THE IMPACT OF THE INTRODUCTION OF IRON 

 ON MEDICAL AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 



YEARS AGO, when I was a boy, I was puzzled because whenever 1 went to pick 

 a sliver out of my finger with a pin my mother promptly stopped me and 

 insisted that I use a needle. Being of an inquiring turn of mind, I kept asking 

 for some reason for this injunction, which evidently all mothers and grand- 

 mothers considered highly important, but I never received a logical answer. 

 All that the elderly women whom I questioned could say was that the pin was 

 brass and the needle was steel. The essential point was that steel should be 

 used. During the next thirty years I asked many an old Vv'oman if she could 

 throw light on this matter, but no one was ever able to help me. 



Cold Iron Prevents the Festering of AV olnds 



In an effort to learn more, I read all the books and articles I could find on 

 medical folklore and gradually accumulated a small library on the subject. 

 Although I have never found a direct reference to this common custom and 

 belief, I long ago became satisfied as to the original reason back of the injunc- 

 tion to use steel. It almost certainly was that "cold iron" could be trusted to 

 keep out those powers of evil that might cause the wound to fester. Brass could 

 not be expected to work in this way. According to Frazer,^ among some primi- 

 tive peoples an iron nail is commonly put with food so that no demon can 

 enter in and so injure the viands as to make the eater ill. A man with a sore on 

 his body ^vill also keep a piece of iron near it to keep away the demons. 



Iron Protects from the Powers of Darkness 



All over the world one finds this belief in the protective power of iron, and one 

 of the commonest manifestations of it is to be seen in the use of the horseshoe, 

 nailed over the door or on the threshold. Over the barn door it will keep out 

 bad fairies who might ride the horses all night or might bewitch the churn so 

 that the butter will not form. The Slavs think that a horseshoe on the threshold 

 will keep disease from coming into the house. In some parts of Ireland they 

 even put a horseshoe over the church door to help keep the devil oiu. The 

 people admitted that the holy water ought to do the trick, but they thought 

 it would do no harm to use some iron too. 



In Scotland, a superstitious man going over the moors at night will carry a 

 little piece of iron to protect him from the pranks of the fairies. Scottish sailors 

 may also carry a bit of iron or they may nail a horseshoe to the mast of their 

 boat to protect them from the sea. 



In some parts of the world those men ivho officiate at a funeral must carry 

 iron to protect themselves from possible injury by the ghost of the dead man. 



