23 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY ' 



large as for warts. Only a few will be mentioned here. Schlief used a 

 bath of compressed air and reported eighty-five per cent, cured in fifteen 

 seances. Gay, supposing that " the sublingual ulcer was the initial 

 specific of whooping-cough, cauterized it with nitrate of silver and re- 

 ports several cases cured in a short time ! " Mohn has reported cases 

 of whooping-cough " cured as if by enchantment " by the use of sulphur 

 fumigators. The child is dressed in clean clothes and sent from the 

 room, which is closed and fumigated with burning sulphur for five hours 

 in the morning. After the room is aired the child sleeps there at night. 

 One trial is generally sufficient for a cure ! These observations have 

 been enthusiastically confirmed by Manly. 1 Another physician cured 

 101 cases out of 169 by letting them inhale illuminating gas. Still 

 another cured 219 out of 341 by the same method. Powdered benzoin 

 cured 75 per cent, of one physician's cases. Seventeen patients were 

 cured by another with boric acid and roasted coffee, and so on ad 

 infinitum. 2 



There is, of course, no intention here of disputing the correctness 

 of these statistics. They have been quoted only to show the similarity 

 between the curative principle underlying them and that relied upon by 

 a woman, probably of German descent, who was seen on the bank of 

 the Schuylkill River, holding a live fish head foremost in the mouth of 

 her child in order to relieve the child of the whooping-cough. The 

 principle is plainly brought out again in the injunction to one seeking 

 a remedy for his disease " to follow the directions given by a man riding 

 on a piebald horse." 



Religious emotion has undoubtedly been the most powerful agency 

 known for energizing curative suggestion. We usually call it impotent 

 superstition when it appears among lowly or primitive peoples. The 

 Malay is patently and grossly superstitious when he recites : " Not mine 

 are the materials, they are the materials of Kemah-ul-hakim. Not to 

 me belongs this neutralizing charm. It is not I who apply it. It is 

 Malim Karinim who applies it." But if he believes in Kemah-ul-hakim 

 and Malim Karinim and is tremendously impressed by the formula he 

 recites, we need not hesitate to believe that — sometimes — he is cured 

 thereby. 



The Englishman of Elizabeth's day was no doubt immensely superior 

 in mental power to the poor Malay who has just been quoted. His 

 religion was more logical and more efficacious than that of the Malay and 

 perhaps his charms worked oftener. To the cold and unfeeling eye of 

 science, however, the therapeutic principle in the charm, spoken by the 

 Malay and that spoken by the Englishman is the same. This was the 

 Elizabethan Englishman's charm for ague: 



'Mohn in the Bevue Internationale des Science Med., November, 1886, and 

 The Practitioner, August, 1888. 



2 Quoted in Foster's "Handbook." 



