By the Rev. A. C, Smith. 



325 



Or, again, the dreaded hooting of the Tawny Owl, so certain to be- 

 token a fatal termination to the sufferer, but to whose window the 

 innocent bird had only been attracted by the light which so generally 

 is burning in a sick-room. 1 



And now, to return again to the cunning men and women, let me 

 next call attention to the horrible medicines, which these imposters, 

 both of old and modern days, recommended, and whose efficacy was 

 never doubted by those who swallowed them, but which were often- 

 times relied upon the more, in proportion to their repulsiveness. 

 Some of these prescriptions were comparatively harmless, but some, 

 probably with a view to enhance the opinion of their value, or create 

 a belief in the wisdom of their advisers, were not only nauseous and 

 disgusting, but productive of most horrible cruelty. Thus a powder 

 composed of mice burnt alive was recommended for one complaint, 

 that of pounded wood-lice for another, while the ashes of earth- 

 worms were a sovereign remedy in a third. 2 These however are 

 comparatively common-place medicines ; for to this day the swallow- 

 ing of live frogs is resorted to as a remedy for certain ailments 

 amongst cattle, and I am not by any means certain that the same 

 receipt is not also followed out by human beings in some parts of 

 Wilts, to one instance of which I myself was an eye-witness in my 

 boyhood. Still more common, but not less disgusting, is the 

 swallowing of live sheep-ticks for the curing of rheumatism : but if 

 I were to enumerate the abominations, which in the way of specifics 

 or charms, many of the people in this county still take, with im- 

 plicit faith in their efficacy, I should not only weary my readers, but 

 disgust them too. Let these then suffice as a sample, but only as 

 a sample, for few are at all aware to how great an extent this form 

 of superstitious practice still prevails amongst us. 



But to mark the supreme indifference to reason, and the mere 

 working of a charm, which is really the light in which many of our 

 rustics regard the prescriptions of medical men, I will give the 

 following case, which occurred within my own personal knowledge, 



\ Waterton's Essays in Natural History, series i., p. 173. 

 2 Knapp's Journal of a Naturalist, 



