Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/88

84 a corpse and dried, is suspended from the neck and is reputed to have the powers of an amulet. In Flanders, a sick person imprisons a spider between two walnut shells and wears it around his neck.

There were also specific amulets in circulation. For every ailment or unhappiness there was obtainable in the market of the necromancers, a charm which was supposed to have a certain beneficial influence for the affliction. Guttierez, a Spanish physician, who wrote a book on "Fascination" in the year 1653, states that children of that country wore amulets against the evil eye. In case a person who had the evil eye should gaze upon a child wearing this stone-charm, the vicious influence of the gaze will be attracted by the stone which will then crack. For epilepsy there was in circulation a charm which had this inscription:

 Jasper brings myrrh, and Melchior incense brings, And gold Balthazar to the King of Kings; Whoso the names of these three monarchs bears, Is safe, through grace, of epilepsy's fears.

For convulsions, as another example, they used to wear a necklace of beads from the root of the peony. Pliny tells that for headache a remedy to be tried is the halter by which somebody has been recently hanged; this should be worn around the neck of the patient. In 1726, Philip, Earl of Chesterfield, wrote in great praise of the Goa Stone:

There was a belief current in the middle ages that the cries of animals had each a significance. A very plausible arrangement of the cries was made by a certain anonymous genius. One must, however, be a scholar of Latin in order to understand what the animals were saying. Arranging the conversation of the beasts in the form of a dialogue, we have the following curious effect:

"Incredulity," said Ashmole, "is given the world as a punishment." It is no wonder then that human beings in order to avoid this penalty, believed all that was told them, and relied upon others to grant them the same courtesy; and then acting upon this privilege or license, helped to burden the lore of the world with tales of absurdity and incongruity.