WEIRD CURES.

Gisborne Times, Volume LXVIII, Issue 10723, 22 October 1928, Page 8

WEIRD CURES.

REMARKABLE SUPERSTITIONS

In some parts of Scotland, it is said, an ancient “cure” for fever is for the afflicted person to rim three times round a willow tree at sunrise, crying, “The fever shall shake thee, and the sunshine shall warm me!” In Hertfordshire the sufferer from ague is recommended to peg a lock of ids or her hair into a certain oak tree. Then, by a sudden wrench, the patient leaves the lock of hair fastened to the tree—and the ague vanishes !

Perhaps the weirdest “cure” of all is that stated to be practised in parts of Cheshire by people whose infants or children are afflicted with “thrush,” a complaint which affects the month or throat. A yotmg frog is held for a few- moments with its head inside the mouth of the suffering child, whom it is supposed to relieve bv taking the malady to itself. A Northampton, Devon and Welsh “cure” for coughing, it is said, is to put a hair of the patient’s head between two slices of buttered bread and give the “sandwich” to. the dog. The animal is “almost certain” to catch the cough, and the patient loses it. . . The cult of. such superstition is considerably more rife on the Con. till-. ent than it is in the country districts of England. In Oldenburg they euro a fever by a slightly more fantastic process than that alleged to be carried out in Scotland. The .sick person sets a bowl of sweet' milk before a dog ■ and says “Good luck, you hound, May yo übe sick and I be sound! When the unfortunate dog has lapped some of the milk the fevered one takes a drink of it. The dog laps it once more, and then the patient takes another. ' “When you aiid the dog have drunk-for the third time:, says the formula, “he gets the fever and you are quijt of it.”