86 FISHES OF FANCY. 



an earthquake is a widely-spread myth, and the whale of 

 ancient astronomy is really a sea-dragon. 



In medicine, fishes filled an absurdly large space, nearly 

 every species being, at one time or another, held a cure for 

 some impossible ailment Shark's teeth, rubbed on the 

 gums, helped children speedily through dentition. The 

 liver of the Muroena cured poisonous bites. The eyes 

 of pike, powdered, were wonderful in their effects — so 

 said the Duchess of Portland of merry memory. Petted 

 as the lamprey once was by Rome, its supposed affinity 

 to the fabulous remora of the ancients has earned it the 

 reputation of being a thing of ill-omen. Yet its fat 

 removed small-pox scars. Fever is cured (in Abyssinia) 

 with an electric eel, and in Wiltshire with a common eel. 

 Rheumatism yields, if you cannot procure the hand 

 of a drowned man, to a rubbing with red-herrings ; 

 cramp (in Ulster and N. Scotland) to an application of 

 fresh eel-skin ; toothache (in N. E. Scotland) can be got 

 rid of by carrying about the person a piece of a dog- 

 fish, the fish being returned alive to the water after the 

 excision ; a sprain is cured (in Ulster) with eel-skin ; deaf- 

 ness by powder of eel's liver ; jaundice by applying a split 

 tench to the soles of the feet (Yorkshire), but you must not 

 forget to bury the tench when it is done with ; haemorrhage 

 can be stopped with the brain of the same fish ; cancer 

 needs only a crab tied on to the spot to disappear ; hooping- 

 cough can always be banished by putting a live fish into 

 the child's mouth.* This tradition is found, not only over 



* An old fisherman, formerly well known at the Foye, Keswick, once 

 caught a fish, which he put into the mouth of a child suffering from 

 hooping-cough. He then replaced the fish in the water. He affirmed 

 that the fish gave the complaint to the rest of its kind, as was evident 

 from the fact that they came to the top to cough ! 



