Is there a reason for the persistent association between scorpions, crabs, and basil?
[It's been long enough this probably needs a link to the original scorpion post for context]
As far as I'm aware, the association between scorpions and crabs comes from straightforward physical similarities (pincers, exoskeletons, etc.). Though when Ovid gives a list of animals that grow from decay in Book 15 of the Metamorphoses he says scorpions come specifically from crabs that have been buried without their claws, which is the opposite of what I'd expect.
[from the 1567 Golding translation, which gets overhyped as one of Shakespeare's influences, but was still an important text in the English Renaissance. also cleas=claws & writhen=twisted]
The association with basil is more complicated. The short version is that the first confirmed Greek mention of basil comes from a physician called Chrysippus (~4th c. BCE). His works were lost, but enough survives in later texts to know that he thought basil was extremely dangerous and unfit for human consumption, but doesn't seem to have mentioned scorpions.
Africa and Asia have a much longer history with basil, and when it does start to get linked with scorpions in classical texts there’s often an accompanying reference to “African” practices. Which isn’t enough to establish cross-cultural influence, but for the purposes of this blog I think it’s okay to speculate that a preexisting link between basil and scorpions + the Greek & Roman medical practice of treating scorpion stings with a mixture of basil, wine and vinegar + the fact that scorpions are frequently found in the kinds of places where basil grows + a cultural belief in the spontaneous generation of small animals made the idea of scorpions growing from basil seem pretty reasonable.
That’s a lot of words without a primary source, so here’s internet favourite Pliny the Elder providing an example of what I’m talking about:
Brief digression, but the highlight of Pliny’s basil facts actually has nothing to do with scorpions. It’s this Totally Normal Gardening Tip:
Obviously it’s fun to imagine a world where this caught on and HGTV stands for Hostile Gardening Television, but it might be even more fun to imagine someone at a fair asking a prizewinning vegetable grower what their secret is and being told “ancient wisdom: swear at yer zucchini.” /end digression
This is already a pretty long post, but while I’m on the subject I can’t not talk about the ‘sniffing too much basil will give you brain scorpions’ urban legend popularized in the 16th-17th centuries. To start with, here are two 17th c. summaries that also give a pretty good idea of the Basil Discourse ™ at the time:
[Culpeper’s The English Physician (1652)]
[Topsell’s History of Four-footed Beasts and Serpents (1658)]
Point form notes because there’s a lot to unpack:
Billingsgate is a fishmarket famous for vulgar language
Non nostrum inter nos tantas componere lites is Virgil reference for “above my pay grade”
Dr. Reason is an allegorical figure representing logic/common sense
The link with basilisks comes from dubious folk etymology, but still probably contributed to basil’s bad reputation
Hollerius is the Latin name for the French physician Jacques Houllier, and I went through his De morborum internorum curatione, liber I (1572) & De morbis internis, libri II (1589) in hopes of finding more information about Brain Scorpion Patient Zero
Each volume contains a one (1) sentence summary saying that an Italian man grew a scorpion in his brain and then died as a result of smelling too much basil
The Gesner example comes from a treatise on scorpions published posthumously as part of Vol. 5 of his Historiae animalium (1587)
It also doesn’t provide any information beyond “an apothecary told me about a French girl who died after smelling basil and turned out to have a brain full of scorpions”
Obviously the real reason for the vagueness is because these are, at absolute best, examples of the false cause fallacy, but I still have a pressing need to know how patients’ basil-sniffing habits entered the medical record
Like, where would you even get that information?
Catch me learning necromancy so I can ask 16th c. physicians some pointed questions about brain scorpion diagnostic criteria, I guess
After all that, it seems fitting to conclude this post with someone who has no problem describing exact methodology: the scientist and mystic Jan Baptist van Helmont, who provides a recipe for growing scorpions from basil in his Oriatrike, or Physick Refined (1664)
I mean, what can you say to that except
He also has a recipe for growing mice by leaving a dirty shirt in a container of wheat:
