credible, and divest them of their miraculous covering.
Far above the miracle of making man independent of the most pressing wants of nature, is that of restoring to him the life that he has lost.
It is agreed that there is nothing so difficult to de- termine as the certain and irrefragable signs of death ; and the special study of these signs, and a complete experience of what is doubtful and positive in them, alone furnish the means of distinguishing between a real and an apparent death. To restore to life a being who is threatened to be deprived of it by a too hasty burial
* Xiphilin. in Sever. Anno. 208. In a story which appears to be of oriental origin, the secret of composing pills, or an opiate endued with the same virtue, is attributed to Avicenna and another learned man. (The Thousand and One Nights.)
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would, in the present day, be a benefit ; formerly it was a miracle.
The laws and customs of an enlightened people will always prescribe laws for ascertaining that life is ac- tually extinct. From time immemorial the Hindoos have employed fire, the most certain, perhaps, of all proofs, for even if it does not rouse the sensibility, there is a visible difference in the action of burning when exercised on an inanimate body, and that on one in which life still exists.* It is not until after a portion of cow-dung has been burned in the hollow over the stomach of the corpse, that the funereal pile, which is to consume it, is lighted. According to appearances, a similar custom formerly existed in Italy and Greece. Tertullianf ridicules those spectacles in which Mercury is represented as examining corpses, and convincing himself by a red-hot iron that the exterior marks of death were not deceptive. This custom must then have been at one time in full force, but had fallen into disuse, and existed only in mytholo- gical remembrances. Democritus had, at an early period, asserted that there did not exist any certain signs of real death.j Pliny || maintained the same opinion, and even remarked that women were more exposed than men to
* Fodéré. Dictionnaire des Sciences Médicales. Art. Signes de la Mort.
f Tertullian. Apologetic, cap. xv. — Cœlius Rhodiginus, (Led. Antiq. lib. iv. cap. xxxi.) reads, as we do, Cauterio in the text of Tertullian, and not Cantherio. This last version, adopted by some modern writers, does not seem to me to offer any reasonable sense.
+ A. Cornel. Cels. lib. n. cap. vi.
|| Plin. Hist. Nat. lib. vu. cap. lu.
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the dangers of an apparent death. He cited numerous instances of apparent deaths, and among others, one mentioned by Heraclides, of a woman who revived after having passed for dead during seven days.# Neither did he forget the sagacity of Asclepiades, who, seeing a funeral procession pass by, exclaimed that the man who was being carried to the pile was not dead.f To conclude,
* Plin. Hist. Nat. lib. vu. cap. lii.
f A. Cornel. Cels. loc. cit. — Heraclides wrote a Treatise entitled, The Disease in which the Respiration is suspended. Asclepiades was a learned physician, and was the founder of a sect in medicine. There can be no difference of opi- nion with respect to the correctness of the observations of these distinguished men. Numerous cases of apparent deaths have been recorded as having occurred in modern times. The mention of a few will suffice to demonstrate the difficulty of deter- mining the fact that death has actually triumphed over mortality ; unless the signs be of that unequivocal nature that they cannot be mistaken — namely, the extinction of animal heat, that rigidity of the body in which the direction of the limb, when changed, remains, and commencing decomposition. Francis Civile, a Norman gentleman, who lived in the time of Charles the Ninth, twice apparently died, and was twice in the act of being buried, when he spontaneously revived at the moment in which the coffin was deposited in the grave. In the seventeenth century, a Lady Russell, apparently died, and was about to be buried ; but, as the bell was tolling for her funeral, she sat up in the coffin, and exclaimed, " It is time to go to church." Diemerbroesk {Treatise on the Plague, book iv.) mentions the case of a peasant, who dis- played no signs of life for three days ; but, on being carried to the grave, revived, and lived many years afterwards. So recently as the year 1836, a respectable citizen of Brussels fell into a profound lethargy on a Sunday morning. His friends conceiving that he was dead, determined to bury him ; and on Monday he was placed
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might not humanity have adopted this means of safety, to which the instinct of tyranny instigated Nicocrates* to make use of, in order to prevent the inhabitants of Cyrene from feigning death, and by thus leaving the town to withdraw from his cruelty.
Would it be absurd to suppose that the Thaumatur- gists were so well acquainted with the distinction between apparent and real death, as to take advantage of it, and to boast the power of so brilliant a miracle as a resurrection : and consequently they exerted themselves to lead to the disuse of the salutary practice, attributed by tradition to the God Mercury.
It is at least certain that many Theurgists boasted of being endowed with the power of recalling the dead to life. Diogenes Laertius relates that Empedocles resus- citated a woman,f that is to say, " that he dissipated
on a bier, with all the usual accompaniments of the dead, previous to interment, in Catholic countries. His body was placed in the coffin ; and, when the undertaker's men were about to screw down the lid, the supposed corpse sat up, rubbed his eyes, and called for his coffee and a newspaper.* From these, and many instances of a similar description, it is evident that a temporary quiescent con- dition of the vital principle must not be confounded with real death. The immobility of the body, even its cadaverous aspect, the coldness of the surface, the absence of respiration and pulsa- tion, and the somewhat sunken state of the eye, are not unequi- vocal evidences that life is wholly extinct. The only unequivocal signs are those mentioned above : and, happily, in this country, interment does not take place until some evidences of putrifaction display themselves. — Ed.
* Plutarch. Mulier, Fort. Fact. § x.
t Diogen. Laert. lib. vm. cap. lvii. et lxix. » Morning Herald, 21st July, 1836.
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the lethargy of a woman attacked by uterine suffoca- tion."*
The biographer of Apollonius of Tyana more cau- tiously expresses himself, relatively to a young girl who owed her life to the care of this philosopher. He says, that she had seemed to die ; while he confesses that the rain which fell upon her, when she was in the act of being carried with her face exposed to the pile, might have commenced exciting her senses. Apollonius had at least, like Asclepiades, the merit of distinguishing at a glance between real and apparent death.f
An observer of the seventeeth century j relates that a servant finding on returning from a voyage, his master dead, tenderly and frequently embraced the inanimate body. Thinking that he discovered some signs of life in it, he breathed his breath into it with so much perse- verance as restored respiration, and reanimated the apparently dead man. This was not regarded as a miracle ;|| and happily for the faithful servant, it was no
* Diderot. Opinions des Anciens Philosophes. Art. Pythagore- Pythagoriciens .
f Philostrat. Vit. Appollon. Tyan. lib. iv. cap. xvi. — Apollo- nius began by asking the name of the young girl, doubtless in order to address her. He knew that of all articulated sounds which strike upon our ear, our own name is that which we most easily recognize, and which most quickly excites our attention.
% Petr. Borellus. Hist, et Observ. Medic. Centur. m. observ. Lvin. quoted by Fromann, Tractât, de Fascinatione, pp. 483 — 484.
|| This mode of restoring the respiratory function in suspended animation, is often successfully resorted to in the present day ; and as a medical man has often to determine the question of real or apparent death, it is consolatory to know, that he possesses the
126 MEDICINE A PART OF THE OCCULT SCIENCE.
longer the custom to attribute such an occurrence to magic*
means of deciding with sufficient accuracy, to authorize the adop- tion of the measures which experience has proved to be the most likely to restore animation when it is merely suspended. When death has actually taken place, it is surely unnecessary to say, that any human attempt to restore life would not only display the most outrageous arrogance, but prove indubitably ineffective. We believe most sincerely in the real miracle of raising Lazarus from the grave by our Saviour, as firmly, indeed, as in the resurrection of our Saviour himself ; and, although we are ready to admit that the Almighty, for some special purpose, as in the case of the Apostles and the early promulgators of Christianity, might even now endow a mortal with such a supernatural gift, yet, all expe- rience is against such an event. Many impostors, however, have presumptuously asserted their possession of this power ; and, even at so recent a period as that of the French prophets, it was assumed by these insane enthusiasts, who, not contented with the reputation of many cures performed upon nervous and imagi- native individuals, by means of prayer, destroyed their reputation by indiscreetly staking it on the resurrection of Dr. Eames ; a striking proof how readily the intellect may become the slave of fanaticism. — Ed .
* The subject of the powerful influence of mind over the body, is of so much importance, especially at the present time, when the public is so open to the promises held forth by every pretender to the healing art, who blazons forth, in advertisements, the mar- vellous cures effected by his nostrums, that the Editor has added an essay upon that subject to the Appendix. (See note c.) — Ed.
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