MARCH 75 



Our Anglo-Saxon forefathers were very fanciful in 

 their leechcraft ; some of their prescriptions were dis- 

 gustingly filthy, others were exceedingly cruel, and 

 some were grotesque. It is curious that the mysterious 

 and clandestine habits of the mole did not suggest to 

 them to employ it in medicine more frequently than 

 they did. In fact, this animal only appears once in the 

 principal leech book which has been preserved, namely, 

 in that of Alfric, written by the penman Gild in the 

 tenth century. Here it is recommended to one suffer- 

 ing from ' wamb wark,' i.e. bowel complaint, or, perhaps, 

 simple stomach-ache, that he watch till he sees a mole 

 casting up earth, then ' catch him with thy two hands 

 along with his casting up and say thrice: Remedium 

 facio ad ventris dolor em (I make this a remedy for 

 my stomach-ache); throw the animal away over thy 

 back ; take care thou look not after it,' and the pain 

 will depart. Perhaps the leech wrote this tongue in 

 cheek, well knowing how powerful is the impression 

 made on a patient's mind by an unusual action per- 

 emptorily enforced and performed in full. 



Of all vertebrate creatures, the mole is probably the 

 most powerful in proportion to his size : so, at least, a 

 certain Welsh mole-catcher assured a friend of mine : 

 who, suspecting that professional zeal might have led 

 this craftsman to form an exaggerated notion of the 

 qualities of his special quarry, asked him how that 

 could be proved. He cited his experience of an in- 

 teresting but rather ghastly experiment. An able- 

 bodied live mole, harnessed to the corpses of two of 



