NECKLACES OF HUMAN FINGERS.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Bourke, John Gregory
Dr. Frank Baker delivered before the Anthropological Society of Washington, D. C., a lecture upon these superstitions as related to the "hand of glory," to which the student is respectfully referred.[162]
An Aztec warrior always tried to procure the middle finger of the left hand of a woman who had died in childbirth. This he fastened to his shield as a talisman.[163] The great weapon of the Aztec witches was the left arm of a woman who had died in her first childbirth.[164] Pliny mentions "still-born infants cut up limb by limb for the most abominable practices, not only by midwives, but by harlots even as well!"[165]
The opinions entertained in Pliny's time descended to that of the Reformation—