AMULETS: ANCIENT, MEDIEVAL, ORIENTAL 333
epilepsy,
and suspected its source in some lesion of the brain or of the
meninges. For this, of course, no more efficient remedy could suggest
itself, according to the old sympathetic theory of medicines, than a
powder made from the skull of one who had been an epileptic. These
skull-amulets have been unearthed in neolithic burials in various parts
of France, a considerable number having been found by M. de Baye and
others in the department of Marne; a specimen was also found in an
Algerian sepulture by General Faid-herbe.
The
great Greek physician Hippocrates of Cos, a contemporary of Plato,
advised that resort should be had to the operation of trephining in
many cases of injury to the head, and that the ancient Hindus were to a
certain extent familiar with it as a method of treating diseases of the
brain appears in one of the Buddhist recitals from a Tibetan source.
Here it is related that Atreya, master of the King of Physicians,
Jîvaka, when appealed to for help by a man suffering from a distressful
cerebral disorder, directed the man to dig a pit and fill it up with
dung ; he then thrust the man into this soft and savory mass until
nothing but his head and neck protruded, and opened his skull. From it
was drawn out a reptile whose presence had caused the malady. Jîvaka
seems to have been in consultation with his master in this interesting
operation, and is said to have later extracted a centipede from a man's
skull after making an aperture therein with a golden knife.27 In neither of these cases, however, do we have any hint that disks or fragments from the human skull were used as amulets.
A ghastly object much favored in France in the Middle Ages, as it was believed to give the owner the power to dis-
" Kumagueu Minakata, " Trepanning
among Ancient Peoples," Nature, Jan. 15, 1914, pp. 555, 556; citing
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1910, vol. xiii, p. 518, and E. A. Schiefner,
" Tibetan Tales," trans. Ralston, 1906, p. 98.
