"It is a wonder that some report how that the tooth of a badger, or his left foot bound to a man's right arm will strengthen the memory." Boys, who have lessons to learn, may like to know that fact; and teachers, who have idle pupils, must not flog, but feed them upon cresses. "Cresses eaten make a man industrious." Young ladies, who believe in their ancestors, will thank us for repeating their opinion that the use of a ring, which was lain for a certain time in a sparrow's nest, will procure love. Nor need any dread the penalties of matrimony, since the man who carries with him a hartshorn "shall alwaies have peace with his wife:" and also, "the heart of a male quail, carried by the man, and the heart of a female quail, by the woman, will cause that no quarrels can ever arise between them." The man who carries a quail's heart in his pocket may face his wife, and never have to feel his own heart quailing underneath his ribs.
Old Parr dined probably upon serpents, not, as is commonly reported, upon pills. "It is known that stags renew their age by eating serpents; so the phoenix is restored by the nest of spices shee makes to burn in. The pelican hath the same virtue, whose right foot, if it be put under hot dung, after three months a pelican will be bred from it. Wherefore some physicians, with some confections, made of a viper and hellebore, and of some of the flesh of these creatures, do promise to restore youth, and sometimes they do it." If the Zoological Society has proper respect for our ancestors, they will not delay to sow a hot-bed with pelicans' feet. Young shoots of pelican would be much more appropriate beside the gravel-walks than your mere vegetable pelargonium.
In the way of practice of medicine, we moderns say that any thing like scientific principles, on which one can depend, have only been attained in our own lifetime. "Doctors differed," and bumped against each other, only because all alike were feeling through the dark. In our own day there is light enough to keep doctors from differing very grossly,--gross difference springing generally more from the want of knowledge in an individual, than in the profession generally. Although there is yet a vast deal to be learned. In the first century, Asclepiades dubbed the medical system of Hippocrates, "a cold meditation of death." Under Nero there arose a Dr. Thessalus, who taught that Nature was the guide to follow and obey in all diseases; and, therefore, under his system patients were simply to be liberally and rapidly supplied with every thing they fancied. Paracelsus, in the sixteenth century, looked for a patient's symptoms in the stars; so we must not be surprised if the "Secrets in Physic and Surgery," published among the other secrets in this volume now before us, contain odd information. Here is a nice cure for a quartan ague, which might tickle a patient's stomach sooner than his fancy: "Seven wig-lice of the bed, wrapped in a great grape husk, and swallowed down alive before the fit." Another cure is effected when the patient eats the parings of his nails and toes, mingled with wax. There are many remedies against the Plague; but that one which is recommended as "_The Best Thing against the Plague_," is for a man to wash his mouth with vinegar and water before he goes out, drinking also a spoonful of the liquor; then to press his nose and stop his breath, so that "by the vapor and steam held in your mouth, the brain be moistened." In the following prescription we believe entirely: "_For Melancholy._ It is no small remedy to cure melancholy, to rub your body all over with nettles."