Part 8

In the hereditary transmission of physical and moral qualities, many curious observations have been made. Women of high mental attainments have been known to produce children of genius, more frequently than men of a superior intellect; although Haller relates the singular case of two noble females who married wealthy idiots on account of their fortunes, and from whom this melancholy defect had extended for a century into several families, so that some of all their descendants still continued idiots in the fourth and fifth generation. Horace had observed this tendency to produce offsprings resembling their parents,

Fortes creantur fortibus et bonis: Est in juvencis, est in equis patrum Virtus: nec imbellem feroces Progenerant aquilae columbam.

This remark, however, is more applicable to physical transmissions, and certain peculiarities characterize whole families. Pliny mentioned examples of six-fingered families, who bore the name Sedigita. C. Horatius had two daughters with a similar deformity. Mr. Carlisle knew a family in which supernumerary toes and fingers were observed for four generations: they were introduced by a female who had six fingers on each hand, and as many toes on each foot. From her marriage with a man naturally formed, were produced ten children, with a supernumerary member on each limb; and an eleventh, in which the peculiarity existed in both feet and one hand, the other hand being naturally formed. The latter marrying a man of ordinary formation, they had four children, of which three had one or two limbs natural, and the rest with the supernumerary parts; while the fourth had six fingers on each hand, and as many toes on each foot. The latter married a woman naturally formed, and had issue by her eight children; four with the usual structure, and the same number with the additional fingers and toes: two of them were twins, of which one was naturally formed, and the other six-fingered and six-toed.--The well-known porcupine family, that were exhibited in London and elsewhere, is a remarkable example of hereditary transmission of organic peculiarities. They were all covered with dark-coloured horny excrescences, which they shed annually in the autumn or winter. Their names were Lambert. Two brothers, John and Richard, grandsons of the original porcupine men, were shown in Germany.--One of these unsightly individuals, who was exhibited some time ago in Bond-street, stated that he was descended from the fourth generation of a savage found in the woods of America; and he further asserted that the females of the family were exempted from this lucrative but uncomfortable peculiarity: all the males had them, and shed them regularly until the thirty-sixth year, when these species of quills grew to a considerable length. We have examples of bristly hair being shed in a whole family every autumn.

Amongst animals, gigantic races no longer inhabit the regions which bore them in ancient times. An extensive whale-fishery was once carried on at Biariz, in the Gulf of Gascony; and the hippopotamus is no longer to be seen on the banks of the Nile.

Gigantic bones having been occasionally discovered with the remains of men and horses and fragments of armour, it has been imagined that in ancient times armies were attended by terrific giants; but it is more than probable that these large fragments of departed warriors belonged to their war-elephants, which with their horses were not unfrequently immolated on their master's tomb.

Skeletons of giants were considered by the ancients as curious as in the present day; and those of Secondilla and Pusio were carefully preserved in the gardens of Sallust.

Some naturalists have maintained that giants had more numerous vertebrae than ordinary men; but this has not been confirmed by observation, nor has it been found that the spinal bones of dwarfs are in smaller number.

Schreber, who has collected the description of the principal modern giants, found few above seven feet and a half; although he mentions a Swedish peasant of eight feet Swedish measure, and one of the guards of the Duke of Brunswick eight feet six inches Dutch. Not so Hakewell, who informs us, from the testimony of Nannez, that the Emperor of China had archers and porters fifteen feet high. Howbeit, Ol. Magnus's account surpasses his; for he tells us of a "puella--in capite vulnerata, mortua induta chlamyde purpurea, longitudinis cubitorum 50, latitudinis inter humeros quatuor!"

UNLAWFUL CURES.

One can scarcely credit that at any period there could have existed men of science and genius who believed that there were supernatural means of curing disease, did we not even to the present day find imbeciles who verily dread the malpractices of the devil and his vicarious agents. Ancient writers divided their cures into lawful and unlawful. The former were obtained from divine aid; the latter from sorcerers, witches, magicians, wizards, and cunning men, who treated all maladies by spells, cabalistic words, charms, characters, images, amulets, ligatures, philters, incantations, &c.; by which means, according to Cardan, Artesius, Picatrix, and sundry wise men, the aforesaid sorcerers and witches could prevent fire from burning, find out thieves and stolen goods, show absent faces in a glass, make serpents lie still, stanch blood, salve gout, biting of mad dogs, toothache, et omnia mundi mala. "Many doubt," says Nicholas Taurellus, "whether the devil can cure such diseases he hath not made, and some flatly deny it; however, common experience confirms, to our astonishment, that magicians can work such feats, and that the devil, without impediment, can penetrate through all the parts of our body, and cure such maladies by means to us unknown." Some of these means were rather singular; for St. Austin mentions as one of these processes, "Agentes cum patientibus conjungunt, colligere semina rerum eaque materiae applicare;" and learned divines, moreover inform us, that to resist exorcisms these witches and magicians had St. Catherine's wheel imprinted on the roof of their mouths, or on some other part. Taurellus asserts, that to doubt it is to run into a sceptical extreme of incredulity. Godelman affirms that Satan is an excellent physician; Langius maintains that Jupiter Menecrates was a magician; and Marcellus Donatus pays the same compliment to Solomon, who, he says, "cured all the diseases of the mind by spells, charms, and drove away devils, and that Eleazar did the same before Vespasian." Galen, in his book "de Medicamentis facile purandis," observes after a preparation, "haec enim suffita, daemonus abigunt."

This fact being clearly ascertained, the next question was whether it was lawful in a desperate case to crave the help of the evil one on the principle

Flectere si nequeunt Superos, Acheronta movebunt.

Paracelsus rather impiously argues that we might, as it matters not, he says, "whether it be God or the devil, angels or unclean spirits, (immundi spiritus,) that cure him, so that he be eased. If a man fall in a ditch, what matter is it whether a friend or an enemy help him out? If I be troubled with such a malady, what care I whether the devil himself, or any of his ministers, by God's permission, redeem me?"--and he therefore concludes, that diseases brought on by malefices can only be cured by incantations. However, this doctrine was denounced as abominable by Remigius, Bodinus, Godelmannus, Erastus, and various divines and schoolmen; and Delrio plainly declares, "mori praestat quam superstitiose canari." Therefore pontificial writers and sages recommend adjuration and exorcism by "fire, suffumigations, lights, cutting the air with swords (gladiorum ictus), sacred herbs, odours," &c., though some hungry devils can only be cast out by fasting.

Witches and impostors, says Lord Bacon, have always held a competition with physicians. Galen complains of this superstition, and observes that patients placed more confidence in the oracles of Esculapius and their own idle dreams than in the prescriptions of doctors. The introduction of precious stones into medical practice owed its origin to a superstitious belief that, from their beauty, splendour, and high value, they were the natural receptacles for good spirits. Mystery, in the dark ages, and, alas! even now, increases the confidence in remedial means; reveal their true nature, the charm is dissolved: "Minus credunt quae ad suam salutem pertinent si intelligunt," said Pliny. One cannot but wonder when we behold men pre-eminent in deep learning and acute observation becoming converts to such superstitious practices. Lord Bacon believed in spells and amulets; and Sir Theodore Mayence, who was physician to three English sovereigns, and supposed to have been Shakspeare's Dr. Caius, believed in supernatural agency, and frequently prescribed the most disgusting and absurd medicines, such as the heart of a mule ripped up alive, a portion of the lungs of a man who had died a violent death, or the hand of a thief who had been gibbeted on some particular day. Nauseous medicines have ever been deemed the most efficacious, on the reasoning that as every thing medicinal is nauseous, every thing that is nauseous must be medicinal. The ancients firmly believed that blood can be stanched by charms; the bleeding of Ulysses was stopped by this means; and Cato the Censor has given us an incantation for setting dislocated bones. To this day charms are supposed to arrest the flow of blood:

Tom Pots was but a serving-man, But yet he was a doctor good, He bound his kerchief on the wound, And with some kind words he stanch'd the blood.

Sir Walter Scott says, in the "Lay of the Last Minstrel,"--

She drew the splinter from the wound, And with a charm she stanch'd the blood.

The strength of imagination in effecting wonderful cures has been observed in all ages; and Avicenna declares, "that he prefers confidence before art, precepts, and all remedies whatsoever." Our learned Burton says, "that this strong imagination or conceit is Astrum Hominis, and the rudder of this our ship, which reason should steer, but overborne by phantasie, cannot manage, and so suffers itself and the whole vessel of ours to be overruled and often overturned."

Nothing could be more absurd than the notions regarding some of these supposed cures: a ring made of the hinge of a coffin had the power of relieving cramps; which were also mitigated by having a rusty old sword hung up by the bedside. Nails driven in an oak-tree prevented the toothache. A halter that had served in hanging a criminal was an infallible remedy for a headache, when tied round the head; this affection was equally cured by the moss growing on a human skull, dried and pulverized, and taken as a cephalic snuff. A dead man's hand could dispel tumours of the glands by stroking the parts nine times, but the hand of a man who had been cut down from the gallows was the most efficacious. To cure warts, one had nothing to do but to steal a piece of beef from the butcher, with which the warts were to be rubbed; then inter it in any filth, and as it rotted, the warts would wither and fall.

The chips of a gallows on which several persons had been hanged, when worn in a bag round the neck, would cure the ague. A stone with a hole in it, suspended at the head of the bed, would effectually stop the nightmare; hence it was called a hag-stone, as it prevents the troublesome witches from sitting upon the sleeper's stomach. The same amulet tied to the key of a stable-door, deterred witches from riding horses over the country.

Rickety children were cured by being drawn through a cleft tree, which was afterwards bound up, and as the split wood united, the child acquired strength. Creeping through a perforated stone to cure various disorders was a Druidical rite, still practised in the East. In the parish of Marden there is a stone with a hole in it, fourteen inches in diameter, through which children are drawn for the rickets; and, in the North, infants are made to pass through a hole cut in a groaning cheese the day of their christening.

Second sight, which, as an hereditary faculty, was deemed a malady, was cured in the Isle of Man, according to Mr. Aubrey's account, by baptizing a child upon the first sight of its head. This ceremony exempts the succeeding generation from the troublesome gift.

It is a melancholy reflection that, at various periods, impostors have impiously called in Scriptural aid to promote their sordid or ambitious views. Chiromancers have quoted the Bible in support of their doctrines and adduced the following lines of Job,--"He sealeth up the hand of every man, that all men may know his works:" while, in the like manner, the Holy Inquisition of Spain and Portugal justified their atrocities on the score of the parable of the marriage of the king's son, in the 22nd of St. Matthew.

Unlawful cures, as they were called, being thus anathematized, lawful remedies were resorted to, and the patient was first ordered to pray with due devotion before he took his physic; or, as Burton observes, not one without the other, but both together; for, as he adds, to pray alone, and reject ordinary means, is to do like him in Aesop, that, when his cart was stalled, lay flat on his back, and cried out "Help, Hercules!" However, Hyperius maintains that no physicians can hope for success unless "with a true faith they call upon God and teach their patients to do the like." Comineus, when he addressed the Christian princes after the overthrow of Charles of Burgundy, bade them "first pray with all submission and penitency, confess their sins, and then take physic."

Another question of importance that led to much controversy was, whether it were lawful to seek the aid of the saints; the learned Burton's remarks on this controverted point are so curious that they are worth relating. "They (the papists) have a proper saint for almost every peculiar infirmity: for poisons, gout, agues, Petronella; St. Romanus, for such as are possessed; St. Vitus for madmen, &c.; and as, of old, Pliny reckons up gods for all diseases. All affections of the mind were heretofore accounted gods: Love and Sorrow, Virtue, Honour, Liberty, Contumely, Impudency, had their temples; Tempests, Seasons, Crepitus Ventris, Dea Vacuna, Dea Cloacina. Varro reckons up thirty thousand gods; Lucian makes Podagra, the gout, a goddess, and assigns her priests and ministers. 'Tis the same devil still, called heretofore, Apollo, Mars, Venus, &c.; the same Jupiter, and those bad angels, are now worshipped and adored by the name of St. Sebastian, St. Barbara, &c.; and our Lady succeeds Venus in many offices; and God often winks at these impostures, because they forsake his word, and betake themselves to the devil, as they do, that seek after holy water, crosses," &c.

Amidst this violent denunciation against popery and devilment, evil spirits and saints, it is somewhat singular to find a spirit of anomalous perversity which justifies suicide to rid ourselves of disease and suffering; and these very sanctimonious censors quote ancient and modern authorities to sanction a practice which every Christian must condemn. Let us pursue the disquisition of our learned bookworm Burton:--"Another doubt is made by philosophers, whether it be lawful for a man in such extremity of pain and grief to make away himself, and how those men that do so are to be censured. The Platonists approve of it, that it is lawful in such cases upon a necessity. Plotinus (L. de Beatitud.) and Socrates himself defend it (in Plato's Phaedon): If any man labour of an incurable disease, he may despatch himself, if it be to his good. Epictetus and Seneca say, Quamcunque veram esse viam ad libertatem;--any way is allowable that leads to liberty. Let us give God thanks no man is compelled to live against his will. Quid ad hominem claustra, carcer, custodia? liberum ostium habet. Death is always ready at hand: Vides illum precipitem locum, illud flumen? There is liberty at hand. Effugia cervitutis et doloris sunt, as that Laconian lad cast himself headlong, Non serviam, aiebat puer; to be freed of misery. Wherefore hath our mother earth brought out poisons (saith Pliny) in so great a quantity, but that men in distress might make away themselves? which kings of old had ever in readiness, ad incerta fortunae venenum sub custode promptum. Many worthy men and women, quorum memoria celebratur in ecclesia, sayeth Leminctius, killed themselves to save their chastity and honour, when Rome was taken. Jerome vindicates the same, and Ambrose commendeth Pelagia for so doing. Eusebius admired a Roman matron for the same fact, to save herself from the lust of Maxentius the tyrant. Adelhelmus, the Abbot of Malmesbury, calls them, beatas virgines quae sic, &c. Sir Thomas More, in his Utopia, commends voluntary death if one be sibi aut aliis molestus; especially if to live be a torment to him, let him free himself with his own hand from this tedious life, or from a prison, or suffer himself to be freed by others." However, be it said in justice to our worthy Burton, he condemns this practice as "a false and pagan position, founded in prophane stoical paradoxes and wicked examples;" and although he denounces most fulminating anathemas on papists, he concludes by saying, "we ought not to be rash and rigorous in our censures, as some are; Charity will judge and hope best; God be merciful unto us all!"

But why should we marvel at the credulity and superstition of our forefathers, when we daily observe equal absurdities? Fanaticism and bigotry will ever strive to speculate on human weakness, and endeavour to surround with impenetrable mists every rebel to their power who gropes for the shrine of reason and of truth. Johanna Southcote had her votaries, and Prince Hohenlohe is still considered by many a pious person, as a vicarious instrument of divine mercy. No miraculous recovery recorded in the dark ages can surpass the tenebral absurdity of the following relation of one of his cures:

Miss O'Connor was a nun in a convent near Chelmsford, and in December 1820, being about thirty years old, was suddenly attacked by a violent pain in the right hand, which extended with much swelling and inflammation up the arm. The whole limb became red, swollen, extremely painful, and entirely useless. Every remedy, both topical and directed to the system, was tried in vain for a year and a half. There was no suppuration, nor any formation of pus; but the malady continued obdurate, and yielded to no application. The resources of the flesh having manifestly failed, Mrs. Gerard, the worthy superior, very properly betook herself to those of the spirit. She made a request through a friend to Prince Hohenlohe to assist the patient in this her extreme case; when the following precious document, which it would be impious to translate into heretical English, was received: