Hysteria.—This disorder, which assumes so many deceptive forms, was formerly known as "the mother," or "hysterica passio," an allusion to which occurs in King Lear (Act ii., sc. 4), where Shakespeare represents the king as saying,
"O, how this mother swells up toward my heart!
Hysterica passio! down, thou climbing sorrow,
Thy element's below!"
Some of the charms used for its cure are much the same as those employed in cases of epilepsy, a favourite one being the wearing of a ring made of a certain number of silver pieces obtained from persons of the opposite sex.
Jaundice.—Many of the remedies recommended for this complaint are not of a very agreeable kind, as, for instance, the following one mentioned by a correspondent of Notes and Queries, first, as having been resorted to in a Dorsetshire parish, where the patient was ordered to eat nine lice on a piece of bread and butter. One popular charm in days gone by, and certainly not of a very refined character, was known as the cure by transplantation, and consisted in burying in a dunghill an odd number of cakes made of ashes and other ingredients.
Lameness.—Sleeping on stones, on a particular night, is an old method of curing lameness practised in Cornwall.
Lumbago.—In Dundee it is customary to wear round the loins as a cure for lumbago a hank of yarn which has been charmed by a wise woman, and girls may be seen with single threads of the same round the head as an infallible specific for tic-douloureux.
Measles.—In the quarterly return of the marriages, births, and deaths registered in the provinces, &c., in Ireland, published in October, 1878, we find the following extraordinary cure for measles, administered with what results will be seen:—"Sixty-three cases of measles appear on the medical relief register for past quarter, but this does not represent a third of those affected, the medical officers being only called in when the usual amount of local nostrums had been tried without effect. Every case seen suffered from violent diarrhœa, caused by the administration of a noxious compound called crooke. This consists of a mixture of porter, sulphur, and the excrement of the sheep collected in the fields. Every unfortunate child that showed any symptom of measles was compelled to drink large quantities of this mixture. All ordinary remedies failed to stop the diarrhœa thus produced, in many cases the children nearly dying from exhaustion." Repulsive as this piece of folk-medicine is, yet it is only one of a most extensive class of the same kind, many being most revolting. It is difficult to conceive how either ignorance or superstition could tolerate any practice of so senseless and indelicate a nature.