Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/785

Rh neighboring counties, he is to shut a large black spider in a box and leave it to perish; while in Flanders he is to imprison one in an empty walnut-shell, and wear it round his neck. Even in sturdy New England a lingering faith in the superstitions of the old mother-country leads to the manufacture of pills of spider's web as a cure for ague, and Longfellow tells of a popular cure for fever "by wearing a spider hung round one's neck in a nutshell." This was the approved remedy of our British ancestors for fever and ague; and I am told that in Sussex the prescription of a live spider rolled up in butter is still considered good in cases of obstinate jaundice.

Many and horrible are the remedies for erysipelas. Thus, at Loch Carron, in Ross-shire, we knew of a case in which the patient was instructed to cut off one half of the ear of a cat, and let the blood drip on the inflamed surface.

It appears that the old superstition may even survive in such an atmosphere of strong common sense as that of Pennsylvania, where so recently as the year 1867, a case was reported in which a woman was found to have administered three drops of a black cat's blood to a child as a remedy for croup. Her neighbors objected to her pharmacy, and proved their superior wisdom by publicly accusing her of witchcraft.

In Cornwall the shedding of blood is not required. The treatment prescribed for the removal of "whelks" or small pimples from the eyelids of children is simply to pass the tail of a black cat nine times over the part affected.

Of the burial of a living cock on behalf of an epileptic patient, we have had many instances in the north of Scotland in the present century, but this savors rather of devil-propitiation and sacrifice than of medicine-lore.

In Devonshire the approved treatment for scrofula at the present day is to dry the hind-leg of a toad and wear it round the neck in a silken bag, or else they cut off that part of the living reptile which answers to the part affected by scrofula, and, having wrapped the fragment in parchment, tie it round the neck of the sufferer. In cases of rheumatism, a "wise man" of Devonshire will burn a toad to ashes, and tie the dust in a bit of silk to be worn round the throat.

So recently as 1822, one of these quacks traveled through England "in his own gig." Each patient who consulted him was required to bring him a fee of seven shillings and a live toad. He pocketed the shillings and cut the hind-legs off the luckless toads, placing them in small bags, which he solemnly hung round the neck of the sufferer, who was required to wear this unfragrant appendage till the leg was quite decayed!

For the same malady the same remedy was in the last century recommended by a beggar-wife to a girl at Gaddesden who had been a sufferer from her infancy. It is stated that the cure was effected, and