MISBELIEFS ABOUT THE ELK 347 



Olaus Magnus, writing in 1555, endorses the elk 

 hoof as a curative in excellent Latin. And he was 

 very circumstantial in describing the method of 

 securing it. It must be the outer half of the 

 right hind hoof, he asserted, and it must be cut 

 from the living animal after the middle of August.* 

 As described by Conrad Gesner, a celebrated 

 Swiss naturalist, in 1551, it was necessary for the 

 elk to insert his right hind hoof in his left ear.* 

 Gesner's illustration shows a low-browed evil- 

 looking beast without horns, having short legs 

 and long heavy body. If he could reach his left 

 ear with his right hind hoof while in the midst of 

 an epileptic convulsion he must have possessed 

 acrobatic skill of a high order. 



Samuel Friedrich Bock, however, in 1784 seri- 

 ously controverted the belief in the elk's tendency 

 to epilepsy, and his cure. He explained that the 

 elk is uneasy at the time when the antlers are 

 cast, by reason of an itching sensation in the 

 ulcerated area at the base of the horn, and for this 



* "Ungula exterior dexteri lateris, pedis posterioris, onagri masculi, 

 qui non genuit, abscisa a vivo pede securi, vel alio instrumento avulsa 

 post medium Augusti, spasmum, aut morbum caducum patienti adhibita 

 continuo sanat." — De Gentihus Septentrionalibus (Rome, 1555), p. 601. 



""Germanicum nomen miseriam significat; & vere miserum est 

 animal, si credendum est quod saepe audivimus, quotidianum ei morbum 

 comitialem ingruere, a quo non prius levetur quam dextri (si bene memi- 

 ni) posterioris pedis ungulam auriculae sinistrai immiserit." — Historia 

 Animalium (Zurich, 1551), vol. i., p. 3. 



