Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/32

against evil spirits (the "evil eye," for example). Various objects were used for this purpose, and among them the following deserve to be mentioned: disks of bone removed with the aid of a trephine from the skull of a dead human body and worn with a string around the neck; the teeth of different animals; bones of the weasel; cats' claws; the lower jaw of a squirrel; the trachea of some bird; one of the vertebrae of an adder, etc. And where these measures failed, the priests resorted to incantations, religious dances, and the beating of drums or the rattling of dried gourds filled with pebbles. Primitive races of men inhabiting the most widely separated parts of the earth appear to have adopted means almost identical with those just described for driving away evil spirits. The holding of these superstitious beliefs is one of the most extraordinary characteristics of the human race. It played an important part throughout the classical period of Greek and Roman civilization, and also during the Middle Ages. Christianity undoubtedly was a most potent agency in hastening the eradication of the feeling, but even this great power has not yet sufficed entirely to do away with superstition; for traces of this weakness may still easily be detected in some of the men and women with whom we daily come in contact.