It is fancied that these herbs were anti-soporific, but I find no record of such power. On the contrary, Galen says Dill "procureth sleep, wherefore garlands of Dill are worn at feasts." A far more probable reason for its presence at church was the quality assigned to it by Pliny and other herbalists down to Gerarde, that of staying the "yeox or hicket or hicquet," otherwise the hiccough. If we can judge by the manifold remedies offered to allay this affliction, it was certainly very prevalent in ancient times. Cotton Mather wrote a bulky medical treatise entitled _The Angel of Bethesda_. It was never printed; the manuscript is owned by the American Antiquarian Society. The character of this medico-religious book may be judged by this opening sentence of his chapter on the hiccough:-- "The Hiccough or the Hicox rather, for it's a Teutonic word that signifies to sob, appears a Lively Emblem of the battle between the Flesh and the Spirit in the Life of Piety. The Conflict in the Pious Mind gives all the Trouble and same uneasiness as Hickox. Death puts an end to the Conflict." [Illustration: Caraway.] Parson Mather gives Tansy and Caraway as remedies for the hiccough, but far better still--spiders, prepared in various odious ways; I prefer Dill. Peter Parley said that "a sprig of Fennel was the theological smelling-bottle of the tender sex, and not unfrequently of the men, who from long sitting in the sanctuary, after a week of labor in the field, found themselves tempted to sleep, would sometimes borrow a sprig of Fennel, to exorcise the fiend that threatened their spiritual welfare."