AMERICAN SUPERSTITIONS
(Investigator
140, 2011
September)
Do you
want good luck?
Here's how:
•
Wear old clothes
•
Knock on wood
•
Snap your fingers
•
Give a coin to a cripple
•
Carry an acorn with you
•
Drink at a fountain
•
Touch the hunch of a hunchback
•
When you sneeze, sneeze three times
•
Attach a horseshoe over a door
•
Stick a pin in the lapel of a friend's coat
•
Carry a crust of bread in your pocket
•
Throw coins to a beggar or into a fountain
•
Carry a rabbit's foot or a penny in your pocket
•
Watch for shooting stars until you see one
•
Bow
9 times at the moon while shaking silver coins in your pocket!
Bad luck
will follow if
you:
•
Find a pin
•
Spill sugar
•
Button your coat wrong
•
Hear the sound of an owl
•
Sing while playing cards
•
Cross paths with a black cat
•
Were born during an eclipse
•
Open an umbrella inside your house
•
Wear skirts that have buttons
•
Brag about your good fortune
•
Lend an umbrella or a handkerchief
•
Light three cigarettes from one match
•
Drop a card (any sort of card) on the floor
•
Look into a mirror by candlelight
•
Get
trodden on the toes by a cripple
•
Let
soap slip out of your hand to the floor
•
Stand a slice of cake edgewise and it falls over
•
Encounter a beggar shortly after leaving home
•
Take the last piece of bread on a plate
•
Wash blankets in months with an "r" in their name.
In its
110 pages A
Brief Dictionary of American Superstitions (1965) lists hundreds of
superstitions. Its lengthier entries include Amulets, Astrology,
Athletes, Bees, Bible Divination, Birds, Bride, Card Playing, Cures,
Dreams, Friday the 13th, Moon, Omens, Palmistry, Phrenology, and
Theatre.
If you
want better
health, the superstitious way includes:
- Get rid of
warts by
killing a cat and burying it in a black stocking;
- For sore
eyes apply
an ointment made from crushed bedbugs mixed with salt and human milk;
- To cure the
common
cold drink whisky, wrap a dirty sock around your neck, tie some fish
skin to you feet, or rub onions and molasses onto your chest;
- Cure a
child’s
cough by passing the child three times under a horse;
- Relieve or
prevent
cramps by wearing an eel's skin on your bare leg, or tie cotton string
around an ankle;
- Relieve
lung
infections by putting onions on your chest;
- For
rheumatism
carry a peeled potato in a pocket, or buckshot in your hip pocket, and
wear an eel skin around your waist;
- Cure
lameness by
applying skunk grease;
- Cure colic
with
wolf dung mixed with white wine;
- Heal burns
by
applying mashed potato;
- Cure ear
ache by
inserting the warmed fat of a fox into the ear;
- For general
aches
and pains apply a poultice made from cow manure.
Or failing to
regain health, you'll die more easily if your head points
east!
The Dictionary
defines some words you’ve probably never heard of such as:
- Cledonism:
The art
of divination from words used occasionally.
- Cleromancy:
The art
of learning the unknown by casting lots.
- Coscinomancy:
The
art of learning the unknown by consulting a sieve.
Occasionally A
Brief
Dictionary cites scientific research:
Aluminium
cooking utensils: There is a widespread rumor and belief that food in
contact with aluminium turned to poison. Discredited by the United
States Public Health Service and the American Medical Association
[Nature, March 25, 1933]
"Discredited"
but there’s
more to be said. So let's leave the Dictionary for a moment. In
the 1980s science linked aluminium to Alzheimer's — the following three
quotes tell the story:
But
patients
with the form of dementia known as Alzheimer's disease also have
abnormally high levels of aluminium and silicon in the diseased regions
of their brains. (New Scientist (1986, February 27, p23)
Scientists
are homing
in on aluminium, the most common metal in the Earth's crust, as a key
factor in the development of Alzheimer's disease… (New Scientist 1987,
May 7, p28)
Strong
evidence
aluminium is not the cause of Alzheimer's disease has emerged from the
work of a young Australian nuclear physicist, Dr Judith Landsberg… The
discovery…will help allay a global scare. (The Weekend Australian,
1992, November 7-8 — Research allays Alzheimer’s fears)
With the
Alzheimer's
scare laid to rest came the hip fracture scare. New Scientist
reported that elderly people who had cooked vegetables in aluminium
pots when they were in their twenties had twice the risk of hip
fractures. People who started using aluminium cooking pots later in
life, however, had no additional risk. The report suggests that
aluminium affects the take-up of calcium in young bones that are still
forming. Acidic foods, in particular, leached aluminium from pots into
the food and put at risk people who in the 1930s to 1950s regularly ate
stewed fruit. (1993, November 6, p20)
However
"leached
aluminium" should not be of concern. The “What’s Your Problem” section
of The Advertiser responded to an inquirer worried about taking
tablets containing aluminium hydroxide:
The
body
absorbs almost no swallowed aluminium, whether in medication or in food
and drinks. The small amounts that are absorbed are efficiently removed
by the kidneys…the evidence is not adequate to make public health
authorities recommend any further controls on aluminium levels in food,
drink or medications. (1992, July 27, p28)
Generally
speaking, to be
guided by superstition is foolish. The Dictionary entry
"Anti-Superstition Society" tells about the Anti-Superstition Society -
"composed of aldermen, judges and leaders of the business and
industrial community". At their meetings they defy "the bad luck spells
associated with broken mirrors, black cats, ladders, opened umbrellas,
etc." Once they even met "in a mortuary and sat around an open coffin
upon which stood 13 candles."
Reference:
Ferm, V. 1965 A Brief Dictionary of American Superstitions,
Philosophical Library Inc.
(BS)