Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing by George Barton Cutten (best large ereader txt) 📕

"With us there was a doctor of phisike; In al the world, was thar non hym lyk To speke of physik and of surgerye, For he wos groundit in astronomie. He kept his pacient a ful gret del In hourys by his magyk naturel; Wel couth he fortunen the ascendent Of his ymagys for his pacient."

Fosbrooke has divided talismans into five classes, examples of some of which I have already given. They are: "1. The astronomical, with celestial signs and intelligible characters. 2. The 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. 4. The sigilla planetarum, composed of Hebrew numeral letters, used by astrologers and fortune-tellers. 5. Hebrew names and characters. These were formed according to the cabalistic art."

The doctrine of signatures bears a close resemblance to talismans, and some believe that talismans have largely grown out of this doctrine. Dr. Paris79 defines the doctrine as the belief that "every natural substance which possesses any medical virtues indicates, by an obvious and 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 characters to discover their uses." Some opined that the external marks were impressed by planetary influences, hence their connection with talismans; others simply reasoned it out that the Almighty must have placed a sign on the various means which he had provided for curing diseases.

Color and shape were the two principal factors in interpreting the signatures. White was regarded as cold and red as hot, hence cold and hot qualities were attributed to different medicines of these colors respectively. Serious errors in practice resulted from this opinion. 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 drug, turmeric, the roots of rhubarb, the flowers of saffron, and other yellow substances were given in jaundice; red flannel, looking like blood, cures blood taints, and therefore rheumatism, even to this day, although many do not know why red flannel is so efficacious.

Lungwort, whose leaves bear a fancied resemblance to the surface of the lungs, was considered good for pulmonary complaints, and liverwort, having a leaf like the liver, cured liver diseases. Eye-bright was a famous application for eye diseases, because its flowers somewhat resemble the pupil of the eye; bugloss, resembling a snake's head, was valuable for snake bite; and the peony, when 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 meninges, and the kernel was beneficial for the brain and tended to resist poisons. Lilies-of-the-valley were used for the cure of apoplexy, the signature reasoning being, as Coles says, "for as that disease is caused by the drooping of humors into the principal ventrices of the brain, so the flowers of this lily, hanging on the plants as if they were drops, are of wonderful use herein."

Capillary herbs naturally announced themselves as good for diseases of the hair, and bear's grease, being taken from an animal thickly covered with hair, was recommended for the prevention of baldness. Nettle-tea is still a country remedy for nettle rash; prickly plants like thistles 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 of diet." Poppy-heads were used "with success" to relieve diseases of the head, and the root of the "mandrake," from its supposed resemblance to the human form, was a very ancient remedy for barrenness and was evidently so esteemed by Rachel, in the account given in Genesis 30:14 ff.

In the treatment of small-pox red bed coverings were employed in order to bring the pustules to the surface of the body. The patient must be indued with red; the bed furniture and hangings should be red and red substances were to be looked upon by the patient; burnt purple, pomegranate seeds, mulberries 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 made red." He further says that "when the son of the renowned King of England (Edward II) lay sick of the small-pox I took care that everything around the bed should be of a red color; which succeeded so completely that the Prince was restored to perfect health, without a vestige of a pustule remaining."

The Emperor Francis I, when infected