N.B. Text in Greek and Hebrew characters have been omitted in the excerpt below, which has been reproduced for annotation purposes—please consult the original text for the full contents!
On the Properties and Use of Sugar.
SUGAR, when first introduced into every country, was used only medicinally. PLINY leaves no room for doubt on this point. Even in Arabia, in AVICENNA’s time, though sugar was an article of commerce from the East, there is no record of its being used in dietetic, or culinary purposes, for several centuries afterwards.
Sugar was employed originally to render unpleasant and nauseating medicines grateful to the sick: and in pharmacy, in syrups, electuaries, confections, and conserves.
ACTUARIUS was the first physician who substituted sugar for honey in medicinal compositions.
It is not to be supposed, however, that such a delicious and innocent article could longer be subject to the controul of the physician, and confined to the apothecary’s shop, than while the quantity obtainable was insufficient for the purposes of luxury: and the price too great to be admitted, by the generality of mankind, as an ingredient in their food.
As there are but few of the ancients who have even mentioned sugar, it is not difficult to collect all that has been said of it by them, as to its use. It appears nevertheless, that it was preferred in their days to honey in medicine.
I have said that ACTUARIUS was the first physician who used sugar, instead of honey, in prescriptions; because he is supposed, by me, to have written anno 1000; which was before MYREPSUS made his compilation; though some writers place ACTUARIUS three centuries (anno 1300) after that period, and subsequent to MYREPSUS.
DIOSCORIDES, who is the first that mentions sugar by name, … from which the Latin saccharum is derived, is also the first who speaks of the medicinal qualities of sugar. In his chapter, … he says:—
“It opens the bowels, and is good for the stomach, when drunk and dissolved in water: it relieves pains in the bladder and kidnies: and discusses those films which grow over the pupil of the eye, and cause a cloudiness in the sight.”
The latter part of this passage implies the external application of sugar. Blowing powdered sugar, or fine sugar-candy, into the eyes, has long been a popular practice to remove films, and ophthalmies. Perhaps the practice originated with DIOSCORIDES.
Galen, in his 7th book of the temperaments and faculties of medicines, … says—
“It possesses similar virtues (to honey), as far as relates to absterging, drying, and digesting; however, it is not hurtful to the stomach like honey, nor causes thirst: so far it differs from honey.”
Galen also, in his 8th book of his method of healing, recommends sugar, among the articles to be used, for the regimen of the sick in fevers.
PAULUS AEGINETA, lib. II. cap. 54. recommends, from ARCHIGENES, a piece of “the Indian salt, which, in appearance, resembles common salt, but in sweetness honey;” to be kept in the mouth, to moisten it in fevers.
In the very few preceding authorities we have all that those who are termed the antients have left us on the medicinal virtues of sugar.
We must now take a survey of the confused accounts of the Arabians, being the next authorities in succession, respecting their different species of sugar.
I shall begin with AVICENNA, and give the Latin version of this author. From the rest of this tribe of copyists I shall confine myself to a few passages, which I shall give in English only.
AVICENNA says, in his chapter on honey,—
Mel cannarum lenit ventrem, et mel tabazet non lenit. Lib. II. tract. 2. cap. 496.
“The honey of canes opens the bowels; but the tabazet (the white sort of honey) does not.”
[…]
RHASES says, “sugar softens the throat and bowels, and does not heat but in a very small degree. Honey is hot, and soon converted into bile; but it destroys phlegm, and is good for old men of cold habits. In summer time, and to those of a hot temperament, honey is hurtful. The Penidii are hot; but are alleviating to the throat, bowels and bladder, and warm the parts about the kidneys.”
SERAPION, though he has a separate chapter concerning sugar, relates only the opinion of others.
He begins with GALEN, and mentions almost verbatim what I have already given from that author: particular that sugar is not prejudicial to the stomach, nor causes thirst, like honey.
From DIOSCORIDES he has given the same account I have; that it is a species of honey found on the canes in India and Arabia: that it is in substance like salt, and brittle between the teeth like salt.
From ABEN MESUAI, he says, “it opens the bowels, strengthens the stomach and cleanses it, particularly from bile; which it expels by its abstersive property. The white sort is not so mollifying as the red, and that brought from Hegen, like lumps of salt.
“The haoscer sugar strengthens the stomach, and is good for pains in the bladder and kidneys, and clears the sight when used in a collyrium; and it dries and resolves the lax films that extend from the angles of the eyes, over the pupils: when drunk, it does not cause thirst, and on this account it is good in the dropsy, when drunk with the milk of mandragora, or Lafaha.
“New sugar is hot, and moist; and the old hot, and dry. It is good for wind in the bowels, and opens them, and when taken with oil of sweet almonds, it is good in the colic; and the old sort is good for phlegm in the stomach, unless it causes thirst, and generates thick blood. That which is brought from Aliemen, and is like mastich, and is called haoscer, is good for the stomach and liver; on account of a small degree of bitterness in it: sugar is good for pains in the bladder and kidneys, and cleanses them.”
From ISAAC BENSULAIMEN he says, “the sugar brought from the region of Heigen, and called haoscer, is less sweet than the other forts of sugar, and more drying; for which reason it does not remove thirst like the other species of sugar: but it produces good effects in pains of the kidneys, and when drunk in milk of mandragora is good in the dropsy. The milk of the haoscer also, when drunk with the milk of mandragora, has the same operations, in a greater degree; but it is not so safe, in habits of hot temperaments.”
From ABRIANIFA he says “the haoscer has broad leaves, and has sugar, which comes out at the buds of the branches, and at the bottom of the leaves; from whence it is collected: in which sugar, there is a bitterness. The tree bears a kind of apple, about the size of an egg, which yields a corrosive liquor. It produces a down, with which pillows and bolsters are stuffed. The tree is called chercha. When the leaves are cut, the haoscer yields a milk which is collected in the month of May, and skins are put in it; and it takes off the hair. The wood of the haoscer is smooth, straight, and beautiful; and musical bards, in their love longs, compare the limbs of their mistresses to it.”
De Temperament. Simpl. cap. 50.
Serapion has a chapter also from ABEN MESUAI, on the penidii, before mentioned, by AVICENNA, and RHASES. It is verbatim from AVICENNA.
—
Having now selected every thing pertaining to sugar from the Arabians, I shall proceed to examine the various opinions of writers in later times, concerning its properties. The first man who took much pains to bestow a great deal of unqualified censure on the use of sugar, was Doctor THEOPHILUS GARENCIERES; the next was our celebrated Doctor THOMAS WILLIS.—SIMON PAULI had preceded them, with his crude notions.
The opinions of these physicians were adopted, in the infancy of sugar in England, by Mr. RAY; and the sentiments of these four authors have been disseminated in every part of Europe.
[…]
I have been more extensive in my quotations from these writers than I should have been, if it were not that I wish to present the reader with that jargon of GARENCIERES, and abstruse and obsolete theory of WILLIS, which have been considered as standing authority by many subsequent writers; and quoted in academic dissertations, in the schools of medicine.
In WILLIS’s time, according to his account, and his account is true, almost every person had, or fancied he had, the scurvy.
He says,—
Nunc fere omnes eo laborant, aut se laborare putant.
The scurvy at that time made great ravages in England; besides which, the fashion of the day gave to the scurvy, all the minor straggling indispositions that were destitute of adoption.
Consumption of the lungs, and every other species of scrophula, are endemial in England. Scurvy is the same. This disease, which made so much havoc in the last century, is now scarcely known in England.
The scurvy, like any sporadic disease, may have its revolutions, and appear and disappear in the character of an epidemic. I do not speak of scurvy acquired by local and particular cuases.
It is incredible that WILLIS and RAY, two well-informed men, should not know that the description of people most afflicted with the scurvy, at all times, and in every country, is that, which seldom taste any sugar.
It is not less extraordinary that the learned WILLIS should refer to so superficial an authority as GARENCIERES; or the laborious RAY, to the weak effusions of SIMON PAULLI.
The rahpsody of GARENCIERES is entirely his own; but what WILLIS advances has a better stamen, but it is not his own. It is taken from ANGELUS SALA, whom he has not mentioned, and from whom he has made a partial selection, merely to support his favourite theory of the scurvy.
SALA enumerates many evils which may arise in weak habits and bad constitutions from the excessive, and what he terms the abuse of sugar; such as, debility of digestion; loss of appetite; blackness and loosening of the teeth; offensive breath; colic; lax bowels; bilious, scorbutic, and hysterical complaints.
But let it be remarked, that it is to the inordinate use of sugar, among already diseased people, to which SALA attributes these evils.
For, his own reflexion on the occasion is, that “the excessive use of the most excellent and salutary things is always hurtful to the human frame.”
SALA, however, views the subject with impartiality, if not with judgement; and does ample justice to the wholesome properties of sugar.
[…]
SUGAR, analytically examined, demonstrates phlegm, spirit, acid, and oil; and, by fermentation, yields an ardent spirit.
Two pounds of refined sugar produced one ounce and thirty-six grains of a limpid, inodorous, insipid phlegm; twelve ounces and six drams of a liquor at first limpid, then brownish and empyreumatic, then acid, and then urinous; and six drams of thin brownish oil.
The black residuary mass in the retort weighed eight ounces, two drams, and three grains; which, calcined in a furnace for fifteen hours, left one ounce, one dram, and ten grains, of brown cinders; from which two drams and forty grains of a fixed alcali salt were obtained by lixivium.
In the distillation there was a loss of eight ounces and six drams; in the calcination, seven ounces and fifty-three grains.
Sugar is an essential salt, consisting of: an acid salt, oil, and earth. It shews no signs of acid or alcali: It takes flame, and burns brightly. It dissolves easily in aqueous menstrua, but not in spirituous or oily. Dissolved in water, it undergoes fermentation, and acquires first a vinous, then an acetous flavour.
If one pound of sugar be dissolved in six or eight pints of water, and a spoonful of the yeast of beer be added to it, and well mixed, and exposed to gentle heat, in a vessel properly closed, but the vessel must not be full, in a few hours it will begin to ferment with great vehemence; and in three or four weeks, more or less, according to the quantity of liquor, and warmth of the situation where it is placed, it will produce a strong vinous liquor, not unlike honey and water. This liquor distilled yields a strong ardent spirit. If the whole fermenting materials be exposed longer to a continued heat, a strong vinegar, like that of wine, will be produced; by the liquor changing from its vinous to its acetous state.
—
Among more recent chemical investigation, and in the higher elementary branches of chemical science, discoveries have been made important to arts and manufactories: and also for the oeconomical purposes of life. Sugar has not escaped that scrutiny, which the magnitude of such a subject demanded.
[…]
We have now some rational data concerning the real principles of sugar; from which it may be suggested, that it has not even yet been so fully investigated, but that it may be applicable in many ways, more than we are at present acquainted with, to a variety of interesting purposes.
[…]
In all cases sugar helps the assimilation of milk in the stomach; and not only prevents its curdling, and disordering that organ, but corrects the tendency which milk has to injure the breath, by adhering to the teeth and gums, and rendering them foul and offensive.
A learned and worthy relation of mine, having been much afflicted with the gout, and having seen the good effects of a milk diet in similar cases to his own, wished to have recourse to it in the same manner, and make it a principal part of his sustenance; but he could not. It curdled, and became sour, heavy, and disgusting in his stomach. He was always very fond of milk, but never could use it without inconvenience, even when he was a boy.
However, on reading the former edition of this work, he was determined to have another trial of milk, with the addition of some sugar. This succeeded, and he now makes two meals every day entirely on milk and bread, with great pleasure and comfort; and with infinite advantage to his health.
As milk has this property of injuring the teeth, and is much used in schools, and constitutes great part of the sustenance of most young people, a tooth-brush and water should always be employed; or at least the mouth should be well rinced with water, after a meal made of milk.
No modern physicians have noticed this; but the ancients were well acquainted with the injurious effects of milk, on the teeth and gums.
In regard to sugar being prejudicial to the teeth, this has long been known as a prudent old woman’s bug-bear, to frighten children; that they might not follow their natural inclination, by seizing opportunities, when they are not watched, of devouring all the sugar they can find.
This story has had a good effect among the common people in Scotland. They are impressed with a notion that sweeties hurt the teeth; therefore they live contented without an article, not always within the compass of their finances.
SLARE, and many others, used sugar as a principal ingredient in tooth powders. It is a component part of many pastes, and other dentrifices; and what the French call opiates, for the preservation of the teeth and gums.
When milk is not the sole diet of children at their mother’s breast, sugar, in various mixtures and vehicles, makes the chief portion, essentially, of their support.
Sugar affords great nourishment, without oppressing their tender powers of digestion. The nutritive principle of their natural food, is thus happily imitated.
Sugar does not create worms in children, as has been often said: on the contrary, it destroys worms. Some writers have mentioned this; but my authority is my own observation.
In the West Indies, the negro children, from crude vegetable diet, are much afflicted with worms. In crop-time, when the canes are ripe, these children are always sucking them. Give a negro infant a piece of sugar cane to suck, and the impoverished milk of his mother is tasteless to him. This salubrious luxury soon changes his appearance. Worms are discharged; his enlarged belly, and joints diminish; his emaciated limbs increase; and, if canes were always ripe, he would never be diseased.
I have often seen old, scabby, wasted negroes, crawl from the hot-houses, apparently half dead, in crop-time; and by sucking canes all day long, they have soon become strong, fat, and sleaky.
The restorative power of sugar, in wasted and decayed habits, is recorded by several physicians, in different parts of the world. I have known many people, far advanced in pulmonary consumption, recovered by the juice of the sugar cane.
A friend of mine, a clergyman in Shropshire, has favoured me with a very interesting account of a cure performed by the use of sugar, in such a diseased state of the lungs, as is generally denominated a complete consumption.
The case is curious; and I shall recite as much of it as is necessary to the fact. The patient is a gentleman, and a neighbour of my friend. he had been attended by two eminent physicians who had given up the case as incurable. He then applied to the late Doctor JAMES, who ordered one paper of his powder to be divided into eight parts, and one part to be taken every other night, diluting with strong green tea. After being a week under this treatment, he was taken out of his bed every morning between nine and ten o’clock, and supported by two persons, was hurried along the garden-walk, when the weather was fine, which brought on expectoration, and retching; when the oppression from his lungs was removed by these operations, he was put into his bed again, and had a tea-cup full of milk-warm mutton broth given him; this excited a gentle perspiration, and pleasant sleep. He was allowed calves feet, chicken, fish, and a glass or two of port wine. This was JAMES’s practice.—The patient thought himself benefited by it.—He was at this time so reduced that he kept his bed upwards of two months, not being able to stand; nor even to sit upright in a chair without support; his cough was violent, with bloody purulent spitting, fever, and profuse, and sudden night sweats. He was then twenty-six years of age.
His disorder originated form sleeping with his bed-room window open, in the month of June, 1770; and increased to an alarming degree by the month of August; and in March, 1771, the above physicians gave over all hopes of his recovery. These things premised, I shall give the gentlemen’s own words, in answer to some particulars stated to him, by my desire.
[…]
The virtues of sugar are not confined to its nutritive and balsamic qualities. It resists putrefaction, and preserves all substances,—flesh, fruits, and vegetables,—from corruption.
It has a great solvent power; and helps the solution of fat, oily, and incongruous foods and mixtures. It promotes their maceration and digestion in the stomach; and qualifies the effects of digestion, to the powers of the lacteals.
For this reason, sugar is much used in foreign cookery, and so much introduced at the tables of the luxurious in France, and also in Italy, Portugal, Spain,—and indeed in every country, excepting England, in confections, preserves, sweetmeats, and liqueurs.
Sugar, in the form of syrup, is an admirable vehicle, to comminute and convey to the internal absorbing vessels any alterative, mineral, or vegetable medicine.
By its miscible property, it diffuses minutely any preparation it may hold in solution, or union, on the surface of the stomach and intestines; and subjects it to the capacity of the orifices of the smallest vessels.
Sugar alone has many medicinal virtues; and, made into a common syrup with water, and disguised, and perhaps somewhat improved by vegetable additions, has performed many cures in diseases, from impoverished blood, rickets, and scrophula, that have baffled the most skilful physicians; and empiricks have accordingly availed themselves of what they term ptifans, and medicated syrups.
The balsamic and fattening properties of sugar are prominently visible in all parts of the world where it is made; and not confined to the human race.
[…]
Two centuries have not elapsed, since it can be properly said, that sugar has become an ingredient in the popular diet of Europe.
There is now scarcely any person who does not mix, more or less of it, in his daily food; excepting the poor, remote inhabitants of the interior, and northern parts of Europe; whose cold, watery diet, most requires it.
The increased consumption of sugar, and the increasing demand for it, exceed all comparison with any other article, used as an auxiliary, in food: for, such is the influence of sugar, that once touching the nerves of taste, no person was ever known to have the power of relinquishing the desire for it.
When sugar was first introduced into England, it is difficult to ascertain; CHAUCER, in his Troilus and Cressida, written in 1380, mentions, allegorically, the sweetness of sugar; and, though it was in use in 1466, yet, until it was brought from the Brazils, about 1580, to Portugal, and imported from thence, it was chiefly confined to feasts, and to medicine.
The quantity consumed in England has always kept increasing; though the whole consumption for nearly a century, subsequent to this period, was inconsiderable.
The importation of sugar into England in 1700 amounted to 481,425 hundred weight; or 48,142 hogsheads, at ten hundred weight each. The price then was thirty-two shillings the hundred weight.
The importation into England and Scotland on an average, for 1787, 1788, 1789, and 1790, amounted annually to 1,952,262 hundred weight.
The annual exportation during this period was, on an average, 296,996 hundred weight; which leaves the annual consumption in England and Scotland 1,655,266 hundred weight; or 118,233 hogsheads, of fourteen hundred weight each.
Thus we find 185,389,792 pounds of sugar are annually consumed in England and Scotland.
But the proportion consumed in Scotland is small; not exceeding 12,00 hogsheads, or 18,916,448 pounds. The consumption then in England only, is 166,573,344 pounds.
Now taking the population of England at 8,000,000, the proportion of sugar to each individual, if each individual had his share, would be about twenty pounds per annum.
These calculations are made, reducing the whole to raw, or muscovado sugar.
The consumption in Ireland is not in this calculation. Ireland consumes 20,000 hogsheads per annum.
Sugar is not an article of smuggling; and there were no prize-sugars at the above period.
Before the Furies lighted their torches in St. Domingue, that beautiful island yielded, for the benefit of mankind, 200,000 hogsheads of sugar.
The importation then, into all Europe, from every part of the world, was about 500,000 hogsheads.
The East Indies have not given us a quantity exceeding 5,000 hogsheads per annum. The East Indies cannot, I believe, spare much more for the English market, without further expensive arrangements.
If Jamaica, and the other English sugar islands, were to share the fate of St. Domingue, by the horrors of war, a distress would arise, not only in England, but in Europe, not confined to the present generation, but that would descend to the child unborn.—Of such importance has the agriculture of half a million of Africans, become to Europeans.
The loss of sugar cannot be estimated, by a survey of the diet of Europe, before sugar was known. If it were possible that people could retrograde into the habits of that time, they would want some of the means then in use for their support.
From the loss of sugar, many articles and vegetable mixtures, which now constitute the most agreeable and most wholesome parts of the food, particularly of youth and delicate people, would be useless; and for which we have no salutary substitute.
There are some saccharite enthusiasts who attribute to the use of sugar the extinction of the plague in Europe;—that is not the case:—but it has certainly contributed to suppress the native malady of England—the Scurvy.
[…]
Miscellaneous Medical Observations.
[pp. 184-205]
THE YAWS.
There are several distempers of bestial origin, I have no doubt.
The Yaws is one of them; and, not being understood in Europe, and a well-known affliction in the sugar colonies, it is not foreign to my purpose to notice it here.
The yaws naturally is an original African distemper. It may be communicated to white people, as it is to blacks, by inoculation, and by accidental contact, when the ulcerous matter is carried into the habit by absorption, as it is called. I have seen several shocking instances of this sort. But it breaks out in negroes without any communication, society, or contact.
The seeds of the yaws descend from those who have ever had it, to their latest posterity. No period from infancy to age exempts them from it. Its appearance is uncertain.
Chevalier and Hillary speak of the yaws; but their accounts are erroneous. Chevalier perhaps never saw it. Hillary often saw it; but he misunderstands Hali Abbas, whom he has quoted; endeavouring to prove it is common in Arabia as well as in Africa.
Turner never saw it, and is absurd; and our great Sydenham, who was a total stranger to it, scarcely ever committed an error, but in this instance.
The yaws differs altogether from every other disorder, in its origin, progress, and termination.
Left to itself, it sometimes departs in 9, 12, 15, or 18 months, without leaving behind it any inconveniency. Sometimes it remains much longer, and ends in shocking nodes, and distortions of the bones. Many are destroyed by it. No person is subject to it twice. From want of care and proper management, the torments of the yaws surpass all description, from the bone ache, and dreadful agonizing curvatures, and caries of the legs, arms, collar-bones, wrists, and almost every other bone, and articulation in the body.
There is also, sometimes, a relic after the original malady is gone, called the master yaw; this is an inveterate ulcer, proceeding from the largest yaw, or chief determination of the eruption. Generally, this distemper terminates in what are called crab yaws. These are painful sores, or cracks in the feet, sometimes spongy, sometimes hard and callous. There are two forts of yaws, like the two species of Farcy in horses; the common yaws and the running yaws.
The common yaws, without fever or indisposition, begins with small pimples, which soon increase, and appear in round, white, flabby, eruptions, from about the size of a pea to that of a large strawberry, separately, or in clusters, in different parts of the body. These eruptions do not appear all at once; and, when some are declining, and others disappearing, a fresh crop comes out in a different part of the body. Sometimes a few doses of sulphur will force them out, when they are thought to be entirely gone from the habit.
The running yaws breaks out in spreading cutaneous ulcers, discharging a great quantity of acrid corrosive matter, in different parts of the body. This is the worst sort.
The cure of the yaws is now understood by skilful practitioners. Inoculation is performed with success. Care soon removes the principal mischief of the distemper; and the crab yaws are easily cured in the manner which I have related in another publication.
Formerly there was no regular method of treating the yaws in the West Indies. It was thought to be a disorder that would have its course, and, if interrupted, that it would be dangerous.
It was then the custom, when a negro was attacked with it, to separate him from the rest, and send him to some lonely place by the sea side, to bathe; or into the mountains, to some Provision Ground, or Plantain Walk; where he could act as a watchman, and maintain himself, without any expence to the estate, until he was well: then he was brought back to the Sugar-Work.
But this rarely happened. A cold, damp, smoky hut, for his habitation; snakes and lizards his companions; crude, viscid food, and bad water, his only support; and shunned as a leper;—he usually sunk from the land of the living.
But some of these abandoned exiles lived, in spite of the common law of nature, and survived a general mutation of their muscles, ligaments, and osteology; became also hideously white in their woolly hair and skin; with their noses, like the beaks of old eagles-starving the creatures, by obstructing the passage to their mouths,—and their limbs and bodies twisted and turned, by the force of the dis-temper, into shocking grotesque figures, resembling woody excrescences, or stumps of trees; or old Ægyptian figures, that seem as if they had been made of the ends of the human, and beginnings of the brutal form; which figures are, by some antiquaries, taken for gods, and by others, for devils.
In their banishment, their huts often became the receptacles of robbers and fugitive negroes; and, as they had no power to resist any who chose to take shelter in their hovels, had nothing to lose, and were forsaken by the world, a tyger would hardly molest them. Their desperate guests never did.
The host of the hut, as he grew more misshapen, generally became more subtile;—this we observe in England, in crooked scrophulous persons;—as if Nature disliked people’s being both cunning, and strong.
Many of their wayward visitors were deeply skilled in magic, and what we call the black art, which they brought with them from Africa; and, in return for their accommodation, they usually taught their landlord the mysteries of sigils, spells, and sorcery; and illuminated him in all the occult science of OBI.
These ugly, loathsome creatures thus became oracles of woods, and unfrequented places; and were resorted to secretly, by the wretched in mind, and by the malicious, for wicked purposes.
OBI, and gambling, are the only instances I have been able to discover, among the natives of the negro land in Africa, in which any effort at combining ideas has ever been demonstrated.
O B I.
The science of OBI is very extensive.
This OBI, or, as it is pronounced in the English West Indies, Obeah, had its origin, like many customs among the Africans, from the ancient Ægyptians.
… OB is a demon, a spirit of divination, and magic.
When Saul wanted to raise up Samuel from the dead, he said to his servants, “Seek me a woman … that hath a familiar spirit.”
His servants replied to him,
…
“Behold there is a woman mistress in the art of OB, in Hen-dor.”
When the witch of Hen-dor came to Saul, he said to her,
…
“Divine, I pray thee, unto me, in thy witchcraft OB, and raise him up from the dead whom I shall name unto thee.”
She accordingly raised up Samuel, from whom Saul had but an unpleasant reception.
Saul must indeed have been “sore distressed,” to have recourse to, and place his faith in, an art he persecuted, and thought he had exterminated. For, during his reign,
…
“He cut off magiciens, and foretellers of future events from the earth.”
OBI, for the purposes of bewitching people, or consuming them by lingering illness, is made of grave dirt, hair, teeth of sharks, and other animals, blood, feathers, egg-shells, images in wax, the hearts of birds, liver of mice, and some potent roots, weeds, and bushes, of which Europeans are at this time ignorant; but which were known, for the same purposes, to the ancients.
Certain mixtures of these ingredients are burnt; or buried very deep in the ground; or hung up a chimney; or on the side of an house; or a garden; or laid under the threshold, of the door of the party, to suffer; with incantation songs, or curses, or ceremonies necromantically performed in planetary hours, or at midnight, regarding the aspects of the moon. The person who wants to do the mischief is also sent to burying-grounds, or some secret place, where spirits are supposed to frequent, to invoke his, or her dead parents, or some dead friend, to assist in the curse.
A negro, who thinks himself bewitched by OBI, will apply to an Obi-man, or Obi-woman, for cure.
These magicians will interrogate the patient, as to the part of the body most afflicted. This part they will torture with pinching, drawing with gourds, or calabashes, beating, and pressing. When the patient is nearly exhausted with this rough magnetising, OBI brings out an old rusty nail, or a piece of bone, or an ass’s tooth, or the jaw-bone of a rat, or a fragment of a quart-bottle, from the part; and the patient is well the next day.
The most wrinkled, and most deformed Obian magicians are most venerated. This was the case among the Ægyptians and Chaldeans.
In general, Obi-men are more sagacious than Obi-women, in giving, or taking away diseases; and in the application of poisons. It is in their department to blind pigs, and poultry; and lame cattle.
In this surprising knowledge, the Africans are far superior to the Indians, though they are also skilled in the venefical art; and are matchless in arming their deadly arrows.
A negro Obi-man will administer a baleful dose from poisonous herbs, and calculate its mortal effects to an hour, day, week, month, or year. These masters could instruct even Frier BACON; and frighten Thomas AQUINAS.
It is the province of the Obi-women to dispose of the passions. They sell foul winds for inconstant mariners; dreams and phantasies for jealousy; vexation, and pains in the heart, for perfidious love; and for the perturbed, impatient, and wretched, at the tardy acts of time,—to turn in prophetic fury to a future page in the book of Fate,—and amaze the ravished sense of the tempest-tossed querent.
The victims to this nefarious art, among the negroes in the West Indies, are more numerous than is generally known; No humanity of the master, nor skill in medicine, can relieve a negro, labouring under the influence of OBI. He will surely die; and of a disease that answers no description in nosology. This, when I first went to the colonies, perplexed me.
Laws have been made in the West Indies to punish this Obian practice with death; but they have been impotent and nugatory. Laws constructed in the West Indies, can never sup-press the effect of ideas, the origin of which is in the centre of Africa.
There was a time, and that not very long ago, when poverty, ugliness, and wrinkles, with palsied head and trembling limbs, constituted suspicions of OBI in England; and for which many old women have been tried, condemned, and hanged, as perpetrators of every untoward accident in their neighbourhood.
But the most bloody tragedy ever acted in the black theatre of superstition, was performed in New England, in North America, in 1692, by the hypochondriacal descendants of the moody melancholy English, who settled in that province.
Sir William Phipps was, at the breaking-out of this phrenzy, governor of the province. This governor was originally a ship-carpenter. He, in conjunction with a few wicked preachers, and magistrates, began such a diabolical scene of murder, under the sanction of legal forms, that went to exterminate every person who differed in opinion from, or was in any respect disagreeable to, this inhuman gang, for witchcraft; the popular mental malady in that country. But the Governor was impeached for mal-administration, and suddenly removed from the province.
This horrid transaction was opened at Salem; where nineteen of the most pious and orderly inhabitants were hanged, and one was pressed to death. An hundred more who were in prison waiting for trial, and two hundred under accusation escaped, by the Governor’s removal.
The first victim in this horrid affair, was a Mr. George Burroughs, minister at Falmouth, a neighbouring village; a man of exemplary manners, and unblemished character. After his execution he was dragged con the ground, by the halter with which he had been hanged, and thrown into a pit in a lonely wood, inhabited only by wild beasts:—and, as a further mark of the brutality of these administrators of public affairs, his face, and one of his hands, were ordered to be left uncovered in the earth: which was accordingly done by the executioner.
Another irreproachable man, a Mr. John Bradstreet, to save his life, fled from this jurisdiction. For wretches had been procured to swear, that Mr. Bradstreet rode through the air on his dog, to witch meetings. The Governor and his party, losing this intended victim, revenged themselves on the dog; had him arrested, and put to death, as an accomplice with his master.
This barbarous insanity was called the Witch Plague. It was first set on foot by one Parris, minister of Salem. This fellow had a beautiful Indian maid, named Tumba, whom he had by some means or other procured from her native country, to attend upon his niece and daughter. These girls, among many others, being attacked with nervous affections and the endemial despondency of that part of America, were deemed bewitched. In some of their distempered reveries, they fancied they had seen Tumba’s ghost. Poor Tumþa was seized; put into a dungeon in the common prison; confessed herself a witch to save her life: but her ruthless master, after beating her into the confession of what he wanted, and of which she was innocent, sold her to slavery to pay the gaoler’s fees.
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I saw the OBI of the famous negro robber, Three fingered JACK, the terror of Jamaica in 1780. The Maroons who slew him brought it to me.
His OBI consisted of the end of a goat’s horn, filled with a compound of grave dirt, ashes, the blood of a black cat, and human fat; all mixed into a kind of paste. A cat’s foot, a dried toad, a pig’s tail, a slip of virginal parchment of kid’s skin, with characters marked in blood on it, were also in his Obian bag.
These, with a keen sabre, and two guns, like Robinson Crusoe, were all his OBI; with which, and his courage in descending into the plains and plundering to supply his wants, and his skill in retreating into difficult fastnesses, among the mountains, commanding the only access to them, where none dared to follow him, he terrified the inhabitants, and set the civil power, and the neighbouring militia of that island, at defiance, for nearly two years.
He had neither accomplice; nor associate. There were a few runaway negroes in the woods near Mount Lebanus, the place of his retreat; but he had crossed their foreheads with some of the magic in his horn, and they could not betray him. But he trusted no one. He scorned assistance. He ascended above SPARTACUS. He robbed alone; fought all his battles alone; and always killed his pursuers.
By his magic, he was not only the dread of the negroes, but there were many white people, who believed he was possessed of some supernatural power.
In hot climates females marry very young; and often with great disparity of age. Here JACK was the author of many troubles:—for several matches proved unhappy.
“Give a dog an ill name, and hang him.”
Clamours rose on clamours against the cruel sorcerer; and every conjugal mishap was laid at the door of JACK’s malific spell of tying the point, on the wedding day.
GOD knows, poor JACK had sins enough of his own to carry, without loading him with the sins of others. He would sooner have made a Medean cauldron for the whole island, than disturb one lady’s happiness. He had many opportunities; and, though he had a mortal hatred to white men, he was never known to hurt a child, or abuse a woman.
But even JACK himself was born to die.
Allured by the rewards offered by Governor DALLING, in proclamations, dated the 12th of December, 1780, and 13th of January, 1781; and, by a resolution of the House of Assembly, which followed the first proclamation; two negroes, named QUASHEE, and SAM (SAM was Captain DAVY’s son, he who shot a Mr. THOMPSON, the master of a London ship, at Old Harbour), both of Scots Hall Maroon Town, with a party of their towns-men, went in search of him.
QUASHEE, before he set out on the expedition, got himself christianed, and changed his name to JAMES REEDER.
The expedition commenced; and the whole party had been creeping about in the woods, for three weeks, and blockading, as it were, the deepest recesses of the most inaccessible part of the island, where JACK, far remote from all human society, resided,—but in vain.
REEDER and SAM, tired with this mode of war, resolved on proceeding in search of his retreat; and taking him by storming it, or perishing in the attempt.
They took with them a little boy, a proper spirit, and a good shot, and left the rest of the party.
These three, whom I well knew, had not been long separated from their companions, before their cunning eyes discovered, by impressions among the weed and bushes, that some person must have lately been that way.
They softly followed these impressions, making not the least noise. Presently they discovered a smoke.
They prepared for war. They came upon JACK before he perceived them. He was roasting plantains, by a little fire on the ground, at the mouth of a cave.
This was scene:—not where ordinary actors had a common part to play.
JACK’s looks were fierce and terrible. He told them he would kill them.
REEDER, instead of shooting Jack, replied, that his OBI had no power to hurt him; for he was christianed; and that his name was no longer QUASHEE.
JACK knew REEDER; and, as if paralysed, he let his two guns remain on the ground, and took up only his cutlass.
These two had a severe engagement several years before, in the woods; in which conflict JACK lost the two fingers, which was the origin of his present name; but JACK then beat REEDER, and almost killed him, with several others who assisted him, and they fled from JACK.
To do Three-fingered JACK justice, he would now have killed both REEDER and SAM; for, at first, they were frightened at the sight of him, and the dreadful tone of his voice; and well they might: they had besides no retreat, and were to grapple with the bravest, and strongest man in the world.
But JACK was cowed; for, he had prophesied, that white OBI would get the better of him; and, from experience, he knew the charm would lose none of its strength in the hands of REEDER.
Without farther parley, JACK, with his cut-lass in his hand, threw himself down a precipice at the back of the cave.
REEDER’S gun missed fire. SAM shot him in the shoulder. REEDER, like an English bull-dog, never looked, but, with his cutlass in his hand, plunged headlong down after JACK. The descent was about thirty yards, and almost perpendicular. Both of them had preserved their cutlasses in the fall.
Here was the stage,—on which two of the stoutest hearts, that were ever hooped with ribs, began their bloody struggle.
The little boy, who was ordered to keep back, out of harm’s way, now reached the top of the precipice, and, during the fight, shot JACK in the belly.
SAM was crafty, and cooly took a round-about way to get to the field of action. When he arrived at the spot where it began, JACK and REEDER had closed, and tumbled together down another precipice, on the side of the mountain, in which fall they both lost their weapons.
SAM descended after them, who also lost his cutlass, among the trees and bushes in getting down.
When he came to them, though without weapons, they were not idle; and, luckily for REEDER, JACK’s wounds were deep and desperate, and he was in great agony.
SAM came up just time enough to save REEDER; for, JACK had caught him by the throat, with his giant’s grasp. REEDER then was with his right hand almost cut off, and JACK streaming with blood from his shoulder and belly; both covered with gore and gashes.
In this state SAM was umpire; and decided the fate of the battle. He knocked JACK down with a piece of a rock.
When the lion fell, the two tigers got upon him, and beat his brains out with stones.
The little boy soon after found his way to them. He had a cutlass, with which they cut off JACK’s head, and THREE-FINGERED HAND, and took them in triumph to Morant Bay.
There they put their trophies into a pail of rum; and, followed by a vast concourse of negroes, now no longer afraid of JACK’s OBI, blowing their shells and horns, and firing guns in their rude method, they carried them to Kingston, and Spanish Town; and claimed the rewards offered by the King’s Proclamation, and the House of Assembly.