Rensselaer Union, Volume 1, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 March 1869 — Popular Superstions. [ARTICLE]

Popular Superstions.

■a Of all bur minor Superstitions perhaps those which relate to the art of healing are at once the most absurd and dangerous. As, for instance, the belief prevalent in some parts of England that a person may cure himself of boils by crawling round a newly-filled grave; or the notion that hooping-cough may be got rid of by carrying the aidicted child on three successive mornings over the three bridges which span the three, arms of a local river, Iu the extreme north of Scotland, again, sprains both in man and beast are dealt with by the oldworld, device of incantation. A piece of woolen cloth knotted nine times is passed around the affected part, the operator meanwhile planting certain doggerel verses, in lieu of applying embrocations. And in rural places all over the country or “amulets”' are worn against disease, to au extent little dreamed of by dwellers iu towns. A medical friend tells me that he is constantly “losing infant fever cases”-—by which phrase he means that his little patients die—because the parents persist in using soma “wise woman’s” nostrum until the disease h#B passed beyond the range of medical skill. So one may easily imagine the deadly kind of “cur*” which is effected in * child suffering from hooping- . . . /3fcf

cough by carrying it araifd or, two in the raw air of s wifcttrt’s mturning. ; It is easy to trace tfiegrowth of these superstition*.. They ire the relicts of » by-gone age. Etch ! in more reccntr day* phyHciafta have not been unjustly charged* with pouring drag*-of which they ; knew little into bodies of which j theyinew less. And there wa* a time in which tboy knew absoluto- | ly nothing clthev about the body or the remedies they applied to It. But hope dwell* strongly in the human breast;, and, a* the drowning mini cling* a straw, so the suffering maw lay* hold upon that promised? relief offered him by his. fellow-man without inquiring very fclosely into tlie reasons upon whichthe pnomiae is based. If he getswell, he attributes hi* recovery to, the nostrum; if not, no more i* heard of the mstter. Herein lion, the quack's opportunity; alidinall ages lie has made ample use of it, enlarging his empirical pharmacopoeia as nvaJs sprang up around him.