The Arkansaw traveler., 1889-07-06
Medical superstitions and Others.
London Morning Poat

ask with "jesting Pilate" what Is truth, that is forever mocking the hands and eyes Of eager inves
 tigators9 Expectations are sometimes like rungs on a ladder leading to truth. That Is, perhaps
 why they are AS numerous as the leaves. Supersti- tions, scientific, political, economical religious the history of the world is little else than record of their growth, development and decay They die and others spring up in their place from the seeds they leave We have not yet nearly reached the time of their final decease. They arc always with us. If the scientific spirit of the age-the Zeit Geist, of which we hear much, but regard so ndiferently-should ever reign with absolute sway over the minds of men and the number thirteen be robbed of portentous significance, and the human race grow as icily logical the bnomial theorem, what on earth will there be left for the social and political reformer to dor Life will not be half SO interesting in that far-oG millennium of the nationalist just as to-day existence is less exciting than during the fresh, undiluted ignorance that gives its charm to the middle ages. The word superstition embraces multitude of sins against pure logic All opinions based on improved data
 to which excessive credence is attached, may be cassed under the term. There is a certain luxury in terror of a mystical kind. Wisdom is not all delight, in spite of the philosophers. Human nature likes tc be afraid in the dark and believe in wizards bogies, banshees specters spiritualism and second sight. Consult the records of that eminent body, the Psychical Research Society, if you doubt it. If we cannot get other people to fill us with awe we do it ourselves We want & few dark places in this matter of fact machine made modern world II we can be allowed to keep them, and in our hearts we scarcely bless the man who turns the electric light and shows the sombre corners contain no grim phantasms to shudder at. It is nearly two thousand years ago that Lucretus threw doubt on the existence Of centaurs, but if, in his mpous agnosticism, he had been able to prove the impossibility of their existence by ana tomical demonstration-a task, we think surpass- ing the attainments of that philosophers great number of his contemporaries would, notwith- standing, have stabed those interesting quadrupeds hair arfa centaurs left although they do not run on four legs, that science has slain, but which we still delight to trot out for exercise Of course the picture has reverse and to live in the middle ages was not always to dwell in fairyla land. There was the medieval leech to be faced. Of all supersti- tions, medical ones are perhaps those endowed with most vitality. People of all times and all ages, including those of the nineteenth century, of which we are all SO proud, have always attached too much importance to the opinions of their med icine men. But the middle ages was the time for the currency of pure and unadulterated medical superstitions. The medeva doctor must have added another terror to death, his advice tainly increased its probability in illness To a dead mans bones thought an excellent spe- ciic. To eat the first Easter daisy that could be found and receive the benediction in three differ ent parishes on the same Sunday was still more potent remedy. To steal a cabbage from & neigh bor's garden and hang it on a hook to dry was another cure, and one certainly within the means of the poorest patient. The efficacy of this remedy was possibly to be found in the theft. People who hung up horseshoes for luck may perhaps be tempted to try 1t on their friends when quinine and bark have been found useless A toad choked to death on the eve of St. Johns Day possessed of even still more virtue. When we recall the ingredients of the witches caudron in "Macbeth" we are afforded, as it were birds-eye view of the pharmacopTia of the contemporaries of the queror. The water in tOad's brain was deemed a most efficient remedy in illness about the same period There cures for mental failngs as well bodily afllictions. To stick pins in dead mans shoes to carry about in the pocket wolf's tooth eye, or, if it were handy, to ride upon a boar, were all-especially the latter-cures for cowardice. We sometimes consult doctors about our nerves now. Perhaps it is the name and not disease that is changed. The modern practitioner