Amulets.--The coin given by the kings of England when they healed the scrofulus or epileptic came to be, in one sense, an amulet. The sight and the touch of this acted as an ever recurrent suggestion tending to make these patients better, and undoubtedly the coin was of great service by its renewal of the mental influence of the touch of the king. There are traditions, also, that these coins healed others who touched them, and sometimes for generations they were kept in families as representing a fountain of healing and of preservation of health. Any object that thus became invested with reverence produced healing effects. Virchow, in the introduction to Schliemann's "Troas," tells of going to a long distance for water, during the time when he was present at the excavations, in order to be sure that the water would be absolutely pure. The natives had heard that he was a great physician from the West. They concluded that the reason why he went to this particular distant spring for water, in spite of the trouble involved, was that it must have some wonderful healing virtues. Accordingly a tradition of healing grew up around it, and people came from long distances, drank from it and were cured. There are still people who carry horse chestnuts for rheumatism, and occasionally a farmer carries a potato for the same purpose. The feeling is, if they do no good, at least they can do no harm. Doubtless in the Middle Ages the same feeling prevailed as to other favorite objects. At present, among the better informed classes, various pendants supposed to have some connection with electricity are popular. I have seen a medal made of alternate discs of copper and zinc, and confidently believed to be strongly electrical, worn even by an otherwise sensible merchant in a country town. Electric belts still are {63} extremely common--and expensive. Supposed electric insoles, one made of copper, the other of zinc, are sold in great numbers and at good prices, though, quite needless to say, they are absolutely inert electrically. Various electric contrivances, small batteries, and the like, really are of the nature of amulets. People have a faith in them that is not justified by anything in science, but that faith helps them in their ills. Most of the supposed medicinal plasters are in the same class. As a rule, sufficient curative material cannot be incorporated in a plaster to be of any service, and most of them, though widely advertised, are scarcely more than rubber adhesive plaster. They do good partly by their mechanical effect, because they actually support muscles, but mainly because of faith in their efficacy. Whenever a particular discomfort occurs the feeling that a plaster is covering the spot gives the patient assurance that he or she must soon be better. In all of these effects there is no manifestation of any physical or marvelous supernormal power, but simply and solely of the influence of the mind on the body. CHAPTER IX