We have seen how early and how widespread was the belief in amulets and charms against the occult powers of darkness.  One that has persisted with extraordinary tenacity is the belief in the Evil Eye the power of certain individuals to injure with a look.  Of general belief in the older civilizations, and referred to in several places in the Bible, it passed to Greece and Rome, and today is still held fervently in many parts of Europe.  The sign of “le corna,”—­the first and fourth fingers extended, the others turned down and the thumb closed over them,—­still used against the Evil Eye in Italy, was a mystic sign used by the Romans in the festival of Lemuralia.  And we meet with the belief also in this country.  A child with hemiplegia, at the Infirmary for Diseases of the Nervous System, Philadelphia, from the central part of Pennsylvania, was believed by its parents to have had the Evil Eye cast upon it.

The second contribution of Babylonia and Assyria to medicine—­one that affected mankind profoundly—­relates to the supposed influence of the heavenly bodies upon man’s welfare.  A belief that the stars in their courses fought for or against him arose early in their civilizations, and directly out of their studies on astrology and mathematics.  The Macrocosm, the heavens that “declare the glory of God,” reflect, as in a mirror, the Microcosm, the daily life of man on earth.  The first step was the identification of the sun, moon and stars with the gods of the pantheon.  Assyrian astronomical observations show an extraordinary development of practical knowledge.  The movements of the sun and moon and of the planets were studied; the Assyrians knew the precession of the equinoxes and many of the fundamental laws of astronomy, and the modern nomenclature dates from their findings.  In their days the signs of the zodiac corresponded practically with the twelve constellations whose names they still bear, each division being represented by the symbol of some god, as the Scorpion, the Ram, the Twins, etc.  “Changes in the heavens . . . portended changes on earth.  The Biblical expression ‘hosts of heaven’ for the starry universe admirably reflects the conception held by the Babylonian astrologers.  Moon, planets and stars constituted an army in constant activity, executing military manoeuvres which were the result of deliberation and which had in view a fixed purpose.  It was the function of the priest—­the barqu, or ‘inspector,’ as the astrologer as well as the ‘inspector’ of the liver was called—­to discover this purpose.  In order to do so, a system of interpretation was evolved, less logical and less elaborate than the system of hepatoscopy, which was analyzed in the preceding chapter, but nevertheless meriting attention both as an example of the pathetic yearning of men to peer into the minds of the gods, and of the influence that Babylonian-Assyrian astrology exerted throughout the ancient world” (Jastrow).(17)