Part 3

Among the most curious of all the Italian charms against the Evil Eye, and yet one which has been singularly neglected by most writers, is the sprig of rue or, as the Neapolitans call it, the cimaruta. In its simplest form it was undoubtedly of Etruscan or Phoenician origin. Later, however, it became curiously involved with other symbols and quite complicated. It is worn especially upon the breasts of Neapolitan babies, and is considered their especial protection against the much-dreaded jettatura. In ancient times no plant had so many virtues ascribed to it as had the rue. Pliny, indeed, cites it as being a remedy for 84 different diseases. It used to be hung about the neck in primeval times to serve as an amulet against fascination. In most of these amulet forms it consists of three branches, which were supposed to be typical of Diana Triformis, who used often to be represented in three positions and as if having three pairs of arms.

Diana, by the way, was the especial protectress of women in child-birth. Silver was her own metal and the moon her special emblem. Therefore, the expression, "the silver moon" is not so meaningless as it would appear. This will in some measure account for the fact that corals, to which large virtues were ascribed, used always to be mounted in silver, and that the crescent, or new moon, is also almost invariably made of this same metal. Of the many charms which used to be combined in the cimaruta there is scarcely one which may not be more or less considered as connected with Diana, the Goddess of Infants.

Frequently, also, we may see representations of the sea-horse quite like the living hippocampi of to-day, which are worn alike by cab horses and by women in Naples. They are known locally as the Cavalli marini.

Protection supposed to be most efficient was and is frequently afforded also by another method, namely, printed or written invocations, prayers, formulae, etc., worn somewhere about the body. Sometimes these were worn concealed from view and at others they were openly displayed. Even today on Turkish horses and Arab camels are hung little bags containing passages from the Koran, while the Neapolitan horses frequently carry in little canvas bags prayers to the Madonna or verses from scripture,--these as a sort of last resort in case the other charms fail. The good Catholic of to-day, especially if of Irish descent, wears his little scapulary suspended around the neck, which is supposed to be a potent protection. Frommannd's large work on Magic offers us a perfect mine of written spells against fascination, which have often to be prepared with certain mystic observances. The various written charms, as against the bite of the mad dog, are only other illustrations of the same superstition. Indeed, many superstitious people believe that the mere utterance of particular numbers exercises a charm. Daily expression of this belief we see in the credulity about the luck of odd numbers, and the old belief that the third time will be lucky. Military salutes are always in odd numbers. More value attaches in public estimation to the number seven than to any other, as we see in the miraculous powers ascribed to the seventh son of a seventh son.

An appeal to luck to-day is the equivalent of the old prayer to the Goddess Fortuna, and is voiced in the common idea about the lucky coin and the various little observances for luck which are so popular. These observances are everywhere inclusive of the popular importance attached to expectoration, which is one of the most curious features of these many widespread beliefs. The habit of spitting on a coin, for instance, is very common, just as the schoolboy spits on his agate when playing marbles or on his baseball, or the bowler upon his wooden ball before rolling it. In fact, this whole matter of spitting has been in all ages an expression of a deep-rooted popular belief. Among the ancient Greeks and Romans the most common remedy against an envious look was spitting, hence it was called "despuere malum." Old women would avert the evil eye from their children by spitting three times (observe the odd number) into their bosoms.

The virtues and properties attributed to saliva among various peoples have been numerous and exalted. To lick a wart on rising in the morning used to be one of its well-recognized cures, and is to-day a popular remedy for any slight wound. Especially was the saliva of a fasting person peculiarly efficacious. Pliny states that when a person looks upon an infant asleep the nurse should spit three times upon the ground. But the most marvellous virtues were attributed to saliva in the direction of restoration of sight. The most conspicuous illustration of this is the instance mentioned in the New Testament when Christ healed the blind man, for it is related that:

"He spat on the ground and made clay of the spittle, and did anoint the eyes of the blind man with the clay."

The practice of concealing the eyes is prevalent throughout the Orient, and among the Mohammedans, cannot be referred entirely to male jealousy, for the women themselves confess to the greatest reluctance to show their faces to the stranger, fearing the influence of the evil eye.

Again, inasmuch as from time immemorial diseases of all kinds have been considered the direct result of fascination, it was most natural that charms of varied form should be introduced as a protection. Many persons even of considerable education lend themselves to this superstition. The carrying in one's pocket of a potato, a lump of camphor or an amulet is, among other alleged charms, but an everyday illustration of this belief.

It would be possible to go on with an almost endless enumeration of the forms of this still generally prevalent belief in the power of the evil eye, and of the charms by which it may be averted. As has been set forth, it is but a particulate expression of a general and widespread belief in the existence of an evil being, for some vague and almost unsubstantial, for others assuming almost the proportions of the personal devil of mediaeval theology, or even of the Tyrolean Passion Plays. A discussion in a general way of this topic I have held to be not entirely foreign to the purpose of this society, it being one of the most interesting subjects of folklore study, and it may perhaps be considered just at the present to have a more particular interest for us in that we have so recently been favored with a most delightful and scholarly essay on the "Salem Witchcraft" by Prof. John Fiske, in which he graphically set forth the mechanism and the consequences of an aggravated expression of this belief, which constitutes the most serious blot which can be found upon the history of the Protestant white races in this country.

THANATOLOGY

A QUESTIONNAIRE AND A PLEA FOR A NEGLECTED STUDY

Appeared first in the Journal of the American Medical Association, April 27, 1912.

Is it possible to watch the "vital spark of heavenly flame," as it quits "this mortal frame" and not be overcome by the mystery of death as the termination of that even greater mystery, life? Is there inspiration in the pagan emperor's address to his soul--those Latin verses which Pope has so beautifully translated?

To the speculative philosopher death may have a different significance, and one not altogether included in that given to it by the physiologist. To the former it is a subject for transcendental speculation; to the latter it is the terminal stage of that adjustment of internal and external relations which, for Spencer, constitutes life. For us its primary and immediate significance is purely mundane, yet it deserves such serious study from a practical viewpoint as it seldom receives.

What is death? When does it actually occur? How can it occur when the majority of cells in the previously living organism live on for hours or for days or, under certain favoring circumstances, retain potentialities of life for indefinite periods? These and numberless related questions constitute a line of inquiry that may well call for a separate department of science. Pondering in this wise, I long ago coined an expression which years later I found had been incorporated in the scientific dictionaries, though never before heard by me or encountered in my reading. "Thanatology" is this word, and it may be defined as the study of the nature and causes of death. Inseparable from it, however, are certain considerations regarding the nature and causes of life. Yet I would not introduce a compound term such as "biothanatology," wishing so far as possible to limit the study and the meaning.

Let us ask ourselves a few more questions. Does life inhere in any particular cell? In the leukocytes? In the neurons? Both are capable of stimulated activity long after the death of their host. In fact, by suitable electric stimulation, nearly all the phenomena of life may be reproduced after death, save consciousness and mentality alone. Do these then constitute life, and their suppression or abolition death? If so what about the condition of trance, or of absolute imbecility, congenital or induced? Or, again, how can a decapitated frog go on living for hours? Is it perhaps because the heart is the vital organ that the hearts of some animals will continue to palpitate for hours after their removal from the bodies? Yet the animals which have lost them certainly promptly die. Suddenly stop a man's heart-action by electrocution, or the guillotine, or a bullet, and he dies, we say, instantly. Let it stop equally suddenly under chloroform and there is a period of several minutes during which it may be set going. Let a man apparently drown and this viable period becomes even longer--say a goodly fraction of an hour. During the interval is he alive or dead, or is there an intermediate period of absolutely suspended animation? And if so, in what does it consist?

Is there a vital principle? If so what is it? Is such a thing conceivable? Can such a concept prevail among physicists? Can we consent even to entertain in this direction the notion of what is so vaguely called "the soul?" Of course, those who talk most lucidly about the soul know least about it, and no man can define it in comprehensible terms; but can consideration of the soul (whatever it may be) be omitted from our thanatology? Probably not, at least by many thinkers who cannot segregate their physics from their theology. Sad it is that theology, which might be so consolatory had it any fixed foundation, should be utterly impotent when so much is wanted of it. Theology, however, has little if aught to do with thanatology.

Is protoplasm alive? If so, then why may we not believe, with Binet, in the psychic life of micro-organisms? He seems to have advanced good reason for assuming that we may do so, albeit such manifestations in either direction may be scarcely more than expressions of chemiotaxis. But if protoplasm be alive in any proper sense, as it would appear (else where draw the line?), just when does it so appear and whence comes its life? If it be alive, then life inheres in the nitrogen compounds composing it, or else is an adjunct of matter, imponderable, elusive, something un-conceivable if undeniable. The vitalists are of late perhaps attaining an ascendency which for decades they had lost, since they maintain that life is not to be explained by chemical activities alone. And yet it is possible to set going in the eggs of certain sea animals the phenomena of life, or to liberate them by certain weak solutions of alkaline cyanides, without the pressure or assistance of fructifying spermatozoa. In such cases life or death are determined by ionization and certain chemicals, or by their absence. Where then, again, is the vital principle? Or is it inherent in the ion, and was Bion correct when he said "electricity is life?"

The life of a cell is then necessarily quite distinct from the life of its host, nor can the latter be composed simply of the numerical total lives of its components. Some lower animals bear semidivision, in which case each half soon becomes a complete unit by itself. Others seem to bear the loss of almost any individual part without loss of life, and it is hard to say just which is the vital part. The central pumping organ is perhaps the sine qua non, when it exists. But when non-existent, then what?

Again, while a living organism may be artificially divided into viable portions, no method seems known by which a series of separate cells may be, as it were, assembled or combined into one, of which a new unit may result from assemblage or combination. The more highly specialized or complex the cell, the more easily does it part with life, and the more difficult becomes its preservation and its reproduction. We may assume that after the death of a man his most specialized cells are the first to die, or more, that their death has perhaps preceded his own. In the ante-mortem collapse seen in many diseases and poisonings, has not this very thing occurred, i. e., that the patient has outlived his most important cells? Certainly when a patient dies of progressive gangrene he has outlived, perhaps, a large proportion of his millions of competent cells. Viewed properly, what a strange spectacle is here presented! Perhaps twenty per cent. of his cells actually dead, the rest bathed in more or less poisonous media, still their host endures yet a little while. "Behold, I show you a great mystery." About which of the poisoned cells does the flame of life still flicker?

The life-giving germ-and sperm-cells may exist and persist for some time after the body dies, as numerous experiences and experiments have shown. Ova and spermatozoa do not die the instant the host dies. And herein appears another great mystery, that cells from the undoubtedly dead body may possess and unfold the potentialities of life when properly environed. Among the lower forms of life cells but slightly differentiated go on living and even creating new organisms, though the larger organisms be dead. Moreover, in what way shall we regard the division of one ameboid cell into two, equally alive and complete? Here two living organisms are made out of one, without death intervening, and by permutation alone may one calculate, through how few generations cells need pass in order to be numbered by millions, without a death necessary to the process.

Thus far we have had in mind life and death in the animal kingdom alone. But most of what has been said, and much that has not, is equally true in the vegetable kingdom. Even in the mineral kingdom--as some think--the invariable and inevitable tendency to assume definite crystalline form represents the lowest type of life. Indeed it might fall in with Spencer's definition as evincing a tendency to adjust internal to external relations, though exhibited only after such ruthless disturbance as liquefaction by heat or solution. But then, is not every disturbance of relations "ruthless," because it follows inexorable habits of Nature? Even a crystal will reform as frequently as appear certain other phenomena of life, if made to do so. Were atoms alive they would suffer with every fresh chemical change, and who knows but that they do?

But in the vegetable world we certainly have all the features of life and death in complete form: fructification of certain cells by certain others, development in unicellular form or in most profuse and complex form, a selection of necessary constituents of growth from apparently unpromising soil, and the production of startling results. Does not the sensitive plant evince a contact sensibility almost equal to that of the conjunctiva? And who shall say that it does not suffer when rudely handled? Does not the production of the complex essential oils and volatile ethers which give to certain flowers their wonderful fragrance, indicating what strange combinations of crude materials have been effected within their cells, show as wonderful a laboratory as any concealed within the animal organisms? Yet death comes to these plants with equal certainty, and presents equally perplexing mysteries. When dies the flower? When plucked and separated from its natural supply or when it begins to fade (a period made more or less variable by the care given it), or when it ceases to emit its odor? And is then death a matter of hours? When the floral stem was snapped what else snapped with it? At what instant did the floral murder occur?

Every seed and every seedling possesses marvelous potentiality of life, and so long as it does we say it is not dead; nor yet is it alive. It resists considerable degrees of heat, will bear the lowest temperature, will remain latent for long periods, and still its cells will instantly respond to favoring stimuli. Its actual life is apparently aroused by purely thermic and chemical (electrionic?) activities environing it. In what do its life and its death consist?

But life and death are influenced--we say "strangely" only because it all seems strange to us--by uncommon or purely artificial conditions. Radium emanations have always an injurious effect on embryonic development. Under their influence, for example, the eggs of amphibia become greatly disturbed. Cells that should specialize into nerve, ganglion and muscle fail to develop, and consequently there may be produced minute amphibian monsters, destitute of nerves and muscles, but otherwise nearly normal. Hertwig has submitted the sperm-cells of sea urchins to these rays, without killing them, but invariably with consequent abnormal development.

The effect of cathode or x-rays is even more widely recognized and has been more generally demonstrated. They seem to possess properties injurious to most cell-life and even fatal to some.

Still more puzzling, and weird in a way, are the results of experiments, now widely practiced, which have to do with juggling, as it were, with ova, larvæ and embryos, by all imaginable combinations of subdivision and reattachment of parts, so that there have resulted all kinds of monstrosities and abnormalities. To such an extent has this laboratory play been carried that almost any desired product can be furnished--living creatures with two heads, two tails, or whatever combination may be determined.