Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing

ges, the talisman of i

il to make you fortunate at gaining; and a Spell that shall as certainly preserve you from being rob'd f

s, but deceivers; for it hath been many times experimented and proved that that which many physicians could not cure or remedy with their grea

e used to-day, but in the days when these terms meant something in real life there was a distinction. The talisman was probably at

and sigils k

watch'd the pl

r, in the case of the charm, if a material object it could be placed entirely outside of one's care. The talisman and amulet must be a comp

oment, she put

es and of wa

mons, disease, or misfortune, but they might, especially the talisman, also attract go

erms be defined to be a substance composed of certain cabalistic characters engraved on stone, metal, or other material, or else written on slips of paper." Hyde quotes a Persian writer who defines t

bly the desire of early peoples to have some representation of the planets during their absence from sight, so that they might at all times be able to worship the planetary body itself or its representative. To accomplish this purpose, the astrologers chose certain colors, metals, stones, trees, etc.,

sentations, because, like the letters composing 'The Incomparable Name,' they were supposed to serve as a defence against sickness, lightning, and tempest. It was a common practice with magicians, whenever a plague or other great c

d manner. Three different kinds are used: one for the head, another for the arm, and the third is attached to the door-posts. The following is a Hebrew talisman suppo

ting in Edinburgh," he says, "there are remains of talismanic or cabalistical characters, which the superstitious of earlier days had caused to be engraven on

," and the talisman with medicine is well portrayed by Chau

e was a docto

rld, was tha

physik and

groundit in

pacient a

by his mag

e fortunen

gys for hi

magical, with extraordinary figures, superstitious words, and names of unknown angels. 3. The mixed, of celestial signs and barbarous words, but not superstitious, or with names of angels.

well-marked external character, the disease for which it is a remedy or the object for which it should be employed." Southey says,80 "The signatures [were] the books out of which the ancients first learned the virtues of herbs-Nature having stamped on divers of them legible chara

nion. Red flowers were given for disorders of the sanguiferous system; the petals of the red rose, especially, bear the "signature" of the blood, and blood-root, on account of its red juice, was much prescribed for the blood. Celandine, having yellow juice, the yellow

in bud, being something like a man's head, was "very available against the falling sickness." Walnuts were considered to be the perfect signature of the head, the shell represented the bony skull, the irregularities of the kernel the convolutions of the two hemispheres of the brain, and the husk the scalp. The husk was therefore used for scalp wounds, the inner peel for disorders of the

es and holly were prescribed for pleurisy and stitch in the side, and the scales of the pine were used in toothache, because they resemble front teeth. "Kidney-beans," says Berdoe, "ought to have been useful for kidney diseases, but seem to have been overlooked except as articles o

or other red ingredients were dissolved in their drink. John of Gladdesden, physician to Edward II, prescribed the following treatment as soon as the eruption appeared: "Cause the whole body of your patient to be wrapped in scarlet cloth, or any other red cloth, and command everything about the bed to be

any of the Japanese emperor's children are attacked with the small-pox, not only the chamber and bed are covered with red hangings, but all persons who approach the sick prince must be clad in

njunction of Saturn and Jupiter in Sagittarius, on the tenth of October, or to a conjunction of Saturn and Mars in the same constellation, on the twelfth of November. Burton makes the most generous melancholy, as that of Augustus, to come fr

hould previously have been offered to the earth. If this was carried out it had power to render the possessor invulnerable, to cure fevers, to eradicate poison, and to conciliate friendship. Notice also, that black hellebore, to be effective, was to be pl

1664, the following curious passage, "Good to purge with electuaries, the moon in Cancer; with pills, the moon in Pisces; with potions, the moon in Virgo; good to take vomits, the moon being in Taurus, Virgo, or the latter part of Sagittarius; to purge the head by sneezing, th

They also tell of a physician named Simon Trippe, who wrote to a patient in excuse for not visiting him, as follows: "As for my comming to you upon Wensday next, verely my promise be past to and old pacient of mine, a very good gentlewoman, one Mrs. Clerk, wch now lieth in great extremity. I cannot possib

was on the fourth day of the moon, said: 'You did very indiscreetly and unskilfully to bleed her on the fourth day of the moon; for I remember that Archbishop Theodore, of blessed m

images of metal, wax, or other materials fabricated under certain constellations or according to fixed characters-figures of peculiar form, either baptized, consecrated, or exorcised, or rather desecrated by the

healing from magnetism. One of these, sympathetic cures, was talismanic in its char

he heart, the brain, or the arteries. "Take the moss growing on the head of a thief who has been hanged and left in the air; of real mummy; of human blood, still warm-of each, one ounce; of human suet, two ounces; of linseed oil, turpentine, and Armenian bole-of each, two drachms. Mix all well in a mortar, and keep the salve in an oblong, narrow urn." With the salve the weapon (not the wound), after being dipped in blood

ENELM

rson Foster" wrote a pamphlet entitled "Hyplocrisma Spongus; or a Spunge to wipe away the Weapon-salve," in which he declared that it was as bad as witchcraft to use or recommend such an unguent; that it was invented by the devil, who, at the last day, would seize upon every person who had given it the least encouragement. "In fact," said Parson Foster, "the

t two friends in a duel, received a severe cut on the hand. Alarmed by the accident, one of the combatants bound up the cut with his garter and conveyed him home. The king sent his own surgeon to attend Mr. Howell, but in four or five days the wound was not recovering very rapidly and he made application to Sir Kenelm. The latter first inquired whether he possessed anything that had the blood upon it, upon which Mr. Howell produced the garter with which his hand had been bound. A basin o

s done than Mr. Howell's servant came running to Sir Kenelm saying that his master's hand was again inflamed, and that it was as bad as before. The garter was again

friar who became possessed of it while journeying in the East. Sir Kenelm communicated it to Dr. Mayerne, the king's physician, and from him it was kn

putting his head over a privy and inhaling the air which comes from it; that those who are bitten by vipers or scorpions are cured by holding the bruised head of either of those animals, as the case may be, near the bitten part; that in times of great contagion, carrying a toad, or a spider, or arsenic or some other venomous substance, about the person is a protection; that hanging a toad about the neck of a horse affected with farcy dissipates the disease; that water evaporated in a close room will not be deposited on the walls, if a vessel of water be placed in the room; that venison pies smell strongly at those periods in which the 'beasts which are of the sam

gives an account of a cure performed by Lord Gilbourne, an English nobleman, upon a carpenter who had cut himself severely with his axe. "The axe, bespattered with blood, was sent for, besmeared with an anointment, wrapped up warmly, and carefully hung up in a closet. Th

makes Ariel say, in reference to the wo

ss'd again, as

ich pierced him wit

lose from air

visit hi

ve the following dialogue b

my wound

come to

wraps t

eel the cold a

hoots wors

and anoints

it still g

hinks, there

ust up

you fi

upon the sudd

Sweet heaven, h

t to the wound, but, what is more effectual, to the weapon by which he received it. By a new ki

t that time may be gathered when we remember that a serious discussion was long maintained between two factions in the sympathetic school concerning the question "whether it was nece

ansferred from the wound to the weapon, they did not injure the weapon, and did give the wound a chance to heal. In fact, leaving out the weapon part of the treatment, which could have none but a mental influence, the treatment would be recommended to-day. The wound was kept clean, the edges were brought in apposition, temperature was modifi

tions Connected with ... Me

agazine, LVIII,

History of

acologia

Doctor,

f.; E. Berdoe, Origin and Growth of the Healing Art, pp. 327 and 416 f.; A. D. White, History of th

153. In references to this work, the editi

scripts, pp. 263 f.

astical History,

f Medical Economy During

ritualism and Nervous

bly of nobles and learned men, at Montpellier, in France, t

and Medicine, pp. 201-213; C. Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions, pp. 266-268; W. A. Hammond, S