Incubus.—Stones with holes through them were commonly called hag-stones, and were often attached to the key of the stable door to prevent witches riding the horses. One of these suspended at the head of the bed was celebrated for the prevention of nightmare. In the "Leech book"[152] we find the following: "If a mare or hag ride a man, take lupins, garlic, and betony, and frankincense, bind them on a fawn skin, let a man have the worts on him, and let him go into his house." Notice the following from Lluellin's poems:
"Some the night-mare hath prest With that weight on their brest, No returnes of their breath can passe, But to us the tale is addle, We can take off her saddle, And turn out the night-mare to grasse."
Insomnia.—In the Loseley MSS. we find a receipt "For hym that may not slepe. Take and wryte yese wordes into leves of lether: Ismael! Ismael! adjuro te per Angelum Michaelum ut soporetur homo iste; and lay this under his bed, so yt he wot not yerof and use it allway lytell, and lytell, as he have nede yerto."
Jaundice.—This disease was sometimes cured by transplantation, and Paracelsus gives us a method for carrying this out. Make seven or nine—it must be an odd number—cakes of the newly emitted and warm urine of the patient with the ashes of ash wood, and bury them for some days in a dunghill.
In the journal of Dr. Edward Browne, transmitted to his father, Sir Thomas Browne, we read of a magical cure for jaundice: "Burne wood under a leaden vessel filled with water; take the ashes of that wood, and boyle it with the patient's urine; then lay nine long heaps of the boyled ashes upon a board in a ranke, and upon every heap lay nine spears of crocus: it hath greater effects than is credible to any one that shall barely read this receipt without experiencing."[153]
Madness.—The early inhabitants of Cornwall used "to place the disordered in mind on the brink of a square pool, filled with water from St. Nun's well. The patient, having no intimation of what was intended, was, by a sudden blow on the breast, tumbled into the pool, where he was tossed up and down by some persons of superior strength till, being quite debilitated, his fury forsook him; he was then carried to church, and certain masses were sung over him. A similar practice of the people of Perthshire is noticed by Sir Walter Scott in Marmion.
"Thence to St. Fillan's blessed well, Whose spring can frenzied dreams dispel, And the crazed brain restore."
Marasmus.—Mr. Boyle relates the case of a physician whose wan face betokened a marasmus, and who was induced to try a method not unlike the sympathetic cures. "He took an egg and boiled it hard in his own warm urine; he then with a bodkin perforated the shell in many places, and buried it in an ant-hill, where it was kept to be devoured by the emmets; and as they wasted the egg, he found his distemper to abate and his strength to increase, insomuch that his disease left him."[154]
Rickets.—The most common method of dealing with this disease was by drawing the children through a split tree. The tree was afterward bound up and, as it healed and grew together, the children acquired strength; at least, so 'twas said. Sir John Cullum saw the operation performed and says that the ash tree was selected as most preferable for the purpose. "It was split longitudinally about five feet: the fissure was kept open by the gardener, whilst the friend of the child, having first stripped him naked, passed him thrice through it, almost head foremost. This accomplished, the tree was bound up with packthread, and as the bark healed, so it was said the child would recover. One of the cases was of rickets, the other a rupture." Drawing the children through a perforated stone was also a cure for rickets, providing that two brass pins were carefully laid across each other on the top edge of this stone.[155]
Sciatica.—Sleeping on stones on a particular night was formerly practised in Cornwall to cure all forms of lameness. Boneshave was the term used for sciatica in Exmoor, where the following charm was used for its cure: The patient must lie on his back on the bank of a river or brook, having a straight staff lying by his side between him and the water, and must have the following words repeated over him: