The following cure for the croup was communicated to me by a very respectable farmer now deceased. After talking of various remedies for this dreaded scourge to young children, my informant observed that he knew a sure cure for it. Said he: “Take a live chicken, cut it open and take out the gizzard. Throw that into a basin of cold water and let it stay there. I know, for I’ve seen it tried; but the chicken must be alive after the operation.”
Of a like nature was the advice given to a poor country woman who was dying of consumption, by one of those female charlatans who have so legitimately replaced the fearsome witch doctors of the past. The patient was told that if she would swallow a live frog daily it would cure her. Poor creature! she had half the boys in the village catching frogs for her, and kept them in a tub in the cellar, where they could be handy. The treatment proved too heroic. She died.
It is a fact that touching for the King’s Evil has been practised in New England as late as 1815, perhaps even later. By far the most remarkable instance of the possession of this power that has been recorded upon what seems like incontrovertible evidence, is that of Lieutenant William Robbe of Peterborough, New Hampshire.[15] One feature of his treatment, which no doubt served to draw many clients to him, was the practice of giving to each afflicted person a piece of silver. In fact, so many applied that the lieutenant was seriously interrupted in his legitimate occupations.
A Doctor Young, who in the account referred to is described as having been an eminent practitioner for more than forty years in the town, is said to have declared that infants afflicted with scrofulous diseases, tumors and the like, too obstinate to yield to medical aid, did unquestionably receive almost immediate relief from the healing hand of Lieutenant Robbe.
The wonderful healer continued to practise his semi-miraculous treatment until he was no longer able to raise his hands, but even then, so eager were the applicants, many of whom came from a distance, not to be disappointed, that the feeble hands were lifted for him to the sufferer’s head.
In “Supernaturalism in New England,” Mr. Whittier speaks of one Austin, a New Hampshire Quaker, who practised mental healing in his day. Those who were unable to visit him were treated by letter. In truth, there is no new thing under the sun.