254 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



May morning to look into a spring that runs to the east, when the 

 face of one's destined husband or wife will appear. If, however, 

 the one trying the charm is to die unmarried, a coffin instead of a 

 face will be seen. 



The idea of sunwise movement often appears in folk medicine. 

 Before the days of massage, in rubbing for rheumatic or other 

 pains in Concord, Mass., it was thought best to rub from left to 

 right i. e., dextrally. A central Maine cure for ringworm is to 

 rub in a sunwise direction about the diseased spot with a finger 

 moistened with saliva. A Pennsylvania-German prescription 

 says that a corn, wen, or other excrescence may be removed by 

 rubbing " with the moon " if by night, and " with the sun " if by 

 day. It is thought that the sun or moon, as the case may be, will 

 draw away all pain and enlargement. Alabama negroes believe 

 that a " conjurer " can rub away a "rising" (boil) by coming to 

 your bedside about daybreak, before you have spoken to any one, 

 and rubbing the inflamed surface for nine successive mornings. 

 A reputed cure for biliousness among the negroes of the Eastern 

 Shore of Maryland is to bore three holes in a tree, around which 

 the patient is to walk three times as he repeats : " Go away, bilious. 

 Go away, bilious." * 



It will be noticed that in several of these cures, as well as in 

 some of the charms already cited, no rule is given as to the direc- 

 tion to be followed in movement ; but it is quite possible that the 

 original description was more explicit, and it is almost certain 

 that in every instance a sunwise course would now be followed. 



A remedy for a " curb " in a horse, in northern Ohio, is to rub 

 the curb with a bone at the going down of the sun. This smacks 

 of the doctrine of signatures, as well as of sun lore. In the same 

 region, some years ago there lived a Pennsylvania-German small 

 farmer. He was somewhat known in the neighborhood as a charm 

 doctor, and children who had been burned sometimes went to him 

 tp have him " blow the fire out," and strangely enough, as I know 

 by personal experience, the pain would disappear as he with his 

 breath blew upon the smarting spot, meantime softly mumbling 

 to himself. This man's cure for what is popularly known as the 

 sweeny in horses was to rub " with the sun " every third morning 

 until there was relief. 



An Alabama superstition is that if the head of one dying be 

 turned to the east his death will be easier. The subject of orien- 

 tation as applied to the position of the dead, both before and after 



* In the province of Moray, in Scotland, hectic and consumptive diseases were thought 

 to be cured by putting parings of the nails of the fingers and toes of the patient in a rag 

 cut from his clothes, and then waving this parcel thrice round his head, crying, " Deassoil." 

 Shaw, History of the Province of Moray, quoted in Brand's Popular Antiquities, iii, 286. 



