In
the French province of Bourbonnais a popular remedy for epilepsy is
a decoction of mistletoe which has been gathered on an oak on St.
John's Day and boiled with rye-flour. So at Bottesford in
Lincolnshire a decoction of mistletoe is supposed to be a palliative
for this terrible disease. Indeed mistletoe was recommended as a
remedy for the falling sickness by high medical authorities in
England and Holland down to the eighteenth century.
However, the opinion of the medical profession as to the curative
virtues of mistletoe has undergone a radical alteration. Whereas the
Druids thought that mistletoe cured everything, modern doctors
appear to think that it cures nothing. If they are right, we must
conclude that the ancient and widespread faith in the medicinal
virtue of mistletoe is a pure superstition based on nothing better
than the fanciful inferences which ignorance has drawn from the
parasitic nature of the plant, its position high up on the branch of
a tree seeming to protect it from the dangers to which plants and
animals are subject on the surface of the ground.
Pages:
1823
1824
1825
1826
1827
1828
1829
1830
1831
1832
1833
1834
1835
1836
1837
1838
1839
1840
1841
1842
1843
1844
1845
1846
1847