LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 324, 26 June 1875, Page 3

LITERATURE.

CURIOUS CURATIVES.

(Continued.)

Mrs Delany, a lady wh > sweetened her blood by taking a modicum of chalk in everything she drank, had a fondness for amateur doctoring, and was not very nice in prescribing for her friends. In one of her letters, she writes, ‘ Does Mary cough in the night ? Two or three snails boiled in her barley water, or tea water, or whatever she drinks, might be of great service to her; taken in time, they have done wonderful cures. She must know nothing of it. They give no manner of taste. I should imagine six or eight boiled in a quart of water, and strained off and put into a bottle, would be a good way, adding a spoonful or two of that to every liquid she takes. They must be fresh done every two or three days, otherwise they grow too thick.’ Mrs Carter entreated a friend not to neglect taking millepedes, as it was an excellent medicine that might be of use to her eyes. Powdered wood-lice were taken in wine by asthmatical folks ; but a believer in the remedy advocates the safer and surer plan of making pills of the vermin and swallowing them alive, ‘ which is very easily and conveniently done, for they naturally roll themselves up upon being touched, and slip down the throat without any taste.’ Pliny, by the way, recommends wood-lice and green lizards boiled down together as a remedy for paralysis. Spiders’ webs were long ago prescribed for ague; sometimes the spiders themselves were administered in treacle, or put into a goose-quill, and securely sealed, when the quill was hung so as to rest upon the pit of the stomach. Somebody asks : ‘ Die of the jaundice, yet have the cure about j ou, lice, large lice, begot of your own dust and the heat of the brick-kiln ?’ Walton thought so highly of this specific, that he declared Heaven itself must have revealed it to the Jews. Bugs were once considered invaluable in of hysteria and quartan fever. Hudibras was almost taken off his legs with ‘purging, comfits, and ants’ eggs,’ although common ants distilled in spirits of wine were reputed to be of great avail in stirring up a man’s courage and magnanimity. Nastier remedies yet have been prescribed and swallowed. Powdered human heart was a blessing to the fever-stricken. Sir Henry Halford saw a prescription, dug out of the ruins of a house in Duke street, Westminster, once the residence of Oliver Cromwell’s apothecary, in which a portion of the human skull, powdered, was ordered for Sir Nicholas Throckmorton. Not long ago, a girl died of hydrophobia at Bradwell, Bucks. At the inquest, it came out, that after the dog that had done the mischief had been killed and buried, the girl’s father obtained its liver, a neighbour grilled it before the fire until it was dried up, and then the horrid morsel was given to the child with some bread, to help it down. This was done in the belief that the bite of the dog would thereby be rendered harmless, as a relative who had met with a similar misadventure had already proved to his own satisfaction ; and in his case the dead dog had lain in a ditch for nine days before his liver was taken from him ! Even if a dead dog's liver possessed the virtue attributed to it, it would be nothing like so valuable as a living fox’s tongue, at least not Inverness-way. The Inverness Advertiser, chronicling the capture of seven foxes by the gamekeeper of Mr Bankes, says, ‘A distant neighbour, hearing that Stewart was in possession of living foxes, sent to him to have one of their tongues taken out alive. Being possessed of the tongue of a fox extracted in such a manner, is supposed by the common people to be all-powerful in curing all manner of disease. One of the foxes was shot, and before it was quite dead, the tongue was taken out, and sent to this credulous neighbour, and the man who satisfied his silly fancy might have been profitably prosecuted by the nearest magistrate. ‘ Three nails,’ says Lupton, ‘ made on the vigil of St John, called Midsummer Eve, and driven in so deep that they cannot lie seen, in the place where the party doth fall that hath the falling sickness, and naming the said party’s name while it is doing, doth drive away the disease quite.’ Equally efficacious in epileptic cases is the wearing of a ring made of a sacramental shilling, one out of the alms collected at the holy communion. Toothache may be cured by digging up a plant of groundsel, with a tool having no iron in it; touching the tooth four times with the groundsel, taking care to spit thrice after each touch, and then replacing the plant. Plague and poison may be defied for twenty-four hours by a light refection consisting of two figs, two walnuts, and twenty rue leaves beaten together. Warts are easily got rid of by rubbing the ill-conditioned things with a piece of bacon, provided the bacon be stolen. If honestly come by, there is no such virtue in it. Theft woiild seem to impart a like curative power to vegetables, since a Lewes labourer, charged with helping himself to a farmer’s turnips, excused the misappropriation by declaring he only stole them because he had been told he might make his crippled boy perfectlimbed by rubbing his neck with five stolen turnips and throwing them away, without saying anything to anybody about the matter. Not such an impudent defence as that of the fellow who decamped with one hundred pounds’ worth of cotton because he wanted a little cotton for a cold in his ear!

There are such things as pleasant remedies. Cherries, grapes, lemons, cucumbers, have been vaunted as certain cures, if taken in sufficient quantity, for that English scourge, consumption ; a malady for which Aaron Hill prescribed the daily imbibing of a quart of coffee made with milk. Mr Henry Phillips found a not very nauseous remedy for seasickness in brandied tea, a remedy respecting which he tells the following story of how things are managed on board American temperance ships. ‘ It was of rare occurrence for me to feel sea-sick, but on this occasion I did; and in a state of misery known only to those who are so situated, I asked the nearest nigger to give me some brandy. He grinned and said: “You get no brandy here, massa; him’s a temperum’s ship.”— “ The deuce it is,” said I. “ What am I to do?”—“Stop a bit,” said he; “I’ll get something for you.” He immediately returned with a soda-water bottle full jof a dark-looking liquor, which he poured into my half cup of tea, saying : “ Here, massa, sarsaparilla —berry good ting for sea-sick-ness. I tasted, and found it was excellent brandy. I gave him half a dollar, and requested a little more sarsaparilla, which he again poured into my cup, while he held his side with laughter, and grinned like a hyena. I found, in after-travelling, when-

ever I had the ill-fortune to get on board a tempearance-ship, that the niggers were always supplied with sarsaparilla and similar pleasant medicines.’ The English singer’s remedy would have been a boon to the Japanese ambassadors who visited Europe in 1862, for they suffered terribly on the voyage; even the chief envoy could make no head against the infliction, despite his courageous attempt to keep the off, by partaking freely of a soup of rice and horseradish, seasoned with sardines and red herrings, washed down with champagne ! The Marquis of Anglesey, when Lord-Lieu-tenant of Ireland, was a martyr to tic-dou-loureux, and the only man who could do him any good was Brophy, the Castle dentist. He did not, as one wo ild guess, attack the viceroy’s teeth ; his method of treatment was more original, and vastly more agreeable to the patient than any that could have been devised by the College of Physicians. Brophy was gifted with marvellous comic powers, and before he got through “ The Blind Beggar of Carlisle Bridge,” or one of his many other convivialities, the marquis found himself free from pain and ready for his dinner. We hardly know whether we may reckon marriage among pleasant remedies ; it depends, we suppose, upon the form in which it is administered. Hr Caborrus, a Parisian physician, being called in by a pretty actress, felt her pulse, looked at her tongue, and so on, and then gravely pronounced marriage to be the only thing he could prescribe. ‘You are single, are you not, my dear doctor?’ inquired his dangerously fair patient. But the doctor was not to be trapped. Taking up his hat, he replied, ‘Yes, mademoiselle ; but doctors only prescribe remedies, they do not take them !’ Bulstrode Whitelock, when a young man, sprained his leg, and the best doctors of the day failed in their efforts to remove the consequent lameness. As a last resource, a German, one Dr Mathias, was sent for. He made a brick red hot, slaked it with a liquor made from muscadine, or marrow and herbs, wrapped it in a napkin, and applied it where the pain was most acute, every morning and night for ten successive days. Whitelock says the brick first soaked up the liquor foi’ined in the hollow of the bone ; then, by fumigation, and infusing the liquor into the lame part, the pain was much lessened, and his strength increased, so that he was able to go about upon crutches, in a short time afterwards to exchange them for a staff, which in a little while longer was cast aside, and he found himself cured. To be continued.