Strangely visited people,
All swollen and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye,
The mere despair of surgery, he cures,
Hanging a golden stamp upon their necks,
Put on with holy prayers.
The cure of Naaman, who seems to have suffered from this disease, by the prophet Elisha (Kings, II., 5) was accomplished by advising the great general to bathe in a certain river. A very delightful cure must have been the one mentioned by Soane.[1] A person suffering from scrofula was to kiss seven virgins, daughters of the same mother, for seven days consecutively. Another remedy, less esthetic than the one just mentioned, was to tie a toad's leg around the part affected.
The great evils of cholera, black death or plague, had very many superstitious beliefs as the basis for their cure or avoidance. The condition of affairs caused by one of these dreaded diseases can be appreciated by perusing Daniel Defoe's description of the state of things before and after the fire of London. In Morocco, as a prophylactic procedure, the priests advise the people to avoid sandhills, and to keep close to the walls to avoid the evil spirits.[2] As a charm against cholera, the Japanese hang a bunch of onions or a leaf of kiri, or a rag monkey in front of their house doors.[3] In some parts of Russia, when the approach of cholera is feared, all the village maidens gather together at night, in the usual toilet of the hour, and walk in procession around their village; one girl walking ahead with an Icon, the rest following with a plow.[4]
For consumption, the white plague, which even now demands a heavy toll of human life annually, the people had very many home remedies, which probably did very little remedying. The specifics that were in vogue were rather empiric, to say the least, and sometimes altogether disgusting. To live at a butcher's shop, to suck healthy person's blood, to sleep over a cow-house, to inhale the smoke of a limekiln, to pass through a flock of sheep leaving the fold in the morning, to feed on a large whiteshelled snail, to eat muggons or mugwort—all of these were current medicaments in various localities. Children who had tuberculosis were allowed to lie over night at a certain well, named in honor of a certain saint. In order to prevent the spread of this malady in the household, they buried the corpse with the face downward.
In hectic and consumptive diseases, they pare the nails of the patient, put these parings into a rag cut from his clothes, then wave their hand with the rag thrice around his head, crying "Deas Soil," after which they bury the rag in some unknown place.
