Medieval Materia Medica.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 223, 8 October 1887, Page 2

Medieval Materia Medica.

A ring made of the hinge of a coffin was ceililed w ; ih the power of relieving cramps, winch aLo received solace when a rusty old swoi'd w^ hung up by the patient's bedside. Nails driven into an oak tree were not a cure but a preventative against toothache. A halter which had served to hang a criminal with vl when bound round the tempos was an infallible remedy for headache. A dead man's hand could dispel tumours of the glands by stroking the pa>'ts nine time", but the hand of a man who had been cut down from the gallowstree wa°, we need nob bay, a remedy infinitely more efficacious. Some of these remedies still exist among the superstitious poor of the piovincea, although the formula, of course, h not now strictly adhered to, the game being emphatically "baldly wor^h the candle" To cure warts, for instance, the best thing was to steal a piece of beef from the butcher, with which the warts we r e to be rubbed, after which it wa- to be interred, and as the process of decomposition went on the warts wou 7 d wither and disappear. The chips of a gallows on which several persons had been hanged, when worn in a bag round the neck, was pronounced an infallible cure for the ague. The nightmare, supposed, of course, to be caused by suj^matural agency, was banished by means of a stone Avith a hole in it being suspended at the head of the sufferer^s bed. This last remedy went by the name o f a " hag-stone," because it prevented the witches, who, of course, wrought the mischief, from sitting on the patient's stomach. Its effect upon these mischievous old crones was singularly deterrent. The poor old creatures, who could not have safe a horse the moment he began to walk, were credited with riding these animals over the moorland at headlong speed in the dead of night, when bei/fcer disposed and le.3s frisky people were wrapped in slumber. A Si hagstone " tied to the key of the stable door at once put a stop to these heathenish vagaries.