"Thou who presidest over the Apulian shores, Thou who curest the bites of mad dogs, Thou, O Sacred One, ward off this cruel plague, Get thee far hence, O madness, O fury."[132]
Burns.—The following is "A Charme for a burning":
"There came three angels out of the east; The one brought fire, the two brought frost— Out fire; in frost; In the name of the Father, and Son, and Holy Ghost. —Amen."[133]
Childbirth.—Many superstitious practices have grown up around this condition. In 1554, Bonner, Bishop of London, forbade "a mydwife of his diocese to exercise any witchecrafte, charmes, sorcerye, invocations, or praiers, other than such as be allowable and may stand with the lawes and ordinances of the Catholike Church." In 1559, the first year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, an inquiry was instituted "whether you knowe any that doe use charmes, sorcery, enchauntementes, invocations, circles, witchecraftes, southsayinge, or any lyke craftes or imaginacions invented by the devyl, and specially in the tyme of woman's travaylle." Two years before this, the midwives took an oath among themselves, so Strype tells us, not to "suffer any other bodies' child to be set, brought, or laid before any woman delivered of child in the place of her natural child, so far forth as I can know and understand. Also I will not use any kind of sorcerye or incantation in the time of the travail of any woman."
The eagle stone and iris were supposed to promote an easy delivery, and the sardonyx was laid inter mammas to procure an easy birth; a sardonyx formerly belonged to the monastery of St. Albans to be used for this purpose. In some countries, during childbirth, the men lie in, keep their beds, and are attended as if really sick, sometimes as long as six weeks.[134]
Chorea.—Of all the charms against this disease, St. Vitus' dance, none seemed so effectual as an application to the saint. In the translation of Naogeorgus, Barnabe Googe says:
"The nexte is VITUS sodde in oyle, before whose ymage faire Both men and women bringing hennes for offring doe repaire: The cause whereof I doe not know, I think, for some disease Which he is thought to drive away from such as him doe please."
Colic.—This disorder was cured by a person drinking the water in which he had washed his feet; we might well consider the cure worse than the disease.
Consumption.—Shaw[135] speaks of a cure for consumptive diseases used in his time in Moray. "They pared the Nails of the Fingers and Toes of the Patient, put these Parings into a Rag cut from his clothes, then waved their Hand with the Rag thrice round his head crying Deas soil, after which they buried the Rag in some unknown place." Dr. Baas[136] declares that natural pills of rabbit's dung were in use on the Rhine as a cure for consumption.
"There is a disease," says the minister of Logierait, writing in 1795, "called Glacach by the Highlanders, which, as it affects the chest and lungs, is evidently of a consumptive nature. It is called Macdonald's disease, 'because there are particular tribes of Macdonalds, who were believed to cure it with the Charms of their touch, and the use of a certain set of words. There must be no fee given of any kind. Their faith in the touch of a Macdonald is very great.'"[137]