The Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son

Dr. Isaac Calcott arrived in Providence, Rhode Island in June of 1769. Well-dressed and in his thirties, Dr. Calcott claimed he could treat nearly thirty separate disorders, including "scale heads, St. Anthony's fire, vapors, King's evil, and deafness."

I don't know what most of those ailments are, but apparently they were quite Common in Colonial New England, because Dr. Calcott traveled through the region for the next four years, advertising his "Art of Curing" in all the local newspapers.

Although there were plenty of local physicians in the area in the 1700s, Dr. Calcott was part of a wave of itinerant doctors and healers who appeared in New England at this time. Most were men and came from Europe, although one Native American woman traveled through Essex County claiming to cure cancer through herbal treatments. Like Dr. Calcott, most also advertised through newspaper ads, but some relied just on local word of mouth.

These traveling healers were denounced by the more established doctors and often advocated highly unorthodox treatments. In addition to herbal treatments and elixirs, electrical devices were frequently used, often in front of a paying audience. These electrical demonstrations were part medicine and part entertainment.

Dr. Calcott didn't perform in front of an audience, but he did use a particularly strange technique. Here is an account of how he cured six year old Elizur Belden of blindness:

"Mrs. Belden holding the Child in his Lap, Dr. Calcott ... Licked the eyes, first putting his Tongue into one Eye and then into the other Eye of the Child - it was soon done, - and instantly the Child saw, and ever after continued to see well."

That account was written by Ezra Stiles, the President of Yale, after talking with Elizur Belden's parents many years after the cure. The testimony is reliable. The licking seemed to be effective, but why?

The modern scientific mindset would probably chalk it all up to psychosomatic illness, but Isaac Calcott claimed he had special healing powers because he was the seventh son of a seventh son. In many parts of Europe it was (and still is) believed that the seventh son of a seventh son has special abilities. Often these were healing powers, but in some places seventh sons could also predict the future and find lost objects. Wikipedia has a short but interesting article on this belief. In contemporary America, the seventh son motif is still popular in genre fiction.

The licking was also probably considered effective because spit was known to be a fluid highly charged with personal power. The average person's spit was often used in simple folk magic, but as the seventh son of a seventh son Dr. Calcott's saliva was obviously quite powerful. Jesus spit in a blind man's ear to make him hear; Dr. Calcott licked a blind boy's eyes to make him see.

Unfortunately the old adage "Physician, heal thyself" seems to apply to Dr. Calcott. Despite, or perhaps because of, his amazing powers Calcott was an alcoholic. Once, in Middletown, Connecticut, the good doctor was so drunk that two young boys were able to tar and feather him. He was last seen practicing his medical magic in 1773 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire before disappearing from the historical record.

I found this information in Peter Benes's article "Itinerant Physicians, Healers, and Surgeon-Dentists" in Medicine and Healing. Volume 15 of the Proceedings of the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife.

The Magic Power of Spit

I'm not a big fan of spitting. Actually, I get really grossed out when I see people spitting on the sidewalk or (God forbid!) the subway platform. Not only is it disgusting, but these people are wasting the magical power inherent in their saliva.

What's that? You didn't know your spit was magic? I guess it's just another flaw in our modern educational system. To edify you, here are some interesting examples from Clifton Johnson's What They Say in New England:

• "When fishing, spit on your bait for good luck. Certain of the most ignorant class will spit on money for good luck."
• If you put on a garment inside out, you should wear it that way to bring good luck. If you want to put it on the right way and not lose the luck, you should spit on it to keep the good luck in. "To do this genteelly, you need only to moisten the finger-tip with the tongue, and touch the wrong garment.Then you can turn the garment again and no harm will result." And then no one will think you're crazy for wearing your pants inside out.  
• If you need to find a missing cow, you can catch a daddy long-legs and hold one of its legs down with you finger. It will point with another leg towards the direction where you can find the cow. However, if you can't find a daddy long-legs, you can "spit in the palm of the left hand, strike the spittle with a finger of the right, and the direction the spittle jumps in will show what course to take in looking for the cow."
• Back in the days when teachers would hit students with rulers, boys believed that if they spit in their hands before the teacher struck the ruler would break in two. 
• To bring yourself riches, spit over your pinky when you see a white horse. 

Clifton Johnson collected this folklore in the late 1800s, but even older references to magic spit can be found in New England. For example, in the 1600s minister Cotton Mather claimed the accused witch Goody Glover of cursing someone by anointing a stone with her spit. It sounds silly to us today, but this was serious business for the Puritans. 

I'm not a saliva specialist, but it looks like the connection between saliva and magical power is not exclusive to New England. For example, in Islamic dream interpretation spit is representative of the dreamer's personal power, and someone who awakes from a bad dream should spit three times to the left, which will free them from the nightmare's influence. Wikipedia claims that mothers in North India and Pakistan will spit on their children to protect them from evil.

If we go even further back, Jesus used his saliva to effect miraculous cures. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus makes a mute man talk by spitting on his finger and sticking it in the man's mouth, and makes a blind man see by spitting on his eyes. (Thanks to this site for pointing this out!) 

That still sounds a little gross to me but I guess it was OK since it was the Messiah's saliva. I still don't want to see anyone spitting on the subway platform though.