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bromide took place in the stomach, causing gastric irritation due to the liberation of free bromine. I always administer the drug in a largely-diluted form— not only with the view of avoiding the nausea and purgation due to concentrated saline solutions, but in order to secure its more ready absorption.

In the foregoing remarks, I have only incidentally alluded to the therapeutical uses of the valuable drug under consideration. My object has been, to call attention to certain effects, especially mental derange ments, which occasionally follow its employment, and to insist upon the correctness of the opinion, that they are due to cerebral anæmia. The anaphrodisiac properties ascribed to the drug, I have witnessed frequently, though, by no means, uniformly. In one case of nymphomania, of a very distressing character, I prescribed the bromide in large doses, with complete success, and patients who take it for other affections occasionally complain of its power in this direction.

ART. IV.-Magic and Astrology in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. By T. EDWARDS CLARK, M. D., Ph. D., of New York.

THE physical sciences were at first nothing but a mass of superstitions and empirical processes, which constituted that which we now call magic. Man was so conscious of the control that he was called to exercise over the forces of Nature, that, when he had to do with them, it was only to attempt to subject them entirely to his will. But, instead of studying the phenomena, in order to discover the laws and apply them to his needs, he imagined that he could, by the aid

of particular practices and sacramental forms, constrain the physical agents to serve his desires and projects.

Such was the fundamental character of magic. This science had for its object the unchaining of the forces of the universe at the will of man, and the bringing into his power the works of God. The phenomena of Nature were not looked at as the immutable and necessary consequences of laws, always active and always calculable, but were made to depend on the arbitrary and fickle will of spirits and divinities. Hence, in order to accomplish one's wishes in regard to Nature, it was necessary to influence the divinities or spirits. That which religion believes it is able to accomplish by prayers and supplications, magic attempted to do by charms, forms, and conjurations. God fell under the empire of the magician: He became his slave; and, master of His secrets, the enchanter could at will overturn the universe and restrain its laws.

As the sciences gradually disengaged themselves from the language of superstition and chimera, magic saw its domain growing less and less. At first it swallowed up all the sciences, or, rather, took the place of these completely: astronomy, physics, medicine, chemistry, and even writing and poetry, all practically were placed under its tyranny. The recognition and understanding of the laws of Nature, revealed by obser vation, exposed the emptiness and absurdity of the practices to which magic resorted. Driven from the control of the science of the celestial phenomena, it took refuge in that of physics. Then, again expelled, by the progress of experiments and investigations, from the material and terrestrial world, it retired to the control of the physiological and psychological actions, whose more obscure laws are not so easily investigated;

and there, strongly fortified, it continues even to the present day.

There were not always illusion and delirium in the magical processes, for certain of the laws of Nature are readily discovered with a little observation. The enchanters very early recognized certain phenomena, and, though they were not able to discover the causes of these, they perceived that they regularly appeared under certain circumstances. These comprehensions or ideas were associated with ridiculous practices calculated to mislead the ignorant, and to produce on their imaginations the desired effect. From magic thus sprung certain sciences, which for a long time remained infected with its chimerical doctrines. Therapeutics, astronomy, and chemistry have each passed through a period of superstition, represented by the notions of simples, the preparation of philters, astrology, and alchemy, which were the immediate products of the magic of the early ages. And the success which followed the employment of the enchanter's processes, based on real properties and physical observations, contributed powerfully to induce the vulgar mind to have confidence in their efficacy.

Nevertheless, illusion disappeared little by little, and all the wonders that the magician pretended to accomplish vanished when a careful investigation was made into the reality. It was not difficult to recog nize that, in spite of the charms, conjurations, and forms, Nature remained always the same; that her laws were neither disturbed nor overturned: hence it followed that in all these prestiges there was nothing but mental illusion. The magician appeared then no more as one holding in his control the natural phenomena and agents, but as a trickster in possession of certain secrets

by which he was able to captivate the imagination and cause it to call up deceptive images.

This was the last stage of magic. We have ceased to believe in the wonders which it pretended to ac complish, but there are those who yet have faith in the reality of the magician's science. They consider him an accomplice of evil spirits and an agent of hell, who can deceive our senses, control our will, and overthrow our intelligence; and the power which is denied him over the physical world is yielded to him in regard to man.

Such has been the belief of all Christians till a very recent day. Too enlightened to attribute to magic a power which they perceived belonged to God, they were not yet sufficiently instructed to see the entire folly of the magical practices and the ridiculousness of the enchantments. But here, as earlier, the mixture of truth and error led minds to hold superstitious views. The enchanters and sorcerers had discovered the means of exciting or putting to sleep the senses by the employment of certain narcotics-of producing hallucinations by introducing a disturbing cause into the brain or nervous system generally; and these illusions, which constituted all their art, appeared to the Christians as the work of the devil, the proof of the intervention of demons in witchcrafts and conjurations.

Demonology, which served to support magic in its expiring moments, is now condemned by all serious and inquiring minds. It, the débris of the ancient naturalism, which greatly influenced Christianity at its beginning, for some time manifested itself in various ways; and in moments of trouble, delirium, or terror, it at tempted to regain in the reason a part of the ground which it had lost. Vain effort; the constancy of the physical laws is more evident than ever in the wonders

of the applied sciences. The study of these phenomena extinguishes in us all faith in the marvellous; and it is by the progress of investigation that the last remnant of superstition will be expelled.

To present a history of the great movement of the human mind, which has gradually elevated us from the shades of magic and astrology into the luminous regions of modern science, is the object of a little work' by L. F. Alfred Maury, on Magic and Astrology, of which we propose continuing a sketch. Many histories. of magic have already appeared. Some have written in defence of these chimerical beliefs; others have attempted only to provoke a profound disdain for all those follies and absurdities: but no one has before attempted to draw from the comparison of these facts a really philosophical deduction, and to mark the dif ferent phases through which a science so chimerical has passed, and which was the necessary beginning of the great discoveries that have been made only to destroy its foundations.

The magic of savage people, of those who are yet in a state of primitive barbarism, reflects by its ridiculous forms the grossness of the ideas entertained everywhere by the human mind when plunged in the most absolute ignorance. The religion of the savage is a superstitious naturalism, a fetichism in which all the phenomena of Nature, all the objects of creation, become objects ofadoration. Such is the religion of all the negro tribes, of the primitive population of Hindostan, of the American Indians, and of the inhabit ants of Polynesia. Such was originally the religion of the Mongols, Chinese, Celts, and Germans. Such ap

'La Magie et L'Astrologie dans l'antiquité et au moyen âge, par L. F. Alfred Maury, Paris.

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