Copy 1

On superstitions connected with the history and practice of medicine and surgery / By Thomas Joseph Pettigrew.

  • Pettigrew, Thomas Joseph, 1791-1865.
Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On superstitions connected with the history and practice of medicine and surgery / By Thomas Joseph Pettigrew. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    will then be delivered of her burthen with the same facility “as a ewe which has gone her full time.’’ Branches of palm were also held in the hand by child-bearing women.* The men in some countries, when the women are deli- vered, lie in, keep their bed, and are attended as if really sick.t At Surinam, Fermin says, the man keeps to his hamac for six weeks. In Persia, when a woman is about to le in, the schoolmasters are requested to give liberty to their boys, and birds confined in cages are permitted to escape. Charlevoix says that when the women of Maroc perceive labour-pains, the neighbours select five school- boys, and tie four eggs in the four corners of a napkin, with which the boys run singing through the streets. Child’s Caul. In this and some other countries when a child is born with the caul or amnion over its face, it is preserved with great care and regarded as ominous of good fortune to the infant, and also as valuable to any one who may become possessed of it, enabling them to avoid many serious dangers. ‘Il est né coiffé,’ is a French proverb applied to lucky people. In Scotland, according to Ruddiman,f it is called a haly or sely how, a holy or fortunate cap or hood. A midwife in Scotland is called a howdy or howdy wife. The virtues of the caul are described as various; it renders advocates eloquent, saves the pos- sessor from having his house destroyed by fire, or being himself drowned. It is therefore much in request with seafaring people, and may be seen among the advertise- ments of our newspapers when to be disposed of at a considerable price. * Homer in Hymn. Apoll, v. 14. + See on this subject the works of Biet, Du Tertre, Thevet, Lafitau, Froger, Boulanger, &c. Similar accounts are to be found in the writings of Diodorus Siculus, Apollonius, and Strabo. { Glossary to Douglas’s Virgil.