Oral magic, folklore and tradition / by B.R. Townend.

  • Townend, B. R.
Date:
1938
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Oral magic, folklore and tradition / by B.R. Townend. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    13/48 page 11
    Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum. THE LEGEND OF THE WORM. THIS CLAY TABLET from Nineveh has inscribed upon it in cimeiform characters, one of the earliest references we possess to the widespread and persistent idea that dental disease is caused by worms in the teeth and gums. The tablet is shown in actual size. be that it was the drug the aforementioned woman obtained from the chemist. It would be tedious to transcribe all the various prescriptions con¬ taining henbane which have come down to us—a volume would be required—so I will quote but a few of the more interesting ones. Scribonius Largus, Surgeon to the Emperor Claudius, whom he accompanied to Britain in a.d. 43, tells us in his “ Di Compositione Medicamentorum ” : “ Suitable also are fumigations made of the seeds of hyoscyamus scattered on burning Charcoal; these must be followed by rinsings of the mouth with hot water. In this, as it were, sometimes small worms are expelled.” In the Syriac Book of Medicines, which was written early in the Christian Era and translated by Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, we find the hyoscyamus seed combined with leek seed and made into pills with fat. These pills are placed on the fire and the smoke from them is inhaled, ‘‘For teeth which throb and have worms in them.” An almost identical prescription is given in ‘‘ Leechdoms, Wort-cunning and Starcraft in Early England ” (Cockaigne) : ‘‘ For tooth worms take acorn meal and henbane seed and wax of all equally much.
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