108 



• KNOWLEDGE • 



[Aug. 8, 1884. 



and A&ia, and from the Orkneys to New Zealand. Shake- 

 speare refers to it in " Much Ado about Nothing," 

 •act iiL, sc. 2 : — 



Don Pedro. What ! sigh for the toothache ? 

 Leonato. Where is but a humour or a worm. 



and instances are current of this superstition being acted 

 upon in rural districts, whilst in China the itinerant dentist 

 conceals a worm in the stick which he applies to the aching 

 tooth, and on the stick being gently tapped, the worm 

 wriggles out to the satisfaction of the sufferer. But among 

 barbaric races the treatment is ordinarily the reverse of 

 soothing. Here and there the virtues of some plant have 

 been discovered by accident, and, whilst exalted into a 

 deity in its native home, it has become, like cinchona, a 

 priceless boon to the fever-stricken all over the world ; but, 

 speaking broadly, the medicine-man is no Melampus, win- 

 ning the secret of their healing balm from herb and tree. 

 Nor has he much faith in magic or charm compared to his 

 faith in noise, in incantations, with their accompanying 

 hideous grimace.s and gestures, and their deafening yells 

 with clang of instrument to drown the sufferer's groans 

 -and chase away the demon. Not unfrequently, when the 

 patient is kept without food so as to starve out the in- 

 dwelling enemy, or when the body is pommelled and 

 squeezed to force him out, the remedy helps the 

 disease ! An illustration or two from a great mass 

 at Gommand must sufhce. Among the Mapuches 

 the sorcerer adopts the canonical howls and grimaces. 

 Making himself as horrible-looking as he can, he 

 begins beating a drum and working himself into a frenzy 

 until he falls to the ground with his breast working con- 

 vulsively. As soon as he falls, a number of young men 

 outside the hut, who are there to help him in frightening 

 the disease-bringing spirit out of the patient, add their 

 defiant yells, and dash at full speed, with lighted torche.s, 

 against the hut. If this does not succeed, and the patient 

 dies, the result is attributed to witchcraft. When a Pawnee 

 chief had some ribs and an arm broken, the medicine-men 

 danced round him, and raised their voices from murmurous 

 chants to howls, accompanying the music (?) by blows upon 

 the wounded man's breast to banish the bad spirit. In 

 olden time this rough-and-tumble busiuess of blows, to 

 which immersion was added, was applied to lunatics in 

 these islands. And, in fact, until some local paper narrates 

 a current superstition, we seldom awaken to the fact how 

 widely the theological explanation of diseases and the em- 

 pirical choice of remedies still obtains, each being survivals 

 of barbaric theory and practice. 



The savage who has more faith, as a curative, in plants 

 that grow on burial-places, and the civilised, who ascribes 

 special healing power to turf and dew from a saint's grave, 

 differ no whit in kind ; and so ingrained was the medicinal 

 belief in virtue inhering in fragments of the dead, that 

 not even the satire of "Reynard the Fox," telling how 

 the wolf was cured of his earache, and the hare of his 

 fever, the moment that they lay down on the grave of the 

 martyred hen, could give quietus to the notion that grated 

 skulls and sacramental shillings were specifics for the heal- 

 ag of the faithful. 



This reference to like practices reminds us how belief 

 in the action of invisible agencies has passed into the 

 practice of confession among advanced races outside 

 Christendom, as in Mexico and Peru. The Eoman 

 datholio priests were not less astonished at finding this in 

 vogue on their arrival in South America than the good 

 Father Hue when, on reaching Tibet, he found shaven 

 monks wearing rosaries, worshipping relics, using holy 

 water, and a grand Lama decked in mitre, cope, and 



cross.* But, as the Italian proverb has it, the world is 

 one country and " we have all one human heart," so that 

 the confessional has the like explanation in east as in west. 

 If the disease be the work of an offended deity or of an 

 avenging spirit, let the wrongdoer admit his fault, and 

 trust to him who is credited with influence with the un- 

 seen to exorcise the intruder. 



THE EARTH'S SHAPE AXD MOTION'S. t 



By Eichakd A. Proctor. 



INTRODUCTION. 



IN many works of astronomy the subject of the earth's 

 figure and motions is dealt with at greater or less 

 length ; the general principles on which modern views are 

 founded are exhibited witli sufficient clearness ; and a 

 number of facts quite sufficient to establish the justice of 

 modern theories are quoted in illustration. But it has 

 always seemed to me that the way in which such matters 

 are commonly presented, is open to objection. Either 

 from a desire to simplify the subject, or for some other 

 reasons, the facts are stated in a general way, which is in 

 reality much more perplexing to the beginner than an 

 exact statement would be, befides being open to cavil and 

 olijection. The full force of the observational or experi- 

 mental evidence on which modem views have been founded, 

 is lost to the student, when the results are stated without a 

 careful reference to quantity and measure. The impression 

 is too commonly left, that those inexact and unsatisfactory 

 results are in reality all that astronomers have been able to 

 gather ; and when it is seen that such results admit of 

 being explained in other ways, doubts naturally spring up 

 as to the exactness of modern astronomy. 



This would be less important, were it not that there is a 

 class of persons very ready to [irofit by this state of things. 

 Knowing perfectly well that the world is always more 

 ready for novelty, than to hear the details of real scientific 

 progress, these persons invent hypotheses of greater or less 

 ingenuity, which appear to be consistent enough with the 

 relations described in books on astronomy. These hypo- 

 theses they further recommend to the public notice by 

 garbled e.xtracts from the works of known authors, or by 

 apocryphal experiments. Secure of a large audience for 

 their absurdities, they little regard the contempt which all 

 well-informed persons bestow on them. They invite con- 

 trover.sy, confident that no student of science, who considers 

 his own reputation, will enter the lists with them, and safe 

 also (even if such an improbable event should occur) in the 

 certainty that by a few verbal evasions they will be able to 

 avoid the appearance of defeat. 



There is also another class of persons equally anxious to 

 promulgate new theories, but not absolutely dishonest. 

 Among the thousand who, having read the ordinary 

 popular works on astronomy, remain unconscious of the 

 exactness of modern science, there are necessarily some 

 who mistake their want of apprehension for exceptional 

 ability. Such persons, especially if they are troubled by 

 the cacoetJies scribfndi, promulgate new theories with a sur- 

 prising fecundity. Scarcely a month passes that a work 

 involving some new absurdities does not pass through the 

 press. And these books find purchasers who are at least 



* " Toil^ autant de rapportsque les Bonddhistes ont avec nons," 

 adds the traveller, for hinting at which analogies between Bnddhists 

 and Catholics the Pope put his book on the Index. 



t The papers which follow are revised versions of a series which 

 appeared seventeen years since in the English Mechanic. 



