_Epilepsy._--The elder tree has been the foundation of many superstitions, chief among which have been some connected with epilepsy. Blochwick[108] tells us how to prepare an amulet from an elder growing on a sallow. "In the month of October, a little before the full moon, you pluck a twig of the elder, and cut the cane that is betwixt two of its knees, or knots, in nine pieces, and these pieces being bound in a piece of linen, be in a thread, so hung about the neck, that they touch the spoon of the heart, or the sword-formed cartilage; and that they may stay more firmly in that place, they are to be bound thereon with a linen or silken roller wrapt about the body, till the thread break of itself. The thread being broken and the roller removed, the amulet is not at all to be touched with bare hands, but it ought to be taken hold on by some instrument and buried in a place that nobody may touch it." Some hung a cross, made of the elder and the sallow entwined, about the children's neck. Rings of various kinds have always been supposed to have some superstitious power. Brand[109] tells us of some of their uses. A ring made from a piece of silver collected at the communion is a cure for convulsions and fits of every kind. If the silver is collected on Easter Sunday its efficacy is greatly increased. This was the receipt in Berkshire, but in Devonshire silver was not necessary. Here they prefer a ring made from three nails or screws dug out of a church-yard, which had been used to fasten a coffin. We are also informed that another kind of ring will cure fits. It must be made from five sixpences collected from five different bachelors, conveyed by the hand of a bachelor to a silversmith who is a bachelor. None of the persons who gave the sixpences, however, are to know for what purpose, or to whom, they gave them.[110] A silver ring contributed by twelve young women, and constantly worn on one of the pattens fingers, has been successfully employed in the cure of epilepsy after various medical means failed.[111] Lupton says: "A piece of a child's navel-string borne in a ring is good against the falling-sickness, the pains of the head, and the collick."[112] Alexander of Tralles recommended for epilepsy a metal cross tied to the arm, or, in lieu of that, bits of sail-cloth from a shipwrecked vessel might be tied to the right arm and worn for seven weeks; the latter was a preventive as well as a cure. Among the ancients, Serapion prescribed crocodile's dung and turtle's blood as a cure for this disease.[113] Lemius remarks that "Coral, Piony, Misseltoe, drive away the falling Sicknesse, either hung about the neck or drunk with wine."