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Ancient physicians carried signets or rings, frequently wearing them upon the thumb, upon which were engraved their own names, sometimes written backwards, or the denominations of the nostrums they vended. With regard to one of these seals, we find the word aromatica from aromaticum, on another melina, abbreviation of melinum, a collyrium prepared with the alum of the island of Melos. A seal of this kind is described by Tochon d'Annecy bearing the words psoricum crocodem, an inscription that has puzzled medical antiquaries.
It has been suggested that the use of talismanic rings as charms against diseases may have originated in the phylacteries or preservative scrolls of the Jews, although it is easy to imagine that, in the earliest days of medicine, the operator, after binding up a wound, would mutter "thrilling words" in incantation over it, which, in process of time, might be, as it were, embodied and perpetuated in the form of an inscription, the ring, in some degree, representing a bandage. It appears to us this is much further from fact than that a barber's pole represents an arm with a bandage.
Amulet rings for medicinal purposes were greatly in fashion with empyrics and ancient physicians.
In Lucian's Philopseudes, one of the interlocutors in a dialogue says that since an Arabian had presented him with a ring of iron taken from the gallows, together with a charm constructed of certain hard words, he had ceased to be afraid of the demoniacs who had been healed by a Syrian in Palestine.
In another dialogue, a man desires that Mercury should bestow a ring on him to insure perpetual health and preservation from all danger.
These rings were to be worn upon the fourth or medical finger.
Marcellus, a physician who lived in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, directs the patient who is afflicted with a pain in the side to wear a ring of pure gold inscribed with some Greek letters on a Thursday at the decrease of the moon. It is to be worn on the right side, if the pain be on the left; and vice versa.
Trallian, another physician who lived in the fourth century, cured the colic and all bilious complaints by means of an octangular ring of iron, upon which eight words were to be engraven, commanding the bile to take possession of a lark. A magic diagram was to be added, which he has not failed to preserve for the certain advantage of his readers. He tells us that he had had great experience in this remedy and considered it as extremely foolish to omit recording so valuable a treasure; but he particularly enjoins the keeping it a secret from the profane vulgar, according to an admonition of Hippocrates that sacred things are for sacred purposes only. The same physician, in order to cure the stone, directs the wearing a copper ring, with the figure of a lion, a crescent and a star to be placed on the fourth finger; and for the colic, in general, a ring with Hercules strangling the Nemean lion.
In the Plutus of Aristophanes, to a threat on the part of the sycophant, the just man replies that he cares nothing for him, as he has got a ring which he bought of a person, whom the scholiast conceives to have been an apothecary, who sold medicated rings against the influence of demons, serpents, etc. Carion, the servant, sarcastically observes that this ring will not prevail against the bite of a sycophant.
As to medicinal rings, Joannes Nicolaus, a German professor, has most unceremoniously ascribed the power of all these medical charms to the influence of the devil, who, he says, by these means, has attracted many thousands of human beings into his dominions.
Lucati has attributed the modern want of virtue in medicated rings to their comparative smallness, contending that the larger the ring or the gem contained in it, the greater the medium power, especially with those persons whose flesh is of a tender and penetrable nature.
Lord Chancellor Hatton sent to Queen Elizabeth a ring against infectious air, "to be worn," as the old courtier expresses it, "betwixt the sweet dugs" of her bosom.
Ennemoser, in his History of Magic, a work made more visionary by the unsatisfactory additions of the Howitts, gravely speaks of coming events manifested in diseases. We have a betrothal ring in the following extract:
"In the St. Vitus's dance, patients often experience divinatory visions of a fugitive nature, either referring to themselves or to others and occasionally in symbolic words. In the 'Leaves from Prevorst,' such symbolic somnambulism is related, and I myself have observed a very similar case : Miss v. Brand, during a violent paroxysm of St. Vitus's dance, suddenly saw a black evilboding crow fly into the room, from which, she said, she was unable to protect herself, as it unceasingly flew round her as if it wished to make some communication. This appearance was of daily occurrence with the paroxysm for eight days afterwards. On the ninth, when the attacks had become less violent, the vision commenced with the appearance of a white dove, which carried a letter containing a betrothal ring in its beak; shortly afterwards the crow flew in with a black-sealed letter. The next morning the post brought a letter with betrothal cards from a cousin; and a few hours after, the news was received of the death of her aunt in Lohburg, of whose illness she was ignorant. Of both these letters, which two different posts brought in on the same day, Miss v. Brand could not possibly have known any thing. The change of birds and their colors, during her recovery and before the announcement of agreeable or sorrowful news, the symbols of the ring and the black seal, exhibit, in this vision, a particularly pure expression of the soul as well as a correct view into the future." |
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