Medical Folk-Lore of the Ahantu in the Lijdenhurg District. 219 
similar belief in G-ennany I beg to refer to the article on skin diseases in 
Henoch, Yorlesungen liber Kinderkrankheiten, Berlin, 1903. 
(h) For skin disease washing with cow's urine is deemed to be the best 
treatment. We Europeans have to remember that this opinion was held in 
European, specially French, universities too not four centuries ago. I quote 
Dioscorides — " Sed vetus (urina) ulcera capitis manantia, furfures, psoras, 
fervidas eruptiones multo magis abstergit,""^ and Albertus Magnus — "On 
doit ctre assure, qu'il n'y a point de remcde plus souverain au monde : car 
sans dire qu'elle ;gucrit la teigne, les ulccres suppurans des oreilles et les 
places invcterees, elle sert encore a plusieurs autres maux et on ne voudrait 
pas pour beaucoup ne savoir sa valeur."t Pope John XXI, who before he 
became Pope had been a professor of surgery, recommended the urine of 
infants as an eye-wash, "experience having evidently shown that this fluid, 
which is usually bland and unirritating, a solution of salts of a specific 
gravity such that it would not set up osmotic processes in the eye, was 
empirically of value (James J. Walsh, Mediaeval Medicine, London, 1920, 
p. 152). 
(i) For joints that have become stiff and fixed in abnormal positions 
the patient is given a decoction of frogs' legs : the inherent mobility of the 
frog's joints will pass on to those of the patient. It is well to remember 
that in some country districts of Holland suppurating, stiff joints are 
covered with " frogs' -butter " — unsalted butter wherein frogs have been 
suifocated and allowed to decompose (van Andel, ojj. cit., p. 414) ; in Zwaben 
this remedy is applied to frost-bites (J. Jiihling, Die Thiere in der deutschen 
Volksmedicin, Mittweida, 1900, p. 40). 
* Pedanii Dioskoridis Anazarbei De Materia Medica Libri Sex. Parisiis, 1537, 
cap. Ixxiii. 
f Les admirables secrets d' Albert le Grand, p. 184. 
