It has been too long since my last post--tomorrow will be two months past. I've been busy writing a post on the spleen (a western and eastern perspective) and researching and writing for a larger essay about the magic and myth associated with ancient and modern medicine--esp. Chinese Medicine and its use of acupuncture for mental conditions (I prefaced this article with an earlier post here about the Ghost Points). I want to add a quick post here as a sort of resuscitation. I will be updating soon with the first half of the spleen post, but now I want to just add some notes of interest. Notes from some articles I've found interesting. And naturally, they pertain to the subject of Magic, myth and medicine.
The following post concerns an article I can't stop re-reading. It was published in the Oct 1943 publication of
Speculum, vol. 18, No. 4 and it is about an unpublished treatise on medicine and magic from the age of Charlemagne--in fact, that's the full title--found in the back of a book in a great library in France. There is no mention of who found the letter or when or how the author (Loren C. Mackinney), who is also the translator of this Latin text, got possession of the piece. Being a well respected Scholar of Medieval Medicine, I suppose that one afternoon an envelope lined with cardboard and with a return address to the Paris Biblioteque Nationale found itself upon Dr. Mackinney's desk. His scholarship in the article is focused primarily of the list of magical and medical recipes and its comparative history.
As stated previously, this one-page treatise, titled
Epistula Vulturis, was found in a medical manuscript in the Paris Biblioteque Nationale and contained the listing of 17 magical/medical recipes compounded from the various parts of a vulture and other substances. Researchers don't know who wrote the piece, or if these were just notes from a curious reader who left there research on a blank page near the end of Book I of Dioscoride's
Materia Medica. Nearly half of the recipes included in this treatise, says MacKinney, closely resemble the passages from
Natural History, published in the first century and written by the Roman naturalist and philosopher, Pliny the Elder (or Gaius Plinius Secundus). However the wording is more contemporary, he says, to the sixth-century writings of Sextus Placitus Papyrensis--particularly his
Book of Medicine from Animals, Cattle, Beasts and Birds. But this accounts for only seven of the recipes. The other ten recipes are not found in any of the Roman handbook, which means they were undoubtedly a record of the unwritten folk medicine and magic of that period. So it's very probable that whoever wrote this small treatise was not making notes from the texts and neglected his research but rather slipped this paper gem against the gutter of Dioscoride's
Materia Medica as a sort of preservation of culture.
The following is the translation of the letter by the late Professor of medieval history and specialist of medieval medical history, Loren C. Mackinny:
(Translation)
INCIPIT EPISTULA VULTURIS or
HERE BEGINS THE LETTER OF THE VULTURE
To the Province of Babylonia Alexandria, greeting from the King of Rome. The human race does not know how much virtue the vulture has in it and how much it contributes to healing. At the hour at which it is captured, kill it, using a sharp reed instead of a sword. Let him who kills it be alone, and before he decapitates it, let him say to it : "Angel Adonai Abraham, on your account the word is completed." And when you cut it open you will do well to repeat the above mentioned words.
[recipes:]
1. The bones from its head (wrapped) in deer skin will cure every pain and migraine (of the head).
2. Its brain you mix with the best of oil and put in the nose, and it will expel all ailments of the head.
3. Wrap the eyes in wolf skin and hang around the neck and it will drive away pain from the eye.
4. If you put its tongue in the right shoe and walk with it (thus) all your enemies will adore you.
5. Its gall mixed with SUGAR OF FENNEL and HOREHOUND and with OIL OF BALSAM and ATTIC HONEY, you apply in the morning, and presently it will relieve all pain in the eyes.
6. Its liver you beat with its blood and ATTIC HONEY and give thrice for seven mornings, and it will heal all epileptics and lunatics and will drive out fear.
7. Its blood purges the itch.
8. You dry its spleen and afterwards mix it with BITUMEN OF SULPHUR and OIL OF COPPER and OLD AXEL GREASE, and if you use it as an ointment it will cure paralysis.
9. You burn its lung with NETTLE and BARK OF MALAGUETTA and of ROSE in equal amounts and give it for fever; verily it will cure you.
10. You mix it (?) with MUST and CITRON for one who is impotent and he will be healed.
11. You dry and beat its little kidneys and testicles and give with wine, to him who is unable to have intercourse with his wife, and he will find remedy.
12. If you wrap its heart in lion or wolf skin (and place around the neck of one possessed) all demons will flee and if you fall among thieves (while you have it) they will adore you.
13. Its wings are valuable for many things. If you bind them on the left foot of a woman who is unable to bring forth, she will be speedily delivered; and when she has brought forth, quickly take it away (i.e. the vulture wing) lest her viscera follow.
14. If you secretly fumigate (with vulture wings) anyone's home which is being troubled, all evil will flee from it.
15. Its feet and claws lying in your home will prevent sorcery from being done there. And if it has been done formerly it will have no effect.
16. If you cook its grease with OIL OF COPPER and WAX, it will heal the sinews.
17. And if you anoint with it (i.e. the grease) a yoke animal which you plan to sell, on that day you will receive (your) price for it. Finit finit.
A pretty thorough list of recipes long out of vogue. I wonder though, about the efficacy of these healing modalities. I can't imagine the National Health Organization--through their department of Complimentary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) research--funding for double-blind studies on the healing potentials of vulture parts. Granted, most of these recipes are more magical than medical, but it is a peek into a world where magic and medicine were interchangeable and mythic. In a world where illness and disease is attributed to devils and sorcery why wouldn't it be a magic called medicine that would exercise the body of those pernicious influences?
We've come a long way to broaden the divide between magic and medicine by classifying the body and it various properties and functions into repeatable patterns for future identification. This system of repeatable familiarity is comforting to us. This is logical thinking, this is real to us. But should we discredit the lore of the vulture's magic and medicine as superstitious, as pseudo-scientific and therefore ineffective? The vulture's spleen, some bitumen of sulphur, some copper oil and old axle grease, may not sound like the most obvious cure for paralysis, but imagine the millions of tax payer dollars we'd save from stem-cell research if we could show the efficacy of this one simple recipe? The more I think about it though, the more the idea of harvesting spleens from government regulated vulture farms makes me want to march in protest. Okay, that's where I put my foot down. Leave the vultures alone.
