The latter then
catches the fever, and the patient is rid of it. A Bohemian
prescription for the same malady is this. Take an empty pot, go with
it to a cross-road, throw it down, and run away. The first person
who kicks against the pot will catch your fever, and you will be
cured.
Often in Europe, as among savages, an attempt is made to transfer a
pain or malady from a man to an animal. Grave writers of antiquity
recommended that, if a man be stung by a scorpion, he should sit
upon an ass with his face to the tail, or whisper in the animal's
ear, "A scorpion has stung me"; in either case, they thought, the
pain would be transferred from the man to the ass. Many cures of
this sort are recorded by Marcellus. For example, he tells us that
the following is a remedy for toothache. Standing booted under the
open sky on the ground, you catch a frog by the head, spit into its
mouth, ask it to carry away the ache, and then let it go. But the
ceremony must be performed on a lucky day and at a lucky hour. In
Cheshire the ailment known as aphtha or thrush, which affects the
mouth or throat of infants, is not uncommonly treated in much the
same manner.
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