Girdles : their origin and development, particularly with regard to their use as charms in medicine, and midwifery / by Walter J. Dilling, M.B., Ch. B., lecturer in pharmacology, Aberdeen University.

  • Dilling, Walter James, 1886-1950
Date:
1914
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Girdles : their origin and development, particularly with regard to their use as charms in medicine, and midwifery / by Walter J. Dilling, M.B., Ch. B., lecturer in pharmacology, Aberdeen University. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Cryptic savour to the practice, but the expression, “ till the thread break of itself,” immediately brings to memory the Norse legend of the three Norns with the rope of Fate. Amongst the Nyam Nyam and Gour tribes of Bahr-el- Ghazal, in Southern Egypt, a tight cord is placed round the chest of a man suffering from pleurisy, and to this cord cylindrical wooden charms are attached (see Fig. I).1 For his kindness in permitting me to make use of this illustration I am much indebted to Mr. Henry S. Wellcome. A belt made of thirty to sixty strands of rather fine string made from vegetable fibre is used by the Warramunga tribes of Northern Australia as an ordinary girdle, and possesses no magical properties ; the same article usually “sung” by Tjingilli men is traded to the Southern tribes, such as the Aruntas, where it becomes the “ ililika,” or knout, which is carried secretly by the man, and used to correct the erring ways of his wife. The sight of it alone is enough to make her obedient, and a blow from it is supposed to have fatal effects. Even distant women can be injured by cracking the knout in their direction.2 Amongst the same tribes girdles made from a dead man’s hair are presented to a man who is either the actual or tribal husband of the daughter of the dead man’s sister, and on him devolves the duty of avenging the death. For them the relationship is important, but for us it is more enlightening to hear that the supposed culprit’s legs tremble under him, and he becomes incapable of fighting on seeing the girdle.3 A curious instance of the girdle idea arose as an offshoot of the early attempts at mesmerism. The Marquis de Puysegur, one of Mesmer’s devotees, heard his teacher remark that he had magnetised bits of wood. M. de Puysegur extended the idea, and magnetised a large elm on the village green at Busancy; he then caused circular seats to be placed around it, and cords to be suspended from it in all directions. When the patients had seated themselves they twined the cords round the diseased parts of their bodies, and held one another firmly by the thumb to form a direct channel of communica¬ tion for the passage of the mesmeric “fluid.”4 Closely 1 Wellcome, “Tropical Research Laboratories,” 1911, fourth report, Vol. B, Plate XVII, Fig. 68, p. 251. 2 B. Spencer and F. J. Gillen, “Northern Tribes of Central Australia,” London, 1904, pp. 544-5. 3 Ibid., pp. 544-5. 4 Chas. Mackay, “ Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions,” London, 1852, vol. i, p. 284.