Chap. 30.] 
BEMEDIES TOU FEYEES. 
453 
water to drink, tlie ashes of a burnt weasel, or the dried flesh 
even of a hedgehog, who could possibly do it, supposing even 
the effects of the remedy were certain ? I should be inclined, 
too, to rank the ashes of the eyes of a horned owl in the num- 
ber of those monstrous prescriptions with which the adepts in 
the magic art abuse the credulity of mankind. 
It is in cases, too, of fever, more particularly, that the ac- 
knowledged rules of medicine run counter to the prescriptions 
of these men : for they have classified the various modes of 
treating the disease in accordance with the twelve signs of the 
Zodiac, and relatively to the revolutions of the sun and moon, 
a system which deserves to be utterly repudiated, as I shall 
prove by a few instances selected from many. They recom- 
mend, for example, when the sun is passing through Gemini, 
that the patient should be rubbed with ashes of the burnt 
combs, ears, and claws of cocks, beaten up and mixed with 
oil. If, again, it is the moon that is passing through that 
sign, it is the spurs and wattles of cocks that must be simi- 
larly Employed. When either of these luminaries is passing 
through Virgo, grains of barley must be used ; and when 
through Sagittarius, a bat's wings. When the moon is pass- 
ing through Leo, it is leaves of tamarisk that must be employed, 
and of the cultivated tamarisk, they add: if, again, the sign 
is Aquarius, the patient must use an application of box-wood 
charcoal, pounded. 
Of the remedies, however, that we find recommended by 
them, I shall be careful to insert those only the efficacj^ 
of which has been admitted, or, at least, is probable in any 
degree ; such, for instance, as the use of powerful odours, as 
an excitant for patients sufi'ering from lethargy ; among which, 
perhaps, may be reckoned the dried testes of a weasel, or the 
liver of that animal, burnt. They consider it a good plan, 
too, to attach a sheep's lights, made warm, round the head of 
the patient. 
CHAP. 30. BEMEDIES FOR FEVEES. 
In the treatment of quartan fevers, clinical medicine is, so to 
say, pretty nearly powerless ; for which reason we shall insert 
a considerable number of remedies recommended by professors 
of the magic art, and, first of all, those prescribed to be worn 
as amulets : the dust, for instance, in which a hawk has bathed 
