[1] The number seven has a long history of mystical and biblical significance, such as seven virtues, seven deadly sins, Seven Sleepers and Seven Heavens.
[4] Belief in the efficacy of seventh son healers and other folklore related to healing persisted to the 20th century in parts of Ireland.
He would also perform the inciaramazione rite on other people to ensure protection from snakes by spreading a special oil on their arm.
The local myth of the lobizón is not connected to the custom that began over 100 years ago by which every seventh son (or seventh daughter) born in Argentina to "legitimately married parents of good conduct and moral character" is eligible to become godchild to the president.
"[8] According to Edward Augustus Kendall in Travels through the Northern Parts of the United States, in the year 1807–1808, while he visited the Newgate copper mine and prison, he met an innkeeper who told him that "there was to be found in the surrounding hills, a black stone, of a certain species, through which a seventh son of a seventh son, born in the month of February, with a caul on his head, can discern everything that lies in the depths and interior of the globe."