id: "If a pregnant woman sit with her face
turned towards the moon, her child will be a lunatic." [361] And this
imagination obtains at home as well as abroad. We are told that
"astrologers ascribe the most powerful influence to the moon on
every person, both for success and health, according to her zodiacal
and mundane position at birth, and her aspects to other planets. The
sensual faculties depend almost entirely on the moon, and as she is
aspected so are the moral or immoral tendencies. She has great
influence always upon every person's constitution." [362] This is the
doctrine of a book published not thirty years ago. Another work,
issued also in London, says, "Cynthia, 'the queen of heaven,' as the
ancients termed her, or the MOON, the companion of the earth, and
chief source of our evening light, is a cold, moist, watery,
phlegmatic planet, variable to an extreme, in astrological science;
and partaking of good or evil, as she is aspected by good or evil
stars. When angular and unafflicted in a nativity, she is the
promissory pledge of great success in life and continual good
fortune. She produces a full stature, fair, pale complexion, round
face, gray eyes, short arms, thick hands and feet, smooth, corpulent,
and phlegmatic body. Blemishes in the eyes, or a peculiar weakness
in the sight, is the result of her being afflicted by the Sun. Her
conjunction, semi-sextile, sextile, or trine, to Jupiter, is exceeding
fortunate; and she is said by the old Astrologers to govern the
_brain_, _stomach_, _bowels_, _left eye_ of the male, and _right
eye_ of the female. Her usual diseases are rheumatism, consumption,
palsy, cholic, apoplexy, vertigo, lunacy, scrophula, smallpox,
dropsy, etc.; also most diseases peculiar to young children."
[363] Such teaching is not a whit in advance of Plutarch's odd
dictum that the moon has a "special hand in the birth of children."

If this belief have disciples in London, it is not by any means
confined to that city. In Sweden great influence is ascribed to the
moon, not only in regulating the weather, but as affecting all the
affairs of man's daily life. The lower orders, and many of the better
sort, will not fell a tree for agricultural purposes in the wane of that
orb, lest it should shrink and decay; nor will the housewife then
slaughter for her family, lest the meat should shrivel and melt away
in the pot. The moon is the domestic deity, whom the household
must fear: the Fortuna who