Book 10 — CHOICE SECRETS.

"Light a room with spermaceti, anoint your face with the same substance, and you will seem to all beholders to have the head of a sperm whale upon your shoulders." "When you would have men in the house seem to be without heads: take yellow brimstone with oil, and put it in a lamp and light it, and set it in the midst amongst men, and you shall see a wonder." These are two out of a large mass of facts which form a compact body of ancestral wisdom. They lie before us in a venerable volume, whose grave frontispiece is adorned with the portraitures of Alexis, Albertus Magnus, Dr. Reade, Raymond Lully, Dr. Harvey, Lord Bacon, and Dr. John Wecker. John Wecker, Doctor in Physic, first compiled the book, and Dr. R. Read augmented and enlarged it. "A like work never before was in the English tongue." It was printed in the year 1661, for Simon Miller, at the Starre in St. Paul's Church Yard, and it is entitled, "Eighteen Books of the Secrets of Art and Nature, being the Summe and Substance of Naturall Philosophy, Methodically Digested." The book is one of considerable size and pretension, written by wise doctors in the good old time, two hundred years ago. Let us not be conceited and harp only on the strings provided to our fingers in the nineteenth century. For a few minutes, at least, it will not do us harm to get a little scientific information from our ancestors. We shall glean, therefore, some random facts out of the harvest-field of Doctors Mead and Wecker, selecting, of course, most characteristic, those which our forefathers may call exclusively their own.

The volume opens with scientific information on the subject of Angels and Devils, including, of course, the fact that "Witches kill children, and divers cattle, which we find by various experience, and by relation of others that are worthy to be believed. But if you will say they are mere delusions of the Devil, whereby he makes foolish women mad that are entangled by him, that they believe they do those things which neither they nor the devil can do; if we can so avoid it, we may as well deny any thing else, be it never so evident. "—If you deny that, you may deny any thing—is a phrase not yet dead. Applied two hundred years ago to the experience concerning witches, it has been industriously employed to the present day, and is employed still on behalf of a great many fresh delusions. As for the gentleman, whom truth is said to shame, he claimed his distinct chapter in the minds of old physicians, because, as the book before us has it, he "can cause many diseases, of the reasons whereof we are ignorant. Also he can do this, or that; being subtile, he can easily pass through all parts of the body, which he can bind, pull back, or torment otherwise."

Passing on now, as we follow the march of high philosophy, to secrets of the sun and moon; it may be worth while to understand, as our forefathers taught, that "it is easie to guess at the fortune of every year by the stars, if a man consider twelve, nineteen, eight, four, and thirty." Somebody wants to know what luck he will have in 1853. Let him consider 1841 (twelve years back), let him consider 1834 (nineteen years back), and, for the eight, four, thirty, let him look back to the years 1845, 1849, and 1823. Let him reflect on the nature of his fortune in each of those years, look up his old diaries, combine their results, and that will give him the character of his fate in 1853. Jupiter is somehow at the bottom of this, but we are too modern and ignorant to understand the author's explanation.

Among secrets concerning fire, are those two facts connected with spermaceti and brimstone already stated. Any one living in the country, whom the croaking of the frogs may trouble of a night, will doubtless be glad to hear of a remedy: "Take the fat of a crocodile, and make it up with wax while in the sun, and make a candle of it, and light it in the place where frogs are, and when they see that they will presently cease crying." Where crocodile's fat cannot be had, "the fat of a dolphin" will do. Prescriptions abound, by the use of which men may appear to wear the heads of asses, horses, dogs, or to resemble elephants. There is a receipt also for making "a faire light, that the house may seem all full of serpents so long as the wick doth burn." But we pass over these pleasant methods of illumination, simply remarking, that if our wise ancestors were right, the volume now before us would procure a sudden fortune to the lessees of Vauxhall. By the use of some dozen kinds of cunningly prepared lamps, the Royal Gardens might in good faith be chronicled in its bills as a "scene of enchantment." At one turn of a walk, all visitors would show their heads, and at another, none; in another grove they would be elephants, and in another they would look like angels. The Rotunda might be lighted for a diabolical effect, and the Dark Walk illuminated brilliantly with dolphin's fat, funeral cloth and Azemat, whose light makes every body invisible. This, again, is no bad hint for a country tallow-chandler, who supplies light to the ladies of a solemn village, where he is annoyed by the neglect of any gayeties that would create large orders for composite or sperm: "To make women rejoice mightily. Make candles of the fat of hares, and light them, and let them stand awhile in the middle where women are: they will not be so merry as to dance; yet sometimes that falls out also."

"It is a wonder that some report how that the tooth of a badger, or his left foot bound to a man's right arm will strengthen the memory." Boys, who have lessons to learn, may like to know that fact; and teachers, who have idle pupils, must not flog, but feed them upon cresses. "Cresses eaten make a man industrious." Young ladies, who believe in their ancestors, will thank us for repeating their opinion that the use of a ring, which was lain for a certain time in a sparrow's nest, will procure love. Nor need any dread the penalties of matrimony, since the man who carries with him a hartshorn "shall alwaies have peace with his wife:" and also, "the heart of a male quail, carried by the man, and the heart of a female quail, by the woman, will cause that no quarrels can ever arise between them." The man who carries a quail's heart in his pocket may face his wife, and never have to feel his own heart quailing underneath his ribs.

Old Parr dined probably upon serpents, not, as is commonly reported, upon pills. "It is known that stags renew their age by eating serpents; so the phœnix is restored by the nest of spices shee makes to burn in. The pelican hath the same virtue, whose right foot, if it be put under hot dung, after three months a pelican will be bred from it. Wherefore some physicians, with some confections, made of a viper and hellebore, and of some of the flesh of these creatures, do promise to restore youth, and sometimes they do it." If the Zoological Society has proper respect for our ancestors, they will not delay to sow a hot-bed with pelicans' feet. Young shoots of pelican would be much more appropriate beside the gravel-walks than your mere vegetable pelargonium.

In the way of practice of medicine, we moderns say that any thing like scientific principles, on which one can depend, have only been attained in our own lifetime. "Doctors differed," and bumped against each other, only because all alike were feeling through the dark. In our own day there is light enough to keep doctors from differing very grossly,—gross difference springing generally more from the want of knowledge in an individual, than in the profession generally. Although there is yet a vast deal to be learned. In the first century, Asclepiades dubbed the medical system of Hippocrates, "a cold meditation of death." Under Nero there arose a Dr. Thessalus, who taught that Nature was the guide to follow and obey in all diseases; and, therefore, under his system patients were simply to be liberally and rapidly supplied with every thing they fancied. Paracelsus, in the sixteenth century, looked for a patient's symptoms in the stars; so we must not be surprised if the "Secrets in Physic and Surgery," published among the other secrets in this volume now before us, contain odd information. Here is a nice cure for a quartan ague, which might tickle a patient's stomach sooner than his fancy: "Seven wig-lice of the bed, wrapped in a great grape husk, and swallowed down alive before the fit." Another cure is effected when the patient eats the parings of his nails and toes, mingled with wax. There are many remedies against the Plague; but that one which is recommended as "The Best Thing against the Plague," is for a man to wash his mouth with vinegar and water before he goes out, drinking also a spoonful of the liquor; then to press his nose and stop his breath, so that "by the vapor and steam held in your mouth, the brain be moistened." In the following prescription we believe entirely: "For Melancholy. It is no small remedy to cure melancholy, to rub your body all over with nettles."

Book Five contains secrets for beautifying the human body. The following receipt, which comes first, for giving people a substantial look, seems to be somewhat too efficacious to be often tried: "To make men fat. If you mingle with the fat of a lizard, salt-petre and cummin and wheat-meal, hens fatted with this meat will be so fat, that men that eat of them, will eat until they burst." A degree of fatness in hens equal to this will never be communicated by our degenerate modern agriculturists. For the hair-dyes, favored by our forefathers, we cannot, however, say much, for we must differ in taste very decidedly. Recipes are given for obtaining, not only black, but white hair, yellow hair, red hair, and "To make your hair seem GREEN." Nobody in these days will use a course of the distilled water of capers to make his hair look like a meadow; and even, if any body among us, too fastidious as we now are, wanted yellow hair, we do not think that he would consent to rub into his head for that purpose honey and the yolk of eggs. There are also in this part of the work some ungallant recommendations of substances, which a man may chew in order that, presently breathing near a lady's cheek, he may discolor it, and so detect her artifice, if she should happen to be painted. Among "secrets for beautifying the body," we cannot but think this also indicative of an odd taste; "If you would change the color of children's eyes, you shall do it thus; with the ashes of the small nut-shells, with oil you must anoint the forepart of their head; it will make the whites of children's eyes black; do it often!"

Concerning wine, it is worth knowing, that to cure a man of drunkenness, you should put eels into his wine. Delightful dreams will visit the couch of him who has eaten moderately, for supper, of a horse's tongue, and taken balm for salad. This is "A means to make a man sleep sweetly," which we recommend to the attention of all restless people, who have proper faith in their forefathers. As we have passed over a good many pages, and come to the "secrets of asses," we may put down, à propos to nothing, that "If an ass have a stone bound to his tail he cannot bray."

The following may be tried in a few months by ladies in the country, who rise early on a fine spring morning; they may thus earn the delight of exhibiting to their friends one of the prettiest balloon ascents that any body can conceive: "In May, fill an egg-shell with May-dew, and set it in the hot sun at noon-day, and the sun will draw it up."

The secrets of gardening, known to our forefathers, annihilate all claim in Sir Joseph Paxton to the commonest consideration. They taught how to get the blue roses by manuring with indigo, or green roses by digging verdigris about the roots. They taught the whole art of perfuming fruit, by steeping the seeds of the future tree in oil of spike, or rose-water and musk. If, say our ancestors, you would have peaches, plums, or cherries without any stone, you have only, when the tree is a twig, to pick out all the pith before you set it. To get your filbert-trees to bear you fruit all kernel, you have only to crack a nut, and sow the kernel only, covered with a little wool. And very much more marvellous, in the annals of gardening, is the receipt for getting peach-trees that bear fruit covered with inscriptions: "When you have eaten the peach, steep the stone two or three days in water, and open it gently, and take the kernal out of it(!) and write something within the shell with an iron graver, what you please, yet not too deep, then wrap it in paper and set it; whatever you write in the shell you shall find written in the fruit." Such shrewd things mingled with the more ordinary knowledge of our ancestors upon affairs of gardening.

It will be seen that for many of these "facts" there was a "reason" close at hand. Our forefathers were wise enough to know that every thing required properly accounting for. Thus, for example, in "the secrets of metals:" "Some report that a candle lighted of man's fat, and brought to the place where the treasures are hid, will discover them with the noise; and when it is near them it will go out. If this be true, it ariseth from sympathy; for fat is made of blood, and blood is the seat of the soul and spirits, and both these are held by the desire of silver and gold, so long as a man lives; and therefore they trouble the blood; so here is sympathy."

If a man would prevent hail from coming down, he is to walk about his garden, with a crocodile—stuffed, of course—and hang it up in the middle. Pieces of the skin of a hippopotamus, wherever they are buried, keep off storms. A thunder-storm also can be put to rout by firing cannons at it; "for by the force of the sound moving the air, the exhalations are driven upward." (In the same way, the plague was said to yield before a cannonade.) "Some who observe hail coming on, bring a huge looking-glass, and observe the largeness of the cloud, and by that remedy,—whether objected against, or despised by it, or it is displeased with it; or whether, being doubled, it gives way to the other" (in some way or other one must find out a reason), "they suddenly turn it off and remove it." An owl stuck up in the fields, with its wings spread, served also as a scare-crow to the tempests. As lightning conductor on a roof, it was thought wise to put an egg-shell, out of which a chicken had been hatched on Ascension-day. Thunderbolt stones were said to sweat during a storm, which was not thought a more wonderful "fact" than the perspirations streaming out of glass windows "in winter when the stove is hot." Our ancestors were far too wise to be surprised at any thing.

Secrets of alchemy, magic, and astrology are, of course, very profound; we pass over these and many more; among secrets of cookery we pause, shuddering. Whipping young pigs to death, to make them tender eating, used to be quite bad enough; and some of our own hidden devices in the meat trade are, even now, equally revolting; but here we meet with a device of the wise ancestors, which may, perhaps, stand at the head of all culinary horrors. Remembering that these cooks were also apt at roasting men, we will inflict this illustration on our readers: "To roast a Goose alive. Let it be a duck or goose, or some such lively creature; but a goose is best of all for this purpose; leaving his neck, pull off all the feathers from his body, then make a fire round about him, not too wide, for that will not roast him; within the place set here and there small pots full of water, with salt and honey mixed therewith, and let there be dishes set full of roasted apples, and cut in pieces in the dish, and let the goose be basted with butter all over, and larded to make him better meat, and he may roast the better; put fire to it; do not make too much haste, when he begins to roast, walking about, and striving to fly away; the fire stops him in, and he will fall to drink water to quench his thirst; this will cool his heart, and the other parts of his body, and, by this medicament, he looseneth his belly and grows empty. And when he roasteth and consumes inwardly, always wet his head and heart with a wet sponge; but when you see him run madding and stumble, his heart wants moisture, take him away, set him before your guests, and he will cry as you cut off any part from him, and will be almost eaten up before he be dead; it is very pleasant to behold."

Degenerate moderns would most certainly be unable to enjoy such hospitality, and would be cured as thoroughly of any appetite as if their host had employed another of the secrets of our ancestors. "That guests may not eat at table, do this: You must have a needle that dead people are often sewed up in their winding-sheet; and at beginning of supper secretly stick this under the table; this will hinder the guests from eating, that they will rather be weary to sit, than desirous to eat; take it away when you have laughed at them awhile."

Take it away, we must say now to the old book. As we have said, our specimens, drawn from an immense mass of the same kind, do not represent the sole character of the volume. It states, also, a very large number of facts, confirmed and explained in the present day, being a fair transcript of the average standard of opinion among learned doctors upon a great number of things. Have we not made a little progress since those good old times, and would it be a pleasant thing to get them back again? To come home to every man's breakfast-table, we may ask the public to decide between the coffee now made, and the coffee of the good old times. In a somewhat expensive book, addressed only to wealthy readers, Drs. Read and Weckir disclose this secret of good coffee, for the ladies and gentlemen of 1660:—"Take the berry, put it in a tin pudding-pan, and when bread hath been in the oven about half-an-hour, put in your coffee; there let it stand till you draw your bread; then beat it and sift it; mix it thus: first boyl your water about half-an-hour; to every quart of water put in a spoonful of the pouder of coffee; then let it boyl one-third away; clear it off from the setlings; and the next day put fresh water; and so add every day fresh water, so long as any setlings remain. Often Tryed."