Page:An Old English Home and Its Dependencies.djvu/278

264 On the third day the uncertificated practitioner tied an earthworm to a thread and let it down the patient's throat. The triton rose to the bait, bit, and was whisked out of the woman's mouth. When she was sufficiently recovered, the herbalist showed her, in effect, a horrible monster, which he professed to have fished out of her inside. This creature was forthwith put in spirits and exhibited in a phial in the practitioner's window. There my informant had seen it—and the woman had told him her tale. The story is well known of Dr. Abernethy and the lady who had swallowed a spider, which she said gave her great internal inconvenience. The doctor bade her open her mouth, he caught a fly, put it into her mouth, and then snapped his hand and pretended to have captured the spider which had come up her throat after the fly. The North Devon quack had played some such trick with the old woman, but with the improvement, that he had utilized the days whilst she was fasting in looking out for a live newt in a pond, and he deluded her into believing that this was the