Page:Popular medicine, customs and superstitions of the Rio Grande, John G. Bourke, 1894.pdf/2

120 well to examine into the superstitions of the Old World in regard to this matter, and we should then see that they have been transplanted to this side of the ocean. Saint Anthony is the friend and patron of the pig in Italy as he is in Mexico, and in the churches of both countries his statue may be seen with his faithful porcine adjunct by his side. Much interesting information on this point is to be extracted from "The Golden Bough" of James G. Frazer, London, 1890.

Amulets and Talismans (Votive Offerings).—Maria Antonia wore at her neck a "miraculous" package which I persuaded her to open. It was made up of a "miraculous" prayer, printed on paper, which had been broken up and reduced to a pulp by the action of time, and of a small piece of blessed wax from one of the candles which had burned upon the altar while mass was going on.

To cure Asthma ("Orguilla").—Take a talcoyote (badger), bake it in the oven until perfectly dry, grind it up, mix on a "metate" with clean flour, add a stew made of the Rio Grande jackdaw, locally known as the orraca, add a trifle of sugar, and put a little of the above mixture in the patient's food. Give in the moon's first quarter. When the moon ends, the disease will end. All diseases which have had their beginning with a new moon can be made to go out with a waning moon. (Maria Antonia.)

Asthma.—Make a drink of hot water and the ripe (black) beans of the ebony roasted. (M. A.)

Some people smoke "mariguan" or Indian hemp, in their cigarritos.

Axolotl.—The most curious and incomprehensible superstition of the Mexican people, and one which has the widest dissemination, concerns the curious lizard called the axolotl, a name by which it was known to the Aztecs, although I do not feel prepared to say that they had the superstition concerning it.

The axolotl frequents damp, slimy places, near pools or tanks of water, and all kinds of refuse ("basura").

It will enter the person of a woman, at certain times, and will remain just as long as would a human foetus.

Young girls, at their first change of life, are especially exposed, and will manifest all the symptoms of pregnancy.

It is within the limits of probability, although I am not sufficiently posted in medical matters to assert that such is the case, that a badly nourished girl would be susceptible to cold, rheumatism, and dropsy at such a critical moment in her life, and that imagination could supply any features that might be lacking to make the romance complete. There are several remedies; one calls for a liberal fomentation with hot goat's milk, and in the other, a young