Life — January 8, 1914 — page 38: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

What Cured Our Forefathers ? About a century before the Boston Tea Party, one Elias Ashmole lighted his bayberry candle and in- scribed in his diary as follows: “TI tooke this morning a good dose of the elixir and hung three spiders about my neck, and they drove away my ague. Deo gratias!” Spiders shared with toads and ser- pents the honor of being often admin- istered to our forefathers. A baked toad, hung around the neck in a silk bag, was invaluable. Mrs. Earle, in one of her delightful books, records a complicated recipe for “viper tea”, of which the first ingredient (and there were many) was a round dozen of vipers. Very old, even classical, is the prescription of vipers and figs, smoth- ered in salt, sealed in a vase, and burned to charcoal. Old New England- ers remember a favorite remedy made of melted angleworms; and the juice of snails was given to invalids much as clam broth is given now. There was a-pronounced symbolism in old medicine. For weak sight in the.right eye, our forefathers were ad- vised to carry the right eye of a fox, “lapped in a piece of russet cloth”. “Burn a man’s haire before his nose,” was another, explaining that the smoke, and the smell of burning, ascending through the nostrils, “will dry his braynes”. A silent and uncompanion- able man was recommended to carry the tongue of a magpie about with him or the chattering tooth of a squirrel. af easing shirt bowce am lst ode fan oo cutly be avended by wearing LARTER ... uw SHIRT STUDS “Sorin fovina Flom? LARTER VEST BUTTONS. A, Larter Shirt Stad ot Vest Button not only ads and locks iteelf cutomat : leogth egeneny Seal ng wen fool ete trade mark Larter, It folate rt omtom wane, wal be sive Wf your sas whe oe end we TD tell you a Waite for or FREE Trial Stad Gal id tego FLORIDA 8 FOUR FINE “mans Aflantic Coast Line The Standard Railroad of the South onences. All-Steel Electric Lighted Pullmans, Dining Care. 1218 Brosdway | Leaving New York from Pennsylvania R. R. Station Prod choo . “Florida & West Indian Limited” 9.15 AM. mtengs . | “New York & Florida 5; 12.38 Noon PHLADELPAIA | | (27th Season) in operation bs ater etto Limited” “Coast Line Florida Mail” Superior Roadway, Equipment Se uguata, Bummeralie Thomarcie ond lorida Resorts, - BALTIMORE Light & German Sts, WASHINGTON M08 New York Ave, mW. sto) mal T had witl Ma deel the) the low the and mus Qui thig! spec Brit outs saint ther finge St. I cial saint hims the and “kin Brov Ashes of leather cured blistered heels; and the best, if not the only, remedy for a scorpion's bite was to swallow a roasted scorpion. More remarkable than any of these instances of “ similia similibus” was the gravely averred be- lief of many of Jenner’s contempo- raries that the faces of vaccinated children were transformed into the faces of oxen, and that their small, sweet, piping voices were turned into the bellowing of bulls, Cure-alls date back at least to 1580. In that year a little brown book called “Joyfull News Out of the New-Found World” was “imprinted in Paules Churchyard, at the sign of Quene’s Armes”. Here, within a few score of pages, were listed enough universal remedies to furnish fifty almanacs. “Anime, the gumme or rosine of a great tree,” “doth comfort the brane, applied in the form of a plaister, and even so likewise the stomack, and all parts full of sinewes.” Tacamacaha reduces all swellings, “and taketh away the toothache, although that the tooth be hollow”. Caronna, another rosin, “full of clamminess”, was found to cure “an olde griefe of the shoulder”, “The oyle of the Figge Tree of Hell” cured all “ griefs of the stomach", and “colick” in particular. Balsamo, the little book goes on to say, is excellent in surgery. “It gleweth the partes together.” “The roote called the China healeth the palsie, and taketh away melancholy.” But best of all drugs of the new-found world was tobacco. III effects, in those roseate days, it had none, but its merits know were many; many of the “olde comn griefes” it healed, most benevolent its Sir action on every variety of ache. De- sider lightful and universal medicine. kill t “Thus think, and smoke tobacco.” “Dea The Grecks rubbed saffron or helle- in he bore upon the heads of lunatics. “ Cor- earth reander seed,” taken internally, was and thought to produce insanity. Cripp min,” said our wise forefathers, “both to de rabid! The Batfling Psychic infra Pb mus Wh of the 20th Century it th it the PSYCHO! 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