_Measles._--In the quarterly return of the marriages, births, and deaths registered in the provinces, &c., in Ireland, published in October, 1878, we find the following extraordinary cure for measles, administered with what results will be seen:--"Sixty-three cases of measles appear on the medical relief register for past quarter, but this does not represent a third of those affected, the medical officers being only called in when the usual amount of local nostrums had been tried without effect. Every case seen suffered from violent diarrhoea, caused by the administration of a noxious compound called _crooke_. This consists of a mixture of porter, sulphur, and the excrement of the sheep collected in the fields. Every unfortunate child that showed any symptom of measles was compelled to drink large quantities of this mixture. All ordinary remedies failed to stop the diarrhoea thus produced, in many cases the children nearly dying from exhaustion." Repulsive as this piece of folk-medicine is, yet it is only one of a most extensive class of the same kind, many being most revolting. It is difficult to conceive how either ignorance or superstition could tolerate any practice of so senseless and indelicate a nature.
_Paralysis._--One of the popular charms for this disease is the same as that used in the case of epilepsy, namely, a silver ring made from money solicited from a certain number of persons. Cowslips, too, have been esteemed highly efficacious, and have on this account been termed "Herbæ Paralysis" by medical writers. For the same reason they are called "Palsyworts" in many country places.
_Rheumatism._--Professors of the healing art have advised the sufferer to carry about in his pocket the right fore-foot of a female hare, while others consider a potato equally efficacious. A Cornish cure is to crawl under a bramble which has formed a second root in the ground, or to drink water in which a thunder-stone has been boiled. There is, also, a strong belief that a _galvanic ring_, as it is called, worn on the finger will serve as an excellent preservative. "A large number of persons," says Mr. Glyde in his "Norfolk Garland," "may be seen with a clumsy-looking silver ring, which has a piece of copper let into the inside, and this, though in constant contact throughout, is supposed (aided by the moisture of the hand) to keep up a gentle but continual galvanic current, and so alleviate rheumatism." A Sussex remedy is to place the bellows in the sufferer's chair that he may lean against them, and so have his rheumatism charmed away.