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Strange Remedies, article in Hardwicke's Science-Gossip 1865
IN all country places there are very strange remedies recommended for various diseases. Generally, there is but little reason for the method of treatment. Often the doctrine that similia similibus curantur, or “like cures like,” is its only foundation. Thus, the yellow bark of the berberry-tree is in some places administered as a cure for jaundice, only because it is yellow and the skin also is yellow in that disease. Our wise forefathers called the purple foxglove “throatwort,” and prescribed it in cases of ulcerated sore throat, because the inside or throat of the flower is spotted like the human throat in a diseased state, and they thought that by these real or fancied resemblances mature pointed out the uses to which different plants ought to be applied. Whether the Digitalis was given internally, or used as an external application, I cannot tell; but if the former, I think it must have been a “kill or cure” kind of remedy.
I have heard of two remedies in Cheshire which have not even this shadow for their rationale. I observed a man intently hunting for something in the long wet grass. I went to see what he was looking for; in fact, he was trespassing in my own orchard, so I had a special interest in watching him. I found, however, that he was looking for some little frogs, which, if found, were to be placed (alive, I suppose) into the mouth of a child that had got the thrush!*
The other remedy is a hedgehog, which is confidently recommended in cases of epilepsy I have never been able to learn, however, whether it is to be cooked or raw, roasted or boiled, with spines or without, or whether it is to be tortured in some way, and made a charm of, as was sometimes done with other animals by our aforesaid wise forefathers, as in the following instance which I met with in an old farriery (blacksmith) book. The remedy was to be used, “When a horse has been frightened or bitten by a mouse in its manger.” The formula was:– “Take a mouse, and having cut a hole in the trunk of a tree (I think some particular tree was specified), there place the mouse, and fasten it up by nailing a piece of wood over the hole. Then, whenever the horse becomes unmanageable, or is frightened at any thing, take him to the tree (not a very easy matter, being unmanageable), and his fright will instantly cease, and he will become manageable.”
Here, however, is a Cheshire remedy for warts, which is most wonderful, and which is by many implicitly believed in... Steal a piece of bacon. Rub the warts with it. Then cut a slit in the bark of an ash-tree; raise up a piece of the bark; put in the bacon, and close the bark down again. In a short time the warts will die away from the hand! but will make their appearance on the bark of the tree as rough exerescences!! This remedy has been quite successful in the case of my man, who told me!!! R. H.
*a disease, especially in children, characterized by whitish spots and ulcers on the membranes of the mouth, fauces, etc., caused by a parasitic fungus, Candida albicans.
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