SPELLS AND CHARMS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 56, Issue 4043, 4 May 1938, Page 4

SPELLS AND CHARMS

WITCHCRAFT AND MODERN MEDICINE.

(By

E.A.B.)

Black hair streaming out in the wind, piercing eyes bright with devilish light, hoarse voices raised in endearment of their cat, toad, or ferret companions, in the light of the rising moon, the witches of th e middle ages sailed on their broomsticks across the cloudy skies to join Satan at their meeting place. They had to report to him their harmful deeds of the last weeks, receiving* commendation for their evil, then in wild licence they danced around the cauldron and feasted in the red light of the flames.

Great powers they had. They could stop ships at sea, or the arms of the windmills from turning; dry up the cows or stop the corn from sprouting; turn the baker’s bread black and stir up strife among friendly folk; provoke epidemics and raise storms. But they had also powers for good—to put out fire, stanch the bleeding from wounds, extract the bullet from a wound, stop a famine or cure maladies beyond the skill of physicians. They did these things by means of charms, spells, touches or with herbs; their knowledge, passing from generation to generation, was much simple plant lore and much mere nonsense. In the latter category comes the case of the farmer whose crop had some strange blight. He collected apple pips, some locks of hair, nail parings from each member of the family, and alone at night, put them into a bottle with two black pins. Then the bottle was thrown on the fire, and when it burst the charm declared broken. Whether it worked or not the annals do not state. Another idea was to wear a stone taken from a toad’s head as a talisman to assure the greatest human happiness. To make a “charm of powerful trouble” the witches in Macbeth flung into their cauldron— Eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog, Adder's fork and blind-worm’s sting, Lizard’s leg and owlet's -wing Strangely enough in their weird incantations lay the suggestions of curative medicine of to-day. They might well have continued Onion’s juice and hair of goat, Coney’s fur and wild oat, Seed of dock and sterile brome, Horse’s dander These last substances have been taken at random from a list of serums supplied to doctors from the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories, used every day in curing such, troubles as asthma and hay fevei. De-sensitivisation. is the method employed in using them that is, by minute and gradually increasing injections of the substance by whicn the patient is affected his body is in time rendered insensitive to it. For similar treatment the people of the middle ages had to trust that the priests, who were the physicians of the period, could by exorcisms cast out the evil spirits hidden in water, wine, salt, sulphur, herbs, flocks and herds, rue, wormwood and even silk worm cocoons. Through years of experiment, made in great faith by successive generations, the -witches to whom the poor country folk went in despair and ter-

Tor, had learned the medicinal qualities of the plants that grew in the countryside, and adding to these a few weird and fantastic circumstances to give them value in their inquirers’ eyes, and probably also in their own, they found remedies for many ills.

A couple of hundred years later the same herbs were found growing in the gardens of the more cultured people of the late Tudor period. One was Solomon’s seal, mentioned in a Book of Incantations for the Summoning of Demons, supposed to be in circulation under the name of King Solomon himself. The priests used this plant to exorcise evil spirits; the Elizabethans considered that its juice would wipe out freckles and bruises from the skin; the chemist of to-day knows its actual value, and adds it to various medicines. Another was basil, whose seed cured infirmities of the heart, and whose root, held in the hand with a swallow’s feather, would relieve the pains of a woman in childbirth. For heart troubles, doctors now turn to the oleander, or foxglove, the latter, digitalis, first having been tried by a practitioner of medicine in the early sixteenth century, Cardinus, who believed that any mendicant or agent of Nature showed by its shape the qualities with which it was endowed heart-shaped plants for the heart, liver-shaped for the liver, and so on.

Sage in those Tudor days was used in pottage to bring appetite, and when boiled to sweeten the breath; rue, famous then, and now almost unknown, was to be cursed and hurt when planted, and then was supposed to be possessed of the power of keeping adders and lizards away—but it was not to be put into plague-time nosegays. Garlic was sown by the wane of the moon, and used to keep birds from the fruit if hung on the branches; now doctors find much more valuable purpose for it. The people planted hoarhound and ginger also, and the chemist will tell you that in modern medicine these serve a helpful part, hoarhound for coughs and colds, ginger for digestive troubles. Onion, used in the treatment of tuberculosis to-day, as lately as 1880 was supposed to have particularly queer powers. To rid oneself of an enemy, one wrote his name on a piece of paper and fastened it with as many pins as possible to an onion, then put the onion up a chimney— a method that would have confounded Sir Peter Wimsey himself.

Ransacking the world for substances that can bring healing, the scientist has found that the willow wands with which the witches and sorcerers performed black magic certainly have a magic power. The salicytate produced from the willow tree serves in the treatment of rheumatism. Here the tree itself provides the antidote to the old belief that people living by the water suffer from rheumatism. Poppies, exceedingly valuable in medicine of this century, appear seldom in books dealing with witchcraft, but belladonna, -which yields a healing fluid, has an age-old reputation. When witches made ready for their meetings they rubbed on their skin an ointment of belladonna and aconite, so it has been stated, and scholars have suggested that the aconite, producing an irregular action of the heart as they were falling asleep, they felt the sensation of ailing or sweping through the air. Even the earth itself has been forced by science to give up its healing secrets, and metals play quite a large part in modern medicine. Mercury is now used in ointments for skin troubles—the same substance the sorcerer found of great fascination, for is provided the elegant power of mak-

ing him invisible. If he found it difficult to carry under his right arm the heart of a bat, a black hen or a frog, he could wear on his finger a Ring of Gyges, turning the stone in it inwards or outwards when he wished to vanish or appear. The ring was made of mercury, set with a little stone found in the lap wing’s nest, and around the stone were engraved (in French) the words, “Jesus, passing through the midst of them, went His way.”

Many of the spells the witches employed were horrible, and would make the most insensitive modern shudder. With men’s whole lives given up to research, these substances have been searched for their powers; twentiethcentury medicine makes the most of them, and medical names assuage the tremors of the timorous-minded. The liver of bulls and sheep gives the extract that is invaluable for patients with pernicious anaemia; from the pancreas of the sheep comes the insulin for the treatment of diabetes; from the patients’ own discharges is grown the vaccine that, fed on broth and egg yoke, killed, rendered antiseptic, and injected into the blood stream, cures them of their illnesses. Faith was the greatest healing agent the witches used and mystery played a part. With the faith of their patients in their powers, doctors can still work magic, while the wonder that surrounded the art of the sorcerers is as nothing compared with that of the witchcraft of medicine of this century.