A medicinal oil was distilled from the hair of a full beard, and an ointment made from the same. Powdered human hair was drunk as a potion in a cure for yellow jaundice; the ashes of burnt hair were made into an unguent with mutton tallow, and applied to the nostrils of people in a state of lethargy; in “suffocation of the uterus,” this ointment was applied to the pudenda. The hair of a patient was frequently used in affecting “sympathetic cures,” or in what were called “Cures by Transplantation,” but the names of the diseases are not given by Flemming (p. 21). (But see under “Cures by Transplantation” in this volume.)
In China, the shavings of the hair, which must amount to a considerable quantity, since hundreds of millions of people shave the head close daily, are preserved for manuring the land.—(See “Bingham’s Exped. to China,” London, 1842, vol. ii. p. 7.)
In China, everything connected with the tilling of the fields is still a religious rite. Probably no country in the world of equal advancement has adhered with more tenacity to old usages in all that pertains to the turning-up of the soil; there are ceremonies in which the Emperor himself must lead with a plough. How much all this may have to do with the utilization of a refuse which has been so generally regarded as possessed of “magical” or “medicinal” properties, is, in all likelihood, never to be ascertained; but attention should be attracted to the fact, in the same manner that it was found worth while to make an examination into the history of latrines.
“Among ourselves, it is a Devonshire belief that you can give a neighbor ague by burying a dead man’s hair under his threshold.”—(“Folk-Medicine,” Black, p. 27.)
“In Devonshire and in Scotland alike, when a child has whooping-cough, a hair is taken from its head, put between slices of bread and butter, and given to a dog, and if in eating it the dog cough, as naturally he will, the whooping-cough will be transferred to the animal, and the child will go free.” The same method of cure is practised in Ireland, but the animal selected is an ass.—(Idem, p. 35.)
“Certain oak-trees at Berkhampstead, in Hertfordshire, were long famous for the cure of ague. The transference was simple, but painful. A lock of hair was pegged into an oak, and then, by a sudden wrench, transferred from the head of the patient to the tree.”—(Idem, p. 39.)
Clippings of hair and rags are offered to holy wells in Ireland, Borneo, Malabar, etc., not merely as offerings to deities, but in order to effect a “transference” of diseases to the people who may take hold of them.—(Idem, pp. 39, 40; quoting from Tylor, “Primitive Culture,” vol. ii., and others.)
“In New England, to cure a child of the rickets, a lock of its hair is buried at cross-roads, and if at full moon, so much the better.”—(Idem, p. 56.)
It is believed in parts of England that the hairs from a donkey’s back, wrapped up in bread, and given to a sick child, will cure the whooping-cough; another remedy of the same kind is to take clippings from the child’s own head, mix them in butter, and give to a dog, which will take the disease from the child; still another was to mount the sufferer upon the back of an ass, and lead him nine times round an oak-tree.—(See Brand, “Pop. Ant.” vol. iii. p. 288, art. “Physical Charms.”)