Præcepta de Medicina

The Romans believed that the magical power of prayers was enhanced if they were uttered with a loud voice.Hence a saying attributed to Seneca: "So speak to God as though all men heard your prayers." Of great repute among the healing-spells of antiquity was the cabalistic word „Abracadabra“, which occurs first in a medical treatise entitled "Præcepta de Medicina," by the Roman writer Quintus Serenus Samonicus,...

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A mysterious word

Abracadabra, a mysterious word, to which the superstitious in former times attributed a magical power to expel diseases, especially the tertian-ague, worn about their neck in this manner.Some think, that Basilides, the inventor, intends the name of GOD by it. The method of the cure was prescribed in these verses. "Inscribes Chartae quod dicitur Abracadabra Saepius, & subter repetes,...

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The Slavery of Free Verse

The truth most needed to-day is that the end is never the right end.The beginning is the right end at which to begin. The modern man has to read everything backwards; as when he reads journalism first and history afterwards--if at all. He is like a blind man exploring an elephant, and condemned to begin at the very tip of its tail. But he is still more unlucky; for when he has a first principle, it is generally...

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The Romance of Rhyme

The romance of rhyme does not consist merely in the pleasure of a jingle, though this is a pleasure of which no man should be ashamed.Certainly most men take pleasure in it, whether or not they are ashamed of it. We see it in the older fashion of prolonging the chorus of a song with syllables like “rumty tumty” or “tooral looral.” We see it in the similar but later fashion of discussing whether a truth...

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Recurrent, reciprocal, or reversible words and verses.

Reading in every Style—What is a Palindrome?—What St. Martin said to the Devil—The Lawyer’s Motto—What Adam said to Eve—The Poor Young Man in Love—What Dean Swift wrote to Dr. Sheridan—“The Witch’s Prayer”—The Device of a Lady—Huguenot and Romanist; Double Dealing.      The only fair specimen we can find of reciprocal words, or those which, read backwards or forwards, are the same, is the...

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James Appleton Morgan - Macaronic poetry

Another ingenious verse is the Palindrome, from πάλιν and δρóμος, to flow or run back; sometimes called Sotadic verse, from Sotades, their inventor, though a higher (or a lower) authority is sometimes given; the first palindrome having been, according to one account, the impromptu of an unfortunate demon, while carrying most unwillingly a portly canon of Combremer from Bayeux to Rome; it reads the same either...

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