"Hiccups, hiccups, go to Fedot, from Fedot to Yakov, from Yakov to everyone." Who of us has not repeated this saying since childhood when we suddenly began to hiccup? Sometimes the funny "conspiracy" helped, sometimes it didn't. It's funny, but the described method of "treatment" is very similar to a witchcraft spell. So after all, what is hiccups and can it be associated with magical actions?
Small hiccup imp
The Great Soviet Encyclopedia gives the following definition of hiccups: “Convulsive contraction of the diaphragm, causing a sudden strong breath with a characteristic sound. It is observed with irritation of the stomach and peritoneum, some diseases of the digestive system, as well as with some functional and organic diseases of the central nervous system and phrenic nerve."
The "magic" side of this medical question seriously puzzled scientists from Perm. Perm University even conducted field research called "The Phenomenon of Hiccups in Traditional Culture." It turned out that hiccups have long been considered damage, but not a disease. Its description as a type of damage can be found in the works of the famous ethnographer A. N. Afanasyev and no less famous compiler of the explanatory dictionary of the Russian language V. I. Dahl.
In a report published by Perm researchers, hiccups figured as a nervous disease, inherent mainly in women who find themselves in difficult family conditions. But in a number of regions of the Komi-Permyak Okrug, hiccups (or, in common parlance, hiccups) were considered not even damage, but a petty demon that infiltrated a person, as a rule, with water or kvass. The villagers, as a defense against this painful "ailment", offered a choice: to carry salt in their pockets, put three crosses on their necks at once, or have a piece of incense with them with prayer.
Evil dwarf, frog and goat
At first glance, the work of the Perm ethnographers can be taken as a joke. But it turns out that similar research was carried out in other regions of our country before the revolution. As it turned out, the inhabitants of rural areas of Central Russia not only considered hiccups as a petty demon, but often even described his appearance. In ethnographic literature, the hiccup demon is usually depicted as an evil dwarf, frog or goat.
It was believed that the hiccups live somewhere in the area of the human abdomen. In this case, the demon can make various sounds, not agreeing with the desire of the "master". Researchers most often spoke about the "speech" of animals: barking, croaking, meowing.
The life of a hiccup-demon ranges from several months to tens of years. There is no benefit from it, usually the demon forces the person in whom he settled to drink wine, swear, eat spoiled food. Perhaps this explains the behavior of an alcoholic, about whom they say: "It is as if a demon has possessed him!" By the way, drunk people, as you can see, are indeed often overcome by hiccups.
"Mute", "roaring" and "talking"
The first literary references to hiccups are found in the annals of the northern monasteries of Russia. It turns out that this strange disease has a very ancient history. In 1785, Bishop Benjamin of Arkhangelsk and Kholmogorsk linked hiccups not with damage or the instillation of an evil spirit, but with illness. At the same time, the prayers uttered by the monks of the Solovetsky Monastery contained the words: "… Lord, deliver us from hiccups," and in the village of Sura there was a nunnery where people suffering from hiccups settled.
Inhabitants of the Russian North distinguish several types of hiccups: “roaring”, “speaking” and “dumb”. And we are not talking about different diseases, but about one. At first, the person was struck by the "mute-hiccups", then "roaring" and "talking".
By the way, in the Guinness Book of Records there is information about a certain Charles Osborne from the American state of Iowa, who began to hiccup in 1922 and stopped in 1990. However, he was married twice and had eight children.
And what about medicine?
Surprisingly, doctors still cannot really explain where this attack comes from. They only describe the processes occurring in the human body during hiccups. Here's what medical reference books say about her:
“Hiccups are a nonspecific dysfunction of external respiration, which occurs as a result of a series of convulsive jerky contractions of the diaphragm and is subjectively manifested by unpleasant short and intense respiratory movements. It sometimes occurs in healthy people for no apparent reason and, as a rule, is a harmless, rapidly disappearing phenomenon."
As the causes of hiccups, doctors most often mention sudden cooling, severe overeating, when the stomach stretches from the abundance of food, and part of the food gets stuck in the esophagus. Hiccups also occur in case of nervous disorders during domestic conflicts.
To get rid of hiccups, doctors recommend several relatively simple tricks: eat something sour or sweet, drink water with your hands behind your back so that the water flows from top to bottom. They say that if you scare a hiccuping person, the hiccups will stop. There are also quite extraordinary ways to deal with this unpleasant condition: tie a red thread around your forehead and focus on it, open your mouth and hold your tongue with your fingertips for a while, or … Make a bet on money.
Hiccups can be defeated in different ways, but its origin remains a mystery behind seven seals. It seems that there really was some magic here.
Folk omens and how else you can get rid of hiccups
- “To stop hiccuping, moisten the index finger of your right hand with saliva and cross the toe of your left shoe three times, repeating 'Our Father' in reverse.” (Cornwall).
- "Remember, Lord, King David and all his meekness!" - a saying when hiccups or yawns.
- Hiccuped you - to know, someone envied a piece.
- What, hiccups attacked you? Drink some water or stretch through yourself.
- It's hard to hiccup - to be abused, easy - someone remembered.
- Until now, hiccups are widely considered a sign that someone is remembering a hiccup. In order to determine who exactly remembered, after each “ik”, you must say the name of one of your relatives, friends or acquaintances. On whose name the hiccups stop, he remembers.
Magazine: Secrets of the 20th century №25. Author: Dmitry Sokolov, Margarita Troitsyna