Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing Part 15

_Thorns._--Three metrical charms have been used for troubles of this kind. _Pepys' Diary_ records "A charme for a thorne":

"Jesus, that was of a Virgin Born, Was p.r.i.c.ked both with nail and thorn; It neither wealed, nor belled, rankled nor boned; In the name of Jesus no more shall this."

Another form of the same is this:

"Christ was of a Virgin born, And he was p.r.i.c.ked with a thorn; It did neither bell, nor swell; And I trust in Jesus this never will."

Brand gives another thus:

"Unto the Virgin Mary our Saviour was born, And on his head he wore the crown of thorn; If you believe this true and mind it well, This hurt will never fester, nor yet swell."[158]

_Toothache._--King in his interesting article recites this cure: "Seeth as many little green frogges sitting upon trees as thou canst get, in water: take the fat flowynge from them, and when nede is, anoynt the teth therwyth. The graye worms breathing under wood or stone, having many fete, these perced through with a bodken and then put into the toth, alayeth the payne."[159] A nail driven into an oak tree is reported to be a cure for this pain, and bones from a church-yard have from ancient times been used as charms against this disease.

An early idea was that toothache was caused by a worm and that henbane seed roasted would cure it. The following from "The School of Salerne"

formulates this superst.i.tion:

"If in your teeth you hap to be tormented, By meane some little wormes therein do breed, Which pain (if heed be tane) may be prevented, Be keeping cleane your teeth, when as you feede; Burne Francomsence (a gum not evil sented), Put Henbane unto this, and Onyon seed, And with a tunnel to the tooth that's hollow, Convey the smoke thereof, and ease shall follow."

Even to-day, I suppose, druggists sell henbane seed for this purpose.

The seed is used by sprinkling it on hot cinders and holding the open mouth over the rising smoke. The heat causes the seed to sprout, and thus there appears something similar to a maggot, which is ignorantly supposed by the sufferer to have dropped from the tooth.[160]

_Warts._--The cures for warts are many and varied. There have been many charms devised for their removal. Grose gives directions to "Steal a piece of beef from a butcher's shop, and rub your wart with it, then throw it down the necessary house, or bury it, and as the beef rots, your warts will decay."[161] Some have great faith in having a vagrant count them, mark the number on the inside of his hat, and then when he leaves the neighborhood he takes the warts with him.

Coffin water was also considered good for them.

"For warts," says Sir Thomas Browne, "we rub our hands before the moon, and commit any magulated part to the touch of the dead. Old Women were always famous for curing warts; they were so in Lucian's time."[162]

Sir Kenelm Digby, in a work already referred to, says: "One would think that it were folly that one should offer to wash his hands in a well-polished silver basin, wherein there is not a drop of water, yet this may be done by the reflection of the moonbeams only, which will afford it a competent humidity to do it; but they who have tried it, have found their hands, after they are wiped, to be much moister than usually; but this is an infallible way to take away warts from the hands, if it be often used."

Black gives us several ways of charming away warts. He says: "Lancashire wise men tell us for warts to rub them with a cinder, and this tied up in paper, and dropped where four roads meet, will transfer the warts to whoever opens the parcel. Another mode of transferring warts is to touch each wart with a pebble, and place the pebbles in a bag, which should be lost on the way to church; whoever finds the bag gets the warts." A common Warwickshire custom was to rub the warts with a black snail, stick the snail on a thorn bush, and then, say the folks, as the snail dies so will the wart disappear.[163]

Warts, on the other hand, seem in certain cases to be considered lucky. In "Syr Gyles Goosecappe, Knight," a play of 1606, Lord Momford is made to say: "The Creses here are excellent good: the proportion of the chin good; the little aptnes of it to sticke out; good. And the wart aboue it most exceeding good."

_Wen._--A newspaper of 1777 reports: "After he (Doctor Dodd) had hung about ten minutes, a very decently dressed young woman went up to the gallows in order to have a wen in her face stroked by the Doctor's hand; it being a received opinion among the vulgar that it is a certain cure for such a disorder. The executioner, having untied the Doctor's hand, stroked the part affected several times therewith."

At the execution of Crowley, a murderer of Warwick, in 1845, a similar scene is described in the newspapers: "At least five thousand persons of the lowest of the low were mustered on this occasion to witness the dying moments of the unhappy culprit.... As is usual in such cases (to their shame be it spoken) a number of females were present, and scarcely had the soul of the deceased taken its farewell flight from its earthly tabernacle, than the scaffold was crowded with members of the 'gentler s.e.x' afflicted with wens in the neck, with white swellings in the knees, &c., upon whose afflictions the cold clammy hand of the sufferer was pa.s.sed to and fro for the benefit of his executioner."[164]

_Whooping-Cough._--It was a common belief in Devonshire, Cornwall, and some other parts of England, that if one inquired of any one riding on a piebald horse of a remedy for this complaint, whatever he named was regarded as an infallible cure. In Suffolk and Norfolk, a favorite remedy was to put the head of a suffering child for a few minutes into a hole made in a meadow. It must be done in the evening with only the father and mother to witness it.

A child in Cornwall received the following treatment: "If afflicted with the hooping cough, it is fed with the bread and b.u.t.ter of a family, the heads of which bear respectively the names of John and Joan. In the time of an epidemic, so numerous are the applications, that the poor couple have little reason to be grateful to their G.o.dfathers and G.o.dmothers for their gift of these particular names.

Or, if a piebald horse is to be found in the neighbourhood, the child is taken to it, and pa.s.sed thrice under the belly of the animal; the mere possession of such a beast confers the power of curing the disease."

We have an account of a cure for whooping-cough in a Monmouthshire paper about the middle of the nineteenth century. "A few days since an unusual circ.u.mstance was observed at Pillgwenlly, which caused no small degree of astonishment to one or two enlightened beholders. A patient a.s.s stood near a house, and a family of not much more rational animals was grouped around it. A father was pa.s.sing his little son under the donkey, and lifting him over its back a certain number of times, with as much solemnity and precision as if engaged in the performance of a sacred duty. This done, the father took a piece of bread, cut from an untasted loaf, which he offered the animal to bite at. Nothing loath, the Jerusalem poney laid hold of the piece of bread with his teeth, and instantly the father severed the outer portion of the slice from that in the donkey's mouth. He next clipped off some hairs from the neck of the animal, which he cut up into minute particles, and then mixed them with the bread which he had crumbled.

This very tasty food was then offered to the boy who had been pa.s.sed round the donkey so mysteriously, and the little fellow having eaten thereof, the donkey was removed by his owners. The father, his son, and other members of his family were moving off, when a bystander inquired what all these 'goings on' had been adopted for? The father stared at the ignorance of the inquirer, and then in a half contemptuous, half condescending tone, informed him that 'it was to cure his poor son's whooping-cough, to be sure!' Extraordinary as this may appear, in days when the schoolmaster is so much in request, it is nevertheless true."

There is a belief in Cheshire that, if a toad is held for a moment within the mouth of the patient, it is apt to catch the disease, and so cure the person suffering from it. A correspondent of _Notes and Queries_ speaks of a case in which such a phenomenon actually occurred; but the experiment is one which would not be very willingly tried. Brand informs us that "Roasted mice were formerly held in Norfolk a sure remedy for this complaint; nor is it certain that the belief is extinct even now. A poor woman's son once found himself greatly relieved after eating three roast mice!"[165]

_Worms._--A Scotch writer in the last half of the seventeenth century observed: "In the Miscellaneous MSS. ... written by Baillie Dundee, among several medicinal receipts I find an exorcism against all kinds of worms in the body, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, to be repeated three mornings, as a certain remedy."[166]

[122] S. B. Gould, _Curious Myths of the Middle Ages_, p. 273.

[123] H. Morley, _Life of Cornelius Agrippa_, I, p. 165.

[124] M. Thiers, _Traite des Superst.i.tions_, p. 436.

[125] E. A. King, "Medieval Medicine," _Nineteenth Century_, x.x.xIV, p. 147.

[126] G. F. Fort, _History of Medical Economy During the Middle Ages_, p. 72.

[127] J. Brand, _Popular Antiquities_, III, pp. 229 f.

[128] _Ibid._, III, pp. 228 and 237.

[129] T. J. Pettigrew, _Superst.i.tions Connected with ...

Medicine and Surgery_, pp. 94 f.

[130] J. Brand, _Popular Antiquities_, III, pp. 252 f.

[131] E. Berdoe, _Origin and Growth of the Healing Art_, p. 416.

[132] T. J. Pettigrew, _Superst.i.tions Connected with ...

Surgery and Medicine_, pp. 104-106.

[133] _Pepys' Diary_, I, p. 323.

[134] T. J. Pettigrew, _Superst.i.tions Connected with ...

Medicine and Surgery_, pp. 113-115.

[135] _History of Moray_, p. 248.

[136] _History of Medicine_, p. 159.

[137] J. Brand, _Popular Antiquities_, III, pp. 240 and 248.

[138] I, p. 324.

[139] E. A. King, "Medieval Medicine," _Nineteenth Century_, x.x.xIV, p. 149.

[140] T. J. Pettigrew, _Superst.i.tions Connected with ...

Medicine and Surgery_, p. 77.

[141] E. Berdoe, _Origin and Growth of the Medical Art_, pp. 397 and 414.

[142] E. A. King, "Medieval Medicine," _Nineteenth Century_, x.x.xIV, p. 147.

[143] E. Berdoe, _Origin and Growth of the Healing Art_, p. 327.

[144] T. J. Pettigrew, _Superst.i.tions Connected with ...