Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/390

376, Maine, comes the notion that pimples may be removed by moistening with saliva. In central Maine I find the belief that ringworm may be "killed" by moistening the finger in the mouth and rubbing around the diseased spot, taking care to move the finger in the same direction in which the sun moves.

This is only one of many survivals which I have found, in our own time and country, of the old withershins superstition, of which I shall treat more fully in another place.

In County Kent, England, W. G. Black says, in his Folk Medicine, there is a belief that a wart may be removed by wetting the fore-finger with saliva and rubbing the wart in the same direction as a passing funeral, meantime repeating, "My wart goes with you." In eastern Massachusetts and in central New York I find the notion that warts may be removed by rubbing them with spittle. A working-woman from Boston tells me that if one rubs a corn with spit upon retiring, four nights in succession, the center will come out of the painful callosity.

We have all seen how involuntarily people moisten a slight burn with saliva. As above suggested, the application of moisture, and consequent evaporation, no doubt afford some relief to the pain of a burn, and if it be on the hand or wrist the quickest and easiest way to moisten the inflamed spot very likely may be to carry it to the mouth; but if the burn be on the arm, and a pail of water be at hand, or a faucet over a kitchen sink, it certainly can not be to save trouble that the finger is wet with saliva and the latter carried to the burn. And yet the latter process is often resorted to even by persons who disclaim any belief in charms or superstitious usages. A Worcestershire charm for a burn, quoted in Black's Folk Medicine, is to keep the burn a secret, spit on the finger, and press it behind the left ear. We frequently see bruises as well as burns treated with saliva. It is almost an instinctive act with many individuals instantly to raise a knuckle that has received a sharp blow to the mouth to moisten it with spittle. Or a mother or nurse often wets her finger with her own saliva and smears with it a bump on a child's head. This suggests an interesting custom found in parts of Japan, of which the Japanese gentleman, above quoted, has told 'me. "When a child hits his head against a hard object, he at once applies his own saliva on the painful spot to prevent a lump from being formed, repeating, ' This is parent's saliva, this is parent's saliva,' thus showing the reverent belief in the efficacy of his parent's saliva."

The application of saliva to sore or inflamed eyes is in accordance with a widely distributed superstition. I have myself known several persons in Massachusetts, of considerable education and great refinement, who faithfully resorted to this popular mode of treatment in slight ailments of the eye. In Woburn, Mass., the