606 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 
time to time appears in the public journals. There has ever 
been a disposition in the human mind to attribute to super- 
natural causes events which it is unable clearly to comprehend ; 
hence the use of amulets and charms. And that these are 
very ancient, is proved by Layard’s finding, in the ruins 
of Babylonia, several bowls or cups made of terra cotta, round 
the inner surface of which were inscriptions in the Chaldean 
language ; the letters being an admixture of the Syriac and 
Palmyrine, and in some instances resembling the ancient 
Phoenician. The subject of these inscriptions is an amulet 
or charm against evil spirits, diseases, and every kind of 
misfortune. The writers of them are supposed to have been 
Hebrews, who adopted the system from the Chaldeans. The 
mode of using them has been conjectured to be that of dis- 
solving the writing off by means of water, and drinking it, a 
practice now not uncommon in the East. The Lama doctor 
exceeds even this, for in the absence of his remedy, he writes 
the name thereof upon a scrap of paper, moistens it with his 
saliva, and gives it to his patient in the form of a pill ; averring 
that to swallow the name of a remedy, or the remedy itself 
is precisely the same. 
You are all aware of the royal touch having been resorted 
to in England, as a cure for the scrofulous affection termed 
the king’s evil ; likewise of the belief, that if the hand of a man 
who had been hung was placed on an enlargement of the 
thyroid gland, it would cause its dispersion. 
At Munich, in 1852, at the execution of a criminal, men 
and women rushed to dip their handkerchiefs and rags in the 
flowing blood, as a remedy for epilepsy and consumption, and 
AS A MEANS OF DRAWING LUCKY NUMBERS IN THE 
LOTTERY ! 
Only last month (Sept., 1854) a decrepid old woman, 
labouring under paralysis, was seen begging pence, in the 
porch of Exeter Cathedral, of the young men as they came out; 
the “ wise man” having told her that if she could get forty 
pennies from forty unmarried men, she would be cured of 
her malady ! 
But it may be justly objected, that these modes of cure 
were adopted only for and by the human subject, since the 
lower animals could not possibly be affected by expedients 
intended to influence the mind, and through it the body. In 
agreement with this, Roger Bacon states that “physicians 
use figures and charms, knowing that the raising of the 
imagination is of great efficacy in curing diseases of the body. 
Raising the soul from impurity to health, by joy and confi- 
dence, is done by charms, for they induce the patient to 
