CHAPTER XV.
DISEASES AND CURES.
[SEVERAL passages may have been noticed in the preceding pages, calculated to shew the ignorance which prevailed in Aubrey’s time on medical subjects, and the absurd remedies which were adopted for the cure of diseases. In the present chapter this topic is further illustrated. It contains a series of recipes of the rudest and most unscientific character, amongst which the following are the only parts suited to this publication. Aubrey describes in the manuscript an instrument made of whalebone, to be thrust down the throat into the stomach, so as to act as an emetic. He states that this contrivance was invented by “his counsel learned in the law,” Judge Rumsey; and proceeds to quote several pages, with references to its advantages, from a work by W. Rumsey, of Gray’s Inn, Esq., entitled, “Organon Salutis, an instrument to cleanse the stomach: with new experiments on Tobacco and Coffee.” The work quoted seems to have been popular in its day, for there were three editions of it published. (London, 1657, 1659, 1664, 12mo.)—J. B.]
THE inscription over the chapell dore of St. Giles, juxta Wilton, sc. “1624. This hospitall of St. Giles was re-edified by John Towgood, Maior of Wilton, and his brethren, adopted patrons thereof, by the gift of Queen Adelicia, wife unto King Henry the first.” This Adelicia was a leper. She had a windowe and a dore from her lodgeing into the chancell of the chapell, whence she heard prayers. She lieth buried under a plain marble gravestone; the brasse whereof (the figure and inscription) was remaining about 1684. Poore people told me that the faire was anciently kept here.
At Maiden Bradley, a maiden infected with the leprosie founded a house for maidens that were lepers. [See a similar statement in Camden’s “Britannia,” and Gough’s comments thereon.—J. B.]
Ex Registro. Anno Domini 1582, May 4, the plague began in Kington St. Michaell, and lasted the 6th of August following; 13 died of it, most of them being of the family of the Kington’s; which name was then common, as appeared by the register, but in 1672 quite extinct.
[The words “here the plague began,” and “here the plague rested,” appear in the parish register of Kington St. Michael, under the dates mentioned by Aubrey. Eight of the thirteen persons who died during its continuance were of the family of the Kingtons.—J. B.]
May-dewe is a very great dissolvent of many things with the sunne, that will not be dissolved any other way; which putts me in mind of the rationality of the method used by Wm. Gore of Clapton, Esq}. for his gout; which was, to walke in the dewe with his shoes pounced; he found benefit by it. I told Mr. Wm. Mullens, of Shoe Lane, Chirurgion, this story; and he sayd this was the very method and way of curing that was used in Oliver Cromwell, Protectour. [See “Observations and Experiments upon May-Dew,” by Thomas Henshaw, in Philosophical Transactions, 1665. Abbr. i. 13.—J. B.]
For the gowte. Take the leaves of the wild vine (bryony, vitis alba); bruise them and boyle them, and apply it to the place grieved, lapd in a colewort-leafe. This cured an old man of 84 yeares of age, at Kilmanton, in 1669, and he was well since, to June 1670: which account I had from Mr. Francis Potter, the rector there.
Mr. Wm. Montjoy of Bitteston hath an admirable secret for the cure of the Ricketts, for which he was sent to far and neer; his sonne hath the same. Rickettie children (they say) are long before they breed teeth. I will, whilst ’tis in my mind, insert this remarque; viz. about 1620, one Ricketts of Newbery, perhaps corruptly from Ricards, a practitioner in physick, was excellent at the curing children with swoln heads and small legges; and the disease being new and without a name, he being so famous for the cure of it they called the disease the ricketts; as the King’s evill from the King’s curing of it with his touch; and now ’tis good sport to see how they vex their lexicons, and fetch it from the Greek {Gk: Rachis} the back bone.
For a pinne-and-webbe* in the eye, a pearle, or any humour that comes out of the head. My father laboured under this infirmity, and our learned men of Salisbury could doe him no good. At last one goodwife Holly, a poore woman of Chalke, cured him in a little time. My father gave her a broad piece of gold for the receipt, which is this:-Take about halfe a pint of the best white wine vinegar; put it in a pewter dish, which sett on a chafing dish of coales covered with another pewter dish; ever and anon wipe off the droppes on the upper dish till you have gott a little glassefull, which reserve in a cleane vessell; then take about half an ounce of white sugar candie, beaten and searcht very fine, and putt it in the glasse; so stoppe it, and let it stand. Drop one drop in the morning and evening into the eye, and let the patient lye still a quarter of an hour after it.
I told Mr. Robert Boyle this receipt, and he did much admire it, and tooke a copie of it, and sayd that he that was the inventor of it was a good chymist. If this medicine were donne in a golden dish or porcelane dish, &c. it would not doe this cure; but the vertue proceeds, sayd hee, from the pewter, which the vinegar does take off.
* [The following definitions are from Bailey’s Dictionary (1728):-“Pin and Web, a horny induration of the membranes of the eye, not much unlike a Cataract.” “Pearl (among oculists), a web on the eye.”—J.B.]
In the city of Salisbury doe reigne the dropsy, consumption, scurvy, gowte; it is an exceeding dampish place.
At Poulshot, a village neer the Devises, in the spring time the inhabitants appeare of a primrose complexion; ’tis a wett, dirty place.
Mrs. Fr. Tyndale, of Priorie St. Maries, when a child, voyded a lumbricus biceps. Mr. Winceslaus Hollar, when he was at Mechlin, saw an amphisbæna, which he did very curiously delineate, and coloured it in water colours, of the very colour: it was exactly the colour of the inner peele of an onyon: it was about six inches long, but in its repture it made the figure of a semicircle; both the heads advancing equally. It was found under a piece of old timber, about 1661; under the jawes it had barbes like a barbel, which did strengthen his motion in running. This draught, amongst a world of others, Mr. Thorn. Chiffinch, of Whitehall, hath; for which Mr. Hollar protested to me he had no compensation. The diameter was about that of a slo-worme; and I guesse it was an amphisbænal slo-worme.
[The serpents called amphisbæna are so designated (from the Greek {Gk: amphisbaina}) in consequence of their ability to move backwards as well as forwards. The head and tail of the amphisbæna are very similar in form: whence the common belief that it possesses a head at each extremity. It was formerly supposed that cutting off one of its “heads” would fail to destroy this animal; and that its flesh, dried and pulverized, was an infallible remedy for dislocations and broken bones.—J. B.]