SOME OLD SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT TEEES AND HERBS. 185 



and the medical (or third) finger, not touching the root, and address it 

 in a solemn invocation — ' Sacred herb, I bid thee, I bid thee, to-morrow 

 I summon thee to the house of my patient to stop the rheum of his feet, 

 I conjure thee by the great name of Jaoth, Sabaoth, the God who made 

 the earth solid and the sea to stand still, &c, to be thyself the spirit 

 and power of the earth, thy mother, and dry up the rheum of this man.' " 

 It was dug up with the bone of a dead animal and hung round the neck 

 of the gouty patient. 



A somewhat analogous charm is in a list of recipes of the fourteenth 

 century. "For the Goute-caine " [probably for " Sayne," i.e. healing] : — 

 " Take the rote of ache [celery] and writte thereon iii words -fihs + xt + 

 dominus -j- and as long as he be rith [exactly fixed] on hym aboute his 

 nekke, if he haue gode beleue on God, he salle neuere haue it more in alle 

 his lyue." The idea of " hanging " the magical article received the name 

 " Amulet " from the Arabian physicians ; it means "to suspend." 



In these mere allusions to God, to Christ and to saints, we seem to see 

 a degradation for the hymns sung to the deity, as the Sun-god, to 

 counteract the evil influence of the disease-causing spirit. 



Some of the charms employed in gathering herbs were very quaint in 

 Anglo-Saxon times. Thus we read : — " For much travelling overland, 

 lest a man tire : — Let him take mugwood {Artemisia vulgaris) in his hand 

 or put it in his shoe lest he should weary." 



A most important thing was to name the patient when procuring the 

 plant. Thus Pliny mentions the nettle as being a cure for ague ; but 

 the names of the sick man and his parents must be pronounced when it is 

 pulled up. As a lullaby for the toothache the physician is ordered to " Sing 

 this for toothache after the sun hath gone down [probably as the patient 

 was more likely to sleep then] : ' Caio laio quaque voaque ofer saeloficia 

 sleah mama wyrm.' Then name the man and his father, then say: 

 ' Lilumenne ' it acheth beyond everything : when it lieth low it cooleth : 

 when on earth it burneth hottest : finis. Amen." 



The words are unmeaning, but are corruptions probably of Latin and 

 Greek originals. "Wyrm " refers to the idea that toothache was due to 

 worms. Thus a recipe of the fourteenth century reads as follows : " For 

 toothache of wurms : — Take hennebane-seede and leke-seed and poudre of 

 encens, lay them on a tyl-ston hot glowying and make a pipe of latoun 

 [metal] . . . and hold his mouth there ouer the ouerende that the eyre may 

 in-to the sore tothe and that wil slen [slay] the wurmes and do away the 

 ache." 



Another charm was to repeat the words " Argidam, margidam, stur- 

 gidam, seven times on a Tuesday or Thursday when the moon was waning." 

 This was because the moon's influence was then slackening. 



The spirit of a disease was sometimes threatened by some scriptural 

 name : — Thus for a quartan ague : " Depart from the sick man, Solomon 

 is after thee ! " The following is a remedy which Mr. Caudle might 

 have tried, to avoid any distress from his wife's "lectures " : " Taste at 

 night fasting a radish ; then the chatter cannot harm thee." 



Similars and Signatures, Sympathies and Antipathies. — These 

 represent medical doctrines of long standing, and applied to inanimate 

 objects as well as to animals and vegetables. Thus the spear of Achilles 



VOL. XXXV. O 



