504 Improvement of Medical and Surgical Science. 
upon the finger: but, to possess. the 
requisite virtue, it is necessary that the 
ring should be made of some metal 
taken by stealth, without discovery, 
The cramp-bone, or patella (knee-pan), 
of the sheep, is also a good charm. The 
great Boyle recommends, for certain 
diseases, “a little bag hung about the 
neck, containing the powder made of a 
live toad, burnt in a new pot.” The 
reader, desirous of such information, 
will find a great deal of curious matter 
in vol. ii, part ii, and vol. vi. of Boyle’s 
collected works. 
For the cure of epilepsy, or the fall- 
ing sickness, numerous are the charms 
which have been invented. A very 
common remedy among the lower 
orders about London, and particularly 
in Essex, is’ to cut the tip of a black 
cat’s tail, in order to procure three drops 
of blood, which are to be taken in a 
spoonful of milk, froma woman’s breast, 
and repeated’ three days successively. 
If the patient be a male, the woman 
from whom the milk is to be procured 
must have lain in of a girl; and the 
contrary, if the epileptic person be a 
female. If the patient be informed 
of the ,composition it loses its  effi- 
cacy. Dr, Lettsom met with three in- 
stances within-a fortnight, wherein this 
method) was. recommended, For a 
similar intention, the patient is to 
creep, with his head foremost, down 
three pair of stairs, three times.a day, 
fer three successive days. Let us re- 
member that three is the root of the 
mystic number nine, and is still much 
esteemed by free-masons. * 
But we ought not to wonder at the 
credulity thus displayed by the illiterate 
and the ignorant, when we find men: of 
liberal. scholarship adopting and ad- 
vocating opinions infinitely more absurd’ 
than the mummeries Ihave mentioned. 
The credulity of Pliny, who was more 
of an annalist than a philosopher, may 
be excused; but when Fulgosus, Ama- 
tus Lusitanus, Ambrose Parré, and 
Donatus, men who. deservedly flou- 
rished in. the 15th and 16th centuries, 
bring an odium, upon the profession of 
physic by sanctioning with their names 
divers marvellous: accounts of the actual 
metamorphosis of the sexes, we may 
overlook the artifices of sibyls, aruspices, 
soothsayers, astrologers, and other im- 
postors of the primeval ages. Nay, we 
may almost pardon the artifices of our 
modern water-doctors—a very numerots 
race, by the, way, and thriving abun- 
[July 1; 
dantly upon the credulity of the lower. 
and middling classes—when compared 
with the formal and elaborate records 
of the physicians I have just named. 
At the latter end even of the six- 
teenth century, Donatus, a medical wri- 
ter of some reputation, relates the case 
of a woman, who, after she had been 
delivered of a son, became a man.* 
Turner (who, by the way, was a clergy- 
man), who relates this story in his 
“‘ History of Remarkable Providences,’” 
shows some hesitation in admitting its 
validity; but as his object is to illus- 
trate a particular position, his judg- 
ment is vanquished, aud he relates it as 
a fact. 
It would be incompatible with the 
plan of this essay to enumerate all the. 
examples of magic, divination, judicial 
astrology and sorcery, more or less 
connected with medicine, which spread 
from Assyria through Greece, and so 
on to most parts of the world. I 
have been sufficiently minute to show 
the wretched condition of the primitive 
art of healing land the venerable an-- 
tiquity of our yet. remaining supersti- 
tions on this subject]. But the planets 
have now no influence in these matters. 
Infinite Wisdom has not permitted us to 
scrutinize into futurity. 
“ Prudens futuri temporis exitum 
Caliginosa nocte premit.”’ Hor. 
We may, indeed, truly exclaim, in. 
the prophetic words of Hoffman, 
_“ Neque dubitamus, fore, ut ia_posterum 
ejus; potentia ludibriaque magis .magisque 
evanescant._Clarior enim, lux veritatis 
ubique in animis hominum. ccepit, explen- . 
descere, florent artes et. scientis, rationis. 
cultura ubique accuratissimé suseipitur.”’— 
Frep. Horrman, De Diaboli. Potentia in 
Corpore, tom. v. 
* We knew of an instance, almost as 
extraordinary, that occurred, some few 
years ago, in the city of Hereford: A 
child was born in a house where we for a 
short time were residing, which, at the 
time of its birth, was believed by the father, 
the mother, and the medicat practitioner, to’ 
be a girl; but they discovered, on the next, 
ot ensuing day, that it had become a boy ! 
We never saw the child; it lived but'a few 
days, and was probably a case of ambiguous 
monstrosity: but it would have: furnished: 
pretext enough, in former times, for a’ tate 
of miraculous metamorphose !~-Epfr. 
To" 
