Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/399

 s. vii. MAY is, i90i.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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worm, and it immediately died. " There," he said ; " if this man had smoked he would have killed this worm ; smoke is the only thing that would reach the heart." K.

There is the well-known medical story of the old lady who imagined that she had a frog in her stomach. Her doctor, after vainly trying to persuade her that it was only imagination, considered a little deception justifiable to prevent this idea becoming fixed in her mind. Having administered an emetic, he managed adroitly to introduce a frog into the basin, as if it had just arrived from the old lady's stomach. The patient's joy was great, as there was proof positive that she had been right all along as to the cause of her illness. Her joy was soon overclouded, as the idea struck her that, although there was the old frog, there might be little frogs left behind. The doctor, however, was equal to this sudden emergency, for on a rapid examination of the frog he immediately assured the patient that her fears were groundless, as her late guest was a gentleman frog. J. G. WALLACE-JAMES.

Haddington.

I might mention that when my brother, the late James Fowler, was in practice at Wakefield, say about thirty years ago, he observed in the window of a certain herbalist or quack doctor, along with bottled tape- worms and other bond fide entozoa, a fine specimen of some air-breathing reptile, I think a snake, labelled, as were the other

things, " Taken from Mr., of ." Mr. F.

went in and asked the man how he dared to publish such a lie. " Oh," said the herbalist,

"it's all right. Mr. offered it to me as a

cur'osity, and so I took it, and there it is." Thus did the Yorkshireman "score."

While on the subject of medical prac- titioners and their patients, I may mention that once when the above-named J. F. ex- amined a woman's throat with a laryngoscope she said, " I should think you can see a long way down with that thing, sir." "Yes," said he, " I can see that you are sitting on a cane- bottomed chair." " Bless me !" exclaimed the patient, greatly impressed. J. T. F.

^Levinus Lemnius, a medical man at Ziricksee in Holland, published in 1574 'De Miraculis Occultis Naturae, Libriiv.' In the second book of this curious treatise the title of chap. xl. is "Alimenta aliquando vitiari ac venenati aliquid contrahere ex bestiolarum insessu circubituque. Denique huraanis cor- poribus ex diffusis in ilia sordibus simile quiddam innasci, nempe mures, forices, glires,

ranas, rubetas, ejusque rei exemplum." The dangers of eating contaminated food are set forth at large in the chapter, but a transla- tion would be too long and not altogether edifying. C. DEEDES.

Brighton.

Among the numerous apothecaries who sold quack medicines during the reigns of Queen Anne and George I., not the least famous was John Moore, "author of the celebrated ' worm powder,' " to whom Pope addressed some stanzas beginning :- How much, egregious Moore, are we

Deceived by shows and forms ! Whate'er we think, whate'er we see, All humankind are worms.

In an old advertisement dated 4 November, 1722, his encounter with a "worm" in a person's inside is thus recorded :

"Sir, You ask me Leave to let the Cure be

printed ; I am not at all against it, being for the good of the Publick. The Worm was in Length 15 Foot 6 Inches, and about half an Inch broad when it came from me, there came also some Scores of small Worms along with it, about the latter End of April, 1721. It was a great Show to all the Town, People came bv 5 or 6 together to see the Worm. I kept it about a week in this Town [Manchester!, that it might be seen ; then sent it home to my Father at Congleton, and it was as great a Sight there. A Doctor sent for it to West-Chester,

and then to Maxfield to be shown there One

thing I had almost forgot to let you know, how People flock to me to get the Powders for their Children, and there are two Persons in this Town

in the same Condition I was N.B. This Worm

is to be seen at the said John Moore's House."

J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL.

When I was a boy the name here for the water-newt was " ask." I daresay it is still so named. R. B R.

South Shields.

The idea of animals, or rather insects, living in the insides of people, and increasing in size by preying upon them, is a very old and widely spread one. The Rev. Charles Merivale, in his ' History of the Romans under the Empire,' narrates the following curious and illustrative anecdote concerning the Emperor Titus, who died A.D. 81 :

"Jehovah suffered him to gain the shore, and there, in scorn of the scorner, sent a gnat to creep into his nostrils and lodge itself in his brain. For seven years the restless insect gnawed the vital tissue. One day, when the tortured prince passed by a blacksmith's forge, the thunders of the hammer seemed to startle and arrest it. Four pieces of silver did the sufferer give to have the noise con- tinued in his ear without ceasing. At the end of thirty miserable days the insect became accustomed to the clang and resumed his ravages. Phineas, the son of Erouba, was present with the chief nobles of Rome at the death of the emperor. The Jewish