For instance, there are two complaints which she is, beyond any other individual, celebrated for managing--that is to say, headache, and another malady which is anonymous, or only known to country folk by what is termed “the spool or bone of the breast being down.” The first she cures by a very formal and serious process called “measuring the head.” This is done by a ribbon, which she puts round the cranium, repeating during the admeasurement a certain prayer or charm from which the operation is to derive its whole efficacy. The measuring is performed twice--in the first instance, to show that its sutures are separated by disease, or, to speak more plainly, that the bones of the head are absolutely opened, and that as a natural consequence the head must be much larger than when the patient is in a state of health. The circumference of the first admeasurement is marked upon a ribbon, after which she repeats the charm that is to remove the headache, and measures the cranium again, in order to show, by a comparison of the two ribbons, that the sutures have been closed, the charm successful, and the headache consequently removed. It is impossible to say how the discrepancy in the measurement is brought about; but be that as it may, the writer of this has frequently seen the operation performed in such a way as to defy the most scrutinising eye to detect any appearance of imposture, and he is convinced that in the majority of cases there is not the slightest imposture intended. The operator is in truth a dupe to a strong and delusive enthusiasm. When the Midwife raises the spool of the breast, the operation is conducted without any assistance from the supernatural. If a boy or girl diminishes in flesh, is troubled with want of rest or of appetite, without being afflicted with any particular disease, either acute or local, the Midwife puts her finger under the bone which projects over the pit of the stomach, and immediately feels that “the spool of the breast is down”--in other words, she informs the parents that the bone is bent inwards, and presses upon _the heart_! The raising of this precisely resembles the operation of cupping. She gets a penny piece, which she places upon the spot affected, the patient having been first laid in a supine posture; after this she burns a little spirits in a tumbler in order to exhaust the air in it; she then presses it quickly against the part which is under the penny piece; and in a few moments, to the amazement of the lookers-on, it is drawn strongly up, and remains so until the heart-bone is supposed to be raised in such a manner as that it will not return.