Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/781

Rh it heals diseases of the ear, or, with oil, is a remedy for toothache. If a child be epileptic, "draw the brain of a mountain-goat through a golden-ring; give it to the child to swallow before it tastes milk; it will be healed." "To get sleep, a goat's horn laid under the head turneth waking into sleep." A goat's horn, roasted and pounded with acid, reduces the inflammation of erysipelas. Goat's grease and blood mingled with barley-meal forms a soothing poultice, while pills of goat's grease and a draught of its blood are recommended for dropsy.

Many and indescribably disgusting are the other remedies derived from the goat. A Brahman, reverentially swallowing a little of each product of the sacred cow, would shrink with loathing from the leechdoms of the early English, so important a place do they assign to preparations of the excrement of divers animals, but chiefly of bulls, of swine, of dogs, and of goats. These, and many other foul ingredients are compounded in every conceivable manner, and prescribed not merely for medicinal baths and plasters for external use, but as most unsavory physic for the inner man.

A less nasty remedy was bull's marrow, administered in wine to check spasms, while its gall was prescribed for divers diseases; moreover, it was well known that snakes would flee from any place where a bull's horn, burned to ashes, had been sprinkled.

The brain, lung, and liver of the boar are largely prescribed, while for nausea "boar's suet boiled down, and with boar's foam added thereto, is so sure a remedy that the patient will wonder, and will ween that it be some other leechdom that he drank." A pleasant cure for sleeplessness is to lay a wolf's head under the pillow; while wolf's flesh, well seasoned, counteracts devil sickness and an ill-sight. A draught of wolf's milk, mingled with wine and honey, was a potent remedy for women in dire suffering; while an ointment made from the right eye of a wolf was the best prescription that the Saxon oculist could command. The head-bone or skull of a wolf, when burned thoroughly and finely pounded, would heal racking pain in the joints, and the ashes of a swine's jaw are to be laid on the bite of a mad dog.

Truly valuable was lion's suet, of which it is stated "it relieveth every sore." Elephant bone or ivory, pounded with honey, is an infallible cosmetic, removing all blemishes from the face. "For the kingly disease, jaundice, the head of a mad dog, pounded and mingled for a drink with wine, healeth. For cancer, the head of a mad dog, burned to ashes and spread on the sore, healeth the cancer-wounds; while, for laceration by a mad dog, a hound's head burned to ashes, and thereon applied, casteth out all the venom and the foulness, and healeth the maddening bites." "For pain of teeth, burn to ashes the tusks of a hound; sprinkle the dust in wine, and let the man drink. The teeth shall be whole."