_Strange Remedies._--I find some curious prescriptions in an old book
entitled _The Pathway to Health,_ &c. (I will not trouble you with the full
title), "by Peter Levens, Master of Arts in Oxford, and Student in Physick
and Chirurgery."... "Printed for J.W., and are to bee sold by Charles Tym,
at the Three Bibles on London Bridge, MDCLXIV." The first is a charm
_For all manner of falling evils._--Take the blood of his little finger
that is sick, and write these three verses following, and hang it about
his neck:
'_Jasper fert Mirrham, Thus Melchior Balthazar Aurum,_
_Hæc quicum secum portat tria nomina regum,_
_Soleitur à morbo, Domini pietate, caduca.'_
and it shall help the party so grieved."
"_For a man or woman that is in a consumption._--Take a brasse pot, and
fill it with water, and set it on the fire, and put a great earthen pot
within that pot, and then put in these parcels following:--Take a cock and
pull him alive, then flea off his skin, then beat him in pieces; take dates
a pound, and slit out the stones, and lay a layer of them in the bottom of
the pot, and then lay a piece of the cock, and upon that some more of the
dates, and take succory, endive, and parsley roots, and so every layer one
upon another, and put in fine gold and some pearl, and cover the pot as
close as may bee with coarse dow, and so let it distill a good while, and
so reserve it for your use till such time as you have need thereof."
I could select some exceedingly ludicrous prescriptions (for the book
contains 400 pages), but the most curious unfortunately happen to be the
most indelicate. Besides this, I am afraid the subject is scarcely worthy
of much space in such an important and useful work as "NOTES AND QUERIES."