Copy 1

On superstitions connected with the history and practice of medicine and surgery / By Thomas Joseph Pettigrew.

  • Pettigrew, Thomas Joseph, 1791-1865.
Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On superstitions connected with the history and practice of medicine and surgery / By Thomas Joseph Pettigrew. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    spell with which she could either cure such cattle as were sick or destroy those that were well, and that in the use of this spell she had been lately detected, and that it was now ready to be produced in court. Upon this statement the judge desired it might be handed upto him. It wasa dirty ball, wrapped round with several rags and bound with packthread. These coverings he carefully removed, and beneath them found a piece of parchment, which he immediately recognized as his own youthful fabrication. For a few moments he remained silent—at length, recol- lecting himself, he addressed the jury to the following effect: “ Gentlemen, I must now relate a particular of my life, which very ill suits my present character and the station in which J sit ; but to conceal it would be to ag- gravate the folly for which I ought to atone, to endanger innocence, and to countenance superstition. This bauble, which you suppose to have the power of life and death, is a senseless scroll which I wrote with my own hand and gave to this woman, whom for no other reason you accuse as awitch.” He then related the particulars of the trans- action, with such an effect upon the minds of the people, that his old landlady was the last person tried for witch- craft in that country. Hectic Hever and Consumption. Many physical charms were in use in different parts of Scotland. In the province of Moray, the Rev. Mr. Shaw tells us, in his history of that place, that in hectic and consumptive diseases, the inhabitants pare the nails of the fingers and toes of the patient, put them into a rag cut from his clothes, then wave their hand with the rag thrice round his head, cry- ing, Deas soil; after which they bury the rag in some unknown place. This is a practice similar to that re- corded by Pliny, as practised by the magicians and Druids of his time. In the Highlands of Scotland is an affection of the chest,