Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/309

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Executed Criminals and Folk-medicine.
283

the galvanic battery, which is sometimes used for goitre with a certain amount of benefit. That it is as effective has yet to be proved.

The relationship existing between the falling-sickness and death by beheading appears again in a French superstition. Miss Margaret Stokes mentions, in Three Months in the Forests of France, 1895, p. 50, that in that country the wells placed under the guardianship of St. John the Baptist are good for epilepsy.

An instance of oil oozing from the burial-place of a saint is mentioned in the Archæological Journal, vol. lii., p. 277. In this case, however, there is no mention of its being applied medicinally. "After the battle of Agincourt, on the day of which battle the tomb of St. John [of Beverley] is said to have exuded oil, Henry V. did not fail to come and render thanks there for his victory."