A little yarrow and mistletoe put into a bag and worn upon the
stomach, prevents ague and chilblains. A powder made of the common
mistletoe, given in doses of three grains at the full of the moon to
persons troubled with epilepsy, prevents fits; and if given during a fit
it will effect an immediate and permanent cure. A woman with rupture of
the bladder was reported to have been cured by wearing a little bag hung
about her neck containing the powder made from a toad burnt alive in a
new pot. The same prescription was also said to have cured a man of
stone in the bladder."
Such theories left ample room for the creation of all sorts of cure
charms, and when such ideas prevailed among the educated in the medical
profession, we need not be surprised that they still survive among many
uneducated persons, although two centuries have gone since. In 1714 one
of the most eminent physicians in Europe, Boerhaave, wrote of chemistry
and medicine:--"Nor even in this affair don't medicine receive some
advantage; witness the cups made of regulus of antimony, tempered with
other metals which communicate a medicinal quality to wine put in them,
and it is ten thousand pities the famous _Van Helmont_ should have been
so unkind to his poor fellow creatures in distress as to conceal from us
the art of making a particular metal which he tells us, made into rings,
and worn only while one might say the Lord's Prayer, would remove the
most exquisite haemorrhoidal pains, both internal and external, quiet the
most violent hysteric disorders, and give ease in the severest spasms
of the muscles.
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