How To Remove A Bone Stuck In The Throat

        Psychic treatment was not unknown.  "Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast"; well, medieval Jews  applied this cure quite literally to people who had gone out of their minds, and it was believed that the Alpdrücken, who were especially susceptible to the charms of music, could be seduced by its sweet strains to vacate the body of a demoniac.  Frightening a patient was another sovereign remedy.  An invalid afflicted with chills was startled out of his ailment with the news that his friend had died suddenly, and in an even more wonderful cure, a man who had been eviscerated by a sword thrust groaned so lustily when he beheld what purported to be the slaughter of his children, that his bowels were drawn back into his body, and it was possible to sew up the wound and save his life. In fact, magic cures and incantations were occasionally permitted by rabbis not because of their direct effect upon the disease, but in order to set a superstitious patient's mind at ease.

      One of the most widespread medical superstitions is the homeopathic doctrine, similia similibu curantur.  The English "hair of the dog that bit you" is matched by the Mishnaic "lobe of the liver" as a remedy for a bite.  Maharil is credited with the view that "we may not employ any of the cures and charms given in the Talmud, for we no longer know how to apply them correctly . . . . except the one found in Shab. 67a:  'When a bone sticks in one's throat he should place a similar bone on his head and say, One, one, gone down, swallowed, gone down, one, one.'  This cure is tested and proven, and is therefore the only one that may be used."

From:  Joshua Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition, A Study in Folk Religion (1939), p. 196.

NOTE:  Rabbi Trachtenberg’s book, which belonged to my mother, is considered a pioneering work and a classic in its field.  I don’t think I’ll ever fully understand all the things that were on her mind.  I am very grateful to own her library.  "Alpdrücken," by the way, is the German word meaning "nightmares," literally "elf-pressure."

Occupy 11-11-11

        Years ago when Caroline and I moved to Tuxedo Park, we visited an out-building (an old disused garage) on my mother’s property where we had stored some of our possessions after leaving our airy loft in Brooklyn Heights for a smaller apartment in Manhattan. Keeping things there seemed like a good idea at the time, but the space wasn’t perfectly weather-tight and the atmosphere eventually turned our possessions (a Danish teak desk my parents bought for my brother and me when we were children; some vinyl lps; old clothes and other items I should have, but hadn’t, discarded) into an interesting sort of compost.

        Tuxedo Park has a large and diverse snake population, including poisonous specimens such as copperheads and rattlers.  You need to remember this and cross tall-grass areas carefully.  Surprises lurk there and it isn't uncommon to see sizable serpents crossing (and during summer sleeping on) our roads.  

        I don’t remember whether we were looking for anything particular that day or just doing a general inventory, but Caroline glanced down at one point, then up, having turned white as a sheet, which on her is really disturbing.  At her feet was a long something I didn’t immediately recognize, but which looked like varicolored tissue paper or, perhaps, ladies’ stockings.  Clearly stunned (but confident in her conclusion -- she is like that), she posited that the object was a freshly-shed rattlesnake skin.  Schooling and the Discovery Channel persuaded me that she was correct and it was only a short leap to the inevitable question, “If that’s true, where is the rattlesnake?”

     I remember immediately running from the garage back across the meadow toward my mother’s house and also feeling a burning shock on my shoulder before we were out the door.   Later that afternoon when we went out to jog, I felt queasily light-headed and my thoughts were distorted, rapid and incoherent.  I was looking forward to running, but I couldn’t take more than a few steps because my legs felt heavy and the arm where I was bitten was flushed and very oddly swollen.  (Imagine Francis Bacon sculpting a human arm.)   My not-very-bright, but crystal-clear thought, shared with my wife, was that I was turning into the Incredible Hulk.

       Vodka and valium homeopathy didn't abate my symptoms and eventually we learned that I had suffered a spider bite, not uncommon in Orange County, New York, but something we hadn’t considered because it was a totally outside our experience.

        Today I “Occupy 11-11-11” and have decided to shed my old skin, which seems like a good idea.  

        But I’m mindful of the fact that I never actually saw the snake who turned over a new leaf by losing and leaving his skin. 

        Did he have a good day that day somewhere else or did he merely disappear, trusting no forwarding address to the spider he managed to avoid?

Note:   Illustration No. 5 is Jasper Francis Cropsey, Autumn Landscape, Sugarloaf Mountain, Orange County, New York, 1870