I have heard the
same cure recommended for roughness of the skin and other skin diseases.
Maimonides states that the Jews were expressly forbidden by their
traditions to put fasting-spittle upon the eyes on the Sabbath day,
because to do so was to perform work, the great Sabbath crime in the
eyes of the Pharisees which Christ committed when he moistened the clay
with his spittle and anointed the eyes of the blind man therewith on the
Sabbath day. To both Greeks and Romans the fasting spittle was a charm
against fascination. Persius Flaccus says:--"A grandmother or a
superstitious aunt has taken baby from his cradle, and is charming his
forehead and his slavering lips against mischief by the joint action of
her middle finger and her purifying spittle." Here we find that it is
not the spittle alone, but the joint action of the spittle and the
middle finger which works the influence. The middle finger was commonly,
in the early years of this century, believed to possess a favourable
influence on sores; or, rather, it might be more correct to say that it
possessed no damaging influence, while all the other fingers, in coming
into contact with a sore, were held to have a tendency to defile, to
poison, or canker the wound.
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