Amulets and charms were in great variety among the ChaldÆans, Jews, and Persians. They were also held in estimation among the Greeks and Romans, chiefly on account of their supposed virtue in exciting or conquering the passion of love. The Council of Laodicea forbade ecclesiastics to wear amulets and phylacteries, on pain of degradation. St. Jerome was likewise opposed to their use. Nevertheless, although amulets and charms are not held in the same repute they once were, their efficacy is not supposed to be entirely gone. Among early Christians amulets and charms were acknowledged to possess peculiar virtues beneficial to man. Amulets and charms were, and are, so numerous that it would be a herculean task to give an account of one half of them. Where the inhabitants were destitute of medical resources, amulets and charms were employed for the alleviation of bodily suffering. Pericles wore an amulet about his neck, as such charms were supposed to be capable of preserving the wearers from misfortune and disease. Lord Bacon was of opinion that if a man wore a planet seal, it might aid him in obtaining the affection of his sweetheart, give him protection at sea and in battle, and make him more courageous. Cramp rings and eel skins were worn round the limbs, to prevent sickness; and people were sometimes cured by laying sticks across each other in front of their beds at night. Moreover, the sticks thus placed prevented demons approaching the couch of rest. The moss off a dead man's skull, says the great Mr. Boyle, is an effectual remedy against bleeding at the nose. We are told by Lord Verulam, that when he was at Paris he had above one hundred warts on his hands, and that they were removed by the English ambassador's lady rubbing them with a piece of bacon, afterwards nailed to a post. In five weeks the bacon, being exposed to the sun, melted away, and the warts disappeared.

St. Vitus' dance was cured by the sufferer visiting the tomb of the saint, near Ulm, every May. The bites of certain reptiles are rendered harmless by music. Dr. Sydenham orders, in cases of iliac passion, a live kitten to be laid on the abdomen. Pigeons, split alive and applied to the soles of the feet, are efficacious in fevers and convulsions. Quincey says that yawning and laughing are infectious, and so are fear and shame; and from these, by a system of reasoning peculiarly his own, he endeavours to prove that amulets may be sufficient to counteract, if not to entirely hinder, infection. Throughout the Mohammedan dominions the people were convinced that charms were indispensable to their well-being. By charms they cured every kind of disease, provided predestination had not determined that the sick man's days were at an end. Surprise, it is urged, removes the hooping-cough; looking from a precipice, or seeing a wheel turn swiftly, causes giddiness. "Why then," asks a wise man, "may not amulets or charms, by their secret influence, produce the effects ascribed to them? Who can comprehend by what impenetrable means the bite of a mad dog produces hydrophobia? Why does the touch of a torpedo induce numbness? When these causes and effects are explained," he concludes, "so may the virtue of amulets be accounted for." Ancient philosophers laid it down, as a proof of ignorance, the condemnation of a science not easily understood. In this way the advocates of amulets and charms have been enabled to silence people who have had the hardihood to throw odium on their superstitions. Believers in amulets and charms remind us that it is a well-ascertained fact in nature, that for every bane there is an antidote. Wherever the stinging nettle grows, the slimy stem of the dock is near; whenever the wasp stings, honey gathered by the industrious bee may be had, without going far, to put on the injured part; when the cold is most intense without, the fire burns brightest within; and if there be evil spirits seeking man's hurt, there are good angels hovering round him for his protection.

Mr. E. Chambers, who published his CyclopÆdia, or A Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, in 1728, says that an amulet (amuletum) is a kind of medicament hung about the neck or other part of the body to prevent or remove diseases. Amulets, he proceeds, are frequently nothing else than spells or charms, consisting of quaint words and characters, supposed to have the virtue of warding off ill. And Mr. Chambers informs his readers, under the word "charm," that a charm is a magic power or spell, by which, with the assistance of the devil, sorcerers and witches are supposed to do wondrous things, far surpassing the power of nature.

Ancient poets, who were of a superstitious turn of mind, attached no small importance to amulets and charms. One of them says:

The following is an old translation from Virgil:

Ovid is made to say:

Other poets, writing of charms, say:

Sir Thomas Brown mentions that a chalked tile at each corner of a field and one in the centre thereof were rural charms that prevented weeds growing; and the three following charms are given in Herrick's Hesperides:

Here are older charms in metre:

In the Hesperides we also find the following spell:

The same writer quaintly says:

Butler, in his Hudibras, describes the supposed power of a cunning man thus:

In the seventeenth century, dairymaids, when churning, used a charm, said over the churn in the following lines:

This having been said three times, the butter came straightway; and very good butter it was, on the good saint being invoked.

A holy Pope of the good old times sent the following lines to an exalted Emperor: