56 Conception, Birth and Infancy in 



was suffering from a dislocated bone such as children are so likely 

 to get, it was Cato who would have two men apply to it a split 

 green reed, while a powerful spell was recited over it. The words 

 of this sound less like Latin than like some formula which children 

 might use in a counting-out for a game: motas vaeta daries dar- 

 darese astataries dissunapiter. You almost expect to hear at the 

 end the decision "You are it." After joining the ends of the split 

 reed around his thighs, one could expect the bone and joint to unite 

 properly. 344 In our age an Italian who is possessed of the same 

 degree of faith as Cato passes a baby afflicted with a rupture above 

 a cleft made in the fork of an oak or an elm. He believes that the 

 eventual union of the severed wood, which has to be bound with 

 a sheathing of the tree's own bark, will effect a similar healing of 

 the child. This was orthodox treatment as long ago as the days 

 of Marcellus Empiricus of Bordeaux. 345 



A cure for what was probably hydrocele, and not a rupture (as 

 so often translated), which also depended upon an operation of 

 magic, was to let a green lizard bite the baby while it lay asleep, 

 then attach the reptile to a reed and hang it in the smoke of a fire 

 until it died. By that time the child was supposed to be perfectly 

 cured. 346 The masters of medical hocus pocus sought to make this 

 more impressive by certain details in an alternative. A male liz- 

 ard should be the choice. It must bite the part afflicted through 

 stuff of gold or silver, or of purple. Then, fastened in a cup that 

 had never been used, it should be given the smoking. 347 If these 

 methods failed, one could try burning snails and applying the ashes 

 from them, mixed with frankincense and the juice of white grapes. 

 When this had been done for a period of thirty consecutive days, 

 the infant ought to be quite sound. 348 



But an Italian has at his command for the protection of his 

 children magic preventives not only of disease but even of acci- 

 dents, if what I read be true. What could be simpler, for instance, 

 than to keep a little boy from falls by having him suck the first 

 egg gathered from the hencoop in the morning? Another magic 

 protection is to wear a turquoise. If the child does, however, have 

 a bad fall on his head, some shelled beans put on his forehead is a 

 remedy widely known in folkmedicine for his pain as well as for 

 headaches in general. 349 



In this little treatise on the birth and infancy of children in Italy 



