Note 146.1 — Chapter X · WITCHCRAFT: PHILTRES—PREVENTIVE AND REMEDIAL LEECHCRAFT.

Specimens of this kind of remedy might be multiplied indefinitely. They are usually regarded as cases of transplantation. By the process described the disease is supposed to be transferred, or transplanted, into the tree, or very often into another human being or one of the lower animals. This idea is present in a recipe for fever given by Beckherius, whose medical work was published in London in 1660. He advises the tying of the patient’s nail-clippings in a rag to the door of a neighbour’s house:146.1 a remedy equally known to the Romans.146.2 Rupture in a young person is to be cured in Thuringia by cutting three tufts of hair from the top of the head, binding them in a clean cloth, carrying the parcel into another parish, and so burying it in a young willow that the hole may close up and grow together.146.3 We can hardly understand apart from transplantation the direction to carry the parcel into another parish and there plant it in a tree, or to fasten the rag of nail-clippings to a neighbour’s door. At other times the hair and nails are given in food to various animals, or are thrown in the highway to be picked up by any passer-by, who is supposed to contract the disease and thereby free the original patient. Many of the cases, however, which have been classed as transplantation are not really so; for it will be noted that it is a very common direction (as in the prescription just cited) to carefully close up the hole made in the tree, and as it heals the patient’s health will improve. But if the disease were to be transferred to the tree, the latter could scarcely be expected to heal; and if it did, there would be ground for suspecting that the rite had not been properly performed. Formerly it was a very common remedy for rupture and other infantile complaints to split a tree and pass the child through it three or seven times. The tree was then bound up and often plastered with clay, so as to ensure its recovery; and it was believed that the more rapidly it healed, the more rapidly the child would be restored to health. In fact, as we have seen, it thenceforth stood in relation to the child as his External Soul or Life-token. The earliest mention of this prescription is by Marcellus of Bordeaux, physician of the Emperor Theodosius I., not later than the beginning of the fifth century of our era; and it has continued in use, even in England, down to the present day. From first to last the importance of the tree’s recovery and preservation has been a cardinal point.147.1 It is perfectly clear, therefore, that whatever the intention of the rite may have been, it was not transplantation. Transplantation, in fact, seems to be a foreign graft on many of the old prescriptions. It may be questioned, for example, whether it is the primitive idea of either Beckherius’ prescription or the Thuringian; and I cannot help thinking that the doctrine of Transplantation is a modern interpretation of an older rite, an interpretation which has in many cases wrought such changes in its substance that the true and profounder significance of the rite is now hardly to be recognised. This may not hold good in every instance. The question, however, is immaterial to my present contention, and cannot be argued at length here. It is enough for my purpose to prove that a large class of remedies cannot be explained as Transplantation, although the theory of Transplantation may have a tendency to appropriate and modify them. The remarks which follow will, I hope, make the position clear.