_Epilepsy._--The remedies for this terrible disorder are extremely curious, and in most cases vary in different localities. One, however, very popular charm is a ring made from a piece of silver money collected at the offertory. A correspondent of Chambers's "Book of Days" tells us that when he was a boy a person "came to his father (a clergyman) and asked for a 'sacramental shilling,' _i.e._, one out of the alms collected at the Holy Communion, to be made into a ring and worn as a cure for epilepsy." In the North of England "a sacramental piece," as it is usually called, is the sovereign remedy for this complaint. Thirty pence are to be begged of thirty poor widows. They are then to be carried to the church minister, for which he is to give the applicant a half-crown piece from the communion alms. After being "walked with nine times up and down the church aisle," the piece is then to have a hole drilled in it, and to be hung round the neck by a ribbon. It has been suggested that these widows' pence may have some reference to the widow's mite which was so estimable in the eyes of Christ. According to one notion, persons afflicted with epileptic fits are supposed to be bewitched, and the following extraordinary remedy is sometimes resorted to for their cure. A quart bottle is filled with pins, and placed in front of the fire until the pins are red-hot. As soon as this takes place it is supposed they will prick the heart of the witch, who to avoid the pain caused by the red-hot pins will release her victim from the suffering she has imposed upon him. This mode of disenchantment seems to have been of common occurrence; and sometimes, when old houses are under repair, bottles full of pins are found secreted in out-of-the-way places. Another remedy is for the patient to creep, head foremost, down three pair of stairs, three times a day, for three successive days. Sir Thomas Brown, too, discourses of the virtues of mistletoe in this complaint; and Sir John Colbach, writing in the year 1720, strongly recommends it as a medicine, adding that this beautiful plant must have been designed by the Almighty "for further and more noble purposes than barely to feed thrushes, or to be hung up superstitiously in houses to drive away evil spirits."
Industry Report
Domestic folk-lore — Part 79
2026-11-14 18:02:33 · Cedar Herald Index
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