a gallows, sewed in a bag and worn around the neck, are good for ague; and the shoes in which a man has been hanged, as well as the rope, have great efficacy.
Sir Robert Boyle gives a favourite recipe for ague:—Beat together salt, hops, and blue currants, and tie them upon the wrist.
A learned author reports fifty cases cured by writing the words febra fuge, and cutting a letter from the paper every day. The disease gradually diminishes, and disappears with the last letter.
Should this fail to cure, you can bury a new-laid egg at a cross-road in the dead of the night; or break a piece of salted bran-bread and give it to a dog; or, if you prefer a classic cure, place under your pillow the fourth book of the “Iliad.”
The power of colours over diseases, once supposed to exist, may be considered as a branch of sympathetic medicine. White substances were considered refrigerant, and red ones heating. Red flowers were given for diseases of the blood, and yellow ones for the bile. In small-pox, red coverings, bed-curtains, &c., were used to bring out the eruption. The patient was only to look at red substances, and his drink was coloured red. The physician of Edward II. treated the king’s son successfully by this rule; and, as lately as 1765, the Emperor Francis I., when sick of the small-pox, was, by the order of his physicians, rolled up in a scarlet cloth, but he died notwithstanding. Flannel, nine times dyed blue, was used for glandular swellings. To this day the tradition remains that certain colours are good for certain disorders. Thousands of people believe that red flannel is better than white for rheumatism. A red string worn round the neck is a common preventive of nose-bleed.
We smile at these facts or fancies; we plume ourselves upon our superior wisdom; but it may be doubted whether medicine can yet take its place among the certain sciences, or whether any one in modern times has written a wiser sentence than that of Plato, where he says: “The office of physician extends equally to the purification of the mind and body; to neglect the one is to expose the other to evident peril. It is not only the body that, by its sound constitution, strengthens the soul; but the well-regulated soul, by its authoritative power, maintains the body in perfect health.”
HOW BLUFF KING HARRY’S BED WAS MADE.
Among other very curious information contained in a manuscript, embodying the whole duty of the Lord Chamberlain, compiled by order of Henry VIII., and approved by him in council, is the following, relative to the manner in which the royal bed was to be made till further orders. The spelling is modernised to facilitate the reading.
“The old order of making the king’s bed, not to be used nor done but as his grace will command and appoint from time to time hereafter.
“First, a groom or a page to take a torch and to go to the wardrobe of the king’s bed, and bring them of the wardrobe with the king’s stuff unto the chamber for making of the same bed.—Where as ought to be a gentleman-usher, four yeomen of the chamber, for to make the same bed. The groom to stand at the bed’s feet with his torch.—They of the wardrobe opening the king’s stuff of his bed upon a fair sheet between the said groom and the bed’s foot, three yeomen, or two at the least, on every side of the bed. The gentleman-usher and party commanding them what they shall do.—A yeoman with a dagger to search the straw of the king’s bed that there be none untruth therein.—And this yeoman to cast up the bed of down upon that, and one of them to tumble over it for the search thereof. Then they to beat and tuft the said bed, and to lay on then the bolster without touching of the bed, where as it ought to lie. Then they of the wardrobe to deliver them a fustian, taking the say thereof. All these yeomen to lay their hands thereon at once, that they touch not the bed till it be laid as it should be by the commandment of the usher.—And so the first sheet in like wise, and then to truss in both sheet and fustian round about the bed of down. The wardroper to deliver the second sheet unto two yeomen, they to cross it over their arm, and to strike the bed as the usher shall more plainly show to them. Then every yeoman laying hand upon the sheet to lay the same sheet upon the bed. And so the other fustian upon, or two, with such covering as shall content the king. Thus done, the two yeomen next to the bed to lay down again the overmore fustian, the yeoman of the wardrobe delivering them a pane sheet (counterpane?), the said yeoman therewithal to cover the said bed, and so then to lay down the overmost sheet from the bed’s head. And then the said two yeomen to lay all the overmost clothes of a quarter of the bed. Then the wardroper to deliver unto them such pillows as shall please the king. The said yeomen to lay them upon the bolster, and the head sheet with which the said yeoman shall cover the said pillows. And so to truss the ends of the said sheet under every end of the bolster. And then the said wardroper to deliver unto them two little small pillows wherewithal the squires for the body or gentleman-usher shall give the said to the wardroper and to the yeoman which have laid on hand upon the said bed. And then the said two yeomen to lay upon the said bed toward the bolster as it was before. They making a cross and kissing it where their hands were. Then two yeomen next to the feet to make the feers (sic) as the usher shall teach them. And so then every of them to stick up the aungell (sic) about the bed, and to let down the curtains of the said bed or sparver.
“Item, a squire for the body or gentleman-usher ought to set the king’s sword at his bed’s head.
“Item, a squire for the body ought to charge a secret groom or page to have the keeping of the said bed, with a light, unto the time the king be disposed to go to it.
“Item, a groom or page ought to take a torch, while the bed is in making, to fetch a loaf of bread, a pot with ale, a pot with wine, for them that maketh the bed, and every man.
“Item, the gentleman usher ought to forbid