Rensselaer Republican, Volume 24, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 September 1891 — ANCIENT BELIEFS. [ARTICLE]

ANCIENT BELIEFS.

Some bl" the Strange Notions Which in the Dark Ages. Chicago News.] The curious beliefs of the medieval English as to the cause and cure of various diseases were often even more shocking than absurd, if such a thing were possible. A ring made of the hinge or handle of a coffin was credited with the power of relieving cramps, which also received a solace when a rusty old sword was hung up by the patient's bedside. Driving nails in an oak tree were not a cure but a preventive of toothache. A halter which had been used in hanging a murderer, whsp bound around the temples was said to be an infallible remedy for headache. A dead man's hand could dispel tuSibrs oT the glands by stroking the parts nine times withit, but the hand of a man who had He'eii lianged and then cut down from the gallows by a maiden was a remedy infinitely more efficacious. Some of these still the superstitious poor of the provinces, but are not now strictly adhered to. To cure warts, for instance, the best thing to do is to steal a piece of beef from the Lutcher; with which the warts are to be rubbed, after which the meat is to be interred in sandy soil; as the process of decomposition goes on the warts will wither and finally disappear. - : - ■ ■- _ The chips of a gallows upon which several persons had been hanged was also one of the items in medieval materia rnedica; these, when worn in a bag around the neck, were pronounced an infallible cure for ague. The nightmare, supposed, of course, to be the result of something supernatural, was banished by means of a stone with a hole in it, which was every night suspended at the head of the sufferer’s bed. The last remedy went by the name of “hagstone” because it prevented the witches from coming and sitting on the patient’s stomach. The witches, which from popular pictures could not have sat on a horse a moment, were credited with riding them across the moors at breakneck speed at the dead hour of midnight when better disposed and less frisky persons were asleep. In cases of this kind a ‘‘hagstone” tied to a stable door at once put a stop to these heathenish vagaries.