This disease might also be cured by swallowing pills
made of a spider's web. One pill a morning for three successive mornings
before breakfast.
There were numerous cures for hooping-cough of a superstitious
character, practised extensively during the earlier years of this
century, and some are still recommended. The following are a few of
these. Pass the patient three times under the belly, and three times
over the back of a donkey. Split a sapling or a branch of the ash tree,
and hold the split open while the patient is passed three times through
the opening. Find a man riding on a piebald horse, and ask him what
should be given as a medicine, and whatever he prescribes will prove a
certain cure. "I recollect," says Jamieson, "a friend of mine that rode
a piebald horse, that he used to be pursued by people running after him
bawling,--
"Man wi' the piety horse,
What's gude for the kink host?"
He said he always told them to give the bairn plenty of sugar candy. Put
a piece of _red_ flannel round the neck of a child, and it will ward off
the hooping cough.
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