STRANGE MEDICINES. 767 



wondrous medical skill on the lucky man who tastes of the serpent- 

 broth.* 



In some of the Hebridean Isles, notably that of Lewis, the greatest 

 faith prevails in the efficacy of so-called " serpent-stones," which are 

 simply perforated, water-worn stones. Some have had two plain cir- 

 cles cut upon them. These are dipped in water, which is then given 

 to cattle as a cure for swelling or for snake-bite. Should such a 

 charmed stone be unattainable (and their number is exceedingly lim- 

 ited), the head of an adder may be tied to a string and dipped in the 

 water, with equally good residt. 



The oft-quoted remedy, " A hair of the dog that bit you," appears 

 in many forms. In Devonshire, any person bitten by a viper is ad- 

 vised at once to kill the creature and rub the wound with its fat. I 

 am told that this practice has survived in some of the Northern States 

 of America, where the flesh of a rattlesnake is accounted the best cure 

 for its own bite. 



In Black's very interesting volume on " Folk-Medicine," he men- 

 tions that the belief in the power of snake-skin as a cure for rheuma- 

 tism still exists among the sturdy New-Englanders, some of whom 

 are not above the weakness of wearing a snake-skin round the neck, 

 or keeping a pet snake as a charm. The use by American Indians of 

 rattlesnake-oil for the same malady seems not devoid of reason ; but 

 the New England faith in snake-skin is probably a direct heritage 

 from Britain, where Mr. Black tells of an old man who used to sit on 

 the steps of King's College Chapel, at Cambridge, and earn his living 

 by exhibiting the common English snake, and selling the sloughs of 

 snakes, to be bound round the forehead and temples of persons suffer- 

 ing from headache. 



In Durham, an eel's skin worn as a garter round the naked leg is 

 considered a preventive of cramp, while in Northumberland it is es- 

 teemed the best bandage for a sprained limb. 



So, too, in Sussex, the approved cure for a swollen neck is to draw 

 a snake nine times across the throat of the sufferer, after which oper- 

 ation the snake is killed, and its skin sewed in a piece of silk and worn 

 round the patient's neck. Sometimes the snake is put in a bottle, 

 which is tightly corked and buried in the ground, and it is expected 

 that, as the victim decays, the swelling will subside. 



The quaint little drug-store at Osaka has led me into a long talk ; 

 but the subject is a large one, and the chief difficulty lies in selecting 

 a few examples from the mass of material before me. I am sure that 

 should these pages ever meet the eye of my Japanese friend, he will 

 acknowledge that my interest in the medicine-lore of his ancestors was 

 certainly justifiable. Nineteenth Century. 



* See " In the Hebrides," by C. F. Gordon Cumming, London, Chatto & Windus. 



