Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/786

766 that the girl never suffered afterward. But it is worthy of note that the beggar-wife explained that the efficacy of the charm lay in the death of the poor mutilated toad, which, deprived of its legs, would pine and die, but as it slowly wasted so would the distemper pass away. Here, then, as in the offering of the live cock, was involved the principle of sacrifice—a life for a life.

Another girl in the same village was partly cured of the "evil" in her eyes by applying a sun-dried toad to the back of her neck, whereby blisters were raised. Poor toads are still made to do service in divers manners in Cornwall and Northampton for the cure of nose-bleeding and quinsy; while "toad-powder," or even a live toad or spider shut up in a box, is still, in some places, accounted as useful a charm against contagion as it was in the days of Sir Kenelm Digby. The medicine known to our ancestors as Pulvis Æthiopicus (a valuable remedy both for external and internal use in the treatment of small-pox and dropsy) was neither more nor less than powdered toad.

Frogs are well-nigh as valuable as toads to the sick poor, who are rarely lacking in the primary necessity of faith in the means adopted. Thus, frog's spawn, placed in a stone jar and buried for three months till it turns to water, has been found wonderfully efficacious in Donegal, when well rubbed into a rheumatic limb. How much of the credit was due to the rubbing is not recorded. In Aberdeenshire a cure recommended for sore eyes is to lick the eyes of a live frog. The man who has thus been healed has henceforth the power of curing all sore eyes by merely licking them! In like manner it is said in Ireland that the tongue which has licked a lizard all over will be for ever endued with a marvelous power of healing whatever sore or pain it touches.

Another Irish remedy is to apply the tongue of a fox to draw a troublesome thorn from the foot; the tooth of a living fox to be worn as an amulet is also deemed valuable as a cure for an inflamed leg. The primary difficulty is to catch the fox and extract his tooth!

With respect to deep-seated thorns, the application of a cast-off snake-skin is efficacious, not to attract the thorn toward itself, but to expel it from the opposite side of the hand or foot. But, once we touch on the virtues of the mystic snake, we find its reputation just as great in Britain's medicine folk-lore as in Japan, where the great snake-skins held so conspicuous a place in the druggist's shop, or in China, where the skin of a white-spotted snake is valued as the most efficacious remedy for palsy, leprosy, and rheumatism.

Strange to say, in the old Gaelic legends, there is a certain white snake who receives unbounded reverence as the king of snakes, and another legend tells of a nest containing six brown adders and one pure white one, which latter, if it can be caught and boiled, confers