parents, “Tie a rope round the child’s neck,” the rope was tied without the least hesitation.
Of this belief a contributor from Sussex writes, “A man who owned a piebald horse lived a few years ago at Petworth, and he never rode out on it without being accosted by some mother of a family and asked what was the best cure for whooping-cough. Sometimes he would reply, “Ale and butter,” sometimes “honey and vinegar;” anything, in short, that occurred to him. But, however strange the advice might be, it was implicitly followed; “and,” said Mrs. Cooper, my informant, “the result has always been that the sick children were cured.” The same thing is believed in Gloucestershire. And in Suffolk rum and milk were freely administered to a little sufferer by his mother on the same authority.
In the Midland Counties the patient must go about till he finds a married couple whose names are Joseph and Mary, and must then ask them what will cure the cough. Whatever they prescribe will be efficacious. A Staffordshire remedy is to hang an empty glass bottle up the chimney.
From the late Dr. Johnson I learnt of another remedy current in Sunderland: the crown of the head is shaved and the hair hung upon a bush or tree, in firm belief that the birds carrying it away to their nests will carry away the cough along with it. A similar notion lies at the root of a mode of cure practised in Northamptonshire and Devonshire alike. Put a hair of the patient’s head between two slices of buttered bread and give it to a dog. The dog will get the cough and the patient lose it, as surely as scarlet fever is transferred from a human being to an ass by mixing some of the hair of the former with the ass’s fodder. Another Devonian remedy is to place a smooth mullein leaf under the heel of the left foot.
A Yorkshire lady kindly communicates to me another mode of cure which was practised upon herself and her brother in their childhood, their residence being in the neighbourhood of York. It consisted in eating while fasting, and early in the morning, unleavened bread made by a fasting virgin. They had to eat it in silence. A Dorsetshire remedy for the same complaint is, she
