OF THE WINTER QUARTER.
But now comes on the cold, dirty, dithering, pouting, rainy, shivering, freezing, blowing, stormy, blustering, cruel quarter called winter; the very thoughts of it are enough to fright one; but that it very luckily happens to be introduced (this year) by a good, fat merry Christmas: yet it is the last and worse, and very much resembles extreme old age accompanied by poverty; this quarter is also pretty much like Pharoah’s lean kine; for it generally (we find) eats up and devours most of the produce of the preceding seasons: now the sun entering the southern tropic, affords us the least share of his light, and consequently the longest long nights: yet, nevertheless, in this uncomfortable quarter, you may possibly pick up some crumbs of comfort, provided you have good health, good store of the ready Rhino, a good wife, and other good things about you: and especially a good conscience: for then the starry influences must necessarily appear very benign, notwithstanding the inclemency of the weather; for in such cases there will be frequent _conjunctions_ of sirloins and ribs of beef; _aspects_ of legs and shoulders of mutton, with _refrenations_ of loins of veal, shining near the watery triplicity of plumb-porridge–together with trine and sextile of minced pies; collared brawn from the Ursus major, and sturgeon from Pisces–all for the honour of Christmas: and I think it is a much pleasanter sight than a Covent-Garden comedy, to see a dozen or two of husbandmen, farmers, and honest tenants, at a nobleman’s table (who never raised their rents) worry a sirloin, and hew down, (I mean cut up) a goose like a log: while a good Cheshire cheese, and plenty of nappy ale, and strong March beer, washes down the merry goblets, sets all their wit afloat, and sends them to their respective homes, as happy as kings.
And now, kind loving readers, every one, God send y’a good new-year, when the old one ‘s gone.
FOOTNOTES:
[75] The following prediction, and the verification of it are of so recent a date, that we cannot resist giving it a place in our pages. In the account of the late Captain Flinder’s voyage of discovery, is the melancholy relation of the loss of the master, Mr. Thistle, with seven others, in a boat, on the inhospitable shores of Terra Australia. To this narrative, the following note is subjoined, which we shall here quote in Captain Flinder’s own words: “This evening, Mr. Fowler, the lieutenant, told me a circumstance which I thought very extraordinary, and it afterwards proved to be more so. While we were lying at Spithead, Mr. Thistle was one day waiting on shore, and having nothing else to do, went to a certain old man, named Pine, to have his fortune told. The cunning man informed him that he was going on a long voyage, and that the ship, on arriving at her destination, would be joined by another vessel. That such was intended, he might have learnt privately; but he added that Mr. Thistle would be lost before the other vessel joined. As to the manner of his loss the magician refused to give any information. My boat’s crew, hearing what Mr. Thistle said, went to consult the wise man, and after the prefatory information of a long voyage, they were told that they would be shipwrecked, but not in the ship they were going out in; whether they would escape and return to England, he was not permitted to reveal. This tale Mr. Thistle often told at the mess-table; and I remarked, with some pain, in a future part of the voyage, that every time my boat’s crew went to embark in the Lady Nelson, there was some degree of apprehension amongst them, that the time of the predicted shipwreck was arrived. I make no comment, (says Capt. Flinders,) upon this story, but to recommend a commander, if possible, to prevent any of his crew from consulting fortune-tellers.”–It should be observed that, strange as it may appear, every particular of these predictions came exactly to pass, for the master and his boat’s crew were lost before the Investigator was joined by the Lady Nelson, from Port-Jackson; and when the former ship was condemned, the people embarked with their commander on board the Porpoise, which was wrecked on a coral reef, and nine of the crew were lost.
[76] In 1670, the passion for horoscopes and expounding the stars, prevailed in France among the first rank. The new-born child was usually presented naked to the astrologer, who read the first lineaments in its forehead, and the transverse lines in its hands, and thence wrote down its future destiny. Catherine de Medicis carried Henry IV, when a child, to old Nostradamus, who antiquaries esteem more for his Chronicle of Provence than for his vaticinating powers. The sight of the revered seer, with a heard which “streamed like a meteor in the air,” terrified the future hero, who dreaded a whipping from so grave a personage.
[77] The Chaldean Sages were nearly put to the route by a quarto pack of artillery, fired on them by Mr. John Chamber, in 1691. Apollo did not use Marsyas more inhumanly than his scourging pen this mystical race; and his personalities made them sorely feel it. However, a Norwich knight, the very Quixote of Astrology, arrayed in the enchanted armour of his occult authors, encountered this pagan in a most stately carousal. He came forth with “A Defence of Judicial Astrologye, in answer to a treatise lately published by Mr. John Chamber. By Christopher Knight. Printed at Cambridge, 1693.”
[78] Vide Amulets passim.
[79] Lilly’s work, a voluminous quarto monument of the folly of the age, was sold originally for four guineas; it is entitled “Christian Astrology,” modestly treated, in three books, by William Lilly, student in Astrology, 2nd. edition 1659. Every page is embellished with a horoscope which, sitting on the pretending tripod, he explains with the utmost facility. There is also a portrait of this arch rogue and star-gazer, an admirable illustration for Lavater. As to Lilly’s great skill in prophecy, there goes a pleasant story related by a kinsman of Dr. Case, his successor–namely–that a person wanting to consult him on a certain point coming to his house one morning, Lilly himself going to the door, saw a piece of filthy carrion which some one, who had more wit than manners, had left there: and being much offended at its unsightly appearance wished heartily he did but know who had treated him in that manner by leaving such an unwelcome legacy, as it were, in his very teeth, that he might punish them accordingly; which his customer observing when the conjurer demanded his business, “Nothing at all,” said he, “for I’m sure if you can’t find out who has defiled your own door, it is impossible you should discover anything relating to me,” and with this caustic remark he left him.
[80] The Reverend and learned Thomas Gataker, with whom Lilly was engaged in a dispute, in his Annotations on the tenth chapter of Jeremiah and 10th verse, called him a “blind buzzard,” and Lilly reflected again on his antagonist in his _Annus Tenebrosus_. Mr. Gataker’s reply was entitled Thomas Gataker, B.D. his Vindication of the annotation by him published upon these words, “thus saith the Lord,” (Jer. x. 2) against the scurrilous aspersions of that grand impostor William Lilly; as also against the various expositions of two of his advocates Mr. John Swan, and another by him cited but not named. Together with the Annotations themselves, wherein the pretended grounds of judiciary astrology, and the scripture proofs produced to it, are discussed and refuted. London, 1653, in 4th part 192. Our author making animadversions on this piece in his English Merlin, 1654 produced a third piece from Mr. Gataker, called a Discourse apologetical, wherein Lilly’s lewd, and loud lies in his Merlin or Pasquil for 1654, are clearly laid open; his shameless desertion of his own cause further discovered, his abominable slanders fully refuted, and his malicious and _murtherous_ mind, inciting to a general massacre of God’s ministers, from his own pen, evidently known, etc. London 1654.
CHAPTER X.
ONEIROCRITICAL PRESENTIMENT, ILLUSTRATING THE CAUSE, EFFECTS, PRINCIPAL PHENOMENA, AND DEFINITION OF DREAMS, ETC.
As we shall have to speak of the art practised through the medium, termed incubation, of curing diseases, it may be proper to say something previously on the interpretation of dreams through whose agency these events were said to be realized.
Oneirocritics, or interpreters of dreams, were called conjecturers, a very fit and proper name for these worldly wise men, according to the following lines, translated from Euripides–
He that conjectures least amiss
Of all, the best of prophets is.
To the delusion of dreams not a few of the ancient philosophers lent themselves. Among these were Democritus, Aristotle, and his follower Themistius, Siresius the Platonic; who so far relied on dreams which some accident or other brought about, that they thence endeavoured to persuade men there are no dreams but what are founded on realities. For, say they, as the celestial influences produce various forms and changes in corporeal matter, so out of certain influences, predominating over the power of the fancy, the impression of visions is made, being consentaneous, through the disposition of the heavens, to the effect produced; more especially in dreams, because the mind, being then at liberty from all corporeal cares and exercises, more freely receives the divine influences: it happens, therefore that many things are revealed to them that are asleep, which are concealed from them that are awake. With these and such reasons it is pretended that much is communicated through the medium of dreams:
When soft sleep the body lays at ease, And from the heavy mass the fancy frees, Whate’er it is in which we take delight, And think of most by day we dream at night.
The transition from sleep is very natural to that of dreams, the wonderful and mysterious phenomena of that state, the ideal transactions and vain illusions of the mind. According to Wolfius, an eminent philosopher of Silesia, every dream originates in some sensation, and is continued by the succession of phantoms; but no phantasm can arise in the mind without some previous sensation. And yet it is not easy to confirm this by experience, it being often difficult to distinguish those slight sensations, which give rise to dreams, from phantasms, or objects of imagination.[81] The series of phantasms which thus constitute a dream, seems to be accounted for by the law of the imagination, or association of ideas; though it may be very difficult to assign the cause of every minute difference, not only in different subjects, but in the same, at different times, and in different circumstances. And hence M. Formey, who adopts the opinion of Wolfius, concludes, that those dreams are supernatural, which either do not begin by sensation, or are not continued by the law of imagination.[82]
The opinion is as old as Aristotle, who asserted, that a dream is only the [Greek: Phantasma] or _appearance_ of things, excited in the mind, and remaining after the objects are removed.[83] The opinion of Lucretius, translated in our motto, was likewise that of Tully.[84] Locke also traces the origin of dreams to previous sensations. “The dreams of sleeping men,” says this profound philosopher, “are all made up of the waking man’s ideas, though for the most part oddly put together.”[85] And Dr. Hartley, who explains all the phenomena of the imagination by his theory of vibrations and associations, says, that dreams are nothing but the imaginations or reveries of sleeping men, and that they are deducible from three causes–viz, the impressions and ideas lately received, and particularly those of the preceding day, the state of the body, more especially of the stomach and brain, and association.[86]
Macrobius mentions five sorts of dreams. 1st. vision–2nd. a discovery of something between sleeping and waking–3rd. a suggestion cast into our fancy, called by Cicero, _visum_,–4th. an ordinary dream–and fifth, a divine apparition or revelation in our sleep; such as were the dreams of the prophets, and of Joseph, as also of the Eastern Magi.
CAUSE OF DREAMS.
Avicen makes the cause of dreams to be an ultimate intelligence moving the moon in the midst of that light with which the fancies of men are illuminated while they sleep. Aristotle refers the cause of them to common sense, but placed in the fancy. Averroes, an Arabian physician, places it in the imagination; Democritus ascribes it to little images, or representations, separated from the things themselves; Plato among the specific and concrete notions of the soul; Albertus to the superior influences, which continually flow from the sky, through many specific channels.
Some physicians attribute the cause of dreams to vapours and humours, and the affections and cares of persons predominant when awake; for, say they, by reason of the abundance of vapours, which are exhaled in consequence of immoderate feeding, the brain is so stuffed by it, that monsters and strange chimera are formed, of which the most inordinate eaters and drinkers furnish us with sufficient instances. Some dreams, they assert, are governed partly by the temperature of the body, and partly by the humour which mostly abounds in it; to which may be added the apprehensions which have preceded the day before; and which are often remarked in dogs, and other animals, which bark and make a noise in their sleep. Dreams, they observe, proceed from the humours and temperature of the body; we see the choleric dreams of fire, combats, yellow colours, etc. the phlegmatic of water baths, of sailing on the sea; the melancholies of thick fumes, deserts, fantasies, hideous faces, etc. they that have the hinder part of their brain clogged, with viscous humours, called by physicians Ephialtes incubus, dream that they are suffocated. And those who have the orifice of their stomach loaded with malignant humours, are affrighted with strange visions, by reason of those venemous vapours that mount to the brain and distemper it.
POETICAL ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE EFFECTS OF THE IMAGINATION IN DREAMS.
Were we to enter more profoundly into the mysterious phenomena of dreams, our present lucubrations might become too abstruse; and, after all, no philosophical nor satisfactory account can be given of them. Such of our readers therefore, as may wish for a more minute inquiry into the opinions above stated, we beg leave to refer to the respective authors whom we have already quoted. The reader, who is fond to find amusement even in a serious subject, from the scenes of nocturnal imagination, will be glad, perhaps for a moment, to be transported into the regions of poetic fancy. And here we find that the fancy is not more sportive in dreams, than are the poets in their descriptions of her nocturnal vagaries. On the effects of the imagination in dreams, the following effusion, put into the mouth of the volatile Mercurio, is an admirable illustration:–
O, then I see, Queen Mab has been with you. She is the fancy’s midwife, and she comes In shape no bigger than an agate stone
On the fore-finger of an Alderman, Drawn with a team of little atomies,
Athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep: Her waggon spokes made of long spinners’ legs; The cover of the wings of grasshoppers; The traces of the smallest spider’s web; The collars of the moonshine’s watery beams; Her whip of cricket’s bone; the lash of film; Her waggoner, a small grey coated gnat, Not half so big as a round little worm, Prickt from the lazy finger of a maid.
Her chariot is an empty hazel nut, Made by the joiner squirril, old grub,
Time out of mind the fairies’ coachmakers: And in this state she gallops night by night, Thro’ lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love; On courtiers’ knees, that dream on curtsies strait; O’er lawyers’ fingers, who strait dream on fees; O’er ladies lips, who strait on kisses dream, Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plague, Because their breath with sweetmeats tainted are. Sometimes she gallops o’er a lawyer’s nose, And then dreams he of smelling out a suit, And sometimes comes she with a tithe-pig tail, Tickling the parson as he lies asleep;
Then dreams he of another benefice; Sometimes she driveth o’er a soldier’s neck And then he dreams of cutting foreign throats, Of breaches, ambuscades, Spanish blades, Of healths fire fathom deep; and then anon Drums in his ears, at which he starts and wakes, And being thus frighted, swears a pray’r or two, And sleeps again.
Lucretius, and Petronius in his poem on the vanity of dreams, had preceded our immortal bard in a description of the effects of dreams on different kinds of persons. Both the passages here alluded to, only serve to shew the vast superiority of Shakspeare’s boundless genius: their sense is thus admirably expressed by Stepney:
At dead of night imperial reason sleeps, And fancy with her train, her revels keeps; Then airy phantoms a mix’d scene display, Of what we heard, or saw, or wish’d by day; For memory those images retains
Which passion form’d, and still the strongest reigns. Huntsmen renew the chase they lately run, And generals fight again their battles won. Spectres and fairies haunt the murderer’s dreams; Grants and disgraces are the courtier’s themes. The miser spies a thief, or a new hoard; The cit’s a knight; the sycophant a lord, Thus fancy’s in the wild distraction lost, With what we most abhor, or covet most. Honours and state before this phantom fall; For sleep, like death, its image, equals all.
Chaucer in his tale of the Cock and Fox, has a fine description, thus versified by Dryden:–
Dreams are but interludes which fancy makes: When monarch reason sleeps, this mimic wakes; Compounds a medley of disjointed things, A court of coblers and a mob of kings:
Light fumes are merry, grosser fumes are sad: Both are the reasonable soul run mad;
And many monstrous forms in sleep we see, That neither were, or are, or e’er can be. Sometimes forgotten things, long cast behind, Rush forward in the brain, and come to mind. The nurse’s legends are for truth received, And the man dreams but what the boy believed, Sometimes we but rehearse a former play, The night restores our actions done by day; As hounds in sleep will open for their prey. In short, the farce of dreams is of a piece In chimeras all; and more absurd or less.
Shakspeare again:–
I talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain, Begot of nothing but vain phantasy,
Which is as thin of substance as the air, And more inconsistant than the wind.
Nor must Milton be omitted–
In the soul
Are many lesser faculties, that serve Reason as chief; among these Fancy next Her office holds; of all external things, Which the five watchful senses represent, She forms imaginations, airy shapes,
Which reason joining, or disjoining, frames, And all that we affirm, or what deny, or call Our knowledge or opinion; then retires
Into her private cell, when nature rests. Oft in her absence mimic fancy wakes,
To imitate her; but misjoining shapes, Wild works produces oft, but most in dreams Ill matching words or deeds, long past or tale.
PRINCIPAL PHENOMENA IN DREAMING.
From these practical descriptions let us proceed to take a view of the principal phenomena in dreaming. And first, Mr. Locke’s beautiful _modes of_ which will greatly illustrate the preceding observations.
“When the mind,” says Locke, “turns its view inward upon itself, and contemplates its own actions, _thinking_ is the first that occurs. In it the mind observes a great variety of modifications, and from thence receives distinct _ideas_. Thus the perception, which actually accompanies, and is annexed to any impression on the body, made by an external object, being distinct from all other modifications of thinking, furnishes the mind with a distinct idea which we call _sensation_; which is, as it were, the actual entrance of an idea into the understanding by the senses.
“The same idea, when it occurs again without the operation of the like object on the external sensory, is _remembrance_: if it be sought after by the mind, and with pain and endeavour found, and brought again in view, it is _recollection_: if it be held there long under consideration, it is _contemplation_; when ideas float in our mind without any reflexion or regard of the understanding, it is that which the French call _reverie_;[87] our language has scarce a name for it. When the ideas that offer themselves (for as I have observed in another place, while we are awake, there will always be a train of ideas succeeding one another in our minds) are taken notice of, and, as it were, registered in the memory, it is _attention_; when the mind, with great earnestness, and of choice, fixes its view on any idea, considers it on all sides, and will not be called off by the ordinary solicitations of other ideas, it is what we call _intention_ or _study_. Sleep without dreaming is rest from all these: and _dreaming_ itself, is the having of ideas (while the outward senses are stopped, so that they receive not outward objects with their usual quickness) in the mind, not suggested by any external objects, or known occasion, nor under any choice or conduct of the understanding at all, and whether that which we call _ecstasy_, be not dreaming with the eyes open, I leave to be examined.”
Dr. Beattie, in his “Dissertations moral and critical,” has an ingenious essay on this subject, in which he attempts to ascertain, not so much the _efficient_ as the _final_ causes of the phenomenon, and to obviate those superstitions in regard to it, which have sometimes troubled weak minds. He labours, with great earnestness, to shew, that dreams may be of use in the way of physical admonition: that persons, who attend to them with this view, may make important discoveries with regard to their health; that they may be serviceable as the means of moral improvement; that, by attending to them, we may discern our predominant passions, and receive good hints for the regulation of them; that they may have been intended by Providence to serve as an amusement to the mental powers; and that dreaming is not universal, because, probably, all constitutions do not require such intellectual amusement. In observations of this kind, we may discover the ingenuity of fancy and the sagacity of conjecture. We may find amusement in the arguments, but we look in vain for satisfaction. Nature, certainly, does nothing in vain, yet we are far from thinking, that man is able, in every case, to discover her intentions. Final causes, perhaps, ought never to be the subject of human speculation, but when they are plain and obvious. To substitute vain conjectures, instead of the designs of Providence, on subjects where those designs are beyond our reach, serves only to furnish matter for the cavils of the sceptical, and the sneers of the licentious.
Among the many striking phenomena in our dreams, it may be observed, that, while they last, the memory seems to lie wholly torpid, and the understanding to be employed only about such objects as are then presented, without comparing the present with the past. When we sleep, we often converse with a friend who is either absent or dead, without remembering that the grave or the ocean is between us. We float, like a feather, upon the wind; for we find ourselves this moment in England, and the next in India, without reflecting that the laws of nature are suspended, or inquiring how the scene could have been so suddenly shifted before us. We are familiar with prodigies; we accommodate ourselves to every event, however romantic; and we not only reason, but act upon principles, which are in the highest degree absurd and extravagant. Our dreams, moreover, are so far from being the effect of a voluntary effort, that we neither know of what we shall dream, or whether we shall dream at all.
But sleep is not the only time in which strange and unconnected objects involve our ideas in confusion. Besides the _reveries_ of the day, already spoken of, we have, in a moral view, our _waking-dreams_, which are not less chimerical, and impossible to be realized, than the imaginations of the night.
Night visions may befriend—-
Our waking dreams are fatal. How I dreamt Of things impossible (could sleep do more?) Of joys perpetual in perpetual change!
Of stable pleasures on the tossing wave! Eternal sunshine in the storms of life! How richly were my noon-tide trances hung, With gorgeous tapestries of pictur’d joys! Till at deaths’ toll,—-
Starting I woke, and found myself undone.
Many of the fabulous stories of ghosts or apparitions have originated unquestionably in dreams. There are times of slumber when we are sensible of being asleep. “When the thoughts are much troubled,” says Hobbes, “and when a person sleeps without the circumstance of going to bed, or pulling off his clothes, as when he nods in his chair, it is very difficult to distinguish a dream from a reality. On the contrary, he that composes himself to sleep, in case of any uncouth or absurd fancy, easily suspects it to have been a dream.”[88] On this principle, Hobbes has ingeniously accounted for the spectre which is said to have appeared to Brutus; and the well-known story told by Clarendon, of the apparition of the duke of Buckingham’s father will admit of a similar solution. There was no man at that time in the kingdom so much the topic of conversation as the duke; and, from the corruptness of his character, he was very likely to fall a sacrifice to the corruptness of the times. Sir George Villiers is said to have appeared to the man at midnight–there is therefore the greatest probability that the man was asleep; and the dream affrighting him, made a strong impression, and was likely to be repeated.
History furnishes us with numerous instances of a forecast having been communicated through the medium of dreams, some of which are so extraordinary as almost to shake our belief that the hand of Providence is not sometimes evident through their instrumentality. Cicero, in his first book on Divination, tells us, that Heraclides, a clever man, and who had been a disciple of Plato, writes that the mother of Phalaris saw in a dream the statues of the gods which she had consecrated in the house of her son; and among other things, it appeared to her, that from a cup which Mercury held in his hand, he had spilled some blood from it, and that the blood had scarcely touched the ground, than rising up in large bubbles it filled the whole house. This dream of the mother was afterwards but too truly verified in the cruelty of the son. Cyrus dreamt that seeing the sun at his feet, he made three different unsuccessful attempts to lay his hand upon it, at each of which it evaded him. The Persian Magi who interpreted this dream told him that these three attempts to seize the sun signified that he would reign thirty years. This prediction was verified: he died at the age of seventy, having begun to reign when he was forty years old.
“There is doubtless,” says Cicero, “something even among barbarians which marks that they possess the gift of presentiment and divination.” The Indian Calanus mounting the flaming faggot on which he was about to be burnt, exclaimed “O what a fine exit from life, when my body, like that of Hercules, shall be consumed by the fire, my spirit will freely enjoy the light.” And Alexander having asked if he had anything to say, he replied, “Yes, I shall soon see you,” which happened as he foretold, Alexander having died a few days afterwards at Babylon. Xenophon, an ardent disciple of Socrates, relates that in the war which he made in favour of young Cyrus, he had some dreams which were followed by the most miraculous events. Shall we say that Xenophon does not speak truth, or is too extravagant? What! so great a personage, and so divine a spirit as Aristotle, can he be deceived? Or does he wish to deceive others, when he tells us of Eudemus of Cyprus, one of his friends, wishing to go into Macedonia, passed by Pheres, a celebrated town in Thessaly, which at that time was under the dominion of the tyrant Alexander; and that having fallen very sick, he saw in a dream a very handsome young man, who told him that he would cure him, and that the tyrant Alexander would shortly die, but as to himself, he would return home at the end of five years. Aristotle remarks that the two first predictions were, indeed, soon accomplished; that Eudemus recovered, and that the tyrant was killed by his wife’s brothers; but that at the expiration of five years, the time at which it was hoped Eudemus, according to the dream, was to return to Sicily, his native country, news were received that he had been killed in a combat near Syracuse; which gave rise to another interpretation of the dream, namely, that, when the spirit or soul of Eudemus left his body, it went thence straight to his own house.–A cup of massy gold having been stolen from the temple of Hercules, this god appeared in a dream to Sophocles three consecutive times, and pointed out the thief to him; who was put to the torture, confessed the delinquency, and gave up the cup. The temple afterwards received the name of Hercules Indicator.
An endless variety of similar instances, both from ancient and modern history, might be adduced of the singularity of dreams, as well as their instrumentality in revealing secrets which, without such agency, had lain for ever in oblivion; these, however, are sufficient for our purpose here; and the occurrence of one of a very recent date, connected with the discovery of the body of the murdered Maria Martin, in the red barn, is still fresh in the recollection of our readers. That there is a ridiculous infatuation attached by some people to dreams, which have no meaning, and which are the offsprings of the day’s thoughts, even among persons whose education should inform them better, particularly among the fair sex, cannot be denied; indeed, a conversation seldom passes among them, but some inconsistent dream or other, form a leading feature of their gossip; and doubtless is with them an hysterical symptom.
Sometimes in our sleeping dreams, we imagine ourselves involved in inextricable woe, and enjoy at waking, the ecstasy of a deliverance from it. “And such a deliverance,” says Dr. Beattie, “will every good man meet with at last, when he is taken away from the evils of life, and awakes in the regions of everlasting light and peace; looking back upon the world and its troubles, with a surprise and satisfaction similar in kind (though far higher in degree) to that which we now feel, when we escape from a terrifying dream, and open our eyes to the sweet serenity of a summer morning.” Sometimes, in our dreams, we imagine scenes of pure and unutterable joy; and how much do we regret at waking, that the heavenly vision is no more! But what must the raptures of the good man be, when he enters the regions of immortality, and beholds the radiant fields of permanent delight! The idea of such a happy death, such a sweet transition, from the dreams of earth to the realities of heaven, is thus beautifully described by Dryden, in his poem entitled Eleonora:
“She passed serenely, with a single breath; This moment perfect health, the next was death; One sigh did her eternal bliss assure;
So little penance needs when souls are pure. As gentle dreams our waking thoughts pursue; Or, one dream past, we slide into a new; So close they follow and such wild order keep, We think ourselves awake and are asleep; So softly death succeeded life in her:
She did but dream of heaven and she was there.”
DEFINITION OF DREAMS.
Dreams are vagaries of the imagination, and in most instances proceed from external sensations. They take place only when our sleep is unsound, in which case the brain and nervous system are capable of performing certain motions. We seldom dream during the first hours of sleep; perhaps because the nervous fluid is then too much exhausted; but dreams mostly occur towards the morning, when this fluid has been, in some measure, restored.
Every thing capable of interrupting the tranquillity of mind and body, may produce dreams; such are the various kinds of grief and sorrow, exertions of the mind, affections and passions, crude and undigested food, a hard and inconvenient posture of the body. Those ideas which have lately occupied our minds or made a lively impression upon us, generally constitute the principal subject of a dream, and more or less employ our imagination, when we are asleep.
Animals are likewise apt to dream, though seldom; and even men living temperately, and enjoying a perfect state of health, are seldom disturbed with this play of the fancy. And, indeed, there are examples of lively and spirited persons who never dream at all. The great physiologist Haller considers dreaming as a symptom of disease, or as a stimulating cause, by which the perfect tranquillity of the sensorium is interrupted. Hence, that sleep is the most refreshing, which is undisturbed by dreams, or, at least, when we have the distinct recollection of them. Most of our dreams are then nothing more than sports of the fancy, and derive their origin chiefly from external impressions; almost every thing we see and hear, when awake, leads our imagination to collateral notions or representations, which, in a manner, spontaneously, and without the least effort, associate with external sensations. The place where a person whom we love formerly resided, a dress similar to that which we have seen her wear, or the objects that employed her attention, no sooner catch our eye, than she immediately occupies our mind. And, though these images associating with external sensations, do not arrive at complete consciousness within the power of imagination, yet even in their latent state they may become very strong and permanent.
Cicero furnishes us with a story of two Arcadians, who, travelling together, arrived at Megara, a city of Greece, between Athens and Corinth, where one of them lodged in a friend’s house, and the other at an inn. After supper, the person who lodged at the private house went to bed, and falling asleep, dreamed that his friend at the inn appeared to him and begged his assistance, because the innkeeper was going to kill him. The man immediately got out of bed much frightened at the dream; but recovering himself, and falling asleep again, his friend appeared to him a second time, and desired that, as he would not assist him in time, he would take care at least not to let his death go unpunished; that the innkeeper having murdered him had thrown his body into a cart and covered it with dung; he therefore begged that he would be at the city gate in the morning, before the cart was out; struck with this new dream, he went early to the gate, saw the cart, and asked the driver what was in it; the driver immediately fled, the dead body was taken out of the cart, and the innkeeper apprehended and executed.
It is very frequently observed, that in a dream a series of representations is suddenly interrupted, and another series of a very different kind occupies its place. This happens as soon as an idea associates itself; which, from whatever cause, is more interesting than that immediately preceding. The last then becomes the prevailing one, and determines the association. Yet, by this too, the imagination is frequently reconducted to the former series. The interruption in the course of the preceding occurrences is remarked, and the power of abstracting similarities is in search of the cause of this irregularity. Hence, in such cases, there usually happens some unfortunate event or other, which occasions the interruption of the story. The representing power may again suddenly conduct us to another series of ideas, and thus the imagination may be led by the subreasoning power before defined, from one scene to another. Of this kind, for instance, is the following remarkable dream, as related and explained in the works of professor Maas of Halle: “I dreamed once,” says he “that the Pope visited me. He commanded me to open my desk, and carefully examined all the papers it contained. While he was thus employed, a very sparkling diamond fell out of his triple crown into my desk, of which, however, neither of us took any notice. As soon as the Pope had withdrawn, I retired to bed, but was soon obliged to rise, on account of a thick smoke, the cause of which I had yet to learn. Upon examination I discovered, that the diamond had set fire to the papers in my desk, and burnt them to ashes.”
On account of the peculiar circumstances by which this dream was occasioned, it deserves the following short analysis. “On the preceding evening,” says professor Maas, “I was visited by a friend with whom I had a lively conversation, upon Joseph IInd’s suppression of monasteries and convents. With this idea, though I did not become conscious of it in my dream, was associated the visit which the Pope publicly paid the Emperor Joseph at Vienna, in consequence of the measures taken against the clergy; and with this again was combined, however faintly, the representation of the visit, which had been paid me by my friend. These two events were, by the subreasoning faculty, compounded into one, according to the established rule–that things which agree in their parts, also correspond as to the whole;–hence the Pope’s visit, was changed into a visit made to me. The subreasoning faculty then, in order to account for this extraordinary visit, fixed upon that which was the most important object in my room, namely, the desk, or rather the papers contained in it. That a diamond fell out of the triple crown was a collateral association, which was owing merely to the representation of the desk. Some days before when opening the desk, I had broken the glass of my watch, which I held in my hand, and the fragments fell among the papers. Hence no farther attention was paid to the diamond, being a representation of a collateral series of things. But afterwards the representation of the sparkling stones was again excited, and became the prevailing idea; hence it determined the succeeding association. On account of its similarity, it excited, the representation of fire, with which it was confounded; hence arose fire and smoke.–But, in the event, the writings only were burnt, not the desk itself; to which, being of comparatively less value, the attention was not at all directed.” It is farther observable, that there are in the human mind certain obscure representations, and that it is necessary to be convinced of the reality of these images, if we are desirous of perceiving the connexion, which subsists among the operations of the imagination. Of the numerous phenomena, founded on obscure ideas, and which consequently prove their existence, we shall only remark the following. It is a well known fact, that many dreams originate in the impressions made in the body during sleep; and they consist of analogous images or such as are associated with sensations that would arise from these impressions, during a waking state. Hence, for instance, if our legs are placed in a perpendicular posture, we are often terrified by a dream that implies the imminent danger of falling from a steep rock or precipice. The mind must represent to itself these external impressions in a lively manner, otherwise no ideal picture could be thus excited; but, as we do not become at all conscious of them, they are but faintly and obscurely represented.
If we make a resolution to rise earlier in the morning than usual; and if we impress the determination on our mind, immediately before going to rest, we are almost certain to succeed. Now it is self-evident that this success cannot be ascribed to the efforts of the body, but altogether to the mind, which probably, during sleep perceives and computes the duration of time, so that it makes an impression on the body, which enables us to awake at an appointed hour. Yet all this takes place, without our consciousness, and the representations remain obscure. Many productions of art are so complicated, that a variety of simple conceptions are requisite to lay the foundation of them; yet the artist is almost entirely unconscious of these individual notions. Thus a person performs a piece of music, without being obliged to reflect, in a conscious manner, on the signification of the notes, their value, and the order of the fingers he must observe; nay even without clearly distinguishing the strings of the harp, or the keys of the harpsichord. We cannot attribute this to the mechanism of the body, which might gradually accustom itself to the accurate placing of the fingers. This could be applied only where we place a piece of music, frequently practised; but it is totally inapplicable to a new piece, which is played by the professor with equal facility, though he has never seen it before. In the latter case there must arise, necessarily, an ideal representation, or an act of judgment, previous to every motion of the finger.
These arguments, we trust, are sufficient, to evince the occurrence of these obscure notions and representations, from which all our dreams originate. Before, however, we close this subject, we shall relate the following extraordinary dream of the celebrated Galileo, who at a very advanced age had lost his sight. In one of his walks over a beautiful plain, conducted by his pupil Troicelli, the venerable sage related the following dream to him. “Once,” said he, “my eyes permitted me to enjoy the charms of these fields. But now, since their light is extinguished, these pleasures are lost to me for ever. Heaven justly inflicts the punishment which was predicted to me many years ago. When in prison, and impatiently languishing for liberty, I began to be discontented with the ways of Providence; Copernicus appeared to me in a dream; his celestial spirit conducted me over luminous stars, and, in a threatening voice, reprehended me for having murmured against him, at whose _fiat_ all these worlds had proceeded from nothing. ‘A time shall come (said he) when thine eyes shall refuse to assist thee in contemplating these wonders.'”
We shall now proceed to notice the subject of dreams in another point of view–that is, as being employed as a medium of divination in the cure of diseases, in which the fancies of the brain appear, in reality, to as little advantage as they do with reference to any other considerations in which such pretended omens exist.
FOOTNOTES:
[81] Wolfius, Psychol. Empir. Sect. 123.
[82] Mem. de l’acad. de Berlin, tom. ii. p. 316.
[83] Arist. de insomn. cap 3.
[84] Quae in vita usurpant homines, cogitant, curant, vident quaeque agunt vigilantes, agitantque, ea cuique in somno accidunt. _De Div._
[85] Essay on Human Understanding, book, chap. i. sect 17.
[86] Obs, on Man, vol. 1, sect. 5.
[87] There is a phenomenon in the mind, which, though it happen to us while we are perfectly awake, yet approaches the nearest to sleep of any I know. It is called the _Reverie_, or, as some term it, the _brown study_, a sort of middle state between waking and sleeping; in which, though our eyes are open, our senses seem to be entirely shut up, and we are quite insensible of every thing about us, yet we are all the while engaged in a musing indolence of thought, or a supine and lolling kind of roving from one fairy scene to another, without any self-command; from which, if any noise or accident rouse us, we wake as from a real dream, and are often as much at a loss to tell how our thoughts were employed, as if we had waked from the soundest sleep. This is frequently called _dreaming_, sometimes _absence_, a thing often observed in lovers and people of a melancholy or indeed speculative turn.–_Fordyce’s Dialogues concerning education, vol. II. p. 255._
[88] Leviathan, part. 1. c. 1.
CHAPTER XI.
ON INCUBATION; OR THE ART OF HEALING BY VISIONARY DIVINATION.
Medicine unquestionably ranks among the most ancient of all human sciences. In the infant state of society, when simplicity of manners characterised the pursuits of mankind, medical assistance was little wanted; but when the nature of man degenerated, and vice and luxury corrupted his habits of innocence and temperance, diseases sprung up which those aids alone could check or eradicate. The knowledge of them at first could not fail to be empirical and precarious. The sick were placed in the high ways, that travellers and passers by might assist them with their counsel; and at length the priesthood appropriated this privilege exclusively to themselves.
It was not merely the sacerdotal dignity which rendered them objects of awe and reverence to the illiterate multitude; the priests were regarded as the depositaries of science and learning; and proved themselves as skilful as they were successful, in cementing their influence by those arts which were best calculated to inflame the prejudices of the vulgar in their favour.
It is the work of ages to wean men and nations from popular illusions, and the deep-rooted opinions transmitted from sire to son: it cannot therefore surprise us, that even when the intellectual energy of Greece was signalizing itself by efforts which have commanded the admiration of after ages, it should still remain a popular dogma in medicine “that persons labouring under bodily infirmity, might be thrown into a state of charmed torpor, in which, though destitute of any previous medical knowledge, they would be enabled to ascertain the nature of their malady, as well as of the diseases of others, and devise the means of their cure.” Upon this dogma was founded the mystery of incubations, or the art of healing by visionary divination.
It is not our object here to discuss whether a man can be capable of divination: such a power, however, was assigned to him, not only by the vulgar, but by the greater number of the philosophical sects of antiquity; and it does appear to savour a little of temerity, that Epicurus and the cynics should have ventured to reject a belief so universally and strenuously maintained, and resting on an infinity of traditions and accounts of prophets, in whom Greece had abounded from her earliest times, and of whose divine gift of prophecy the firmest conviction was currently entertained. Aeschylus, Plutarch, Apuleius, and other Greek authors, bear ample testimony of this persuasion, and tell us that by uncommon and irregular motions of the body intoxicating vapours, or certain holy ejaculations, men might be thrown into an enchanted trance; in which, being in a state between sleeping and waking, they were unsusceptible of external impressions and obtaining a glimpse of futurity, were gifted with the power of prophecy. Here their allusion, however, only concerns the celebrated divinations of the Pythia.[89] We must therefore, probe somewhat deeper, in order to illustrate that species of divination which was the result of dreams, and a source of divination on the nature of diseases and their remedies.
This kind of superstition was in no less acceptation than the former among the ancients, whose temples were constantly crowded with the sick, and reverberated with their supplications for divinatory dreams, which were regarded as an immediate gift from the gods. Indeed, the celestial origin of dreams was universally admitted by the nations of antiquity, and thence also their efficacy as oracles. Nothing could be more natural than such an idea. From the crude and imperfect notions which long prevailed with respect to the soul, it was scarcely possible for them to ascribe the impressions, which their memory retained of the creation of their fancy during their slumbers, to the instrumentality of their own conceits; they could not fail therefore to impute them to the interposition of some foreign agent, and to whom more naturally could they refer them than to a divinity? When awake, they imagined themselves always attended by the gods in person, and ascribed every thought, and resolved every appearance or accident, which deviated from the common course of nature, to the immediate influence of a superintending deity. It was under such impressions that so many nations originally rested their belief in divinatory dreams. The records of antiquity therefore abound in instances (for the greater part of an early date) where the actions of men have been the result of a dream, whose conceit was entirely at variance with the real state of their affairs. It was not long before the diversity of dreams awakened their attention: some were connected and simple, others were obscure, and made up of curious fancies, though not incapable of being resolved by the windings and turnings of allegory.
It was no unnatural transition from the received belief in dreams, to the idea that they might become the medium of seeking instruction from the gods: hence the institution of oracles, whose responses were given in dreams; and the addition of sleeping chambers to many temples, such as those in Epidaurus and at Oropos. Here it was, that after pious ceremonies and prayers, men laid themselves down in expectation of dreams; when the expectation was realized, though the dream proved ever so confused or intricate, the dreamer always succeeded in reconciling it to his circumstances: his own belief and priestly wiles, readily effected the solution. The conceit of dreams, according to the votary’s wishes, was so powerfully promoted by the preparatory initiation he had undergone, that it would have been somewhat extraordinary had he been altogether disappointed. He was generally anxious to increase the fame of his divinity by his dream, and possessed a high veneration and deep impression of the miracles which that divinity had wrought. With these predispositions he resorted to the temple, where he had a whole day before him to ponder on his malady, and on every sort of remedy that might have been suggested to him; how natural was it, therefore, for his busy imagination to fix, in his sleep, upon one particular remedy more forcibly than upon another? Add to this, the solemn lonely hour of night was the appointed hour for his sleep, which was preceded by prayer and other inspiring ceremonies, that would naturally elevate his devotion to the highest pitch. He had also previously perambulated the temple, and with a full heart surveyed the offerings of those whose sickness had departed from them.
If all these preparations were unavailing, the officiants of the temple had still means in reserve, by which the credulous should be thrown into that bodily state which was indispensable to the divinatory sleep: of these, succeeding instances will be hereafter produced. In those days, there were however, some men from whom the somniferous faculty was withheld: they were, therefore, admonished to repeat their prayers and oblations, in order to win the divinity’s favour: and the ultimate and customary resort was, if success did not crown his perseverance, to pronounce it a token, that such patients were an eyesore to the divinity.
From this divinatory sleep, arose the vulgar expressions in Greece [Greek: enkoimasdai], and [Greek: enkoimaesis][90] The latin terms are _incubare_ and _incubatio_ an exact translation of the Greek words. It appears, therefore, that the Romans and Greeks were equally acquainted with the institution; though we find but very little mention made of it by the Latin writers, yet this is no argument against its prevalence among the Romans, as we are left with as scanty accounts of many other superstitions which were in vogue amongst them. It is highly probable that it was not by any means so popular in Rome as in Greece; and the cause of this may, perhaps, be found in the reflecting disposition and sober character of the haughty Roman, to which the light and volatile temperament of the Grecian, formed so striking a contrast.
That incubation was a ready means of diving into the future, needs no demonstration. Although its practice was chiefly resorted to in cases where medical aid was desired, it was still made use of in every other case, in which the ancient oracles were consulted. Whether it arose in Greece, or migrated thither from the East, is a point with which the ancients have left us unacquainted, though they advert to its prevalence amongst those who were called barbarians. Strabo has several instances of it, and particularly mentions a place in the Caspian sea, where such an oracle existed;[91] he also relates, in his celebrated account of Moses, that this law-giver laid it down, in common with the priests of Esculapius, that to those who led a chaste and virtuous life the deity would vouchsafe prophetical visions in his sanctuary; but to those who were of idle and impure habits, they would be denied.[92]
Pomponius Mela even mentions a savage nation, in the interior of Africa, who laid themselves down to sleep on the grave-stones of their ancestors, and looked upon the dreams they had on those spots as oracles from the dead.[93] We shall see, hereafter, that this superstition was equally indigenous among the Egyptians. Although it be doubtful whether the Greeks owed this species of divination to their own invention or not, its existence may at least be traced as far as the earliest ages of their history; notwithstanding no positive mention of it has been made either by Homer or the authors following him.
The oracular power of dreams, and the sanctuaries where they are supposed to be dispersed, have been diffusely treated of in the compilations of Van Dale and other learned writers. These species of oracles were in high estimation, even in the most enlightened and flourishing periods of Greece; it is somewhat singular, however, that no people cherished them more devoutly than the Spartans, who depended altogether upon oracles in their weightiest affairs of state. Of all the civilized nations of Greece, Sparta always approved herself the most superstitious; her advancement was rather the effect of her policy, than of any stimulus given to her civilization by science. This consideration will enable us to account for the powerful influence which, even in the latest stages of Lacedemonian story, attached to the responses of Passiphae, a local goddess of Thalame, but little known beyond the confines of Laconia. The extent of their influence is particularly evident in the history of Agis and Cleomenes.[94]
The greater part of these somnambulistic oracles were ascribed to persons who had distinguished themselves as great dreamers when on earth. In old times there was a description of prophets who pretended to prepare themselves for the foreboding of future events through the medium of sacred dreams. They were classed under the appellation of [Greek: Oneiroploi], to which rank the most celebrated Vates of the heroic age belonged. In this way it was that a sacred spot was dedicated to Calchus, whence he gave his responses in dreams after his decease: this spot lay in Daunia, on the coast of the Adriatic. The supplicant’s offices began with the offering up of a ram, on whose skin he laid himself down, and in this situation, received the instruction he sought for.[95] Amphilocus, a contemporary soothsayer, who accompanied the Epigoni in the first Theban war, had a similar oracle at Mallos, in Cilicia, which Pausanias asserts, even at the close of the second century, to have been the most credible of his age; it is also mentioned by Dion Cassius, in his history of Commodus.[96]
The most famous, however, of this class of oracles, was that of Amphiaraus, the father of Amphilocus, which was one of the five principal oracles of Greece; he had signalized himself as a sapient soothsayer in the first Theban war; and his oracle was situated at Oropos, on the borders of Boetia and Attica. Of all others this deserves our most particular attention, as it was resorted to more frequently in cases of infirmity and disease, than in any other circumstances. His responses were always delivered in dreams, in whose interpretation, as he was the first to possess that faculty. Pausanias says he received divine honours. Those who repaired to Amphiaraus’s oracle to supplicate his aid, laid themselves down in the manner we have just related, after several preparatory lustrations and sacrifices, on the skin of a ram slain in honour of the god, and awaited the dreams, which were to unfold the means of their different cures.
Lustrations and sacrifices were not, however, the only preparatives for inducing the visionary disposition. The priests subjected the patients to various others, which Philostratus affirms[97] to have been very instrumental towards rendering the sleeper’s mind clear and unclouded. Part of these preparatives consisted in one day’s abstinence from eating, and three, nay, even in some cases, fifteen days’ abstinence from wine, the common beverage of the Greeks. This was the practice also with other oracles; nor were the priests in the meantime insensible to their own interests on these occasions; for those who were cured by Amphiaraus’s revelations were permitted to bathe in the sacred waters of a fountain, into which they were enjoined to cast pieces of gold and silver, which were destined, most probably, to sweeten the labours of his officiants.
The oracles, whose intervention was principally or altogether sought for the healing of the sick by means of divination founded on dreams, were scattered over Greece, Italy, Egypt, and other countries. As regards those of Egypt, it may be remarked, that although many of the Egyptians believed there were thirty-six demons, or aerial deities, each of whom had the care of a certain portion of the human frame, and when that portion was diseased, would heal it on the patient’s earnest prayer, yet a variety of their oracles, such as those of Serapis, Isis, and Phthas, the Hephaestos of the Greeks, appertained to the class, which is the present object of our inquiry.
The oracle Serapis was situated near Canopus; it was visited with the highest veneration by the wealthiest and most illustrious Egyptians, and contained ample records of miraculous cures which that god had performed on sleepers.[98] Isis, it is said, effected similar cures in her lifetime, whence it became her office, in her after state of deification, to reveal in dreams the most efficacious remedies to the sick. Indeed the healing powers of this goddess were such, that, as we are told by Diodorus,[99] the remedies she prescribed never failed of their effect, and that convalescents were daily seen returning from her temple, many of whom had been abandoned as incurable by the physicians.
The third oracle of the sick was consecrated to Phthas, and lay near Memphis, but it is seldom mentioned by the ancients.[100]
In Italy there existed two oracles, whose responses were imparted in dreams, before the worship of Esculapius was introduced from Greece. One of them only belongs to this place, that of the physician Podalirus, in Daunia,[101] which is mentioned by Lycophron.[102] Subsequently it is well known incubation was practised after the Grecian form in the Roman temple of Aesculapius on the Insula Tiberina.[103]
This description of oracles abounded throughout Greece; the most memorable of which was that on the Asiatic coast, between Trattis and Nyssa, which is more particularly described by Strabo than any other. Not far from the town of Nyssa, says he, there is a place called Charaka, where we find a grove and temple sacred to Pluto and Proserpine, and close to the grove a subterraneous cave, of a most extraordinary nature. It is related of it, that diseased persons, who have faith in the remedies predicted by those deities, are accustomed to resort to it and pass some time with experienced priests, who reside near the cave. These priests lay themselves down to sleep in the cave, and afterwards order such medicine as have been revealed to them there, to be furnished to their patients in the temple. They frequently conduct the sick themselves into the cave, where they remain for several days together, without touching a morsel of food; nor are the profane withheld from a participation in the _divinatory_ sleep, though this is not permitted otherwise than under the controul, and with the sacred sanction, of the priests. There is, however, nothing more surprising about this place than that it is esteemed _noxious and fatal to the healthy_.[104] This last remark of our geographer, proves how jealous the priestly physicians were of their medical monopoly, and how fearful lest the _saner_ part of mankind should detect and expose the pretended virtues of their medical sanctuary.
We have hitherto mentioned the name of Aesculapius but casually, though there was no god of antiquity more celebrated for curing every species of malady by the incubatory process. He was particularly designated by the Greeks as “the sender of dreams,” [Greek: Oneiropompon]; nor could any other deity boast of so great a number of those oracles. The most distinguished of these was the oracle of Epidaurus, in the Argivian territory; from which spot his worship extended over a great proportion of the old world;–hither, as being the place of his birth and the site of his richest temple, crowds of sick persons constantly repaired in quest of dreams. The success attending them was diligently set forth on every wall of the temple; where the _tabulae votivae_ recorded the names of those who had been healed, the nature of their maladies, and the cure which the god prescribed. Similar circumstances are related of his Temple at Triccae, in Thessaly, where Esculapius was held in great veneration at a very early period; there appears also to have been another such temple either at or near Athens,[105] where we must look for the scene of the ridiculous cure which Aristophanes makes Aesculapius to perform on the blind god of riches. Though there is undoubtedly a rich vein of the burlesque in the Plutus of the Grecian dramatist, yet we may gather much concerning our present subject from the scene in which the slave, who had attended Plutus in the Temple, relates the whole process of his master’s wife. Here also the night was the chosen period of incubation. Before the signal for sleep was given, the officiants of the temple extinguished all the lights in the sick men’s chamber; thus involving them in a solemn stillness and obscurity highly favourable to the work in hand, but in a particular manner to the subterfuge of the priests, who enacted the nocturnal apparition of Aesculapius to his sick client.
This passage in Plutus is certainly the earliest circumstantial relation we possess of the practice of this species of incubation.[106] The license permitted to Grecian comedy was such as to authorise the ridicule and contempt of the most popular deities; we are not, therefore to conclude from the scenes that there were many unbelievers, or that this ancient system of cure had sunk into disrepute: for the history of our comedian’s great contemporary, Hippocrates, informs us, that at this very time the temple of Aesculapius at Cos abounded in tablets, on which the sick attested the remedies that had been revealed to them during incubation, and that he himself was highly indebted to them for much of his medical knowledge.
Were it not authenticated by the most undeniable testimonies, it would appear incredible that the impostures of the disciples of Aesculapius, and the common faith in his regenerative powers, should have survived with equal potency and acceptation during the ages immediately succeeding the Christian era. It must not however, be forgotten, that these were the times also, when an infinity of superstitious of every description disgraced the Roman world; although it would have appeared a necessary consequence, that their prevalency should have been checked by the increasing determination of learning and science.
If at this period the number of dreaming patients had fallen off at Cos and Epidaurus, the deficiency was amply compensated by the growing popularity of Aesculapius’s shrines at Rome, Pergamus, Alaea, Mallos, and other places, where the ancient rituals were faithfully preserved. The highest magistrates in the Roman states not only countenanced, but patronised the superstition; Marcus Aurelius, by the friendship with which he honoured the Paphlagonian imposter Alexander, and Caracalla, by the journey he undertook to Pergamus, to obtain the cure of a disease which inflicted him. This Alexander, the Cagliostro of his age, whose memoirs have been handed down to us by Lucian, made shift to father a new species of juggling upon the ancient process of incubation: for he pretends that it was necessary for him to sleep for a night in the sealed scrips which contain the queries he was to have resolved for those who visited his oracle.[107] During this interval he dexterously opened the scrips, and sealed them up again; pretending that the responses which he delivered to the querists in the morning, had been revealed to him by the deity in a dream.
The priests of Aesculapius possessed a never failing source of information on the recipes or votive tablets with which these temples abounded. These were sometimes engraven on pillars, as at Epidaurus; of which Pausanias says there were six remaining in his time, and besides these, one in particular removed from the rest, on which it was recorded that Hippolytus had sacrificed twenty horses, in return for his having been restored to life by him. Five memorials only of this kind have reached the present age. One of them is to be found in the beginning of Galen’s fifth book de Compos, medic.: it is taken from the temple of Phthas, near Memphis, and is the least interesting of the whole. Its subject is the use of the Diktamnus, borrowed from Heras of Cappadocia, a medical writer, frequently quoted by Galen. The remaining four are much more important: they were engraven on a marble slab,[108] of later date at Rome, and are thought, with much probability, to have belonged to the Aesculapian temple in the Insula Tiberina. The present translation, in which some errors either of the artist or copyist are rectified, is extracted from the first volume of Gruter’s Corp. Inscriptionum. The narrations are perspicuous and laconic.
1. “In these latter days, a certain blind man, by name Caius, had this oracle vouchsafed to him–‘that he should draw near to the altar after the manner of one who could see; then walk from right to left, lay the five fingers of his right hand on the altar, then raise up his hand and place it on his eyes.’ And behold! the multitude saw the blind man open his eyes, and they rejoiced, such splendid miracles should signalize the reign of our Emperor Antoninus.”
2. “To Lucius, who was so wasted away by pains in his side, that all doubted of his recovery, the god gave this response: ‘Approach thou the altar; take ashes from it, mix them up with wine and then lay thyself on thy sore side.’ And the man recovered, and openly returned thanks to the god amidst the congratulations of the people.”
3. “To Julian who spitted blood, and was given over by every one, the god granted this response: ‘Draw near, take pine apples from off the altar, and eat them with wine for three days. And the man got well, and came and gave thanks in the presence of the people.”
4. “A blind soldier, Valerius Asper by name, received this answer from the god: that he should mix the blood of a white cock with milk, make an eye ointment therewith, and rub his eyes with it for three days. And lo! the blind recovered his sight, and came, and publicly gave thanks to the god.”
The success with which the Priests of Aesculapius carried on their impostures, and the popularity which their dexterous management, no less than the vulgar credulity obtained for them, will cease to surprise us on maturer consideration. It could not be a difficult task for them to give the minds of their patients whatever bias was best adapted to their purposes. These credulous beings passed several days and nights in the temple, and their imagination could not fail to be powerfully impressed with what was diligently told them of the prescriptions and cures of Aesculapius; nor to retain during their slumbers many lively impressions of their meditations by day; their priestly nurses too were neither so blind to their own interests, nor so careless of their reputations as to omit the prescribing of such modes of diet and medical remedies as were calculated to appease their patients’ sufferings. Besides which, however delusive and empirical their outward ceremonials and bold pretensions might have been, we should remember, that priests, having some acquaintance with the science of medicine, were generally selected to officiate on those spots where the incubitary process[109] was the order of the day. To this acquaintance were added the results of daily experience, and the frequent opportunities which the incessant demands of the infirm upon their skill afforded them of correcting previous errors and improving their practical knowledge: of gradually ascertaining the various kinds and appearances of human disorders; and of digesting such data as would enable them, with the least possible chance of failure, to prescribe the modes of cure and treatment suitable to the various stages and species of the applicant’s maladies. With such means, it would have been not a little singular if the priests of Aesculapius had failed in converting the popular veneration to his credit and their own emolument.
FOOTNOTES:
[89] The Priestess of Apollo, by whom he delivered oracles. She was called Pythia from the god himself, who was styled Apollo Pythius, from his slaying the serpent Python. The Priestess was to be a pure virgin. She sat on the covercle or lid of a brazen vessel, mounted on a tripod, and thence, after a violent enthusiasm, she delivered his oracles; i.e. she rehearsed a few ambiguous and obscure verses, which were taken for oracles.
[90] These words are but ill explained by the best Greek Lexicographers. Servius ad Virg., Aen. vii. 88, says: _Incubare dicuntur proprie hic, qui dormiunt accipienda responsa_. Tertullian de Anima, C. 49, thence calls them _Incubatores fanorum_.
[91] Lib. XI. p. 108. Paris, fol. 1620.
[92] Ibid. lib. XVI. p. 761.
[93] De situ orbis, lib. I. cap. 1.
[94] Plutarch apud Agis et Cleomen. Cicero (de Div. 1. c. 48) probably alludes to this oracle, when he says, that the Ephori of Sparta were accustomed to sleep in the temple of Pasiphae on state emergencies. There was a similar oracle in the neighbourhood of Thalame, not fur from Aetylum, sacred to Ino.
[95] Strabo, lib. VI. p, 284.
[96] Pausanias, 1, 35.
[97] De vita Apoll. Thyan, 11. 37.
[98] Strabo, lib. xvii. p. 801. Anian. Exped. Alex, vii. 6.
[99] In Egypt lib. I, 25.
[100] Galen de comp. Med. p. Gen v. 2.
[101] Podalirius and Machaon, the two sons of Esculapius. The state of medicine at the time of the Trojan war was very imperfect, as we find exemplified by these two acting as surgeons general to the Grecian army. Their simple practice consisted chiefly in extracting darts or arrows, in staunching blood by some infusion of bitter herbs, and sometimes they added charms or incantations; which seemed to be a poetical way of hinting, that frequently wounds were healed or diseases cured in a manner unaccountable by any known properties they could discover either in the effects of their rude remedies, or in the then known powers of the human body to relieve itself. In Homer’s description of the wound which Ulysses, when young, received in his thigh from the tusk of an enraged wild boar, the infusion of blood was stopped by divine incantations and divine songs, and some sort of bandage which must have acted by pressure. If any virtue could have acted as a charm, the very verse that describes the wound might have as good a right to such a claim as any other; but, in what manner the surgeons of ancient Greece, before the discovery of the circulation of the blood, might apply bandages for the purposes here mentioned, is not easily explained; though doubtless these bandages must have acted like a tourniquet, which is now the most effectual remedy for compressing a wounded artery, and thereby stopping an hemorrhage.
[102] Alexand. 1050.
[103] Suet. Claid. c. 28.
[104] Strabo. lib. xiii. Pausan. lib. ii.
[105] Scholia ad Plut. v. 621
[106] Aristoph, Plut act. ii, sc. 6, and iii. sc 2.
[107] Luciani, oper. t. ii. ed Reitzii.
[108] It is often called by antiquaries _Tabella Marmorea apud Maffaeos_, as it was first preserved in the collection.
[109] It is somewhat singular, that Cicero’s treatise on divination, as well as the works of Hippocrates and Galen, should be so destitute of information on the subject of a mode of cure which was of such long standing, and so universally esteemed. From the two last, one should at least have expected something more satisfactory: Cos being the birthplace of the one, and Pergamus of the other.
CHAPTER XII.
ON AMULETS, CHARMS, TALISMANS–PHILTERS, THEIR ORIGIN AND IMAGINARY EFFICACY, ETC.
Amulets are certain substances worn about the neck or other parts of the body, under the superstitious impression of preventing diseases, of curing, or removing them.
The origin of amulets may be traced to the most remote ages of mankind. In our researches to discover and fix the period when remedies were first employed for the alleviation of bodily suffering, we are soon lost in conjecture or involved in fable. We are unable, indeed, to reach the period in any country, when the inhabitants were destitute of medical resources, and even among the most uncultivated tribes we find medicine cherished as a blessing and practised as an art. The feelings of the sufferer, and the anxiety of those about him, must, in the rudest state of society, have incited a spirit of industry and research to procure ease, the modification of heat and cold, of moisture and dryness; and the regulation and change of diet and habit, must intuitively have suggested themselves for the relief of pain; and when these resources failed, charms, amulets, and incantations, were the natural expedients of the barbarians, ever more inclined to indulge the delusive hope of superstition than to listen to the voice of sober reason.
Traces of amulets may be discovered in very early history, though Dr. Warburton is evidently in error when he fixes the origin of these magical instruments to the age of the Ptolomies, which was not more than three hundred years before Christ. This assertion is refuted by Galen, who informs us the Egyptian King Nechepsus, who lived 630 years before Christ, had written, that a green jasper cut into the form of a dragon surrounded with rays, if applied externally, would strengthen the stomach and organs of digestion. This opinion, moreover, is supported by scripture: for what were the earrings which Jacob buried under the oak of Sechem, as related in Genesis, but amulets. And Josephus in his antiquities of the Jews,[110] informs us that Solomon discovered a plant efficacious in the cure of epilepsy, and that he employed the aid of a charm, for the purposes of assisting its virtues. The root of the herb was concealed in a ring, which was applied to the nostrils of the demoniac; and Josephus remarks that he saw himself a Jewish priest practise the art of Solomon with complete success in the presence of the Emperor Vespasian, his sons and the tribunes of the Roman army. From this art of Solomon, exhibited through the medium of a ring or seal, we have the Eastern stories which celebrate the seal of Solomon, and record the potency of his sway over the various orders of demons or of genii, who were supposed to be the invincible tormentors or benefactors of the human race.
Nor were such means confined to dark and barbarous ages. Theophrastus pronounced Pericles to be insane in consequence of seeing him with an amulet suspended from his neck. And in the declining era of the Roman Empire, we find this superstitious custom so general that the Emperor Caracalla was induced to make a public edict, ordering, that no man should wear any superstitious amulets about his person.
All remedies working as it were sympathetically, and plainly unequal to the effect, may be termed amulets; whether used at a distance by another person, or carried immediately about the patient. By the Jews, amulets were called _kamea_, and by the Greeks _phylacteries_. The latins called them _amuleta_ or _ligatura_; the catholics _agnus dei_, or consecrated relics; and the natives of Guinea _fetishes_. Various kinds of substances are employed by different people, and which they venerate and suppose capable of preserving them from danger and infection, as well as to remove disease when present. Plutarch says of Pericles, an Athenian general, that when a friend come to see him, and inquired after his health he reached out his hand and shewed him his amulet; by which he meant to intimate the truth of his illness, and, at the same time, the confidence he placed in these popular remedies.
Amulets are still prevalent in catholic countries at the present day; the Spaniards and Portuguese maintain their popularity. Among the Jews they are equally venerated. Indeed, there are few instances of ancient superstition some portion of which has not been preserved, and not unfrequently have they been adopted by men of otherwise good understanding, who plead in excuse, that they are innoxious, cost little, and if they can do no good, they can do no harm.
Lord Bacon, whom no one can suspect of ignorance, says, that if a man wear a bone ring or a planet seal, strongly believing, by that means, that he might obtain his mistress, and that it would preserve him unhurt at sea, or in a battle, it would probably make him more active and less timid; as the audacity they might inspire would conquer and bind weaker minds in the execution of a peculiar duty.
AMULETS USED BY THE COMMON PEOPLE.
A variety of things are worn about the person by the common people for the cure of ague; and, upon whatever principle it may be accounted for, whether by the imagination or a natural termination of the disease, many have apparently been cured by them, where the Peruvian bark, the boasted specific, had previously failed. Dr. Willis says that charms resisting agues have often been applied to the wrist with success. ABRACADABRA, written in a peculiar manner, that is, in the form of a cone, it is said, has cured the ague; the herb lunaria, gathered by moon-light, has, on some high authorities, performed surprising cures. Perhaps it was gathered during the invocating influence of the following charm, which may be found in the 12th book, chap. XIV. p. 177 of “Scot’s discovery of witchcraft,” which is headed thus:–
“_Another charme that witches use at the gathering of their medicinal herbs._”
Haile be thou holy herbe,
Growing in the ground.
And in the mount Calvaire
First wert thou found.
Thou art good for many a sore,
And healest many a wound,
In the name of sweet Jesus
I take thee from the ground.
We are told that Naaman was cured by dipping seven times in the river Jordan. Certain formalities were also performed at the pool of Bethesda. Dr. Chamberlayne’s anodyne necklaces, were, for a length of time, objects of the most anxious maternal solicitude, until their occult virtues became lost by the reverence for them being destroyed; and those which succeeded them have long since run their race or nearly so.
The grey limewort was at one time supposed to have been a specific in hydrophobia–that it not only cured those labouring under this disorder, but by carrying it about the person, it was reputed to possess the extraordinary power of preventing mad dogs from biting them. Calvert paid devotions to St. Hubert for the recovery of his son, who was cured by this means. The son also performed the necessary rites at the shrine, and was cured not only of the hydrophobia “but of the worser phrensy with which his father had instilled him.” Cramp-rings were also used; and eelskins to this day are tied round the legs as a preventive of this spasmodic affection; and by laying sticks across the floor, on going to bed, cramp has also been prevented.
Numerous are the charms and incantations used at the present day for the removal of warts, many cases of which are not a little surprising. And we are told by Lord Verulam, who is allowed to have been as great a genius as this country ever produced, that, when he was at Paris, he had above a hundred warts on his hands; and that the English ambassador’s lady, then at court, and a woman far above superstition, removed them all by only rubbing them with the fat side of the rind of a piece of bacon, which they afterwards nailed to a post, with the fat side towards the south. In five weeks, says my Lord, they were all removed. The following are his Lordship’s observations, in his own words, relative to the power of amulets. After deep metaphysical observations on nature, and arguing in mitigation of sorcery, witchcraft, and divination, effects that far outstrip the belief in amulets, he observes “We should not reject all of this kind, because it is not known how far those contributing to superstition, depend on natural causes. Charms have not the power from contract with evil spirits, but proceed wholly from strengthening the imagination: in the same manner that images and their influence, have prevailed on religion, being called from a different way of use and application, sigils, incantations, and spells.”
ECCENTRICITIES, CAPRICES, AND EFFECTS, OF THE IMAGINATION.
A certain writer, apologizing for the irregularities of great genii, delivers himself as follows: “The gifts of imagination bring the heaviest task upon, the vigilance of reason; and to bear those faculties with unerring rectitude or invariable propriety, requires a degree of firmness and of cool attention, which does not always attend the higher gifts of the mind. Yet, difficult as nature herself seems to have reduced the task of regularity to genius, it is the supreme consolation of dullness, to seize upon those excesses, which are the overflowings of faculties they never enjoyed.”[111] Are not the _gifts of imagination_ mistaken here for the strength of passions? Doubtless, where strong passions accompany great parts, as perhaps they often do, the imagination may encrease their force and activity: but, where passions are calm and gentle, imagination of itself should seem to have no conflict but speculatively with reason. There, indeed, it wages an eternal war; and, if not contracted and strictly regulated, it will carry the patient into endless extravagancies. The term patient is here properly used, because men, under the influence of imagination, are most truly distempered. The degree of this distemper will be in proportion to the prevalence of imagination over reason, and, according to this proportion, amount to more or less of the whimsical; but when reason shall become, as it were, extinct, and imagination govern alone, then the distemper will be madness under the wildest and most fantastic modes. Thus, one of those invalids, perhaps, shall be all sorrow for having been most unjustly deprived of the crown; though his vocation, poor man! be that of a school-master. Another, like Horace’s madman, is all joy; and it may seem even cruelty to cure him.
The operations and caprices of the imagination are various and endless; and, as they cannot be reduced to regularity or system, so it is highly improbable that any certain method of cure should ever be found out for them. It has generally been thought, that matter of fact might most successfully be opposed to the delusions of imagination, as being proof to the senses, and carrying conviction unavoidably to the understanding; but we rather suspect, that the understanding or reasoning faculty, has little to do in all these cases: at least so it should seem from the two following facts, which are by no means badly attested.
Fienus, in his curious little book, _de Viribus Imaginationis_, records from Donatus the case of a man, who fancied his body encreased to such a size, that he durst not attempt to pass through the door of his chamber. The physician believing that nothing could more effectually cure this error of imagination, than to shew that the thing could actually be done, caused the patient to be thrust forcibly through it: who, struck with horror, and falling suddenly into agonies, complained of being crushed to pieces, and expired soon after.[112]
The other case, as related by Van Swieten, in his commentaries upon Boerhaave, is that of a learned man, who had studied, till be fancied his legs to be of glass: in consequence of which he durst not attempt to stir, but was constantly under anxiety about them. His maid bringing one day some wood to the fire, threw it carelessly down; and was severely reprimanded by her master, who was terrified not a little for his legs of glass. The surly wench, out of all patience with his megrims, as she called them, gave him a blow with a log upon the parts affected; which so enraged him, that he instantly rose up, and from that moment recovered the use of his legs.–Was reason concerned any more here; or was it not rather one blind impulse acting against another?
Imagination has, unquestionably, a most powerful effect upon the mind, and in all these miraculous cures, is by far the strongest ingredient. Dr. Strother says, “The influence of the mind and passions works upon the mind and body in sensible operations like a medicine, and is of far the greater force than exercise. The countenance betrays a good or wicked intention; and that good or wicked intention will produce in different persons a strength to encounter, or a weakness to yield to the preponderating side.” Dr. Brown says, “Our looks discover our passions, there being mystically in our faces certain characters, which carry in them the motto of our souls, and, therefore, probably work secret effects in other parts.” This idea is beautifully illustrated by Garth in his Dispensatory, in the following lines:–
“Thus paler looks impetuous rage proclaim, And chilly virgins redden into flame.
See envy oft transformed in wan disguise, And mirth sits gay and smiling in the eyes, Oft our complexions do the soul declare, And tell what passions in the features are. Hence ’tis we look the wond’rous cause to find, How body acts upon impassive mind.”
On the power and pleasure of the imagination, from the pleasures and pains it administers here below, Addison concludes that God, who knows all the ways of afflicting us, may so transport us hereafter with such beautiful and glorious visions, or torment us with such hideous and ghastly spectres, as might even of themselves suffice to make up the entire heaven or hell of any future being.
DOCTRINE OF EFFLUVIA–MIRACULOUS CURES BY MEANS OF CHARMS, AMULETS, ETC.
Dr. Willis, in his Treatise on nervous disorders, does not hesitate to recommend amulets in epileptic disorders. “Take,” says he, “some fresh peony roots, cut them into square bits, and hang them round the neck, changing them as often as they dry.” It is not improbable that the hint was taken from this circumstance for the anodyne necklaces, which, some time ago, were in such repute, as the Doctor, some little way further on, prescribes the same root for the looseness, fevers, and convulsions of children, during the time of teething, mixed, to make it appear more miraculous, with some elk’s hoof.
St. Vitus’s dance is said to have been cured by the afflicted person paying a visit to the tomb of the saint, near Ulm, every May. Indeed, there is no little reason in this assertion; for exercise and change of air will change many obstinate diseases. The bite of the tarantula is cured by music; and this only by certain tunes. Turner, whose ideas are so extravagantly absurd, where he asserts, that the symptoms of hydrophobia may not appear for forty years after the bite of the dog, and who maintains that “the slaver or breath of such a dog is infectious;” and that men bitten by mad dogs, will bite like dogs again, and die mad; although he laughs at the anodyne necklaces, argues much in the same manner. It is not, indeed, so very strange that the effluvia from external medicines entering our bodies, should effect such considerable changes, when we see the efficient cause of apoplexy, epilepsy, hysterics, plague, and a number of other disorders, consists, as it were, in imperceptible vapours.–Blood-stone (Lapis Aetites) fastened to the arm by some secret means, is said to prevent abortion. Sydenham, in the iliac passion, orders a live kitten to be constantly applied to the abdomen; others have used pigeons split alive, applied to the soles of the feet, with success, in pestilential fevers and convulsions. It was doubtless the impression that relief might be obtained by external agents, that the court of king David advised him to seek a young virgin, in order that a portion of the natural heat might be communicated to his body, and give strength to the decay of nature. “Take the heart and liver of the fish and make a smoke, and the devil shall smell it and flee away.” During the plague at Marseilles, which Belort attributed to the larvae of worms infecting the saliva, food, and chyle; and which, he says, “were hatched by the stomach, took their passage into the blood, at a certain size, hindering the circulation, affecting the juices and solid parts.” He advised amulets of mercury to be worn in bags suspended at the chest and nostrils, either as a safeguard, or as means of cure; by which method, through the _admissiveness_ of the pores, effluvia specially destructive of all venomous insects, were received into the blood. “An illustrious prince,” Belort says, “by wearing such an amulet, escaped the small-pox.”
Clognini, an Italian physician, ordered two or three drachms of crude mercury to be worn as a defensive against the jaundice; and also as a preservative against the noxious vapours of inclement seasons: “It breaks,” he observes, “and conquers the different figured seeds of pestilential distempers floating in the air; or else, mixing with the air, kills them where hatched.” By others, the power of mercury, in these cases, has been ascribed to an elective faculty given out by the warmth of the body, which draws out the contagious particles. For, according to this entertained notion, all bodies are continually emitting effluvia, more or less, around them, and some whether they are internal or external. The Bath waters, for instance, change the colour of silver in the pocket of those who use them. Mercury produces the same effect; Tartar emetic, rubbed on the pit of the stomach, produces vomiting. Yawning and laughing are infectious; so are fear and shame. The sight of sour things, or even the idea of them, will set the teeth on edge. Small-pox, itch, and other diseases, are contagious; if so, say they, mercurial amulets bid fair to destroy the germ of some complaints when used only as an external application, either by manual attrition, or worn as an amulet. But medicated or not, all amulets are precarious and uncertain, and in the cure of diseases are, by no means, to be trusted to.
The Barbary Moors, and generally throughout the Mahommedan dominions, the people are strikingly attached to charms, to which, and nature, they leave the cure of almost every disorder; and this is the most strongly impressed upon them from their belief in predestination, which, according to their creed, stipulates the evil a man is to suffer, as well as the length of time it is ordained he should live upon the land of his forefathers; consequently they imagine that any interference from secondary means would avail them nothing, an opinion said to have been entertained by William III, but one by no means calculated for nations, liberty, and commerce; upon the principle that when the one was entrenched upon, men would probably be more sudden in their revenge, and dislike physic and occupation; and when actuated with religious enthusiasm, nothing could stand them in any service.
The opinion of an old navy surgeon,[113] on the subject, is worth recording here. “A long and intense passion on one object, whether of pride, love, fear, anger, or envy, we see have brought on some universal tremors; on others, convulsions, madness, melancholy, consumption, hectics, or such a chronical disorder as has wasted their flesh, or their strength, as certainly as the taking in of any poisonous drugs would have done. Anything frightful, sudden, or surprising, upon soft, timorous natures, not only shews itself in the continuance, but produces sometimes very troublesome consequences–for instance, a parliamentary fright will make even grown men _bewray_ themselves, scare them out of their wits, turn the hair grey. Surprise removes the hooping cough; looking from precipices or seeing wheels turn swiftly will give giddiness. Shall then these little accidents, or the passions, (from caprice or humour, perhaps,) produce those effects, and not be able to do anything by amulets? No; as the spirits, in many cases, resort in plenty, we find where the fancy determines, giving joy and gladness to the heart, strength and fleetness to the limbs, and violent palpitations. To amulets, under strong imagination, is carried with more force to a distempered part, and, under these circumstances, its natural powers exert better to a discussion.
“The cures compassed in this manner,” says our author, “are not more admirable than many of the distempers themselves. Who can apprehend by what impenetrable method the bite of a mad dog, or tarantula, can produce these symptoms? The touch of a torpedo numbness? If they are allowed to do these, doubtless they may the other; and not by miracles, which Spinoza denies the possibility of, but by natural and regular causes, though inscrutable to us. The best way, therefore, in using amulets, must be in squaring them to the imagination of patients: let the newness and surprise exceed the invention, and keep up the humour by a long scroll of cures and vouchers; by these and such means, many distempers have been cured. Quacks again, according to their boldness and way of addressing (velvet and infallibility particularly) command success by striking the fancies of an audience. If a few, more sensible than the rest, see the doctor’s miscarriages, and are not easily gulled at first sight, yet, when they see a man is never ashamed, in time, jump in to his assistance.”
There is much truth and pertinence in some of the above remarks, and they apply nearly to the general practice of the present day. The farces and whims of people require often as much discrimination on the part of the physician as the disease itself. Those who know best how to flatter such caprices, are frequently the best paid for their trouble. Nervous diseases are always in season, and it is here that some professional dexterity is pardonable. Nature, when uninterrupted, will often do more than art; but our inability upon all occasions to appreciate the efforts of nature in the cure of diseases, must always render our notion, with respect to the powers faith, liable to numerous errors and deceptions. There is, in fact, nothing more natural, and at the same time more erroneous, than to lay the cure of a disease to the door of the last medicine that had been prescribed. By these means the advocates of amulets and charms, have ever been enabled to appeal to the testimony of what they are pleased to call experience in justification of their pretensions, and egregious superstitions; and cases which, in truth, ought to have been classed, or rather designated, as lucky escapes, have been triumphantly pulled off as skilful cures; and thus, medicines and medical practitioners, have alike received the meed of unmerited praise, or the stigma of unjust censure. Of all branches of human science, medicine is one of the most interesting to mankind: and, accordingly as it is erroneously or judiciously cultivated, is evidently conducive to the prejudice or welfare of the public. Of how great consequence is it, then, that our endeavours should be exerted in stemming the propagation of errors, whether arising from ignorance, or prompted by motives of base cupidity, in giving assistance to the disseminations of useful truths, and to the perfection of ingenious discoveries.
FOOTNOTES:
[110] Lib. viii. chap. 2. 5.
[111] Langhorne’s Life of Mr. Collins
[112] Reverii Praxis Medica, p. 188.
[113] John Ailkin, author of the Navy Surgeon, 1742. Sec Demonologia, p. 64 et seg.
CHAPTER XIII.
ON TALISMANS–SOME CURIOUS, NATURAL ONES, ETC.
The Egyptian amulets are not so ancient as the Babylonian talismans, but in their uses they were exactly similar. Some little figures, supposed to have been intended as charms, have been found on several mummies, which, at various times, have been brought to Europe. Plutarch informs us that the soldiers wore rings, on which the representation of an insect resembling our beetle, was inscribed; and we learn from Aelian, that the judges had always suspended round their necks a small figure of Truth formed of emeralds. The superstitious belief in the virtues of talismans is yet far from being extinct, the Copths, the Arabians, the Syrians, and, indeed, almost all the inhabitants of Asia, west of the Ganges, whether Christians or mahometans, still use them against possible evils.
There is little distinction between talismans, amulets and the gree-grees of the Africans as regards their pretended efficacy; though there is some in their external configuration. Magical figures, engraven or cut under superstitious observances of the characterisms and configurations of the heavens, are called talismans; to which astrologers, hermetical philosophers, and other adepts, attribute wonderful virtues, particularly that of calling down celestial influences.[114]
The talismans of the Samothracians, so famous of old, were pieces of iron formed into certain images, and set in rings. They were reputed as preservatives against all kinds of evils. There were other talismans taken from vegetables, and others from minerals. Three kinds of talismans were usually distinguished 1st. the _astronomical_ known by the signs or constellations of the heavens engraven upon them, with other figures, and some unintelligible characters; 2nd. the _magical_, bearing very extraordinary figures, with superstitious words and names of angels unheard of; 3rd. the _mixt_ talismans, which consist of signs and barbarous words; but without any superstitious ones, or names of angels.
It has been asserted and maintained by some Rabins, that the brazen serpent raised by Moses in the wilderness, for the destruction of the serpents that annoyed the Israelites, was properly a talisman. All the miraculous things wrought by Apollonius Tyanaeus are attributed to the virtue and influence of _talismans_; and that wizard, as he is called, is even said to be the inventor of them. Some authors take several Runic medals,–medals, at least, whose inscriptions are in the Runic characters,–for talismans, it being notorious that the northern nations, in their heathen state, were much devoted to them, M. Keder, however has shown, that the medals here spoken of are quite other things than talismans.
It appears from the Evangelists[115] that, when St. Paul, after he had been shipwrecked, and escaped to the island of Malta, a viper fastened on his hand as he was laying a bundle of sticks, he had gathered, on the fire; and that, by a miracle, and to the great astonishment of the spectators, inhabitants of the island, he not only suffered no harm, but also cured, by the divine power, the chief of the island, and a great number of others, of very dangerous maladies. There remain still in that island, as so many trophies gained by the Apostle over that venemous beast, a great many small stones representing the eyes and tongues of serpents, and considered for several centuries past, as powerful amulets against different sorts of distempers and poisons. As the virtue of these stones is still much boasted of by the Maltese, and as some, on the contrary, maintain that they are the petrified teeth of a fish called lamia, it will not be irrelevant here to relate some observations from the best authors on this interesting subject, so much to our purpose.
It is said that those eyes and tongues of serpents are only found by the Maltese when they dig into the earth, which is whitish throughout the island, or draw up stone, especially about the cave of St. Paul. This stone is so soft, that, like clay, it may be cut through with any sharp instrument, and made to receive easily different figures, for building the walls of their houses and ramparts; but, when it has been imbibed with a sufficient quantity of rain or well water, it changes into a flint that resists the cutting of the sharpest instrument: whence the houses that are built of it in the two cities, appear as hewn out of one solid rock, and become harder, the more they are exposed to the inclemencies of the weather. This hardness may, with good reason, be ascribed to the salt of nitre, which contracts a certain viscidity from the rain wherewith it is mixed, and which easily penetrates into these stones, because their substance is spongy and cretaceous, and adheres to the tongue as hartshorn.
It is in these stones that not only the eyes and tongues of serpents are found, but also their viscera and other parts: as lungs, liver, heart, spleen, ribs, and so resembling life, and with such natural colours, that one may well doubt whether they are the work of nature or art; the figure of the eyes and tongues is very different. Some are elliptic, but, for the greater part round: some represent an hemisphere, others a segment, others an hyperbola. The glossopetrae are naturally of a conic figure, representing acute, obtuse, regular, and irregular cones. They are also of different colours, especially the eyes; for some of them are of an ash-colour, others liver colour, some brown, others blackish; but these, as most rare, are most esteemed. Bracelets are frequently made of them and set in gold: some representing an entire eye with a white pupil, and these are the most beautiful. Several are likewise found of an orange colour.
The virtues attributed by the Maltese to those eyes and tongues, and to the white earth which is found in the island, particularly in St. Paul’s cave, and which is kept for use by the apothecaries, as the American bole, are very singular; for they reckon them not only a preservative against all sorts of poison, and an efficacious remedy for those who have taken poison, but also good in a number of diseases. They are taken internally, infused in water, wine, or in any other convenient liquor; or let to lie for some hours in vessels made of the white earth; or the white earth is taken itself dissolved in those liquors. The eyes set as precious stones in rings, and so as to touch immediately the flesh, are worn by the inhabitants on the fingers; but the tongues are fastened about the arm, or suspended from the neck.
Paul Bucconi, a Sicilian nobleman, treated this notion of the eyes and tongues of serpents as a mere vulgar error; and maintains that they either constitute a particular species of stone produced in the earth, or in the stones of the island of Malta, as in their matrix; or that they are nothing more than the petrified teeth of some marine fish; which is also the opinion of Fabius Columna, Nicholas Steno and other physicians and anatomists.
It seems to this noble author that the glossopetrae should be classed in the animal kingdom, because, being burnt, they are changed into cinders as bones, before they are reduced into a calx or ashes, whilst calcined stones are immediately reduced into a calx. He further says, that the roots of the glossopetrae are often found broken in different ways, which is an evident argument that they have not been produced by nature, in the place they are digged out of, because nature forms other fossils, figured entirely in their matrix, without any hurt or mutilation. Add to this, that the substance is different in different parts of the glossopetrae; solid at the point, less solid at the root, compact at the surface, porous and fibrous in the interior: besides, the polished surface, contrary to the custom of nature, which forms no stone, whether common or precious, is polished; and, lastly, the figure that varies different ways, as well as the size, being found great, broad, triangular, narrow, small, very small, pyramidal, straight, curved before, behind, to the right and to the left, in form of a saw with small teeth, furnished with great jags or notches, and frequently absolutely pyramidal without notches; all these particulars favour his opinion. But, as he thence believes he has proved that the glossopetrae should not be classed amongst stones, so also what he has said may prove that they are the natural teeth of those fishes, which are called, by lithographers, lamia, aquila, requiem, (shark) etc. and therefore there scarce remains any reason for a further doubt on this head.
There are representations of curiosities, which we shall give an account of from the Ephemerides of the Curious. It is customary to see at Batavia, in the island of Java, the figure of serpents impressed on the shells of eggs, Andrew Cleyerus, a naturalist of considerable note, says, that when he was at Batavia in 1679, he had seen himself, on the 14th of September, an egg newly laid by a hen, of the ordinary size, but representing very exactly, towards the summit of the other part of the shell, the figure of a serpent and all its parts, not only the lineaments of the serpent were marked on the surface, but the three dimensions of the body were as sensible as if they had been engraved by an able sculptor, or impressed on wax, plaister or some other like matter. One could see very plainly the head, ears, and a cloven tongue starting out of the throat; the eyes were sparkling and resplendent, and represented so perfectly the interior and exterior of the parts of the eye, with their natural colours, that they seemed to behold with astonishment the eyes even of the spectators. To account for this phenomenon, it may be supposed that, the hen being near laying, a serpent presented itself to her sight, and that her imagination, struck thereby, impressed the figure of the serpent on the egg that was ready to press out of the ovarium.
An egg equally wonderful, was laid by a hen at Rome on the 14th. of December, 1680. The famous comet that appeared then on the head of Andromeda, with other stars, were seen represented on its shell. Sebastian Scheffer says, that he had seen an egg with the representation of an eclipse on it. Signor Magliabecchi, in his letter to the academy of the Curious, on the 20th. of October 1682, has these words; “Last month I had sent me from Rome, a drawing of an egg found at Tivoli, with the impression of the sun and the transparent comet with a twisted tail.”
There are also representations of Indian nuts, or small cocos, with the head of an ape. The nut has been exactly engraved in the Ephemerides of the Curious, both as to size and form, and covered with its shell, as expressed there by cyphers and other figures which represent the same nut stripped of its covering, and exhibiting the head of an ape. This nut seems pretty much like the foreign fruit described by Clusius, Exoticorum lib. a, which John Bauhin (Hist. Plant. Universal Lib. 3) retaining the description of Clusius, calls, “a nut resembling the areca,” and which C. Bauhin (Pinac. lib. II, sect. 6) calls, the fruit of the fourteenth of Palm-tree, that bears nuts, or a foreign fruit of the same sort as the areca.
This fruit with its shell, is, as Clusius says, an inch and a half in length, but is somewhat more than an inch thick. Its shell or membraneous covering, is about the thickness of the blade of a knife, and outwardly of an ash colour mixed with brown. Clusius was in the right to say, that the shell of this nut was formed of several fibrous parts, but those fibres resemble rather those of the shell of a coco, than the fibrous parts of the back of the areca nut. He, moreover, has very properly observed, that this shell is armed, at its lower part, with a double calyx and that the opposite part terminates in a point; but it is necessary to observe, that this point is not formed by the prolongation of the shell, as the figure he has given of it seems to specify; but that from the middle of the upper part of the fruit, there juts out a sort of small needle.
The shell being taken off, the nut is found to be hard, ligneous, oblong, of unequal surface, furrowed, and of a chesnut yellow. One of its extremities is roundish, and the other, by the reunion and prolongation of three sorts of tubercles, terminates in a point; those protuberances being so formed, that the middlemost placed between the two others, has the appearance of a nose, and the two lateral protuberances resemble flat lips. On each side of that which forms what we call the nose, a small hole or nook is perceived, capable of containing a pea; but does not penetrate deep, and is surrounded with black filaments, sometimes like eye-brows and eyelashes, so that the nut on that side resembles an ape or a hare.
This _lusus naturae_, or sport of nature, has a very pretty effect, but is oftener found in stones than other substances. A great variety of such rare and singular productions of nature may be seen at the British Museum: but nothing can be more extraordinary in this respect than what is related concerning the agate of Pyrrhus, which represented, naturally, Apollo holding a lyre, with the nine muses distinguished each by their attributes. In all probability, there is great exaggeration in this fact, for we see nothing of the kind that comes near this perfection. However, it is said, that, at Pisa, in the church of St. John, there is seen, on a stone, an old hermit perfectly painted by nature, sitting near a rivulet, and holding a bell in his hand; and that, in the temple of St. Sophia, at Constantinople, there is to be seen, on a white sacred marble, an image of St. John the Baptist, cloaked with a camel’s skin, but so far defective that nature has given him but one foot.
There is an instance in the Mercury of France, for July 1730, of some curious sports of nature on insects. The rector of St. James at Land, within a league of Rennes, found in the month of March, 1730, in the church-yard, a species of butterfly, about two inches long, and half-an-inch broad, having on its head the figure of a death’s-head, of the length of one nail, and perfectly imitating those that are represented on the church ornaments which are used for the office of the dead. Two large wings were spotted like a pall, and the whole body covered with a down, or black hair, diversified with black and yellow, bearing some resemblance to yellow.
These freaks of nature are equally extended to animate as to inanimate bodies; and the human species, as well as the brute creation, affords numerous specimens, not only of redundance and deficiency in her work, but a variety of other phenomena not well understood. The march of intellect, however, it is to be hoped, will be as successful in this instance, as in obliterating the hobgoblins of astrologers and quacks who so long have ruled the destiny and health of their less sagacious fellow-creatures;–and when the public shall become persuaded of the advantages which science may derive from occurrences similar to those we shall enumerate in the next chapter, it will be more disposed to offer them to the consideration of scientific men.
FOOTNOTES:
[114] The author of a book, entitled “_Talismans justifies_” pronounces a talisman to be the seal, figure, character, or image of a heavenly sign, constellation or planet, engraven on a sympathetic stone, or on a metal corresponding to the star, etc. in order to receive its influences.
[115] Acts of the Apostles, chap. xxviii. v. 3.
CHAPTER XIV.
ON THE MEDICINAL POWERS ATTRIBUTED TO MUSIC BY THE ANCIENTS.
The power of music over the human mind, as well as its influence on the animal creation, has been variously attested; and its curative virtues have been no less extolled by the ancients.[116] Martianus Capella assures us, that fevers were removed by songs, and that Asclepiades cured deafness by the sound of the trumpet. Wonderful indeed! that the same noise which would occasion deafness in some, should be a specific for it in others! It is making the viper cure its own bite. But, perhaps Asclepiades was the inventor of the _acousticon_, or ear-trumpet, which has been thought a modern discovery; or of the speaking-trumpet, which is a kind of cure for distant deafness. These would be admirable proofs of musical power![117] We have the testimony of Plutarch, and several other ancient writers, that Thaletas the Cretan, delivered the Lacedemonians from the pestilence by the sweetness of his lyre.
Xenocrates, as Martianus Capella further informs us, employed the sound of instruments in the cure of maniacs; and Apollonius Dyscolus, in his fabulous history (Historia Commentitia) tells us, from Theophrastus’s Treatise upon Enthusiasm, that music is a sovereign remedy for a dejection of spirits, and disordered mind; and that the sound of the flute will cure epilepsy and the sciatic gout. Athenaeus quotes the same passage from Theophrastus, with this additional circumstance, that, as to the second of these disorders, to render the cure more certain, the flute should play in the Phrygian mode. But Aulus Gellius, who mentions this remedy, seems to administer it in a very different manner, by prescribing to the flute-player a soft and gentle strain, _si modulis lenibus_ says he, _tibicen incinet_: for the Phrygian mode was remarkably vehement and furious.
This is what Coelius Aurelianus calls _loca dolentia decantare_, enchanting the disordered places. He even tells us how the enchantment is brought about upon these occasions, in saying that the pain is relieved by causing a vibration of the fibres of the afflicted part. Galen speaks seriously of playing the flute on the suffering part, upon the principle, we suppose, of a medicated vapour bath.
The sound of the flute was likewise a specific for the bite of a viper, according to Theophrastus and Democritus, whose authority Aulus Gellius gives for his belief of the fact. But there is nothing more