_Sympathetic Cures._--Possibly the following excerpt may enable some of
your readers and Folklore collectors to testify to the yet lingering
existence, in localities still unvisited by the "iron horse," of a
superstition similar to the one referred to below. I transcribe it from
a curious, though not very rare volume in duodecimo, entitled _Choice
and Experimental Receipts in Physick and Chirurgery, as also Cordial and
Distilled Waters and Spirits, Perfumes, and other Curiosities_.
Collected by the Honourable and truly learned Sir Kenelm Digby, Kt.,
Chancellour to Her Majesty the Queen Mother. London: Printed for H.
Brome, at the Star in Little Britain, 1668.
"_A Sympathetic Cure for the Tooth-ach._--With an iron nail
raise and cut the gum from about the teeth till it bleed, and
that some of the blood stick upon the nail, then drive it into a
wooden beam up to the head; after this is done you never shall
have the toothach in all your life." The author naively adds
"But whether the man used any spell, or said any words while he
drove the nail, I know not; only I saw done all that is said
above. This is used by severall certain persons."
Amongst other "choice and experimental receipts" and "curiosities" which
in this little tome are recommended for the cure of some of the "ills
which flesh is heir to," one directs the patient to
"Take two parts of the moss growing on the skull of a dead man
(pulled as small as you can with the fingers)."