Bottled Tears
In Persia the past and the present are linked by the belief that human tears are a remedy for certain chronic diseases. At every funeral the bottling of mourners’ tears forms a prominent feature of the ceremonies. Every mourner is presented with a sponge with which to mop off the cheeks and eyes, and after the burial the moistened sponges are presented to the priest who squeezes the tears into bottles which he keeps for curative purposes. This is one of the most ancient of the Eastern customs; it is referred to in the eighth verse of the fifty-sixth Psalm, where David says, “put thou my tears into thy bottle;” and according to the testimony of a physician recently returned from a visit to Persia, the custom is still practised by the Persians as it was thousands of years ago.