al instruments to the age of the Ptolomies, which was not more than
three hundred years before Christ. This assertion is refuted by Galen,
who informs us the Egyptian King Nechepsus, who lived 630 years before
Christ, had written, that a green jasper cut into the form of a dragon
surrounded with rays, if applied externally, would strengthen the
stomach and organs of digestion. This opinion, moreover, is supported by
scripture: for what were the earrings which Jacob buried under the oak
of Sechem, as related in Genesis, but amulets. And Josephus in his
antiquities of the Jews,[110] informs us that Solomon discovered a plant
efficacious in the cure of epilepsy, and that he employed the aid of a
charm, for the purposes of assisting its virtues. The root of the herb
was concealed in a ring, which was applied to the nostrils of the
demoniac; and Josephus remarks that he saw himself a Jewish priest
practise the art of Solomon with complete success in the presence of the
Emperor Vespasian, his sons and the tribunes of the Roman army. From
this art of Solomon, exhibited through the medium of a ring or seal, we
have the Eastern stories which celebrate the seal of Solomon, and record
the potency of his sway over the various orders of demons or of genii,
who were supposed to be the invincible tormentors or benefactors of the
human race.

Nor were such means confined to dark and barbarous ages. Theophrastus
pronounced Pericles to be insane in consequence of seeing him with an
amulet suspended from his neck. And in the declining era of the Roman
Empire, we find this superstitious custom so general that the Emperor
Caracalla was induced to make a public edict, ordering, that no man
should wear any superstitious amulets about his person.

All remedies working as it were sympathetically, and plainly unequal to
the effect, may be termed amulets; whether used at a distance by another
person, or carried immediately about the patient. By the Jews, amulets
were called _kamea_, and by the Greeks _phylacteries_. The latins called
them _amuleta_ or _ligatura_; the catholics _agnus dei_, or consecrated
relics; and the natives of Guinea _fetishes_. Various kinds of
substances are employed by different people, and which they venerate and
suppose capable of preserving them from danger and infection, as well as
to remove disease when present. Plutarch says of Pericles, an Athenian
general, that when a friend come to see him, and inquired after his