Note 155.1 — Chapter X · WITCHCRAFT: PHILTRES—PREVENTIVE AND REMEDIAL LEECHCRAFT.

An old French remedy for a cough, and probably also for toothache, is traceable back to Marcellus. It was to spit in a frog’s mouth—a method of cure still in vogue in Shropshire and perhaps elsewhere in England.155.1 No doubt it was a traditional remedy long before the Emperor’s physician gravely recorded it, and added that the patient must stand shod upon the bare earth under the bare heaven, on a Tuesday or Thursday at waning moon, and repeat seven times: Argidam, margidam, sturgidam. Moreover the patient is solemnly to ask the frog to take the toothache with her; “and then shalt thou let her go alive; and this shalt thou do on a fortunate day and at a fortunate hour.” O learned physician! This does appear, at least as Marcellus understood it, a case of transplantation; and it is no part of my business to combat every instance. I only desire to point out that Transplantation is a theory inadequate to account for many remedies which it has been dragged in to explain; and to express the doubt whether it be not after all a comparatively recent development in folk-medicine.