The Myths and Fables of To-Day

by Samuel Adams Drake

“A journal was kept by the various members of the family who had charge of the madstone, in which was entered the name and age of every person on whom it was used, and the character of the wound treated. The entries in this book, made in the quaint handwriting of member after member of the family, the most of whom have long since turned to dust in their graves, are most interesting.

“While the stone was in my possession I had occasion several times to use it upon persons who were brought to me in great agony of mind over wounds they had received from the bite of rabid dogs. The last case occurred just a few days before the sale of the stone. A young boy was brought to my house late at night, who had been bitten on the wrist. The wound was an ugly one, and the father was in great distress of mind for fear hydrophobia would set in. I placed the stone on the boy’s wrist at about ten o’clock and went to bed. The father stayed up and took care of the boy. At two o’clock in the morning, he said, the stone let go. The boy was then sound asleep. The father placed the stone, as I had told him to do, in a glass of milk, on which, when I saw it in the morning, there was a thick green scum. This seemed to be the usual result in all such cases. The stone was never known to let go until it had extracted all the poison, and, on being placed in a glass of warm water or milk, discharged a greenish liquid. The stone itself is perhaps an inch long by three-quarters wide, and is of a velvety, grayish brown color. Years ago it was accidentally broken in two, and the jeweller who placed a gold band around it to hold it together has told me that the inside was a little darker than the outside and was arranged in concentric layers.”[14]

As an antidote against the bite of a dog, you must procure some of the hair of the dog that has bitten you. This has passed into a proverb among habitual topers, with particular reference to taking another “nip.”

There is also a more or less current belief, better grounded perhaps than many others of a like nature, that a dog which has bitten a person should not be killed until unmistakable symptoms of rabies have appeared.

Who does not remember the “blue-glass craze” of some fifteen years ago, which spread like wildfire over the land, and as suddenly died out? Whole communities went blue-glass mad. It was enough for some one to have advanced the theory that the cerulean rays were a cure-all, for everybody to accept it with as much confidence as if it had been one of the demonstrated facts of science. Dealers in blue-glass were about the only ones to benefit by the craze which infallibly suggests its own moral, namely, that credulity has not wholly disappeared. Is this doubted when hardly a day goes by in which some miraculous cure is not heralded abroad by the newspapers? Sometimes it is performed merely by the laying on of hands; and most often without the aid of medicines. Indeed, within a few years, there has sprung up a new school of healing, numbering its tens of thousands proselytes, which not only sets all the best established principles and traditions of the old schools at defiance, but also literally “throws physic to the dogs.”

The practice of dipping in the healing waters of the ocean as a cure-all, or preventive of disease for the coming year, formerly prevailed on the Maine coast, particularly at Old Orchard Beach and in the immediate neighborhood, to a very great extent. In its nature and inception the practice certainly more nearly approached the character of those annual pilgrimages made to the famous shrines of the Old World than anything which has come to my notice. Not to mince words, it proceeded from the same superstitious idea, just how originating no one can say. So, every year, on the anniversary of St. John the Baptist’s day, a curious assemblage of country-folk, for miles around, moved by a common impulse, wended their way to the nearest beaches, there to dip in the briny waters, believed to be invested with especial healing powers on this day only, like the bargains advertised to draw custom, and thereby be freed from all the ills which flesh is heir to. On that sacramental day of days, one saw a long string of nondescript wagons, loaded with old and young, moving along the sandy roads leading down from their inland homes to the salt sea. Even the school children thought that they, too, must dip, in imitation of their elders. For some unknown reason, the day, which not only had the sanction of long custom but also is hallowed by such venerated traditions, was given up for the 26th, which is quite like any other day of the year.

As all superstitious folk are generally the last to admit that they are so, so in this instance the followers of this singular custom in general either maintain a discreet silence on the subject, or refuse to say more than that they go to the beach to bathe, on a fixed day, and at no other time, because other folks do so. The custom undoubtedly arose from a firm belief in the miraculous power of the waters to heal the sick, make the weak strong and the lame to walk—on that day only. That it is a most healthful one few will deny, and as cleanliness is said to be next to godliness, an annual dip at Old Orchard is, at least, one step toward the more spiritual condition.

But it would be a mistake to suppose this singular custom to be an article of religious faith. It simply illustrates the mental and moral stamina of the period in which it flourished. For if founded in faith alone, there is strong probability that it might have survived the ridicule to which it has mostly, if not quite, succumbed.

Whether it be merely a coincidence or not, it is fact that June 26th is also the anniversary of the festival of St. Anne, to whose shrine annual pilgrimages are made by the faithful in the northern parts of the United States and in Canada for purposes quite similar to those which once attracted a host of bathers to the Maine beaches, with the difference that the Canadian shrine can show many visible tokens of its marvellous curative powers, to be seen of all men. A visitor to the little church of St. Anne, de Beaupré, remarks that “by far the most conspicuous feature of the place was a towering trophy of crutches and canes raised within the altar rail. These were of all sizes and shapes. Two fresh additions rested against the rail, where they had been left by their recovered owners.”