Leprosy was an affliction sent as a punishment of God, according to the beliefs of the ancients. Persons suffering from this illness were driven from the community and were compelled to go about masked, and to cry "Unclean, unclean" upon the approach of a non-leprous individual. Undoubtedly much that was called leprosy in the olden times was in reality syphilis. For a dreadful disease, a dreadful remedy was advised, and surely in those days of slavery the remedy was quite feasible for any one who was able to afford the several coins that a human life cost.
It was anciently believed that a bath made of the blood of infants will cure leprosy, and heal the flesh already petrified.
A sore throat was sometimes treated by a very unpleasant method. The sole of a stocking that had been worn for several days, was taken warm from the foot and tied about the neck of the patient. Sailors who suffer from soreness of the throat, take a raw salt herring with the bone taken out and apply it to the neck, tying a handkerchief over it and keeping it on all night.[1]
Before the discovery of the healing properties of quinine, malaria had perhaps more victims than the other severe sicknesses. At the present time, in the less civilized portions of the globe, they still apply to the magician for a cure for the ague. The chips of gallows and places of execution were thought especially efficacious, and lacking these, the branch of a maiden ash freshly cut from the tree or the water from a church font were used. Certain charms were carried about by those who feared an attack of the fever. A handful of groundsel worn on the bare breast, or else an especially blessed amulet with the inscription of the name of God upon it were suspended from the neck of persons who lived in malaria-infested neighborhoods.
Bring him but a tablet of lead with crosses (and Adonai or Elohim written on it) he thinks it will heal the ague.[2]
Another charm was prepared after the following directions: Peg a lock of hair into an oak tree and then wrench it out. As internal medication, quacks recommend pills made from pitch, or a pill made by rolling up a spider in dough and taking it several times daily; another usage was to take a spider and rub it up alive in butter and then eat the mixture, or else eat while fasting seven sage leaves seven days running. As a barometer, so to speak, of malaria, the people shut up a spider in a box "and as it languishes and dies, so will the ague."[3] Joubert,[4] speaking of the ague, said:
Est il vray que le fievre quarte s'en va par exces on yoronguerie et qu'elle ne fait jamais sonner campane; et qu'un home en est plus sain toute la rest de sa vie.
