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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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    his diocese to exercise any witchecrafte, charmes, sorcerye, invocations, or praiers, other than such as be allowable and may stand with the lawes and ordinances of the Catholike Churche.” And in 1559, (Ist Eliz.) an inquiry* was di- rected to be made “whether you knowe any that doe use charmes, sorcery, enchauntementes, invocations, circles, witchecraftes, southsayinge, or any lyke craftes or imagi- -nacions invented by the devyl, and specially in the tyme of women’s travaylle.” Strypet tells us that in 1567 the midwives took an oath, infer alia, not to “ suffer any other bodies’ child to be set, brought, or laid before any woman delivered of child in the place of her natural child, so far forth as I can know and understand. Also I will not use any kind of sorcerye or incantation in the time of the travail of any woman.” To promote or facilitate delivery, the lapis etites, or eagle-stone, a composition of the oxyde of iron with small portions of silex and alumina, which rattle within upon being shook, have been bound to the arm or to the thigh, the former to prevent abortion, the latter to aid in partu- rition. “ Aquilze lapis qui in ventre ejus aut in nido inven- tus fuerit, phylacterium est praegnantibus. Nomen habet AAtites.’t “Iris helpeth a woman to speedie deliverance, and maketh rainebows to appeare.” The sardonyx was laid inter mammas, to procure easy birth, and one formerly belonged to the monastery of St. Alban’s to be used for this purpose.§ The Chinese recommend, with the same intention, a marine insect in the shape of a horse, which is to be held in the hand of the woman in labour, and she * Articles to be inquired in the Visitacyon in the fyrst yeare of Queen * Eliz. 1559. + Annals of the Reformation, vol.1. p 537. { Sextus Philosophus Platonicus de Medicina Animalium, &c, Tiguri, 1539, p. 100. § Brand’s Popular Antiquities, vol. 11. p. 599, note.