Page:A short history of social life in England.djvu/299

Rh Contusions, Fractures, Compress and Bandage; you'll presently by most people be thought an excellent Surgeon."

In such an age of blind superstition and ignorance, it was not uncommon for a sharp-witted cobbler or bricklayer to pick up a collection of old recipes, where he learnt that Venice soap would cure cancer, the juice of wild cucumber would help dropsy, or snails beaten up and laid to the feet would soothe the ague, to hang out a sign describing himself as a physician, and to practise his art with more or less success. The local newspapers of the time are full of quack advertisements whereby women as well as men often made large fortunes. It is hardly credible to think that a sum of £5,000 was voted by the Treasury to a woman for the secret of her three remedies for disease. They consisted of a powder, a decoction, and a pill. The powder was made of calcined egg-shells and snails; the decoction was made by boiling herbs, soap and swine's cresse burnt to blackness and honey in water; the pills, of calcined snails, wild carrot seeds, hips and haws, ashen keys, &c., burnt to blackness and mixed with soap and honey.

Nevertheless it is interesting to note that it was