Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/94

90 Not a very profitable transaction to one of the persons concerned is the following "Worcestershire superstition:

A writer of the sixteenth century in England says:

An incantation which was to be chanted by the oldest female in the family on Saint Agnes' Eve ran as follows:

 Tremble and go; First day shiver and burn. Tremble and quake; Second day shiver and learn. Tremble and die; Third day never return.

Epilepsy, the falling sickness, was ever regarded with superstitious dread. For this disease special amulets were worn. The emerald was supposed to possess the power of hindering an attack, or it would break into fragments. Another charm was a ring made of seven six-pences collected from seven maidens from seven parishes. Still others were: Hair plucked from the cross of an ass's shoulder, woven into a chain and worn; nine pieces of silver and nine three half pence collected from as many unmarried persons of the opposite sex—a ring was made from the silver and the cost of making was paid by the copper coins. In France they hung about the child's neck, as Brâssieres relates, "un tuyau de plume d'oie fermé aux deux exiremités et dans lequel est intoduit de mercure liquid." A broth made in the skull of a dead person; lion's hair chopped up and eaten with milk; three drops of a sow's milk; toadstools fresh and small; the juice of the bracken fern squeezed out when the stem is newly cut across; the fresh blood from a decapitated criminal; a poultice of groundsel applied to the pit of the stomach to set up vomiting—were all used in the various countries of Europe. A procedure, somewhat cruel, was to take a live mole, cut off its nose, and let nine drops of blood fall upon a piece of sugar, which was then to be given to the child. In certain of the village parishes, the epileptic was advised to go into a church at midnight, and to walk three times around the communion table.

The daily cramps and aches and unpleasantnesses that are found in all families had their specific remedies. The usual belly-ache attack passes without the use of any medical agent, and will, in the very great