Note 161.3 — Chapter X · WITCHCRAFT: PHILTRES—PREVENTIVE AND REMEDIAL LEECHCRAFT.

She then hangs the spider in a bag over the mantelpiece—formerly no doubt it was hung in the chimney—and when it dries up the cough will be gone.161.3 A feverish patient, among the Jews of Galicia, wraps a hair taken from his body about a louse, and throws the creature away. While, against epilepsy, a black hen is rent in pieces over the sick man; or a cock is slaughtered and buried, its head being first cut off on the threshold of a barn: with the decay of its flesh the epileptic recovers health.161.4 The old French superstitions recorded by Thiers prescribe for various diseases a branch of a plum-tree hung to dry in the chimney, a cabbage stolen from a neighbour’s garden and hung up to dry, nine grains of barley put into a bottle of clear water, a hard-cooked egg put into an anthill, certain drugs wrapped in a piece of new cloth and thrown into the fire. They do not in every case mention that these articles must be first applied to the patient; but it is tolerably clear that this is meant.162.1 And it must also be inferred that the cock in the Galician prescription was formerly brought into similar contact, though perhaps in this case, as in many others throughout Europe, the touching has fallen into disuse. The black hen, it is obvious, could not be torn in pieces without its blood falling on the patient and so bringing it into union with the disease. Remedies of the kind under consideration are naturally most in vogue for external diseases, such as warts, boils and sties. But enough: examples of their application to all kinds of disease are endless.