Part 18 (1/2)
William George Meade was an eminent physician at Tunbridge Wells; and dying there on the 4th of November, 1652, was buried at Ware, in Hertfords.h.i.+re. This gentleman left ?5 a-year for ever to the poor; but he is more remarkable for longevity than generosity. He died at the extraordinary age of 148 years and nine months. This is one of the most astonis.h.i.+ng instances of longevity on record. Old Parr, dying at 152 years of age, exceeded it only by 4 years. The celebrated Countess Desmond was some years more than 140 at the time of her death. Henry Read, minister of Hardwicke, Co. Northampton, numbered only 132 years; and the Lancas.h.i.+re woman (the _Cricket of the Hedge_) did not outlive the 141st year. But all these ages become insignificant when put by the side of the 169 years to which Henry Jenkins protracted his earthly sojourn.
CHAPTER XIV.
IMAGINATION AS A REMEDIAL POWER.
Astrology, alchemy, the once general belief in the healing effects of the royal touch, the use of charms and amulets, and mesmerism, are only various exhibitions of one superst.i.tion, having for their essence the same little grain of truth, and for their outward expression different forms of error. Disconnected as they appear at first sight, a brief examination discovers the common features which prove them to be of one family. By turns they have--each of them--given humiliating evidence of the irrational extravagances that reasoning creatures are capable of committing; and each of them, also, has conferred some benefits on mankind. The gibberish of Geber, and the alchemists who preceded and followed him, led to the study of chemistry, the utility and importance of which science we have only begun rightly to appreciate; and a curiosity about the foolishness of astrology led Sir Isaac Newton to his astronomical inquiries. Lord Bacon says--”The sons of chemistry, while they are busy seeking the hidden gold--whether real or not--have by turning over and trying, brought much profit and convenience to mankind.” And if the delusions of talismans, amulets, and charms, and the impostures of Mesmer, have had no greater consequences, they have at least afforded, to the observant and reflective, much valuable instruction with regard to the const.i.tution of the human mind.
In the history of these superst.i.tions we have to consider the universal faith which men in all ages have entertained in planetary influence, and which, so long as day and night, and the moon and tides endure, few will be found so ignorant or so insensible as to question.
The grand end of alchemy was to trans.m.u.te the base metals into gold; and it proposed to achieve this by obtaining possession of the different fires transmitted by the heavenly bodies to our planet, and subjecting, according to a mysterious system, the comparatively worthless substances of the mineral world to the forces of these fires.
”Now,” says Paracelsus, in his ”Secrets of Alchemy,” ”we come to speake of a manifold spirit or fire, which is the cause of variety and diversity of creatures, so that there cannot one be found right like another, and the same in every part; as it may be seen in metals, of which there is none which hath another like itself; the _Sun_ produceth his gold; the _Moon_ produceth another metal far different, to wit, silver; _Mars_ another, that is to say, iron; _Jupiter_ produceth another kind of metal to wit, tin; _Venus_ another, which is copper; and _Saturn_ another kind, that is to say, lead: so that they are all unlike, and several one from another; the same appeareth to be as well amongst men as all other creatures, the cause whereof is the multiplicity of fire.... Where there is no great mixture of the elements, the Sun bringeth forth; where it is a little more thick, the Moon; where more gross, Venus; and thus, according to the diversity of mixtures, are produced divers metals; so that no metal appeared in the same mine like another.”
This, which is an extract from Turner's translation of Paracelsus's ”Secrets of Alchemy” (published in 1655), may be taken as a fair sample of the jargon of alchemy.
The same faith in planetary influence was the grand feature of astrology, which regarded all natural phenomena as the effects of the stars acting upon the earth. Diseases of all kinds were referable to the heavenly bodies; and so, also, were the properties of those herbs or other objects which were believed in as remedial agents. In ancient medicine, pharmacy was at one period only the application of the dreams of astrology to the vegetable world. The herb which put an ague or madness to flight, did so by reason of a mystic power imparted to it by a particular constellation, the outward signs of which quality were to be found in its colour or aspect. Indeed, it was not enough that ”a simple,” impregnated with curative power by heavenly beams, should be culled; but it had to be culled at a particular period of the year, at a particular day of the month, even at a particular hour, when the irradiating source of its efficacy was supposed to be affecting it with a peculiar force; and, moreover, it had to be removed from the ground or the stem on which it grew with a particular instrument or gesture of the body--a disregard of which forms would have obviated the kindly influence of the particular star, without whose benignant aid the physician and the drug were alike powerless.
Medical pract.i.tioners smile now at the mention of these absurdities.
But many of them are ignorant that they, in their daily practice, help to perpetuate the observance of one of these ridiculed forms. The sign which every member of the Faculty puts before his prescriptions, and which is very generally interpreted as an abbreviation for _Recipe_, is but the astrological symbol of Jupiter.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _AN ACCIDENT_]
It was on this principle that a belief became prevalent that certain objects, either of natural formation or constructed by the instruments of art, had the power of counteracting noxious agents. An intimate connection was supposed to exist between the form or colour of an external substance and the use to which it ought to be put. Red objects had a mysterious influence on inflammatory diseases; and yellow ones had a similar power on those who were discoloured with jaundice. Edward II.'s physician, John of Gaddesden, informs us, ”When the son of the renowned King of England lay sick of the small-pox, I took care that everything round the bed should be of a red colour, which succeeded so completely that the Prince was restored to perfect health without a vestige of a pustule remaining.” Even as late as 1765, this was put in practice to the Emperor Francis I. The earliest talismans were natural objects, with a more or less striking external character, imagined to have been impressed upon them by the planets of whose influence they were especially susceptible, and of whose virtues they were beyond all other substances the recipients. The amulet (which differs little from the talisman, save in that it must be worn suspended upon the person it is to protect, whereas the talisman might be kept by its fortunate possessor locked up in his treasure-house) had a like origin.
But when once a superst.i.tious regard was paid to the external marks of a natural object, it was a short and easy step to produce the semblances of the revered characters by an artificial process, and then bestow on them the reverential feelings which had previously been directed to their originals. The ordinary course taken by a superst.i.tion in its degradation is one where its first sentiment becomes lost to sight, and its form is dogmatically insisted on. It was so in that phase of feticism which consisted in the blind reliance put on artificial talismans and amulets. The original significance of the talisman--the truth which was embodied in it as the emblem of the unseen powers that had produced it, in accordance with natural operations--was forgotten. The rows of lines and scratches, and the variegations of its colour, were only thought of; and the cunning of man--ever ready to make a G.o.d for himself--was exerted to improve upon them. In the mult.i.tude of new devices came inscriptions of mystic numbers, strange signs, agglomerations of figures, and sc.r.a.ps from sacred rituals--Abraxas and Abracadabra, and the Fi-fo-fum nonsense of the later charms.
Creatures that were capable of detecting the influence of the planetary system on that portion of Nature which is unquestionably affected by it, and of imagining its presence in inanimate objects, which, to use cautious language, have never been proved by science to be sensible of such a power, of course magnified its consequences in all that related to the human intellect and character. The instant in which a man entered the world was regarded as the one when he was most susceptible. Indeed, a babe was looked upon as a piece of warm and pliant wax: and the particular planet which was in the ascendant when the nurse placed the new child of Adam amongst the people of earth stamped upon it a distinctive charactery. To be born under a particular star was then an expression that meant something. On the nature of the star it depended whether homunculus, squealing out its first agonies, was to be morose or gentle, patient or choleric, lively or saturnine, amorous or vindictive--a warrior or a poet--a dreamer or a man of action.
Laughing at the refinements of absurdity at which astrology had arrived in his day, the author of ”Hudibras” says:--
”There's but the twinkling of a star Between a man of peace and war; A thief and justice, fool and knave, A huffing officer and slave; A crafty lawyer and a pickpocket, A great philosopher and a blockhead; A formal preacher and a player, A learned physician and manslayer.
As if men from stars did suck Old age, diseases, and ill-luck, Wit, folly, honour, virtue, vice, Travel and women, trade and dice; And draw, with the first air they breathe, Battle and murder, sudden death.
Are not these fine commodities To be imported from the skies, And vended here amongst the rabble For staple goods and warrantable?”
Involved in this view of the universe was the doctrine that some exceptional individuals were born far superior to the ma.s.s of their fellow-creatures. Absurd as astrology was, still, its postulates having once been granted, the logic was una.s.sailable which argued that those few on whose birth lucky stars had shone benignantly, had a destiny and an organization distinct from those of ordinary mortals.
The dicta of modern liberalism, and the Transatlantic dogma that ”all men are by nature born equal,” would have appeared to an orthodox believer in this planetary religion nothing better than the ravings of madness or impiety. Monarchs of men, whatever lowly station they at first occupied in life, were exalted above others because they possessed a distinctive excellence imparted to them at the hour of birth by the silent rulers of the night. It was useless to strive against such authority. To contend with it would have been to wrestle with the Almighty--ever present in his peculiarly favoured creatures.
Rulers being such, it was but natural for their servile wors.h.i.+ppers to believe them capable of imparting to others, by a glance of the eye or a touch of the hand, an infinitesimal portion of the virtue that dwelt within them. To be favoured with their smiles was to bask in suns.h.i.+ne amid perfumes. To be visited with their frowns was to be chilled to the marrow, and feel the hail come down like keen arrows from an angry sky. To be touched by their robes was to receive new vigour. Hence came credence in the miraculous power of the imposition of royal, or otherwise sacred hands. Pyrrhus and Vespasian cured maladies by the touch of their fingers; and, long before and after them, earthly potentates and spiritual directors had, both in the East and the West, to prove their t.i.tle to authority by displaying the same faculty.
In our own country more than in any other region of Christendom this superst.i.tion found supporters. From Edward the Confessor down to Queen Anne, who laid her healing hands on Samuel Johnson, it flourished; and it was a rash man who, trusting to the blind guidance of human reason dared to question that manifestation of the divinity which encircles kings.h.i.+p. Doubtless the gift of money made to each person who was touched did not tend to bring the cure into dis-esteem. It can be easily credited that, out of the mult.i.tude who flocked to the presence of Elizabeth and the Stuart kings for the benefit of their miraculous manipulations, there were many shrewd vagabonds who had more faith in the coin than in the touch bestowed upon them. The majority, however, it cannot be doubted, were as sincere victims of delusion as those who, at the close of the last century, believed in the efficacy of metallic tractors, and those who now unconsciously expose their intellectual infirmity as advocates of electro-biology and spirit-rapping. The populace, as a body, unhesitatingly believed that their sovereigns possessed this faculty as the anointed of the Lord. A story is told of a Papist, who, much to his astonishment, was cured of the king's evil by Elizabeth, after her final rupture with the court of Rome.
”Now I perceive,” cried the man, ”by plain experience that the excommunication against the Queen is of no effect, since G.o.d hath blessed her with such a gift.”
Nor would it be wise to suppose that none were benefited by the treatment. The eagerness with which the vulgar crowd to a sight, and the intense excitement with which London mobs witness a royal procession to the houses of Parliament, or a Lord Mayor's pageant on its way from the City to Westminster, may afford us some idea of the inspiriting sensations experienced by a troop of wretches taken from their kennels to Whitehall, and brought into personal contact with their sovereign--their ideal of grandeur! Such a trip was a stimulus to the nervous system, compared with which the shock of a galvanic battery would have been but the tickling of a feather. And, over and above this, was the influence of imagination, which in many ways may become an agent for restoring the tone of the nervous system, and so enabling Nature to overcome the obstacles of her healthy action.
Montaigne admirably treated this subject in his essay, ”Of the Force of Imagination”; and his anecdote of the happy results derived by an unfortunate n.o.bleman from the use of a flat gold plate, graven with celestial figures, must have occurred to many of his readers who have witnessed the beneficial effects which are frequently produced by the practices of quackery.
”These apes' tricks,” says Montaigne, ”are the main cause of the effect, our fancy being so far seduced as to believe that such strange and uncouth formalities must of necessity proceed from some abstruse science. Their very inanity gives them reverence and weight.”
And old Burton, touching, in his ”Anatomy of Melancholy,” on the power of imagination, says, quaintly:--