Note 189.3 — Chapter X · WITCHCRAFT: PHILTRES—PREVENTIVE AND REMEDIAL LEECHCRAFT.

At Athens, mothers bring their sick children to the little church of Santa Marina, under the Observatory Hill, and there undress them, leaving the old clothes behind. There is a dripping well near Kotzanes, in Macedonia, “said to issue from the Nereids’ breasts, and to cure all human ills. Those who would drink of it must enter the cave with a torch or lamp in one hand and pitcher in the other, which they must fill with the water, and, leaving some scrap of their clothing behind them, must turn round without being scared by the noises they may hear within, and quit the cave without ever looking back.”189.3 Among the inscriptions discovered at Epidauros, recording the miraculous cures attributed to Asklepios, is the record of what happened to Pandaros, a Thessalian who was afflicted with certain unsightly marks upon his forehead. The god appeared to him in a dream, pressing a bandage on the spots and directing him when he left the chamber to take off the bandage and deposit it as an offering in the temple. When the patient untied the bandage in the morning, the marks were transferred to it, leaving his forehead free; and he left the bandage in the temple, with this proof of his recovery,190.1 just as crutches are left in modern times at Roman Catholic shrines by persons who believe themselves healed by the presiding saint. It is clear from a reference by Aristophanes that the Greeks were in the habit on certain occasions of hanging articles of their clothing on, or even nailing them to, sacred trees as an offering to the god.190.2 Indeed, allusions to the practice are not uncommon in Greek poetry. Among the Romans, Pompey is compared by Lucan to a lofty oak, hung with old clothes and other votive offerings; and Vergil describes an olive-tree whereon the vests and votive tablets of mariners who had escaped shipwreck were suspended.190.3 To-day in Lesbos sick women vow to walk before Our Lady, or one of the saints, with bare feet, flowing hair, and their hands tied behind their backs with a handkerchief which they subsequently leave suspended on the image. In one of their tied hands they must contrive to carry a large lighted taper. Lofty sacred trees are still numerous, frequently growing in the vicinity of some chapel. The sick suspend on the branches their shirts or their girdles, in the hope, we are told, of leaving their ailments there. Feverish patients hang their clothes on a tree near the chapel of Saint John.191.1