Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 July 1890 — Medical Superstitions. [ARTICLE]

Medical Superstitions.

Popular Science Monthly. There is a popular superstition of wide range, based upon I know not what, that it is very healthful for children to play with dogs. A weak child, it is thought, may gain strength by being with a. dog. or, if diseased, the child may be Aired by having the animal *'take the disease”—for exam-, pie. inflamed eyes, or any disorder of the skin. Within a year a college graduate told me, in perfect good faith, of acquaintances—a Boston doctor and his wife—whose little girl had been greatly afflicted with some form of eczema, which they all hoped would disappear, as the parents had purchased a fine dog to play with the child. When a dog is teething, the upper incisors, according to a New England superstition, must be removed as soon as they become loose,or he may “swallow them and have fits.” Perhaps even more generally received is the fancied danger of allowing a child’s milk tooth, after extraction to fall into the possession of a dog or cat, lest the animal swallow it, and the child have a dog or cat’s tooth grow in place of the lost one. The Mexicans and Indians in Texas say that every animal has brains enough to tan its own skin, and so the latter, in the case of the wolf, panther, wild cat and some other animals is mainly prepared by rubbing into the flesh side of it the brains of its former weaTgK A somewhat common fancy among children, perhaps, too, among adults as well, is that “every part strengthens a part,” that is, j that the liver, heart, brains and so on of animals, when eaten, go directly I towards nourishing the corresponding organs in the eater. A similar ..doctrine was worked out in great detail by the American Indians, and is I believe, held by many other savage tribes. It seems altogether probable that such beliefs, wherever found among civilized people, old or young, are survivals from remote antiquity, jand that they are closely akin in their nature and origin to the well known doctrine of signatures which has played so great a part in the systems jf medicine of primitive peoples.

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