658 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



It lias often happened tliat substances as well as ceremonies, wliicli 

 originally liad a religious signification, in later ages degenerated 

 into fancied cures for disease ; so, is it not more than probable that 

 the employment of animal excreta as remedies among the less in- 

 telligent classes in different parts of Europe, in both earlier and 

 later times, as well as in our own newest offshoot from the Indo- 

 European stem, is a survival of early Aryan religious observances? 

 Many ignorant people in various parts of the United States to- 

 day believe that a decoction made by steeping in water the ma- 

 nure of sheep is a sovereign remedy in measles, and very similar 

 notions are found among the English and German peasantry. In 

 one of Bale's " Interludes,^' published in 15G2, in which various 

 remedies for comnion ailments of the lower animals are recounted 

 in quaint verse, the same substance is recommended as " whole- 

 som for the pyppe." In that repertory of curious information, 

 Brand's " Popular Antiquities," the following statement is quoted 

 from a statistical account of County Stirling, in Scotland: "A 

 certain quantity of cow-dung is forced into the mouth of a calf 

 immediately after it is calved, or, at least, before it receives any 

 meat ; owing to this the vulgar believe that witches and fairies can 

 have no power ever after to injure the calf." In Cumberland, 

 England, a reputed cure for ear-ache is the application of a bit of 

 wool from a black sheep moistened in cow's urine. Possibly it is 

 a modified form of this latter notion that is found in the island 

 of Mount Desert, where it is said that the wool must be wet in 

 new milk ; while in Vermont, to be efficacious, it is thought that 

 the wool must be gathered from the left side of the neck of a per- 

 fectly black sheep. In other localities negro's wool is a reputed 

 cure for the same pain. It seems almost incredible, whatever 

 their origin, that remedies of so offensive a character as many of 

 those above given can still retain a place even in the rudest tradi- 

 tional pharmacopoeia, but there seems to be in the uneducated 

 human mind a sort of reverence for or faith in that which is in 

 itself disagreeable or repulsive. This idea apparently rules in- 

 stead of rational judgment in the selection of many popular 

 household remedies in the shape of oils of most loathsome deriva- 

 tion, such as " skunk-oil," " angle-worm oil " (made by slowly ren- 

 dering earth-worms in the sun), " snake-oil " of various kinds, etc. 

 George Borrow, in that rare idyl of vagabondage, " Lavengro," 

 tells of various encounters with an old herbalist who always car- 

 ried on his back a stout leathern bag, into which he gathered not 

 simples but vipers, whose oil he extracted for medicinal purposes. 

 The faith of this wandering English mediciner and his numerous 

 customers of half a century ago in the viper-oil is quite equaled 

 to-day by that of American frontiersmen in the peculiar virtues 

 of rattlesnake-oil. It is just possible that subtle remedial powers 



