The Lhoosai, a savage hill-tribe in India, teach their young warriors to eat a piece of the liver of the first man they kill in order to strengthen their hearts, and here we see the development of the magic power of the medicines which is not only efficacious for the body, but for the spirit.
When Coleridge was a little boy at the Blue Coat School, he relates in his Table Talk, there was a "charm for one's foot when asleep," which he believed had been in the school since its foundation in the time of King Edward VI. Its potency lay in the words--
"Crosses three we make to ease us, Two for the thieves, and one for Christ Jesus."
The same charm served for cramp in the leg, and Coleridge quaintly adds: "Really, upon getting out of bed, where the cramp most frequently occurred, pressing the sole of the foot on the cold floor, and then repeating this charm, I can safely affirm that I do not remember an instance in which the cramp did not go away in a few seconds." Charms like this, by which a simple method of cure is invested with marvel, are common enough among primitive races, and not infrequently provide the key to the solution of the mystery of the magician's triumph. The cunning leaders, priests, or medicine-men of ignorant nations maintain their ascendency by ascribing to miracle the simplest feats they perform.