Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/255

Rh well as courage in the patients partaking of the strange admixtures:

"To cure a Wound, though the Patient be ever so far off.—Take a quart of pure Spring water, and put into it some Roman Vitrol and let it dissolve, then if you have any blood of the wound either in linnen or wollen or silk, put the cloth so blooded into the water, and rub the cloth once a day, and if the wound be not mortal, the blood will out, if it be, it will not. Let the Patient keep his wound clean, washing it with white wine; when ever you wash the cloth, the Party wounded shall sensibly find ease; let the cloth be constantly in the water."

One is hardly surprised to find, among the other horrors in these medicinal compounds, that "dung" of various and suDdry kinds plays an important part. Read this rare combination of game and fertilizing materials, in juxtaposition with the household "staff of life":

"Dr. Baffa, an Italian. An approved Receipt to break the Stone in the Kidneys.—In the Month of May distill Cowdung, then take two live Hares, and strangle them in their blood; then take one of them, and put it into an earthen vessel or pot, and cover it well with a mortar made of Horsedung and Hay, and bake it in an Oven with household bread, and set it still in the Oven for two or three days, baking it anew with anything, until the Hare be baked or dryed to powder; then beat it well, and keep it for your use. The other Hare you must flea, and take out the guts only; then distill all the rest, and keep this water; then take at the new and full of the Moon, or any other time, three mornings together as much of this powder as will lie on a sixpence, with two spoonfuls of each water, and it will break any stone in the Kidneys."

Then this "pretty" drink:

"The Lady Gorings Water for an Ague, sickness or foulness in the Stomach, and to purge the blood.—Take dung of a stone-horse that is kept in the stable, when it is new made, mingle it well with Beer and a little Ginger, and a good quantity of Treacle, and distill in an ordinary still; give of this a pretty draught to drink."

Truly loathsome, perfectly disgusting, we say; "reely nasty," "beastly," perhaps our English cousins said.

We often hear people complain of the elongation of the palate (uvula), and they have recourse to many remedies, surgical and otherwise; even if one could believe that the uvula could be affected from the top of the head, through skull, brains, and all, would the "cure" here given work on a thick head of hair, or is it only applicable to the bald-headed?

"To draw up the Uvula.—Take a new-laid Egg, and roast it till it be blue, and then crush it between a cloath, and lay it to the