Use, Preparation, and Discovery of Remedies.
Vambery tells of a holy Turkoman who sold as a wonderworking medicine a cup of water over which he had recited numerous sacred verses and into which he had expectorated at the end of each stanza (p. 48). In like manner we are told in the Arabian Nights (II, p. 222) how the excrement of ecclesiastical dignitaries was sold at a high price and used as a remedy for many diseases.
So, too, the indestructible parts of the bodies of the Buddhas and saints are accorded curative powers by the Buddhists (p. 49). On the same principle are numerous legends (p. 57) relating to the curative properties of articles in any way connected with the body of Jesus ; e. g., the water in which Mary washed the infant Jesus, the touch of his swaddling clothes, the water in which his body was washed in preparation for burial, the bandage with which he was blindfolded, his blood, the crown of thorns, cross, cup, etc., are all said to have been used in healing many diseases. In both Ireland and England the water in which the chalice used by the priest at communion is washed is given to delicate children or those having whooping cough as they are thus supposed to partake of some of the real blood of Jesus (9, p. 88).
A slightly different class of religious facts noted by Bourke (p. 97) have also much significance for the healing art. It is because of a religious conception that "the pranks and gibberish of the maniac or the idiot are solemnly treasured as outbursts of inspiration" and it was at first to the end of producing a state of religious ecstasy that the intoxicating mushroom, mistletoe, rue, ivy, mandrake, hemp, opium, and stramonium were used; but the insane talk of the mental pervert and the revelations of the religious ecstatic have often served as guides to the treatment of disease, and the natural intoxicants we have enumerated have often been used simply as medicines when their religious significance has become somewhat forgotten.
For example: the mistletoe, called "all heal" by the Druids, has been used in many countries and many centuries even to the present for the cure of epilepsy, rupture, fits, sterility, for exorcism of evil spirits, and as amulets for a great number of other diseases.
It seems hardly advisable to record here the many more revolting practices connected with the healing art throughout the entire world; all the more degrading because of their close relation to religion which has always been the revealer of that which is best in man; but, deplore it as we may, the fact remains as Bourke has shown (p. 333) that "excrementitious remedies are still to be met with in the folk medicine of various countries; indeed the problem would be to determine in what country of the world at the present day the more ignorant classes do not still use them." Indeed, in her study of the folk medicine of our own country, Mrs. Bergen finds many remedies of so offensive a character that it seems almost incredible that they "can still retain a place in even the rudest traditional pharmacopoeia" except we admit that there is "in the uneducated human mind a sort of reverence for or faith in that which is in itself disagreeable or repulsive." (Pop. Sci. Mo., 33, P. 658.)
Miracles of Healing
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By Charles W. Waddle (1909)
Primitive Christian Worship
Hereditary genius
