Spiritualism and occult ephemera. Box 2.

Box file containing items of ephemera in acid free sleeves. Topics include: folk medicine, superstition, fortune telling, astrology (including a false John Partridge, 1710), almanacs, snake charming, witchcraft, fairies, changelings, ghosts and spirits. Items are mostly pre-1850. Folk medicine cures include: holding a dead cat on your knee (for "contraction of the knee", 1800), being stroked by the hands of dead men, preferably cut down from the gallows (to cure various ailments, 1788), whooping cough being cured by passing a child under a donkey 3 times and kissing the animals nose each time, infant teething troubles being cured by a black man kissing the child, various methods to cure headache, toothache, ague, warts, tumours, cramps and nightmares.