Page:Leechdoms wortcunning and starcraft of early England volume 1.djvu/25

 From the cradle modern Englishmen are taught to fight an angry battle against superstition, and they treat a talisman or a charm with some disdain and much contempt. But let us reflect that these playthings tended to quiet and reassure the patient, to calm his temper, and soothe his nerves; objects which, if we are not misinformed, the best practitioners of our own day willingly obtain by such means as are left them. Whether a wise physician will deprive a humble patient of his roll of magic words, or take from his neck the fairy stone, I do not know: but this is certain, that the Christian Church of that early day, and the medical science of the empire by no means refused the employment of these arts of healing, these balms of superstitious origin. The reader may enjoy his laugh at such devices, but let him remember that dread of death and wakeful anxiety must be hushed by some means, for they are very unfriendly to recovery from disease.

Some part of the prevailing superstition must have come from the Magi, for we find them ordering that the modern feverfue, the Pyrethrum parthenium, must be pulled from the ground with the left hand, that the fevered patients name must be spoken forth, and that the herborist must not look behind him.

Plinius says also, that the Magi and the Pythagoreans had many foolish tales about the eryngium, known in England as sea holly. That they ordered the pseudo anchusa to be gathered with the left hand, the name of him, who was to profit by it to be uttered, and that it should be tied on a man for the tertian fever. They used the άγλαοφωτὶς, or pæony, for evocation of spirits. They got cures for