MAGIC (see article Maw) is a general name for wonderful effects produced in some -mysterious way. Medicine in its early form is intimately allied to magic. It would soon be discovered by accident that certain plants produced powerful effects, both good and bad, upon the bodies of men and animals; and the reverence arising from their real virtues would lead to ascribing to them all manner of imaginary ones. The laws of nature being little known, one thing was not more incredible than another; and effects were assigned to causes in the most arbitrary and accidental way. The Rosicrucian physicians treated a case of wounding by applying the salve to the weapon instead of to the wound itself; and this may be taken as the type of magical as contrasted with rational medicine. In modern times drugs are mostly drawn from the mineral and vegetable kingdoms; but while the healing art was in the mystic sta.g,e, animal sub stances were most esteemed. If the juice of a plant could affect the living body, how much more must the life-blood of another animal! And the rarer the kind of blood, so much the rarer the virtue. The blood of an innocent child, or of a virgin, was believed to cure the leprosy; that of an executed criminal, the falling sickness. The hearts of animals, as being the seat of life, were held to be potent drugs. The fat of a hog had been found by experience to benefit a sore; what virtue, then, must there be in human fat, with the solemn mysteries of the grave about it! In early stages of society women are the doctors; while the naen fight and hunt, the women gather herbs and decoct salves for their wounds; and the art would naturally become a sort of profession.in the hands of the older women who had a reputation for superior skill of that kind. Mostly a blind groping—a mystery to themselves as well as others—their operations were looked upon with awe. The wise woman" with her kettle, cooking. her mysterious broth, addin,„0. ingredient after ingredient (for the more, the rarer, the horribler they were, would not the compound be the more efficacious?), inspired not only hope but fear; for the art might be, and doubtless was, used to hurt as well as to heal. Roman matrons were often accused and convicted of poisoning by their decoctions; and during seasons of pestilence these female druggists were perse cuted with indiscriminate fury, as were witches afterwards in Europe. So much was the notion of poisoning uppermost in the Roman mind respecting them that renefica, literally "a poison-maker,' was the general name for a preparer of magic medicines, an enchantress or sorceress—the corresponding character to our witch. See WITCH CRAFT.
The operation of magical medicines was not, as is the case with those of the modern pharinacopceia, coufinecrto physical effects on living bodies to which theywere applied; -associated with incantations and other ceremonies, as they always were, they could be made to produce almost any desired effect—raise or lay storms; fertilize a field, or blast it; kill or cure a man, absent as well as present; and give the power of predicting future events. How a belief in imaginary virtues of things inay grow out of the experience of
their real virtues is indicated by Dr. Livingstone, when speaking of the belief in rain making among. the tribes in the heart of southern Africa. The African priest and the medicine-man is one and the same, and his chief function is to make the clouds give out rain. The preparations for this purpose are various—charcoal made of burned bats; internal parts of animals, as lions' hearts and hairy calculi from the bowels of old cows; -serpents' skins and vertelme; and every kiud of tuber, bulb, root, and plant to be found iu the country. "Although you disbelieve their efficacy in charming the clouds to pour -out their refreshing treasures, yet, conscious that civility is useful ever3rwhere, you kindly state that you think they are mistaken as to their power; the rain-doctor selects a particular bulbous root, pounds it, and administers a cold infusion to a sheep, which in five minutes afterwards expires in convulsions. Part of the same bulb is converted into smoke, and ascends towards the sky; rain follows in a day or two. The inference is obvious." The religion of this part of Africa may be characterized as medicine worship. In a village of the Balonda, Dr. Livingstone saw two pots with charms or medicines kept in a little shed, like idols in a niche. For an idol they sometimes take a piece of wood, and carve a human head on it, or simply a crooked stick, when there is no professed carver to be had; but there is nothing divine about it until it is dotted over with a mixture of medicine and red ocher. Packets of medicine are worn as charms about the person, to ward off evils of all kinds. The female chief Manenko was hung all over with such charms; and when she had to cross a river, her traveling-doctor waved medicines over her. and she took some in her hand, to save her from drowning.
During the middle ages, and down almost to the 18th c., magic was greatly studied in Europe, and could boast of distinguished names, who attempted to treat it as a grand and mysterious science, by means of- which the secrets of nature could be discovered, and a certain godlike power acquired over the "spirits " (or, as we should now say, the " forces") of the elements. The principal students and professors of magic during the period referred to were pope Sylvebter II., Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, Raymond Lully, Pico della Mirandola, Paracelsus, Cornelius Agrippa, Trithemius, Van Helmont, and Jerome Cardan. See Horst's Von der Allen und Neuen Nagle, Ursprung, Idee, Umfang und Geschichte (Mentz, 1820); and Ennemoser's Gesehlehte der Nagle (2d ed. Leip. 1844; translated into English by W. Howitt, 2 vols. Lond. 1854). For an interest ing account of the discipline and ceremonies of the " art," consult the Dogme et Mud de la Haute Magic (Paris, 1856), by Levi; and Ristoire de let Megie, by Christian (Paris, 1870).
Some of the different forms which the belief in magic has assumed will be seen under AMULET, AUGURIES AND AUSPICES, DIVINATION, INCANTATION, and WITCHCRAFT, and the allied subjects of ALCHEMY and ASTROLOGY.