2 MODERN BIOLOGIC THERAPEUSIS 



upon disease as the work of offended spirits of 

 the dead. These three views of disease are com- 

 mon beliefs of the lowest grades of human life. 

 Savages as a rule cheerfully accept all three, 

 while a lingering belief in human sorcery and 

 the displeasure of the dead is always a trait of 

 the peasant. 



For instance, almost any one who is living in 

 the country will be familiar with various rural 

 superstitions relating to warts that killing or 

 handling a toad may cause them, and that they 

 can be removed by some one touching them with 

 pebbles ; or, with the notion that stump-water is 

 good for freckles, while bad eyesight can be 

 remedied by the water in which the blacksmith 

 has dipped his red-hot iron. As a remedy for 

 whooping-cough in Norfolk, England, a spider 

 was tied up in a piece of muslin and pinned over 

 the mantel piece ; in Suffolk, to dip a child head 

 downward in a hole dug in a meadow ; in York- 

 shire, owl broth ; in other parts of England, rid- 

 ing a child on a bear. It was White of Selborne 

 who described the most recent form of this folk- 

 belief, which consists in passing a child afflicted 

 with hernia through a cleft in an ash-tree. As 

 late as 1895, such trees were described as exist- 



