Odd Clips from Dark Windows #10

Pulverized toads were not only employed in medicine with supposed advantage, but were also considered a slow but certain poison. Solander relates, that a Roman woman, deisrous of poisoning her husband gave him this substance; but instead of attaining her criminal desire, it cured him of a dropsy that had long perplexed him. [1]


Affection deprives death of all horrors. We shrink not from the remains of what we cherished. Despite its impiety, there was something refined in that conviction of the ancients, who imagined that in bestowing their farewell kiss they inhaled the souls of those they loved. [2]


The Romans of the regal and of the early republican periods regarded the unappeased souls of the dead as most dangerous to public and private welfare. They were capable of inflicting not only disease upon men, but blight on the crops. Hence the worship of the ancestors became one of the most important functions in the religious life of the people. The central motive in this worship was not love for the departed, but fear. [3]


1. Curiosities of Medical Experience (2nd ed.), by J. G. Millingen (Bentley, London, 1839), p.30

2. same, p.60

3. Disease-Spirits and Divine Cures Among the Greeks and Romans, by Cesidio R. Simboli (Columbia Univ., 1921), p.31