The Spirit LandEmmons, Samuel B. (Samuel Bulfinch)
Religion
The Spirit Land
Emmons, Samuel B. (Samuel Bulfinch)
Occultism -- Early works to 1900; Spiritualism
Not many years since, the cold hands of a convict, who had terminated
his life on the gallows, in Liverpool, were drawn over several wens a
number of times to effect a cure. A person in one of our western states
ran a pitchfork into his hand, and he applied a plaster to the cold
iron as well as to the fresh wound. When people run a nail into their
foot, they frequently save and polish the rusty iron to facilitate the
recovery. Some time since, in the State of Maine, the body of a female
was taken from the grave, her heart taken out, dried, and pulverized,
and given to another member of the family, as a specific against the
consumption. And the same thing has more recently been done in the town
of Waltham, Massachusetts. The heart was reduced to a powder, and made
into pills, but they did not cure the patient; while the person who
took up the remains from the grave, and removed the heart, came very
near losing his life, from the putrefactive state of the corpse at the
time.
We could relate many other cases, equally foolish and disgusting. All
such things should be classed under the general name of charms, and be
looked upon as relics of the grossest superstitions. Why not as well
have the touch of a slave as a king? Why not as well apply your plaster
to a tree as to a pitchfork? Why not as well drink the heart of a lamb
as a woman? You may say that God has determined certain cures shall
follow certain applications. No such determination is published in his
word, and no such conclusions can be inferred from facts. You may
pretend that a special miracle is wrought in such cases. But this is
incredible; for the object is not compatible with the miraculous
interposition of Deity. And the few cures which are reputed to have
taken place can be satisfactorily accounted for, on the influence of
the imagination, and other natural causes. So that such a belief is not
only superstitious, but calculated to lead people to neglect the proper
means of recovery, and thus injure themselves and the medical
profession.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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