Onion
The Onion was regarded as a symbol of the universe among the ancient Egyptians, and many curious beliefs were associated with it. It was believed by them that it attracted and absorbed infectious matters, and was usually hung up in rooms to prevent. maladies. This belief in the absorptive virtue of the onion is prevalent even at the present day. "When a youth," says Napier, " I remember the following story being told, and implicitly believed by all. There was once a certain king or nobleman who was in want of a physician, and two celebrated doctors applied. As both could not obtain the situation, they agreed among Ooscopy themselves that the one was to try to poison the other, and he who succeeded in overcoming the poison would thus be left free to fill the situation. They drew lots as to who should first take the poison. The first dose given was a stewed toad, but the party who took it immediately applied a poultice of peeled onions over his stomach, and thus abstracted all the poison of the toad. Two days after, the other doctor was given the onions to eat. He ate them, and died. It was generally believed that the poultice of peeled onions laid on the stomach, or underneath the armpits, would cure anyone who had taken poison." Onomancy, it has been properly said, more correctly signifies divination by a donkey, than by a name; and the latter science ought to be termed Onomamancy, or Onomatomancy. The notion that an analogy existed between men's names and their fortunes is supposed to have originated with the Pythagoreans; it furnished some reveries to Plato, and has been the source of much small wit in Ausonius, which it may amuse the classical scholar to collate from his epigrams.
Two leading rules in the science of Onomancy were first, that an even number of vowels in a man's name signifies something amiss in his left side; an uneven number a similar affection on the right; so that, between the two, perfect sanity was little to be expected. Secondly, of two competitors, that one would prove successful the numeral letters in whose name when summed up exceeded the amount of those in the name of his rival; and this was one of the reasons which enabled Achilles to triumph over Hector.
The Gothic King, Theodotus, is said, on the authority of Cælius Rhodiginus to have practised a peculiar species of Onomancy on the recommendation of a Jew. The diviner advised the prince, when on the eve of a war with Rome, to shut up thirty hogs in three different styes, having previously given some of them Roman and others Gothic names. On an appointed day, when the styes were opened, all the Romans were found alive, but with half their bristles fallen off-all the Goths, on the other hand, were dead; and from this prognostic the onomantist foreboded that the Gothic army would be utterly destroyed by the Romans, who, at the same time, would lose half their own force.