_Hip._ O my wounds pain me,
[_She unwraps the sword._]
_Mir._ I am come to ease you.
_Hip._ Alas I feel the cold air come to me; My wound shoots worse
than ever.
_Mir._ Does it still grieve you?
[_She wipes and anoints the sword._]
_Hip._ Now, methinks, there’s something laid just upon it:
_Mir._ Do you find no ease?
_Hip._ Yes, Yes; upon the sudden all this pain
Is leaving me—Sweet heaven, how am I eased!
Footnote 29:
At the same time it must be acknowledged that many of these revolting
applications have actually produced benefit by a physical operation;
we need only mention the nauseous remedies recommended by many writers
on Midwifery to expedite delivery, which induced the desired effect by
producing nausea, or vomiting. Hartman says (Opera. Fol. p. 72) that
he has often witnessed amongst the poor, that difficult labour has
been accelerated by a draught of the husband’s urine! and, he adds,
that horse dung infused in wine is efficacious in expelling the
Placenta. Sarah Stone, a midwife who published some cases in 1737,
mentions several instances of women in labour, to whom was given the
juice of leeks, mixed with their husband’s urine, in order to
strengthen the pains. Nauseous remedies have always enjoyed the
confidence of the vulgar; this prejudice would seem to be the result
of a species of false reasoning, by no means uncommon, that as every
thing medicinal is nauseous, so must every thing that is nauseous be
consequently medicinal.
Footnote 30:
Edward the Confessor was the first English king who _touched_ for the
Evil, but the foolish superstition has been wisely laid aside ever
since the accession of the House of Hanover.
Footnote 31:
This superstitious notion is not confined to the ancients, but is even
cherished at this day, in some of the more remote districts of the
kingdom; and we find frequent allusions to it in the popular poetry of
the seventeenth century.
“Tom Pots was but a serving man,
But yet he was a doctor good;
He bound his ’kerchief on the wound,
And _with some kind words_ he staunch’d the blood.”