Chapter II: Part 2

Under the jurisdiction of Venus are those of medium stature, succulent, with delicate and fair complexions, good-looking, with crisp brown or blackish hair, dark eyes, narrow eyebrows, narrow chests, and thick thighs. When well affected, they are indolent, bland, pious, religious, merciful, peaceful, sociable, lovers of the arts of singing and of music, elegant and graceful, and given to delicacies and pleasures. They are lucky in love and in friendship, forgiving, and impatient under misfortune. When ill affected, they are timid, imprudent, effeminate, lecherous, and betrayers of women.

Lastly, the characters of those who are ruled by the Sun are a large head, a round and glowing face, large eyes, long hair which at length falls out and leaves them bald, and a sallow complexion. When well affected, they are pious, just, upright, faithful, open, chaste, worldly-wise, apt to anger, but magnanimous, honourable, splendid and magnificent, warm in friendship, and lovers of their wives and children.

It will have been noticed that the descriptions of the bodily configurations are not very definite, and we are warned by Maninius to be very careful of judging of the dominant Planet by the configuration of the body. This, he says, is a part of the science in which many fail; and it is not yet fully ascertained. The knowledge is to be attained by long experience only. Maninius had, indeed, good reason to inculcate caution in interpreting the indications obtained from Astrological lore, for he sought to clench the arguments with which he was defending Astrology from the attacks of Gassendi, by predicting the death of the sceptic upon a certain date. When the date came round in due course, Gassendi unexpectedly refused to die, and Maninius then discovered a mistake in his calculation which had led him to antedate the event. He corrected the error, revised his prediction, and fixed another and later date, beyond which Gassendi could not survive. He seems, however, to have overlooked a second time some material factor, for his opponent lived on, and laughed him to scorn, giving much occasion to the enemy to blaspheme. Maninius, unfortunately, lacked the resource of Dean Swift, who was confronted with the same difficulty by the survival of the astrologer Partridge. Swift, under the pseudonym of Isaac Bickerstaff, predicted that Partridge would die “on the twenty-ninth of March next, about eleven at night, of a raging fever”; and, when the date was past, published a circumstantial account of the death, with a confession by Partridge of the imposture of his predictions. In vain Partridge denied the facts, for Bickerstaff gave five conclusive reasons for disbelieving these protestations, and for holding that Partridge was in fact dead, and in denying the fact had carried beyond the grave his proclivity for telling lies.

When it is remembered that any Sign of the Zodiac may be in any of the Houses of Heaven; that any Planet may be in any House, and may have any aspect, sextile, quartile, trine, or opposition, towards the Ascendent and towards the other Planets; and that the various Planets have by these means their powers reinforced or attenuated in the most various degrees; and when we remember further the different powers that different Planets have over different persons and different diseases, it will easily be seen that the variations are virtually infinite, and the whole scheme far too complicated to put to practical application.

In practice, however, the calculations of the physician were narrowed down to a small number of factors. Arnaldus de Villanova, a physician of great repute in the thirteenth century, limits these as follows:—A perfect physician, he says, should constantly bear in mind eight Astrological factors; and then we are disappointed to find that he enumerates only seven. It is no doubt the want of the eighth factor that has falsified the predictions that I have ventured to make in accordance with his rules. Be that as it may, the factors that he enumerates, as necessary for the perfect physician to consider, are these:

1. The thing concerning which the inquiry is made.

2. The Sign that is in the Ascendent.

3. The Lord of it. (Whether of the Sign or of the
Ascendent is not clear.)

4. The Sign that is in the House of the thing inquired
about. (In the case of sickness, this may be either
the first House, the House of Life; or the eighth,
the House of Death; or the sixth, the House of
Diseases.)

5. The Lord of it. (Again, whether of the Sign or of
the House is not clear.)

6. Its (?) relation to the Ascendent.

7. Its relation to the Moon.

These are to be interpreted in the following manner:

1. The Ascendent and the Lord of it signify the sick
man.

2. The middle of Heaven (the tenth House) signifies
his physician.

3. The sixth House and the Lord of it signify his
disease.

4. The fourth House and the Lord of it signify his
physic.

The consequences are these:

If there is evil in the Ascendent, or if the Lord of the Ascendent is subject to adverse influences, the patient will do badly; but if these are propitious, he will do well.

If there should be a benevolent or propitious Lord of the tenth House, which signifies the physician, then his treatment will do the patient good; but if the Lord should be evil, then the patient will be injured by the treatment.

If there should be a powerful influence for good in the eighth House, which is the House of Death, the patient will be quickly cured; but if there should be an evil influence in this House, he will go from bad to worse.

Similarly, if there is good fortune in the fourth House, which is the House of Remedies, his medicine will do him good, but if evil fortune, the medicine will make him worse.

If the Sign in the Ascendent should be mobile, and Luna should be in a mobile Sign, such as Aries, Cancer, Libra, or Capricorn, and the Lord of the Ascendent should also be in a mobile Sign, the illness will soon terminate, either well or badly, especially if Luna is in swift motion. If, however, it happens contrarily, it signifies a long illness, especially if Luna is in a stable Sign, as Taurus, Leo, Scorpio or Aquarius.

If the Lord of the Ascendent should be propitious, and free from adverse influences of other Planets, and Luna likewise, the illness will end favourably, especially if Luna and the Lord of the Ascendent should aspect favourably the Lord of the eighth House, which is the House of Death—that is, if they should be in sextile, and especially if they should be in trine, to that House.

But if Luna, or the Lord of the Ascendent, or the Lord of the House of Sickness, which is the sixth, should be combust and retrograde, or if the Lord of the Ascendent should be in the House of Death in conjunction with Mars or Saturn, both of them malevolent Planets, then there is no hope.

Also, if the moon should be in conjunction with a propitious Planet in the Ascendent, and should be moving forward and her light waxing, and both should be free from adverse influences, then the disease will be quickly cured; but if the moon should be in the House of Death, the patient cannot be saved.

And generally, whenever Luna and the Lord of the Ascendent are subject to adverse influences, it is a mortal sign, and we must fear death, or relapse, or long illness; but when they are fortunately situated, and aspected by well-disposed powers, as when Luna and the Lord are in the Ascendent, then it is a good sign, and _ad vitam_.

But if the House of Death, and the Lord of the House of Infirmity, or the Lord of the House of Death, are fortified by situation or by aspect, especially when they aspect the moon adversely, then it is a bad sign, and _ad mortem_; but when they are impeded or weakened, it is a good sign.

Now the position of the heavenly bodies in the Houses of Heaven alters from hour to hour, and a fatal disposition of them now may alter to a favourable one in a couple of hours, and _vice versâ_. Luna, which is now in the Ascendent, and therefore smiles upon the patient, will, in fourteen or fifteen hours’ time, be in the eighth House, and condemn him to death. It is manifestly of the utmost importance, therefore, to fix upon the correct hour and minute for setting up the _tabula cælestiarum_. It is to be feared, however, that in this matter astrological physicians allowed themselves a good deal of latitude. There are two fixed moments, one or other of which should be taken as that on which the scheme should be erected. One of these is the moment of birth; the other is the decumbiture.

It will be seen that the scheme of the nativity of Charles XII sets forth the year, the month, the day, hour, and minute of birth, and the scheme is erected accordingly, and admits of no doubt or variation. There was, however, a process known to Astrologers by the name of Rectification of the Nativity, a process the rules of which are difficult to discover, but the practical result was to shift the heavenly bodies from positions that were inconvenient to the Astrologer to positions more suitable to his purpose. I should never myself make an alteration of this nature, which does not seem to me quite justifiable, but, emboldened by this established astrological practice, I have ventured to make a trifling alteration in the scheme of nativity that I have placed before you as that of Charles XII. As originally erected, it referred not to the year 1682 but to the year 1594, and to the moment of birth, not of Charles XII, but of a previous King of Sweden, namely, Gustavus Adolphus, the Lion of the North, and the Bulwark of the Protestant Faith. In working it out, I found that by no ingenuity and by no artifice could I make the predictions to be drawn from this scheme of nativity fit in with the known career of that great and successful commander. They suited, however, with such surprising accuracy and appropriateness the career of his successor Charles XII that I felt it was a pity to allow myself to be fettered, in applying them to him, by a punctilio of needless scrupulosity. I did not venture to take that liberty with the facts that astrologers were accustomed to take, by altering the positions of the heavenly bodies in the Houses of Heaven; I merely altered the date by less than a century, and substituted the name of one King of Sweden for another.

In estimating the scheme of the heavens relating to the illness of a patient, it is always advisable to compare it with the scheme of his nativity. If that Planet which was Lord of the Ascendent in the nativity is favourably placed and fortunately aspected in the scheme of the decumbiture, and is neither combust nor retrograde, the patient will be strengthened and live, and _vice versâ_.

These are the considerations that should weigh with a perfect physician; but the authority I am now quoting from lived seven centuries ago, and the world was very different then from what it is now. It would appear that in those remote and benighted times there actually were physicians who were not perfect, and to temper the difficulties of astrological practice to these weaker brethren, they were taught a method of procedure that is shorter and easier, but less accurate. It will have been noticed how prominent a place is assigned to the moon in the explanations that have been given, although in setting up the scheme no separate mention was made of her, but she was just lumped in together with the other Planets, which had presumably equal value, except in as far as their power was subdued or enhanced by their position. In the modified and abbreviated scheme that was drawn up for the guidance of the general practitioner, the whole burden lay upon the moon. It was recognised that a busy practitioner could not be expected to have the correct positions of the Planets always at his fingers’ ends; but he could scarcely be ignorant of the phase in which the moon was, of whether she was waxing or waning, or even of the Sign she occupied. Consequently, except to the very expert—to the dwellers in the Harley Street and Wimpole Street of that day—the moon alone was the guide to treatment and prognosis.

I must now go back for a moment, and call your attention to certain _Facultates Naturales_ possessed by the human body, and governed by the Planets. These are the Retentrix, the Coctrix, the Expultrix, the Attractrix, the Vegatatrix and the Generatrix; and each has, of course, its corresponding complexion. Retention, for instance, is favoured by cold and drought, Digestion by heat and moisture, Expulsion by cold and moisture, and Attraction by heat and drought.

It follows, of course, that retentive medicines, given to check fluxes of any kind, should be administered either when Luna is in a sign that is cold and dry, such as Taurus, Virgo or Capricorn, or when one of these signs is in the Ascendent; and at such times retentive drugs should be not only administered but prepared, for their virtues are not in themselves, but are part of the celestial virtue communicated from the celestial bodies, from which all virtues are derived. So that retentive medicines, such as sugar of roses, diaciton and diapapaver, should be prepared as well as administered when one of these cold and dry signs is in the Ascendent, or when the moon is in one of them. If, however, we wish to reinforce the expulsive faculty, as for instance in constipation or amenorrhœa, the medicament must be prepared and administered when Luna is in Cancer, Scorpio or Pisces, or when one of them is in the Ascendent; for these Signs are cold and moist. In this case we must be careful, however; for if a purgative is given when the motion of Luna is retrograde, the expulsion will be retrograde, and instead of purgation we shall cause vomiting; but if we are so incautious and ignorant as to give purgatives when the moon is retrograde in Leo, which has an aspect to the heart and blood, we shall produce vomiting of blood.

Diseases of plethora are very dangerous when a man is taken sick upon a full moon, and diseases of wasting are most dangerous when he is taken sick upon a waning moon. Let me entreat you therefore to give physic for inanition when the moon is near the full, and for plethora when she has lost her light; and remember that a humour can scarcely be diminished but when the moon is waning, nor increased except when she is waxing.

It is very bad when, in the beginning of a sickness, the moon is in a Sign of the nature of the peccant humour, as in the hot and dry Signs Aries, Leo or Sagittarius, when the peccant humour is choler; the cold and dry Signs Taurus, Capricorn or Virgo, when it is melancholy; the hot and moist Signs Gemini, Libra or Aquarius, when it is blood; or the cold and moist signs Cancer, Scorpio or Pisces, when it is phlegm.

Naturally, when she is in a fiery Sign, it is easy to amend a disease of phlegm, but if choler abound, wait until she is in a watery Sign.

We see, therefore, how very important it is to consider the aspect of the heavens before we begin our treatment; and though it is true that patients do sometimes recover under the care of ignorant physicians who take no account of these things, yet in such cases, says my authority, the patient recovers by accident, and not by the skill of the physician.

An additional reason for studying the motion of the moon in illness is because this motion regulates the critical days. A crisis is defined as a swift and vehement motion of a disease, leading to recovery or death. Strictly speaking, those only are true crises which lead to recovery, but inaccuracy and corruption have crept into the meaning, until some authors enumerate six kinds of crisis, which I need not enumerate here; but all authorities are agreed, and their agreement seems to me to arise from everyone copying the words of his predecessor, that for a true and perfect crisis six conditions must be fulfilled.

In the first place, the crisis must be complete, that is to say, the whole of the _materia peccans_ must be evacuated; for instance, all the bile in tertian fever, and all the phlegm in quotidian fever. If the whole of the _materia peccans_ is not evacuated, it is evident that the patient may relapse.

The second condition is that none of the peccant material should remain. This is evidently quite as important as the first, that all of it should be evacuated.

The third condition is that health must be completely regained, and there must be no terrible accidents or pernecabilibus, such as running of the eyes.

The fourth condition is that the crisis must be manifest; that is to say, there must be a sensible evacuation of the _materia peccans_.

The fifth condition is that the crisis must make indication, and as to the meaning of this, I have come, after long and careful study, to the conclusions on another subject arrived at by my authority, and piously expressed by him in the words, _Deus solus cognoscit, quia habet neque caput neque caudam_.

The sixth condition is that the crisis must occur on a critical day.

The critical days are governed entirely by the motion and positions of the moon. It is clear that there can be no crisis for good except _materiâ peccante coctâ_, and it is evident that the _materia peccans_ cannot be digested in as short a time as two days; consequently the first and second days of a disease cannot be critical. The third day is intercadent, and the fourth is indicative, because, manifestly, whatever happens on the fourth day will happen with exaggerated force on the seventh. The fifth day again is intercadent, and of no significance, nor is the sixth of any. The seventh is the first critical day, for then the moon is in quartile to the decumbiture, and is necessarily in a Sign of opposite nature in all respects to that in which she was at the decumbiture. If she was in Aries at the decumbiture, she will be on the seventh day in Cancer. Now, Aries is hot and dry, Cancer cold and moist; Aries is masculine, Cancer feminine; Aries diurnal, Cancer nocturnal. The quartile aspect is thus thoroughly hostile, and whatever process Luna favours at the decumbiture she will oppose when she reaches the quartile. At the decumbiture she favoured the disease, for otherwise the disease would not have occurred; at the quartile, therefore, she opposes the disease, and makes for a favourable crisis.

The eighth day is neutral, the ninth intercadent, the tenth neutral, and the eleventh indicative, for whatever happens on the eleventh will happen with exaggerated force on the fourteenth, which is the second and most critical day, for then the moon is in opposition to the decumbiture, and with all her might counteracts all that took place at the decumbiture. The next critical day is, of course, the twenty-first, when she is again in quartile, and finally, between the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth she comes into conjunction. If the disease has not been ended by crisis on one of the three critical days, the reinforcement that it now receives from the conjunction of the moon converts the acute disease into a chronic, and henceforth it is governed no longer by the positions of the moon, but is regulated, according to the same laws, by the sun. The next crisis will not take place therefore for two months, when the sun will be in quartile to the decumbiture.

Of course, the favourable or unfavourable character of the crisis will depend largely upon whether, on the critical day, the moon is favourably aspected by good Planets, or unfavourably influenced by bad ones.

It will be seen that all of these influences and dates depend upon the moment of the decumbiture, which is described as the first punct of time of the invasion of the disease; and this, as Galen says, is very hard to find. It is easy, indeed, to find the decumbiture in the literal sense, that is to say, the time when the patient takes to his bed; but when the beginning of the sickness is, that, says Culpeper, is the question; ‘for a lusty stout man bears the disease longer before he takes to his bed than a puny sickly man: a meer suspition of sicknesse will send a faint-hearted man to bed; you may perswade him he is sick whether he is or no. Notwithstanding, in most acute diseases, as also in many others, as Falling Sickness, Palsies, Apoplexies, and Pleurisies, ’tis an easy thing to find the precise time of the invasion of a disease. The best opinion is that that moment of time is to be taken in which a man finds a manifest paine or hurt in his body; for instance, when a man hath got a Fever, usually the head akes certain dayes before; this is not the Fever, but a messenger or forerunner of the Fever; the true beginning is when a horrour or trembling invades the Sick.’

Certain objections to these doctrines did not escape the notice of the astrologers who taught them. ‘If,’ says one, ‘the crisis depends on the motion of the moon and her aspect to the other Planets, what is the reason, if two men be taken ill at one and the same time, that yet the crisis of one falls out well, and not so the other?’ The reasons are manifold. The virtue working is changed according to the diversity of the virtue receiving; for you all know the sun makes the clay hard and the wax soft, it makes the cloth white and the face black; so then, if one be a child, whose nature is hot and moist, the other a man in the prime of life, whose nature is hot and dry, and the third an old man, whose nature is cold and dry, the crisis works diversely because their natures are different.

Secondly, in the Spring time, diseases are most obnoxious to a child, because his nature is hot and moist. A disease works most violently with a choleric man in Summer, with a melancholy man in Autumn, and with a phlegmatic man in Winter.

Thirdly, if at the decumbiture the moon was aspected by Mars, whose nature is hot and dry, if the disease be of heat and drought it is mightily aggravated: not so if it be cold.

Fourthly, the complexions of the patients may be different; the one hot and dry, the other cold and moist. If the disease be hot and dry, it will not be so violent upon a cold and moist body as on a hot and dry.

Fifthly, their nativities may not agree. If the moone be aspected by Saturne or Mars at the nativity, the disease is dangerous; not so if she be aspected by Jupiter or Venus; or Saturn may be Lord of one nativity and not of the other, and then he may hurt the one and not the other, for the Devil will not hurt his own. If you can possibly get the nativities, you shall not err. ‘For example, I know,’ says my authority, ‘three children born at one and the same time. At five years of age they all three had convulsion, whereby they were all three lame of one leg, the boyes on the right, and the girl on the left. At 14 they dyed altogether on one and the same day of the small-pox.’

To us, with our present knowledge, and requirements of evidence, and our ways of thought, all this appears such a farrago of tomfoolery that it is difficult to understand how it can have been seriously entertained by men of ordinary intelligence; and yet we know that it was in fact believed by the rarest intellects of their time, some of them, like Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus, among the rarest intellects of all time; and it is an interesting exercise to try and carry our minds back and put ourselves as far as we can in the position of our forefathers. We shall then find it easy to understand why the system was maintained, and not difficult to discover how it originated. The first is explained by the overwhelming power of authority, the last by the belief that was overthrown by Copernicus.

In the first place, we must imagine ourselves living on an earth that is the centre of the universe, and that to the earth, and especially to its human inhabitants, the rest of the universe is subservient. The universe was created to serve a certain purpose, ‘the diapason closing full in man.’ That anything could exist for any other purpose than the service of mankind was not conceived, was probably not conceivable, by our forefathers. At a time almost within the memory of some now living, one of our leading philosophers declared that in the world there is nothing great but man. If he had expressed all that was in his mind, no doubt he would have said in the world there is nothing great but Scotchmen; but taking the declaration as he made it, it summarises effectively the attitude of our ancestors towards the cosmos. It was made for their benefit. To them there was no greater paradox than that

Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear,
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste (mark the word) its sweetness on the desert air.

This being so, of what use are the heavenly bodies? The overpowering and incalculable value to man of the sun is evident enough. By its daily transit through the sky it makes the difference between the day, the time of man’s activity, and night, the time of his repose. By its annual transit through the Signs of the Zodiac it makes the differences among the seasons, and so regulates his food supply, whether animal or vegetable, his comfort, and his welfare in a thousand particulars. Here we have the root of the whole matter; but to understand it fully we must remember that the sun was but one of seven Planets, all resembling him in so many important respects that it was impossible not to attribute to them powers corresponding with his, if different from his. So that, if the sun had power over the affairs of men, so had the other Planets; if his power varied according to the Sign he occupied, so did theirs; if his power altered with his height above the horizon, so did theirs. In a world in which natural law was unknown, and everything seemed to happen by chance, the mind clutched at anything that offered an explanation of the ways in which things happen. Here was an explanation ready to hand, and needing only study and interpretation.

The moon is evidently complementary to the sun. Her power is greatest when she is in opposition, and at this time she antagonises the sun by producing a colourable imitation of daylight at night, and thus interfering with his power of regulating light and darkness. This is naturally taken as an instance of a general law, that opposition means antagonism, a meaning that is now become fixed and general; and since opposition is but one of several differences of position, it follows that every such difference—trine, quartile and sextile—means some difference of influence. Again, the moon, as far as her power extends, antagonises the sun, and works against him. But the sun is manifestly and immensely beneficial to the human race, and is a benevolent power; consequently, the moon is malevolent and injurious. Both sun and moon are but samples and members of the family of Planets, and whatever characters they possess must be shared by the rest of the family. The other Planets, therefore, must be benevolent or malevolent in their degree, and must exercise their powers, as the sun and moon do, according to their position above the horizon, that is in the Houses of Heaven, or in the Signs of the Zodiac.

As the sun undoubtedly by its position and movements produces the seasons, and as the moon has faculties and qualities of like kind, though inferior in power, it follows that she too regulates some natural phenomena of minor importance to the seasons. Such minor natural phenomena are displayed by the weather; and the belief that the moon regulates the weather is the one astrological doctrine that still displays vitality. The other Planets are irregular in their movements, being now rapid, now slow, now direct, now retrograde; clearly, therefore, their influence will be exerted upon those great natural events that are irregular and occasional in their incidence; and thus it is that Saturn produces intense frost, inundations and tempests; that Mars regulates thunder and lightning and the invasion of pirates; that Venus brings beneficial floods, rains, and mists; that under Mercury occur droughts and squalls, and so forth.

All these catastrophes have their effects on the welfare and fortunes of men, and consonantly with the belief already stated, were conclusively presumed to take place for no other purpose than to affect, in one direction or other, the lives and fortunes of men. It would be strange if, after being credited with these powers for this purpose, the Planets were not further endowed with the power of causing those catastrophes, equally inexplicable otherwise, and still more affecting human welfare, plague, pestilence, and all other diseases.

In order to produce diseases, the Planets must influence the humours by whose defect or excess diseases were produced; and since _entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem_, the Planets could not influence these humours except by themselves possessing and distributing the same elementary qualities, heat, cold, drought, and moisture, that characterise the humours. This doctrine was the easier to establish since it was already known that these four qualities pervade all things in nature. The very elements themselves, out of which all things are compounded, are but embodiments of the four elementary qualities in their four possible combinations. Fire is hot and dry, Air is hot and moist, Earth is cold and dry, Water is cold and moist. When it is remembered that the four humours are similarly compounded, yellow bile being hot and dry, blood hot and moist, black bile cold and dry, and phlegm cold and moist, it becomes evident, even if it were not already certain from the universal prevalence of these qualities, that corresponding pairs must be possessed by the several Planets to give them those powers over disease that they undoubtedly exercise. This useful method of the _circulus in probando_ is not the only device that our forefathers have bequeathed to us, and that still serves our purposes with all its original efficacy.

When we have got thus far, the remaining doctrines of medical astrology follow naturally by the development and elaboration of those we already possess, aided by further analogies, more or less far-fetched, and by chance coincidences, such as that already mentioned which led Guy de Chauliac to attribute the great plague of 1345 to the conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars in Aquarius in March of that year.

We should take a very superficial view of Astrology, however, if we failed to recognise that beneath all its strange doctrines, and under all its monstrous assumptions, lies the insatiable craving of the human mind for explanation. Every event that happens before us throws down an irresistible challenge to us to explain it. We are so constituted that we cannot rest until it is explained; but we are also so constituted that we are apt to accept as sufficient anything that purports to be an explanation, even if it rests upon no reasonable ground, or even if it is a mere verbal explanation that explains nothing. We have discarded Astrology as a garment that we have outgrown, even as the snake wriggles itself out of its skin, and the crab withdraws itself from a rigid envelope that is too small for it; but can we assure ourselves that we have outgrown and discarded the mental carapace that renders such beliefs as Astrology possible? Do not logicians still teach doctrines every bit as absurd as the doctrines of Astrology? And even in Medicine itself, do we never take that for an explanation that is no explanation? Before we can cast stones at the Astrologers, have we no windows of our own to guard? Let those answer who explain aphasia by calling it a loss of memory for words; who explain ataxy by calling it loss of the power of coordinating movements; who explain a delusion by discovering a lesion in the brain; who explain feeble mindedness by hereditary influence; who explain hysteria entertained in middle age by some sexual irregularity committed in youth; or who explain an hypothetical increase of appendicitis by an hypothetical increase in the consumption of meat. Surely we have every right to despise those who attributed all acute diseases to the influence of the moon, and all chronic diseases to the influence of the sun, for we know with assured knowledge that acute diseases are in fact produced by intestinal stasis, and that chronic diseases are due to that blessed combination of words—alimentary toxæmia.

ASTROLOGY IN MEDICINE.

_To the Editor of_ THE LANCET.

SIR,—I trust that with your well-known love
of fair play you will kindly permit me to make a few
remarks on this subject and to ask Dr Mercier a few
questions of public interest.

With all respect for the learned doctor, and with
due acknowledgment of his candid admission that
astrology was believed in and seriously studied
‘by the rarest intellects of their time, some of
them, like Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus, the
rarest intellects of all time,’ I wish to ask: Does
Dr Mercier think that such rarest intellects were
incapable of distinguishing truth from error, and
could have accepted the superstitions associated in
their day with astrology? Surely not. They accepted
_astrologia sana_ as Bacon (Lord Verulam)
accepted it, as a part of physics and discarded
superstition. One might as reasonably proclaim
medicine nowadays to be ‘tomfoolery,’ on the ground
of the superstitions connected with it formerly, as
Dr Mercier condemns astrology and pronounces it as
‘dead’—officially. Dr Mercier’s only argument against
astrology on scientific grounds is the worn-out and
utterly unfounded assertion that it was overthrown by
Copernicus!

* * * * *

Dr Mercier ridicules the belief of that eminent man
Guy de Chauliac that the outbreak of the ‘Black Death’
in the middle of the fourteenth century was due to
the great conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars in
_Aquarius_ on March 24th, 1345. Neptune was also
in the same sign at that time—a planet unknown then.
Such a doryphory of great planets in _Aquarius_,
a sign which is found to relate to epidemic diseases,
certainly foreshadowed the outbreak of a pandemic;
and if Dr Mercier will compare the periods of great
conjunctions in Aquarius he will find that great
epidemics always coincided therewith. If Dr Mercier
had directed attention to the immense difference made
by the discovery of Uranus and Neptune, he would have
recognised that many mistakes of ancient and mediæval
astrologers were due to their being unaware of the
existence and relative positions of these distant
planets.

I hope Dr Mercier will forgive me for directing
attention to the above points. I am sure that he
meant to be as fair as possible in his delineation of
mediæval astrology; in fact, he proved this intention
by the last paragraph but one of his second lecture. I
should be happy to meet Dr Mercier in friendly debate
on this important subject before any learned society
or private assembly.

I am, Sir, yours faithfully,
ALFRED J. PEARCE.

_Dec. 3rd, 1913._

⁂ Mr Pearce makes an appeal for publication which we
have not been able to resist, but the view that the operations
of nature are mysterious until they are understood cannot be
advanced as a complete defence of mysticism.—ED. L.

_To the Editor of_ THE LANCET.

SIR,—Like yourself, I am unable to withstand
the appeal that Mr Pearce makes to me. He asks me
whether I think that Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus
were incapable of distinguishing truth from error. I
hasten to assure him that in my opinion these eminent
men were as incapable of making a mistake as I am
myself. The experience of mankind throughout the ages
shows that clever men never make mistakes. No clever
general has ever been defeated in battle; no clever
judge was ever upset on appeal; no clever counsel
ever lost a cause; no clever theologian ever held an
erroneous opinion, or at any rate an opinion that was
held to be erroneous by other clever theologians; no
clever doctor ever made a wrong diagnosis; no clever
schoolboy ever needs to have his exercises corrected;
in fact ability and infallibility mean the same thing.

Mr Pearce is certainly right in pouring contempt upon
my argument that Copernicus overthrew astrology; at
least, he would have been right if I had made the
statement, or if I had called it an argument.

I should be most happy to accept Mr Pearce’s challenge
to debate this important subject before a learned
society were it not that I am at present immersed in
a much more important investigation, which absorbs my
whole time and attention. That Saturn, Jupiter, and
Mars, in conjunction in Aquarius, must have produced
the Black Death in the following year is patent to
everyone and needs no demonstration, but it required
the insight of genius to discover that the burning of
York Minster was due to the superabundance of snails
in a certain back garden early in the same year. It is
the peculiar merit of the adept, be he an astrologer
or merely an haruspex, to recognise the significance
of such coincidences. It seems to have escaped
altogether the observation of the vulgar that this
year of grace 1913 has been characterised no less
by the superabundance of snails in back gardens
than by the number of conflagrations initiated by
suffragettes. The causal nexus needs no proof; but
if it did, proof would be found in the fact that
in Ireland, from which snails were banished by the
beneficent action of St Patrick, and where there are
no back gardens, the backs of the houses being in
front, there has been no suffragette incendiarism. I
will not pursue the subject further in this place, but
if Mr Pearce wants any further information he will
find it in my forthcoming book, ‘De Conflagrationibus
et de Multitudinibus Helicidarum in Hortulis Posticis.’

I am, Sir, yours faithfully,
CHAS. MERCIER.

_Dec. 13th, 1913._

SAINTS AND SIGNS

(Part of a third Lecture, which was not delivered, but was read to the Casual Club, _Nov. 1912_)

It used to be a point of honour with me, and I believe with other members of this Club, never to read up the subject of the evening’s discussion. So to do would be to deprive the discussions of that casual character which is their distinctive charm, and which gives its name to the Club. It is with regret that I have noticed of late years signs that this honourable understanding is not maintained, and therefore I have chosen for this paper a title which will have rendered impracticable any attempt to acquire information of its subject from outside sources. If any member present has been trying to steal a march upon the rest by looking up the literature of miraculous signs, adduced in evidence of the truths of Christianity by the heroes or the victims of canonisation, I have the pleasure of informing him that he has been wasting his time; and I may further inform those members who have made direct inquiries of me as to the scope of the subject indicated by my title, that my answers, while of course strictly truthful, were intended to mislead, and have, I trust, served their purpose.

I have here a specimen of a metallic token, which, if any of you have never seen one, I shall be glad to hand round—I wish I had more, so that I might present one to each of you as a memento of this joyful occasion, but the Chancellor of the Exchequer seizes upon every specimen with such avidity that they are becoming more and more scarce and difficult to obtain—a metallic token which serves in this country as the standard of value, and is known as the sovereign or pound sterling. If you will let observation with extensive view survey it on both aspects, you will find that on the obverse or the reverse—I never know which is which—it bears the image, though not the superscription, of St George of Cappadocia, who has abandoned the more lucrative occupation of army contractor in order to follow the more honourable calling of patron saint.

He is engaged, you will observe, in his customary avocation of slaying the dragon, an operation which he performs in a rather surprising manner. Chastely attired in a helmet much too large for him, the weight of which has dislocated his neck, and mounted on a pony many sizes too small for him, the saint is in the act of kicking the dragon in the neck with his bare foot, while the pony simultaneously kicks the animal on the head with his off fore, and treads on its abdomen with his near hind. The triple assault so confounds the dragon that instead of biting the leg of the saint or of the pony, both of which are within easy reach, he retaliates by swearing, which any intelligent dragon must know would avail little against a Welsh pony (unless indeed the dragon should swear in Welsh, of which there is no evidence) and would be quite ineffectual against a saint, especially a saint who had had as long an experience in the army as St George of Cappadocia.

George of Cappadocia was a commercial man, and a very successful commercial man, and no doubt it is meet and right and our bounden duty to place upon the standard of value in this commercial country the effigy of a successful commercial man. But it is not on account of his success in commerce that the effigy of George appears on the fronts—or backs—of our coins. If we wanted to typify upon our coins the highest development of the commercial spirit, I suppose we should stamp them with the image of Lord Rothschild, or of Mr Rockefeller; but we do not. We stamp them with the image of St George of Cappadocia, not because he was a prosperous and successful commissary, but because, for some unknown reason, he subsequently became a saint. At some remote time, I do not know when or why, George was chosen as the patron saint of this country, and it is because he is the patron saint of England that his image appears on those useful tokens that are collected with such avidity by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Mr Rockefeller would not be eligible, because he is not a saint.

Patron saints were in past times much more highly valued and much more frequently employed than they are now. France has, or had, a patron in St Louis. I speak without accurate knowledge, but I believe I am correct in saying that, in the common phrase, he has joined the ranks of the unemployed. Scotland placed itself under the patronage of St Andrew, Ireland of St Patrick, Wales of St David, Spain of St James; and if I cannot adduce any other examples, it is because these are the only nations—if we can allow that Scotland is a nation—that remain as they were before the modern redistribution of the map of Europe.

But nations were not the only things that had patron saints. Every family that aspired to county rank, and indeed, every person who aspired to be of consequence, had his or her patron saint. Nor was this all, as they say in Oxford. Every profession and calling had its patron saint. The patron saint of medicine was St Luke. Who was the patron saint of lawyers I do not know, but no doubt they chose a very powerful one, for their need was great; or perhaps no saint would consent to act for them, for of all the Inns of Court it is curious that not one is named after a saint. As to other callings, the sailor-men had a patron saint in St Botolph, ferrymen in St Christopher, fishermen in St Peter, shoemakers in St Crispin, butchers in St Bartholomew, huntsmen in St Hubert and so on. I need not remind you that to this day every church has its patron saint, but you may not know that every part of the human body, and every ailment of the human body had its patron saint. The head was under the patronage of St Ottila; the neck acknowledged St Blasius; the body, St Lawrence; the legs and feet, St Rochus and St John; and thereby hangs a curious tale, as we shall see presently.

Except for countries and churches, patron saints are not now much utilised; but it is evident, from their universal employment in former times, that they were once of great importance. At the present day, a patron is a merely ornamental personage. He gives his name, and he is usually expected to give a subscription, but beyond this, his only function is to confer respectability. In former times, however, his functions were much more active. Patron, I may remind you, is correlative with client, as father with child, or master with servant. A child necessarily implies a father, and without a father can no child be. A master implies a servant, and where there is a servant, there must be a master. And similarly, patron and client are correlative. There can be no patron without a client, and no client without a patron. For this reason, I object to and resent the custom that has recently arisen, of tradesmen calling their customers clients, especially as in the same breath they ask their customers for patronage. A master might as well ask his servant for orders, or a father expect a tip from his child, as a patron ask his client for patronage.

The relation of patron and client was the relation of protector and protected. I don’t know whether those who placed themselves under the patronage of a saint called themselves his clients, but undoubtedly they invoked and expected his protection; and it was for the sake of protection that they provided themselves with patron saints. We must remember that in the days when men provided themselves with patron saints, no one could afford to be without protection. We have only to pay attention to the litany to realise how urgent was the need. The litany is one long prayer for protection. We pray to be protected from evil and mischief, from the crafts and assaults of the devil, from the wrath of God, from lightning and tempest, from plague, pestilence and famine, from battle and murder, and from sudden death. We pray for protection for all that travel by land or by water, for all prisoners and captives, for all sick persons (against their doctors I suppose), and for all sorts and conditions of men.

In those days, the modern conception of the reign of law, in the sense of the inexorableness of natural causation, had not yet been attained. Things happened in those days, not in obedience to natural laws, but according to caprice, and to whether the devil got a chance when God was not attending, or when the saints, his ministers, were pre-occupied with other affairs. The Almighty was too august to be approached directly. Indeed, it seems to have been assumed that he occupied the position of a constitutional sovereign, and acted only on the advice or the intercession of his ministers, the saints, so that it was of the first importance to have the protection and favour of a powerful and influential saint.

When clans or nations joined battle, their war-cry was the name of their patron saint, who was expected to fight on the side of his votaries or clients, to see that they had all the luck and came out top dog. Not infrequently, the saint came down on purpose, and in bodily presence led them to the attack. Many such instances are on record, and it is worth notice that, whoever the saint that thus interpreted his obligations, he was always mounted on a white horse.

Although wars were very frequent in mediæval times, it would be a mistake to suppose, as historians before the present generation seemed to suppose, that the whole time of the whole male population of the world was occupied in fighting, and in nothing else. No doubt, in times when there were no newspapers, no novels, no theatres, no cricket, no football, no suffragists, no divorce court, no kinematographs and no parliamentary debates, people must have suffered terrible boredom, and would have been driven now and then to do a little wholesome fighting from sheer vacancy of mind; and no doubt, when there were no motor buses, no taxi-cabs and no municipal tram-cars, the normal increase of population must have required some other check to keep it within the bounds of the means of subsistence; and so people plunged into war to save themselves from famine; but still, the laity did not live wholly on acorns and beech-mast, nor the clergy on Greek roots, and therefore some industrial occupations must have been followed; and we know as a matter of fact that some were followed; and whatever a man’s occupation might be, whether of war or peace, it was necessary, if he was to have any luck, that he should have a patron saint; and hence it was that a patron saint presided over every trade and calling. Not even thieving could prosper except under the patronage of St Nicholas.

My own occupation had not then reached the perfection that it has now attained, and in those days there were maladies that baffled the resources of medical art as it then was, and defied all the drugs in the pharmacopœia, reinforced as that then was by many potent and valuable remedies that the ignorance and indifference of a later age has suffered to fall into disuse. Pounded earthworms, ants’ eggs, asses’ dung, the urine of a bull or—strange alternative—of a virgin, vipers’ fat, the water that had been used for washing a corpse—all these, incredible as it appears, sometimes failed to cure; and then there was no resource left but to go to the celestial Harley Street, and consult a specialist saint. For the celestial Harley Street had as many saintly specialists as its mundane successor has now of specialists who are, perhaps, not altogether saintly. St Apollonius was the leading authority on toothache; St Avertin appropriated my own specialty of lunacy; St Benedict practised in stone and other diseases of the bladder; St Hubert specialised in hydrophobia; St John in epilepsy; St Vitus in chorea; St Maur in gout; and St Anthony in erysipelas. Of course, it was not to be expected that everyone should know the right saint to go to in any particular malady, any more than the man in the street knows at the present time precisely the best specialist, who is not a saint, to consult for the malady with which he may happen to be afflicted. It would have been as absurd to go for one’s gout to St Apollonius, the President, if one may so put it, of the celestial College of Dentists, as for the toothache to St Maur, whose specialty was gout. In cases of difficulty, it was necessary to consult a priest, as one now consults a general practitioner.