At the feast of St. Blaise, Bishop of Sebaste, in Armenia (d. circa 316), which occurs on February 3d in the Roman Church, the wick of a candle is sometimes dipped in a vessel containing consecrated oil, the throats of the faithful being then touched with this wick, to preserve them from diseases of the throat. At other times the ceremony is performed in a different way. The priest holds two candles, adjusted so as to form a cross, above the heads of those who come to seek the saint’s aid, and the following prayer is recited: “Through the intercession of St. Blaise may God free thee from diseases of the throat, and from every other disease. (Per intercessionem S. Blasii liberet te Deus a malo gutteris et a quovis alio malo.)” It is related that this saint in his travels, once meeting a poor woman whose only child had swallowed a fish-bone, relieved the child of its trouble by offering up a prayer and laying his hand upon its throat. In the prayer he adjures all who may suffer from a like trouble to seek his intercession with God. St. Apollonia of Alexandria (February 9) is said to cure toothache and all diseases of the teeth, the reason for this being that at her martyrdom all her beautiful teeth were pulled out. In a similar way St. Agatha, of Catania or Palermo, in Sicily, is endowed with the power to cure diseases of the breast, because it is related that before her martyrdom her breasts were cruelly torn and mutilated. To recite the formula of St. Apollonia was considered by the Spaniards of three centuries ago to be a cure for toothache. This fact is brought out by a passage in Don Quixote, when the knight’s housekeeper is urged to recite it for her master’s benefit when he is ailing. To this request the woman quickly answers: “That might do something if my master’s distemper lay in his teeth, but, alas! it lies in his brain.” This formula was probably used before the age of Cervantes, and has persisted to our own time. It is in verse and has been literally translated into English as follows:[495] Apollonia was at the gate of Heaven and the Virgin Mary passed that way. “Say, Apollonia, what are you about?” “My Lady, I neither sleep nor watch, I am dying with a pain in my teeth.” “By the star of Venus and the setting sun, by the Most Holy Sacrament, which I bore in my womb, may no pain in your tooth, neither front nor back, afflict you from this time henceforward.”