The Doctor in History, Literature, Folk-Lore, Etc.
History
The Doctor in History, Literature, Folk-Lore, Etc.
Literature and medicine; Physicians; Physicians in literature
Cures are effected by rubbing the warts with something, which is
afterwards allowed to decay. Some rub the warts with a grey snail or slug,
and then impale the poor creature on a thorn; others steal a bit of beef,
not so much as Taffy made off with, rub the beef on the warts, and then
bury the beef. Lord Bacon, in his _Natural History_, says:--"I had from my
childhood a wart upon one of my fingers; afterwards, when I was about
sixteen years old, being then at Paris, there grew upon both my hands a
number of warts, at the least an hundred in a month's space. The English
Ambassador's lady, who was a woman far from superstitious, told me one day
she would help me away with my warts: whereupon she got a piece of lard
with the skin on, and rubbed the warts all over with the fat side; and
among the rest, the wart which I had from my childhood; then she nailed
the piece of lard, with the fat towards the sun, upon a post of her
chamber window, which was to the south. The success was, that within five
weeks' space all the warts went quite away; and that wart which I had so
long endured, for company.... They say the like is done by the rubbing of
warts with a green elder stick, and then burying the stick to rot in
muck."
In Withal's _Dictionary_ (1608) there is the following couplet:--
"The bone of a haire's foot closed in a ring,
Will drive away the cramp whenas it doth wing,"
but Pepys, who tells us the whole of his experience, with comments
thereon, used a hare's foot as a charm for colic. He says:--(20 Jan.
1664-5) "Homeward, in my way buying a hare and taking it home, which arose
upon my discourse to-day with Mr. Batten in Westminster Hall, who showed
me my mistake, that my hare's foot hath not the joynt in it, and assures
me he never had the cholique since he carried it about him; and it is a
strange thing how fancy works, for I no sooner handled his foot but I
became very well, and so continue."
(22nd.) "Now mighty well, and truly I can but impute it to my fresh hare's
foot."
(March 26) "Now I am at a loss to know whether it be my hare's foot which
is my preservation; for I never had a fit of collique since I wore it, or
whether it be my taking a pill of turpentine every morning."
The following newspaper cutting from the _Boston Herald_, 7th February,
1837, is worth preserving:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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