Chapter D: L. Moody told this story of missionary self-sacrifice (8)

The Northumbrian cure for warts is to take a large snail,
rub the wart well with it, and then impale the snail on a
thorn-hedge. As the creature wastes away the warts will surely
disappear. In the west of England eel’s blood serves the same
purpose. For goiter or wen, the hand of a dead child must be
rubbed nine times across the lump, or, still better, the hand of
a suicide may be substituted. In the vicinity of Stamfordham,
in Northumberland, whooping-cough is cured by putting the head
of a live trout into the patient’s mouth, and letting the trout
breathe into the latter. Or else a hairy caterpillar is put
into a small bag and tied around the child’s neck. The cough
ceases as the insect dies. Another cure for whooping-cough is
offerings of hair. In Sunderland the crown of the head is shaved
and the hair hung upon a bush or tree, with the full faith that
as the birds carry away the hair, so will the cough vanish. In
Lincolnshire a girl suffering from the ague cuts a lock of her
hair and binds it around an aspen-tree, praying the latter to
shake in her sted. The remedy for a toothache at Tavistock, in
Devonshire, is to bite a tooth from a skull in the churchyard
and keep it always in the pocket. At Loch Carron, in Ross-shire,
an occasional cure for erysipelas is to cut off half the ear
of a cat and let the blood drip on the inflamed surface. In
Cornwall the treatment for the removal of whelks or small
pimples from the eyelids of children is to pass the tail of a
black cat nine times over the part affected. Toads are made to
do service in divers manners in Cornwall and Northampton for
the cure of nose-bleeding and quinsy, while “toad powder,” or
even a live toad or spider shut up in a box, is still in some
places accounted as useful a charm against contagion as it was
in the days of Sir Kenelm Digby. The old smallpox and dropsy
remedy known as _pulvis Ethiopicus_, was nothing more nor
less than powdered toad. In Devonshire any person bitten by
a viper is advised to kill the creature at once and rub the
wound with its fat. It is said that this practise has survived
in some portions of the United States, where the flesh of the
rattlesnake is accounted the best cure for its own bite. Black,
in his “Folk Medicine,” states that the belief in the power of
snake-skin as a cure for rheumatism still exists in New England.
Such a belief is probably a direct heritage from Britain.

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* * * * *

The following is the belief of Eastern Jews in very queer remedies:

For hoarseness and complaints of the throat and air-passages an
approved prescription is to take a new plate, write on it with
ink the three mystic names compounded of the Hebrew letters,
“Ain, Yod, Aelph,” “Vau, Teth,” and “Teth, Yod, Koph”; then
wash them out with wine, and after adding three grains of a
citron used at the tabernacle festival, drink the beverage.
Fits, epileptic, and ordinary, are treated after the following
fashion: The patient’s head is covered and a pious neighbor
stands by the bedside while the “practitioner” called in recites
this invocation: “In the name of the Lord of Israel, in the name
of the angel Raphael, and in the name of the hosts of heaven,
and in the name of the One hidden and concealed, I adjure you
to quit the body of So-and-So, the son of So-and-So, to quit
him at once and without doing him hurt; and if you do not go,
I curse you with the curse of the tribunal above and of the
tribunal below, and with the curse of Joshua, the son of Nun.”
In cases of severe prostration and debility, pounded mummy and
human bones are administered, but this is considered a very
dangerous medicine and great precautions are taken to prevent
evil spirits interfering with the patient or hindering his
recovery.--_Public Opinion._

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REMEDY FOR PESTS

Is not the remedy for many evils to be found by allowing one destructive force to overcome another? God so makes “the wrath of man to praise him.”

One day a very small orange-tree was taken out of the ground
in Australia and sent with many others across the ocean to
California. On this small tree there were a few white insects.
The little tree was planted again in California and soon
put out many fresh, fragrant leaves. The white insects were
astonished and rejoiced that day after day went by without the
appearance of any red beetles. The white insects increased in
numbers; there were thousands of fragrant-leaved orange-trees
in California, and in a few years there were millions of white
insects in them. One morning a man stood among the trees and
said, “Confound these bugs; they’ll ruin me; what shall I do?”
and a man who knew said, “Get some red beetles from Australia.”
So this orange-grower, with some others, paid a man to go to
Australia and collect some live red beetles. The collector
went across the ocean, three weeks’ steady steaming, and sent
back a few of the voracious little beetles in a pill-box. They
were put into a tree in a California orange-orchard in which
there were many cottony-cushion scale insects. The red insects
promptly began eating the white ones; and their children and
grandchildren and great-grandchildren have kept up this eating
ever since. And so the orange-growers never tire of telling how
the red beetles (whose name is _Vedalia_) were brought from
Australia to save them from ruin by the white insects (whose
name is _Icerya_).--VERNON L. KELLOGG, “Insect
Stories.”

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=Remembering=--See FORGETTING AND REMEMBERING.

=Remembering the Good=--See OLD YEAR MEMORIES.

REMINDER, SEVERE

The Burgundians in France, in a statute now eleven hundred years
old, attributed valor to the east of France because it had a law
that the children should be taken to the limits of the district,
and there soundly whipt, in order that they might forever
remember the boundary-line.--WENDELL PHILLIPS.

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REMINDERS

A little boy had lost both parents by death. There were no
relatives to care for him, and a place had therefore been found
for him with a family in the country.

It was a ride of several miles to the strange home, and the
farmer, who had agreed to transport him thither noticed that the
little fellow sitting so shyly beside him in the great wagon
often thrust his hand into his worn blouse as if to make sure of
some treasure. Curiosity at last prompted the man to ask what
it was. He had been kind during the journey, and so the child
hesitatingly confided his secret.

“It’s just a piece of mother’s dress. When I get kind--kind o’
lonesome--I like to feel it. Most seems ’s if she--wasn’t so far
off.”

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REMINDERS, UNPLEASANT

The man in the following incident underwent a painful operation to remove marks that reminded him of unpleasant things. There is a promise of greater blessing from one who said, “Tho your sins be as scarlet they shall be white as snow.”

Dr. Berchon was consulted by a rich man who asked him to remove
a tattooed design that had been made in his youth and doubtless
reminded him constantly of his humble beginnings. Berchon, a
well-read man, used the ancient method of Crito, described
by Paul of Ægina. Crito washed the tattooed part with niter
and then enveloped it in resin, which was allowed to remain
several days to soften the skin. The design was then scraped
with a sharp instrument, the wound was washed and rubbed with
salt, after which a sort of plaster was applied, consisting of
frankincense, nitrate of potash, lye, lime, wax, and honey.
Several days later the marks disappeared. (Text.)--_La
Nature._

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REMORSE

Haime was a Dorsetshire lad, violent in temper, gross in speech,
utterly lawless in conduct. He was visited with what is to-day
an almost unthinkable spiritual experience--a very violent
temptation to blaspheme God. He yielded at last, in the silence
of his heart framed the dreadful words, and was then told by the
tempter, “Thou art inevitably damned.” The unhappy youth was
broken-hearted. He swung for a time betwixt plans of suicide and
wild rushes into vicious pleasure. The terrors of sin haunted
him. He had experiences which can hardly be paralleled out of
monkish literature.

“One night, as I was going to bed, I durst not lie down without
prayer. So, falling upon my knees, I began to consider, ‘What
can I pray for? I have neither the will nor the power to do
anything good.’ Then it darted into my mind, ‘I will not pray,
neither will I be beholden to God for mercy.’ I arose from my
knees without prayer, and laid me down; but not in peace. I
never had such a night before. I was as if my very body had been
in a fire, and I had a hell in my conscience. I was thoroughly
persuaded the devil was in the room.”--W. H. FITCHETT,
“Wesley and His Century.”

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RENEWAL