MEDICINAL AND ECONOMIC PRODUCTS 319 



alive, cut the tip of his nose off, and let nine drops of the blood 

 fall on to a drop of sugar: the swallowing of this was held to be a 

 certain cure." 



" The shrew-mouse, one of the most inoffensive of creatures, 

 was by our ancestors held to be of terribly poisonous nature. Its 

 bite was thought to be most venomous, and even contact with it 

 in any way was accounted extremely dangerous. Cattle and 

 horses seized with any malady that appeared to cause any numb- 

 ness of the legs were at once reputed shrew-struck. 'It is a raven- 

 ing beast,' quoth Topsell, 'feigning itself gentle and tame, but 

 being touched it biteth deep and poysoneth deadly. It beareth 

 a cruel minde, desiring to hunt anything, neither is there any 

 creature that it loveth.' On whatever limb it crept was 'cruel 

 anguish', often ending in paralysis. These calumnies have pre- 

 vailed in many countries and for many ages, the Romans being as 

 firmly convinced of the deadly nature of the shrew-mouse as any 

 British rustic of a century ago. . . . Happily there was a certain 

 antidote against the evil wrought by this malevolent beast. A 

 large ash-tree being chosen, a deep hole was made in its trunk, 

 and after certain incantations were made a shrew-mouse was 

 thrust alive into the opening, and the hole securely plugged. ' A 

 shrew-ash', says Gilbert White in his Natural History of Selborne, 

 ' is an ash whose twigs or branches, when gently applied to the 

 limbs of cattle, will immediately relieve the pain which a beast 

 suffers from the running of a shrew-mouse over the part affected. 

 Against this accident, to which they were continually liable, our 

 provident forefathers always kept a shrew-ash at hand, which 

 when once medicated would maintain its virtue for ever.' One of 

 these shrew-ashes, now but a fragment of what was evidently once 

 a massive stately tree, may still be seen (1895) near the Sheen 

 Gate in Richmond Park, and there are those still living who can 

 remember cattle and horses being brought to it for its healing 

 virtues." 



"To cure a stye our forefathers had great faith in rubbing it 

 with hairs from a cat's tail, two essential points being that the cat 

 should be a black one, and that the operation should take place on 

 the first night of the new moon; but to cure warts the hairs must 

 be taken from the tail of a tortoise-shell cat, and even then the 

 remedy is only efficacious during the month of May." 



" Toads were in great repute in sickness. ' In time of com- 



