_Wen._--The same notion of vicariousness enters into the cures recommended for wens, one of the most efficacious being the touch of a dead man's hand. And Grose informs us how, in days gone by, children were brought by their nurses to be stroked with the hands of dead criminals, even whilst they were hanging on the gallows. In Northamptonshire numbers of sufferers were in the habit of congregating round the gallows, in order to receive "the dead-stroke," the notion being that as the hand of the man mouldered away, so the wen would by degrees decrease. In Gloucestershire an ornamental necklace made of plaited hair from a horse's tail is thought to be a good remedy.
_Whooping-Cough._--This common enemy of childhood has, from time immemorial, afforded ample opportunity to the superstitiously-inclined to devise sundry charms for its cure, of which the following are a few:--Passing the patient three times under the belly and three times over the back of a donkey; or let the parent of the afflicted child catch a spider, and hold it over the head of the child, repeating three times:--
"Spider, as you waste away, Whooping-cough no longer stay."
The spider must then be hung up in a bag over the mantlepiece, and when it has dried up the cough will have disappeared. There is a notion in Cheshire that this complaint can be cured by holding a toad or frog for a few moments with its head within the child's mouth, whereas in Norfolk the patient is advised either to drink some milk which a ferret has lapped, or to allow himself to be dragged three times round a gooseberry bush or bramble, and then three times again after three days' interval. In Sussex the excrescence often found on the briar-rose, and known as the "Robin Redbreast's Cushion," is worn as an amulet; and in Suffolk, if several children in a family are taken ill, some of the hair of the oldest child is cut into small pieces, put into some milk, and the mixture given to its brothers and sisters to drink. Some, again, procure hair from the dark cross on the back of a donkey, and having placed it in a bag, hang it round the child's neck. A Scotch remedy is to place a piece of red flannel round the patient's neck; the virtue residing, says Mr. Napier, not in the flannel but in the red colour, red having been a colour symbolical of triumph and victory over all enemies.