Nov. 18. 1854.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



399 



Bla-vik, blue cove; as the cove there is still 

 called Sandy Cove, on account of its freedom from 

 rocks and seaweeds. This, however, is only a 

 case of corruption ; Cape of Good Hope, and 

 others, are translations. Our emmet and the Ger- 

 man ameise are the same, connected probably with 

 the terms above. Ant comes from emmet, as aunt 

 comes from amita. 



Inch. This name of some kind of tape was 

 once so common, that incle-malier was the name 

 of a trade ; but it is now gone out of use, and its 

 origin is unknown. Now, as inch is the Ang.- 

 Saxon diminutive, and rupinch was a little rope 

 or cord, may not this tape have been originally 

 ropmch, and then by aphseresis (a figure we use 

 so much) have become inch ? 



Wolf. It is very remarkable how the names of 

 the various species of the genus Canis, in different 

 languages, accord. 'AAcoir->j| and vulpes is fox ; 

 XvKos and lupus wolf; and as ulf is wolf in Ice- 

 landic, we may see that these two sets of terms 

 are in reality the same. Gurk is wolf in Persian ; 

 volk in Russian ; varg in Icelandic ; goupil, a fox, 

 in old French. We ourselves have wolf and 

 whelp, a young dog, with which the old German 

 Welf must have been analogous. 



Queen, Quean, Crone. These terms, so difTer- 

 ent in signification now, all originally signified 

 simply looman. The two former answer to kvdna, 

 liven, Icelandic ; quinde, Dan. ; qvinna, Swed. ; the 

 last is the Icelandio Ao?ia, Dan. ko7ie, woman ; while 

 kojia, Swed., answers to our quean. All are akin to 

 yvi/rj ; zend, Pers. ; jend, Russian. It is curious 

 enough that giii is the Australian term for woman 

 or wife. Thos. Keightley. 



MEDICAL SUPERSTITIONS. 



An amusing and not uninstructive book might 

 be written on the above title. It might perhaps 

 be objected that such a work, if treated exhaus- 

 tively, would be nothing less than a complete his- 

 tory of medicine up to Bacon's day. And such 

 objection would not be altogether unreasonable. 

 But the contribution towards such a work, which 

 I am about to send you, refers to the post- 

 Baconian era ; and is interesting, less as a speci- 

 men of the working of the mediteval mind, than 

 from the date of the volume in which I stumbled 

 on it, — a very curious book in many respects, of 

 which I will say a few words in the first place. 

 _ Jl Medico Poeta (the Physician a Poet) is the 

 title of a folio by Dr. Cammillo Brunori, published 

 at Fabriano in 1726. The leading object of his 

 work is to prove that there is nothing in the na- 

 ture of things to forbid the banns of marriage 

 between poetry and medicine ; that an excellent 

 physician may be an excellent poet, and vice versa ; 

 and the subject-matter they are to deal with the 



same in either capacity. And I know no reason 

 why it should not be so — there are the examples 

 of Lucretius, Redi, and Fracastoro in its favour, — 

 except the existence of worthy Dr. Brunori's 

 attempt to demonstrate the affirmative of the pro- 

 position. The work consists of a poem in twelve 

 cantos, or " Capitoli," as from the fifteenth cen- 

 tury downwards it was the Italian fashion to call 

 them, on the physical poet — a sort of medical ars 

 poetica ; and followed by a hundred and seventy- 

 two sonnets on all diseases, drugs, parts of the 

 body, functions of them, and curative means. 

 Each sonnet is printed on one page, while that 

 opposite is occupied by a compendious account in 

 prose of the subject in hand. We have a sonnet 

 on the stomach-ache, a sonnet on apoplexy, a 

 sonnet on purges, another on blisters, and many 

 others on far less mentionable subjects. The 

 author's poetical view of the action of a black-dose 

 compares it to that of a tidy and active housemaid, 

 who having swept together all the dirt in the 

 house, throws it out of the window. 



Mystic virtues are attributed to a variety of 

 substances, animal, vegetable, and mineral. But 

 the page of this strange farrago which specially 

 induced me to introduce Dr. Cammillo Brunori to 

 the readers of " N. & Q.," is that which details 

 the medical uses of the human skull. It is easy to 

 conceive the nature of the associations of idea, and 

 more or less poetical imaginings, which generated 

 such superstitions in the minds of men accustomed 

 to seek facts in fancies as philosophers, rather 

 than fancies in facts as poets. And in this, as in 

 other similar instances, we may safely conclude, 

 that the simple unsupported superstition was an- 

 tecedent to the laborious attempts at finding some 

 rationale for it. Of course, the would-be reasoner 

 supposes and represents the process to have been 

 the reverse. But the truth is, that such essays 

 belong to a time when the nascent ideas of induc- 

 tive philosophy had obtained sufficient strength 

 and currency to convince students of nature, that 

 something of the sort was needful; but when 

 they were not yet strong enough to sweep away 

 the whole baseless fabric. 



All skulls, Dr. Brunori informs us, are not of 

 equal value. Indeed, those of persons who have 

 died a natural death, are good for little or nothing. 

 The reason of this is, that the disease of which 

 they died has consumed or dissipated the essential 

 spirit ! The skulls of murderers and bandits are 

 particularly efficacious. And this is clearly be- 

 cause not only is the essential spirit of the cranium 

 concentrated therein by the nature of their violent 

 death, but also the force of it is increased by the 

 long exposure to the atmosphere, occasioned by 

 the heads of such persons being ordinarily placed 

 on spikes over the gates of cities ! Such skulls are 

 used in various manners. Preparations of volatile 

 salt, spirit, gelatine, essence, &c. are made from 



