"Place a Toad's heart on a woman's left breast when she sleeps, to make her tell her secrets."—Thiers, tome 1, p. 389.
From "Markham's Horsemanship."
How to doe with a Jaded Horse.—When that your horse is thoroughly tired, and hath yet much of his journey to do, alight from him, and cut, from the nighest hedge, a short wande, which you shall jag in notches with your knife, and, making a hole in the thinnest of his ear, when he dothe flag in his pace, then saw the stick to and froe in the hole, which will revive him soe that, until he be entirely spent, he will not faile to goe.
Another way, with the horse of a friend, or that is hired, and soe that the proper owner shall not know thereof.—When that your beast is muche wearied, and hath yet far to travel, get down from his back, and choose from the road side six smooth round pebbles, of which you shall put three in his right ear, and tye up the ear with binde-weed, or long grass, purse-wise; then mount him again and put him on his mettle, and with the motion of his head the stones in his ear will rattle seemingly to him like thunder, which will soe inspirit him that while he hath life in him he will not fail to goe; and when he doth, after that, slacken of his pace, then tye up three in his left ear also.
From "One Thousand Notable Things."
To Staunch the Bleeding of a Wound.—Write these four letters, A O G L, with the blood of the wound, about the wound.
A Medicine for the Toothache.—Take a live Mowle, and put him in a brass pot, and there let him die, then cut him asunder and take out the guts, and dry the blood with a cloth, then cut him in quarters, and hang him on a thred drying by the fire's side; when ye would use it, lay the fleshy side of it, with bladders of saffron, with a cloth to your sore.
Pare the nails of one that hath the Quartan Ague, which, being put into a linen cloth, and so tied about the neck of a quick eel, and the same eel put into the water, thereby the ague will be driven away.
It is certainly and constantly affirmed, that on Midsummer eve there is found under the root of mugwort a coal which preserves and keeps safe from the plague, carbuncle, lightning, the quartan ague, and from burning, them that bear the same about them: and Mizaldus, the writer hereof, saith that he doth hear that it is to be found the same day under the root of plantane; which I know to be of truth, for I have found them the same day under the root of plantane. It is to be found at noon.
You shall stay the bleeding of the nose, if you write with the same blood, in the forehead of the party that bleeds, these words following, Consummatum est.