If thou frequently smearest and touchest children’s gums with bitches’ milk, the teeth wax without sore.
Various Leechdoms.
Some “Fly-Leaf Leechdoms” of unknown authorship follow. In these information concerning the four humours is given, hot and cold, moist and dry remedies are distinguished, and we are told of the forty-five dies caniculares “in which no leech can properly give aid to any sick man.” It is carefully noted that the same disorder may occur from different causes, and quite scientifically the practitioner is advised to vary his treatment accordingly. Thus, for example, dealing with “host” (cough) we are told that “it hath a manifold access, as the spittles are various. Whilom it cometh of immoderate heat, whilom of immoderate cold, whilom of immoderate dryness.” The remedies must depend on the causes of the complaint. The “tokens” of “a diseased maw” of “a half head’s ache” (megrims) and of other distempers are set forth with graphic simplicity, and often sensible advice as to diet and medicine is given. But not infrequently the remedy may not be an easily procurable one. For instance “If one drink a creeping thing in water, let him cut open a sheep instantly and drink the sheep’s blood hot”; and “if a man will eat rind which cometh out of Paradise no venom will damage him.” The writer considerately adds that such rind is “hard gotten.”
The following is apparently adapted from Alexander of Tralles, or some other of the later classical authors.
“Against gout and against the wristdrop; take the wort hermodactylus, by another name titulosa, that is in our own language the great crow leek; take this leek’s heads and dry them thoroughly, and take thereof by weight of two and a half pennies, and pyrethrum and Roman rinds, and cummin, and a fourth part of laurel berries, and of the other worts, of by weight of a halfpenny, and six pepper corns, unweighed, and grind all to dust, and add wine two egg-shells full; this is a true leechcraft. Give it to the man to drink till that he be hole.”
A few other recipes in the Leechbooks may be quoted:—
For headache take a vessel full of leaves of green rue, and a spoonful of mustard seed, rub together, add the white of an egg, a spoonful, that the salve may be thick. Smear with a feather on the side which is not sore.
For ache of half the head (megrim) take the red nettle of one stalk, bruise it, mingle with vinegar and the white of an egg, put all together, anoint therewith.
For mistiness of the eyes take juice of fennel and of rose and of rue, and of dumbledores’ honey; (the dumbledore is apis bombinatrix); and kid’s gall, mixed together. Smear the eyes with this. Again, take live periwinkles burnt to ashes; and let him mix the ashes with dumbledores’ honey.
For sore and ache of ears take juice of henbane, make it lukewarm, and then drip it on the ear; then the sore stilleth. Or, take garlic and onion and goose fat, melt them together, squeeze them on the ear. Or, take emmets’ eggs, crush them, squeeze them on the ear.