“2. To remove freckles. Rub a bull’s gall on the face.
“3. To cure headaches. Gather plantain-root before sunrise, and tie it on the head. Use also the juice of the seed of the elder-tree, a cow’s brain, goat’s dung dissolved in vinegar; swallows’ nests mixed with water, and applied to the forehead; water out of which an ass or an ox has drunk.
“4. To purge the head. Pour the juice of cabbage (brassica) into the nostrils.
“5. For dimness of the eyes. Pound fennel-roots, mix with honey, and boil over a slow fire; add cistern-water or woman’s milk. Smear the eyes with the fat of a fox (adipe volpis).
“6. Another remedy. Mix a child’s urine (lotium infantis) with the best honey; add a decoction of fennel-roots (‘omnem caliginem mirabiliter discutiet’).
“7. The beginning of this paragraph has been cut off. The remedies prescribed are butter and cram occifæth (garlic...?), mixed with ram’s fat (‘per aruinam ariætis’).
“14. To cure the bite of a dog. Apply two or three onions calcined and boiled with lard and honey.
“15. To extract a straw from the eye. Chant the psalm Qui habitat (Ps. 90) thrice over water, with which then douche the eye, et sanus ærit.”
Among the various remedies fish play a prominent part. For gravel it is recommended that the head of a pike be boiled in a newly-glazed earthen pot, then reduced to powder and drunk in a glass of white wine. A sure means of curing gout is to wear continually three or four moles’ feet tied to one’s garters. For nose-bleeding, the sufferer is advised to blow up the nose the powder of a stone found in the head of a carp, or to plug up the nostrils with hare’s fur. A certain remedy for curing a drunkard of his evil way is to give him as many eggs of the screech owl, boiled hard, as he can possibly eat, when we are assured he will ever after be a total abstainer.
In the first book of the Secretes of the reverent Maister Alexis of Piemont, 1562, which is a kind of general receipt-book for the apothecaries of the time, there occur some curious formulæ, which may be taken as a fair example of the pharmacy of those days. The process of making the oil of red dog is given with elaborate detail.