Magnetismus Medicinalium

In their qualities, properties and not unpleasant smell, they are entirely similar to the Puteoli Baths, which are commonly known as 'li Bagni Secchi' (the Dry Baths). If you come down from these mountain vents and descend about fifteen paces, there is an elm, quite a prominent and handsome tree, under which can be seen a cavity, or cavern, commonly 'la Grotta delli Serpi' (the Grotto of Snakes), big enough for two men, perforated with tube-like openings, giving it the form of a sieve, from which every year at the start of spring there swarms forth a great brood of multicoloured snakes, but not, it is said, imbued with any particular venemous quality. In this cave it is customary to expose naked those suffering from elephantiasis, leprosy, paralysis, gout, and similar hopeless afflictions of the body; they are soon melted into a sweat by the heat of the underground exhalations, and it is said that by the sucking and licking of the swarming snakes which envelop the whole body of the invalid they are thus relieved of every vicious and virulent humour, so that after repeating this treatment for some time they are eventually restored to perfect health. I had heard different things about this cave from different people, and had for a long time been possessed by a great desire to examine precisely, and with my own eyes, the truth of such a prodigious matter, so when at last, on the 8th of December this year of 1640, I was touring these parts on some land surveying business, I determined that such a remarkable opportunity to investigate should not be neglected: so taking with me a guide versed not only in the paths but also in the nature of the mountain, by a difficult and devious route, and not without danger, I reached the cave, and discovered that what I had heard about the position of the mountain, the vents or vapour-chamber, the cavern and the snakes, was all true; I entered the cave and found it as hot as could be; but I did not see the snakes, which were at that time hidden, though the elm tree I mentioned earlier was so loaded with their scraps and cast-offs that you would think it was a Staphylodendrum (Bladder Nut), Colutea (Bladder Senna) or Vesicaria (Chinese Lantern) replete with pods, which provided clear evidence of the offspring of the snakes with which the mountain swarmed; moreover, when I put my ears to the openings of the channels, a sort of dull murmur or hissing noise could be heard, a manifest sign, if not of a struggle between the air and the trapped exhalations, then surely of the concealed snakes. Having thus observed the singular qualities of the mountain, its plants, exhalations and minerals, I came down, and interrogated anyone I could find with experience of this mountain, and established a great many surprising things, which were able to supply no little material for writing. In the first place then, I found the mountain full of hot vents, with exhalations issuing in six places: secondly

I discovered them by no means fetid in their exhalations but fragrant, and emitting a sort of pleasant smell which I remember noticing in the baths of Puteoli, a sign that they have passed through places full of fragrant matter, certainly something in the nature of some kind of bitumen, and consequently, as they are very dry, hot, subtle and penetrating on account of the spirits of sulphur with which they abound, they also offer a very appropriate medicine for curing skin and joint diseases.

Moreover such is the constitution of this soil that, when affected by the hot and humid exhalations and conditioned by exposure to the sun and the position and nature of the place, it may easily be animated into serpents. Hence the whole mountain, where it cracks into vents, swarms with snakes. They, by a singular gift of God, nourished by such pleasant and health-giving exhalations, acquire a magnetic body for perfectly curing those diseases which the exhalations cure. I was told by a herbalist from Tolfa, who is not unfamiliar with those places, that soil dug from the said cavern along with the dried dust of a native snake, rendered down by mixture with rain or marsh water and exposed to a moderate sun, in springtime readily produces serpents of the kind that the mountain breeds: he further affirmed that with the meat, or by the use of pills made from the aforesaid artificially produced snakes, he was accustomed in his own home to cure any scurf and mange, and also joint pains, and added that not all snakes worked for curing particular diseases, but certain ones for certain diseases: he also related that the herb Dracontea [Dracontium?] grows there, and when it emerges from the ground, that is when the snakes emerge, and when it is concealed they too are concealed, and they never appear when it is dormant. This herb emerges in March and wilts in August. That is what he said.

The cure actually proceeds as follows: the sick person, after preliminary purges, being first laid in the cave on a blanket, is stripped totally naked, and immediately on entering is reduced to a sweat owing to the vapourising of the hot exhalations; sleep follows the sweat, and while thus drowsy with sleep the invalid lies motionless, and the snakes come out, allured from their caverns by the sweat, and wreathe the sleeper's whole body in their coils, harmlessly licking and compressing it; but at the slightest movement they flee away back to their lairs. It is necessary therefore that the invalid lies still, with no bodily movement, for which reason some people, both so the cure may be conduted more expediently, and so they will not be scared by the sight and the licking of the snakes, dull them with an opium drink into a spontaneous sleep: then when they have lain so for two, three or four hours,

those responsible for the patient haul him from the cave, put his clothes back on and take him into the nearby house of Fumarola, where after a rest he is restored with various tonics, and this treatment continues until the intended curative effect has resulted. All this I have at first hand, both from people well acquainted with and indigenous to those places, and from those who have been cured there. Among others, here in Rome, is a coachman of His Eminence Cardinal Barberini by the name of Hercules, who five years ago underwent the above treatment over a period of eighteen days, and was delivered from a disease unknown to the doctors; I got many things from him, which also match with the accounts of others.

That being as it is, the next question is: Whether, how and by what power the snakes might be able to cure serious and intractable diseases of this sort simply by licking. Now before answering this, it should be noted that the success of this cure should be attributed not only, as some will have it, to the snakes, but in very great part to this type of hot exhalations; I think the cure happens for the following reason. As the hot exhalations issuing very dry from the bowels of the mountain pass through materials imbued with healing qualities, this has a good effect, through heat, on the body placed in the cavern; the pores of the invalid are soon opened by the heat, the opening of the pores leads to sweating, the sweating to sleep. Hence the offending humours, being enticed from the centre to the periphery by the power of heat, are dissolved by the particular quality of the exhalations. The snakes, which live by sucking humours, come out attracted by the very pleasant smell of human sweat, and as they wind themselves round, by some natural power of licking and sucking, they acquire to themselves the noxious and pernicious humours which they have attracted, for the same reason as we said viper meat acquires to itself ingested poison. That the snakes contribute nothing to the cure, as some doctors will have it, but that it is achieved solely by the sweating, I judge to be false: the likelihood is that both the exhalations and vapours together with the constricting and licking of the snakes collaborate in the healing, in such a way that the licking and sucking of the snakes completely shuts out, separates and consumes the malignity which the exhalation has brought from the centre to the periphery by sweating: for it is established that no invalid is cured simply by use of the baths, without help from the licking of the snakes: which is a clear argument that both collaborate in the completion of the cure: for the snakes have some sort of power not unlike magnetism by which they correct and value that which is vicious and putrid in a man, and increase and strengthen the radical humour. So it is no accident that

the Egyptians adopted the snake as a symbol of life and medicine. That they customarily used snakes to cure leprosy, a disease native to this country, is shown profusely in my 'Medicina Hieroglyphica'; moreover the locals know that this cave too owes its origin entirely to a leper. On his way from Rome to a baths near this place, when, overtaken by night and rain, he sought shelter while wandering on this mountain, he is said to have stumbled on this cave; finding it very warm he took off his clothes and went in; he was soon seized by a powerful sweat and sleep, and spent a great part of the night there; when on waking he found himself wreathed in snakes, he rushed outside in immense horror, and having thought a little earlier that he had been devoured by snakes, discovered that thanks to them he had found complete health. Drawn by this example many other scabies sufferers later exposed themselves to be licked by snakes in the same cave, not without the desired effect.

And surely if the cure were not so excessively disgusting and frightening I do not think there is anyone who suffers from such diseases who would not willingly subject themselves to this treatment to remedy their ills; but still every year, my guide told me, some are cured there - indeed his own nephew [kinsman, son-in-law] was cured of leprosy in the cave. Another person, a chariot man from Manciano, said the same of his wife. I find something similar written by Father Eusebio Nieremberg in his 'Pliny of the Indies', about a certain American cave - but I wanted to mention this so that if anyone wanted to investigate this prodigy of nature more fully they would know where they could do so. I did say earlier that snakes deprived of their venom, as soon as they touch the ground, are replenished with new venom: this would only happen if they attracted it from the soil which is a mixture of everything: thus any other venemous animal which has made a strike, when placed on the impacted place, on account of some hidden discord of natures is the remedy for its own injury, so that the source of the ill is the source of the remedy: thus sometimes paired and combined poisons of opposing faculties are remedial and not fatal, and a poison encompasses the destruction of a poison related to it; all this is also apparent in other non-poisonous situations, for body parts injured by cold are put right by the application of snow water. So too parts over-heated are restored by application of spirits of wine, and so heat draws out heat and cold draws out cold by some wonderful magnetism.

Now, one may rightly wonder by what reason one poison could be poison to another.

For we see that a spider's venom is opposed to the venom of a toad (Bufo or Rubeta). I saw with my own eyes a spider, when it noticed a toad I had put beneath it, immediately leave the web, come down on its thread, inject the toad, and not just stun it but even kill it outright. A great prodigy of nature which I would like everyone to try. Furthermore a viper after eating scorpions or a weasel so potently returns the poison, with which it disagrees, as to kill even by touch. So I respond that a poison is not opposed to another poison properly by reason of poison: for when the spider killed the toad by injecting its lethal quality, it is not supposed that it thereby corrupted the toad's poison, nor did the toad therefore cease to be venemous, but the spider killed the toad because its venom was in its whole substance opposite, and dissimilar, to the toad's venom: in the same way that diametrically opposed to our food is that which is the whole substance of deleterious and venemous things; so that even the most venemous of animals has a poison contrary to it, by which it may be corrupted: hence there is nothing a toad fears more than spiders, nor does it usually reveal itself in dry places and in the midday sun, the places and times when spiders are apt to operate, to avoid coming across a lethal foe. But that a snake is not opposed to a snake, or a shrew to a shrew, is because venoms of this sort are very closely allied and of homogeneous quality, and are so far from hurting them that they rather seek out the venemous quality by joining with or eating each other. Hence snakes fed on snakes, or other venemous things, are rendered more venemous; indeed a shrew taking a toad into its mouth, by some hidden struggle and discord of opposite qualities, kills it instantly. Whence nature also provides for it the antidote of sage, by which the vital force is strengthened against the shrew, like the power of rue for the shrew and the weasel: anyone then who knew from experience all such opposing struggles of animals would beyond doubt be able with their help to perform utterly miraculous medical operations.