But it was soon found advisable to make this knowledge secret and difficult to get. They did not really know so very much, and a mysterious, solemn manner and a quantity of horrible and unusual objects placed about the hut[4] would perhaps prevent some irate and impatient savage patient from throwing a spear at his wizard--or witch-doctor. [4] This is still the custom in the huts of the wizard or medicine-man in West Africa, where one finds small cushions stuck over with all sorts of poisonous plants, bits of human bones, and other loathsome accessories. Shakespeare alludes to this in _Macbeth_. "Scale of Dragon; tooth of wolf; witches' mummy; maw and gulf of the ravin'd salt sea shark; root of hemlock digg'd i' the dark; ... gall of goat and slips of yew"; and so on. Most of their cures were faith-cures, and they were, no doubt, much more likely to be successful when the patient believed he was being treated with some dreadful stew of all sorts of wonderful and horrible materials. This explains how it was that the knowledge of medicine became so mixed up with pure charlatanism and swindling that no man could tell which drugs were of real use and which were mere ornaments giving piquancy and flavour to the prescription. It is not possible to say that a snake's head, the brain of a toad, the gall of a crocodile, and the whiskers of a tiger, were all of them absolutely useless. Within the last few years it has been found that an antidote to snake-bite can be obtained from a decoction of part of the snake itself, and it has also been discovered that small quantities of virulent poisons are amongst our most valuable and powerful remedies. Whether the savages and their successors the doctors of feudal times even down to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, suspected or believed that this was the case must remain a rather doubtful hypothesis, but there is no question "that the hair of the dog that bit him" theory of medicine was very prevalent. The following was a cure for hydrophobia of a more elaborate nature: "I learned of a Friend who had tried it effectual to cure the Biting of a Mad Dog; take the Leaves and Roots of Cowslips, of the leaves of Box and Pennyroyal of each a like quantity; shred them small to put them into Hot Broth and let it be so taken Three Days Together and apply the herbs to the bitten place with Soap and Hog's suet melted together" (Parkinson). This prescription is not so preposterous as it sounds. Box and Pennyroyal both contain essences which would be in all probability fatal to the germ of hydrophobia, and the soap and hog's suet would keep air from the wound. Other prescriptions read like our modern patent medicines. "Good Cloves comfort the Brain and the Virtue of Feeling, and help also against Indigestion and Ache of the Stomach" (Bartholomew).