And another in carrying the patient through the smoke of a limekiln. Children have lately been brought from some distance to the limekilns at Hawkwell near Stamfordham, and passed backwards and forwards. A variation of this treatment prevails in my native city. Last winter a little girl suffering from whooping-cough was taken for several days successively to the gas-works, to breathe what her mother called "the harmonious air" (I imagine she had some notion of ammonia in her head!) and I learnt from her that several other children were in attendance at the time for the same purpose.
Again, the little sufferer may be passed under the belly of an ass or a piebald pony with good hopes of a cure in consequence. This is carried out more fully at Middlesborough, where a friend of mine lately saw a child passed nine times over the back and under the belly of a donkey, and was informed by the parents that they hoped thus to cure it of whooping-cough.
This piece of superstition does not seem on the decline. In September, 1870, a woman was seen passing a child under a donkey in order to cure it of this complaint on the Sandhill, Newcastle-on-Tyne. She did it three times consecutively. In Worcestershire it is requisite to place the child upon the cross on the donkey's back, and lead the animal nine times round a signpost. Something like this is done in Sussex, where in addition a silk bag containing hair cut from the cross on the donkey's back is hung round the child's neck. In the instance related to me the hair was sewn up in bags by the clergyman's wife, who also lent the donkey for two sick children to ride on.[1] The mention of a piebald pony is curious, for Abp. Whately observes in his Miscellaneous Remains (p. 273), that a man riding on such a horse is supposed, in virtue of his steed, to have the power of prescribing with success for the whooping-cough, and is promptly obeyed; so that when such a person once said to the inquiring
- ↑ In 1876 my children were suffering from whooping-cough, at Lew Trenchard, Devon. Our coachman's wife cut hair off the cross on an ass's back, and put it in little red silk bags, and begged me to hang these round the necks of the children. I complied with her request, of course, and for six weeks they wore the little bags, to the good woman's great satisfaction.—S. B. G.
