A propensity to attribute every ordinary and natural effect to some extraordinary and unnatural cause, is one of the striking peculiarities of medical superstition; it seeks also explanations from the most preposterous agents, when obvious and natural ones are in readiness to solve the problem. Soranus, for instance, who was cotemporary with Galen, and wrote the life of Hippocrates![22] tells us that honey proved an easy remedy for the aphthæ of children, but instead of at once referring the fact to the medical qualities of the honey, he very gravely explains it, from its having been taken from bees that hived near the tomb of Hippocrates! And even those salutary virtues which many herbs possess, were, in these times of superstitious delusion, attributed rather to the planet under whose ascendancy they were collected or prepared, than to any natural and intrinsic properties in the plants themselves; indeed such was the supposed importance of planetary influence,[23] that it was usual to prefix to receipts a symbol of the planet under whose reign the ingredients were to be collected, and it is not perhaps generally known, that the character which we at this day place at the head of our prescriptions, and which is understood, and supposed to mean _Recipe_, is a relict of the astrological symbol of Jupiter, as may be seen in many of the older works on pharmacy, although it is at present so disguised by the addition of the down stroke, which converts it into the letter ℞, that were it not for its _cloven_ foot, we might be led to question the fact of its superstitious origin.
A knowledge of this ancient and popular belief in Sideral influence, will enable us to explain many superstitions in Physic; the custom, for instance, of administering cathartic medicines at stated periods and seasons, originated in an impression of their being more active at particular stages of the moon, or at certain conjunctions of the planets: a remnant of this superstition still exists to a considerable extent in Germany; and the practice of bleeding at ‘spring and fall,’ so long observed in this country, owed its existence to a similar belief. It was in consequence of the same superstition, that the metals were first distinguished by the names and signs of the planets; and as the latter were supposed to hold dominion over time, so were astrologers led to believe that some, more than others, had an influence on certain days of the week; and, moreover, that they could impart to the corresponding metals considerable efficacy upon the particular days which were devoted to them;[24] from the same belief, some bodies were only prepared on certain days in the year; the celebrated earth of Lemnos was, as Galen describes, periodically dug with great ceremony, and it continued for many ages to be highly esteemed for its virtues; even at this day, the pit in which the clay is found is annually opened, with solemn rites by the priests, on the sixth day of August, six hours after sun rising, when a quantity is taken out, washed, dried, and then sealed with the Grand Signior’s seal, and sent to Constantinople. Formerly it was death to open the pit, or to seal the earth, on any other day in the year. In the botanical history of the middle ages, as more especially developed in Macer’s Herbal, there was not a plant of medicinal use, that was not placed under the dominion of some planet, and must neither be gathered nor applied but with observances that savoured of the most absurd superstition, and which we find were preserved as late as the seventeenth century, by the astrological herbalists, Turner, Culpepper, and Lovel.