Nowadays the berries are taken by country people when finding themselves troubled with severe stitches, [348] and they obtain almost instantaneous relief. In accordance with which experience Johnson says it was creditably reported to him, "That a few of the berries of the Misseltoe, bruised and strained into oyle and drunken, hath presently and forthwith rid a grievous and sore stitch." The tincture, moreover, is put to a modern use as a heart tonic in place of the foxglove. It lessens reflex irritability, and strengthens the heart's beat, whilst raising the frequency of a slow pulse. Dr. J. Wilde has shown that the Mistletoe possesses a high repute in rural Hampshire for the cure of St. Vitus's dance, and similar spasmodic nervous complaints. In the United States the leaves have been successfully employed as an infusion to check female fluxes, and haemorrhages, also to hasten childbirth by stimulating the womb when labour is protracted to the exhaustion of the mother. In Scotland the plant is almost unknown, and is restricted to one locality only. The Druids regarded the Mistletoe as the soul of their sacred tree-- the oak; and they taught the people to believe that oaks on which it was seen growing were to be respected, because of the wonderful cures which the priests were then able to effect with it, particularly of the falling sickness. The parasite was cut from the tree with a golden sickle at a high and solemn festival, using much ceremonial display, it being then credited with a special power of "giving fertility to all animals." Ovid said, "Ad viscum cantare Druidoe solebant." Shakespeare calls it "The baleful Mistletoe," in allusion to the Scandinavian legend, that Balder, the god of peace, was slain with an arrow made of Mistletoe. He was restored to life at the request of the other gods and goddesses. The mistletoe was afterwards given to [349] be kept by the goddess of love; and it was ordained in Olympus that everyone who passed under it should receive a kiss, to show that the branch was the emblem of love, and not of death. Persons in Sweden afflicted with epilepsy carry with them a knife having a handle of oak mistletoe, which plant they call Thunder-besom, connecting it with lightning and fire. The thrush is the great disseminator of the parasite. He devours the berries eagerly, and soils, or "missels" his feet with their viscid seeds, conveying them thus from tree to tree, and getting thence the name of missel thrush. In Brittany the plant is named _Herbe de la croix_, and, because the crucifix was made from its wood when a tree, it is thought to have become degraded to a parasite.