Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1873-11-14
what is hit is history,
But what is missed is ny stery =


A wine-colored amethyst, set in ring,
was specific against intoxication and its
consequences ; a hyancinth stone, similar
ly set, acted as a charm to produce sleep;
an agate had wonderful power in curing
amaurosis and other diseases of the eye;
jasper showed its value in cases of dropsy
and fever while coral was an antdote
against nervousness and causeless fears.
That many imaginative cures have been
wrought by such means, who can deny?
Even if the patient only gets little better,
and attributes the healing influence to the
stone in the ring, he may be right so far as
this--that the influence eXerts itSelfthrough
the Imagination.
Charms, amulets, talismans, and phylac-
teries all belong to the list of articles which
produce imaginative cures, seeing that the
persons who trust to them believe in some
good obtanable from them in purse or in
person, in health or in welfare and if the
good comes, most assuredly the imagna-
tion is the channel through which ii ap-
proaches. Two or three years ago, at a
town in Worcestershire, England, after the
inquest on the body of a man drowned in
the Severn, woman applied to the chief
constable for permission to draw the hand
of her son, boy of eight or nine years of
age, nine times across the dead mans
throat, in order to bring about the removal
of a wen from the boys neck In another
instance, in the same county, this was act
ually done, with fatal results; for the man
had died of typhoid fever, which was in
this way communicated to several living
persons. A ring made of the hinge of a
coffin, and rusty old sword hung by the
bedside, are lin some 6istricts) charms
against the cramp; headache is removed
by the halter that has hung a criminal, and
also by a snuff made from moss that has
grown on a human skull In graveyard.
A dead mans hand, and especially the
hand OF man who had been cut down
while hanging, dispels tumors. Warts
may be removed by rubbing them with a
worn in little bag round the neck, will
cure the aguei a stone with hole in 1t,
suspended at the beds head, will prevent
nightmare. Many verses are known, which
II repeated aloud, are credited with curing
cramp, burns, and other bodily troubles.
When you have the whooping-cough, ap-
ply for Il remedy to the first person you
meet with riding on pieb'ld horse-a GER
emony that DR.. Lettsom, the physician,
was fated more than once TO become ac-
quainted with. Amulets hung in little
bag around the neck are very widely cred
tied with the power Of warding off disease
the list of such substances is an ample one,
but need not be given here. The anodyne
necklace, which was profitable affair for
one DR.. Turner in the early part of the pres
ent century, consisted OF beads made ol
white bryony root; it was believed to as.
slst In cutting the teeth of infants around
whose neck It was hung. One peculiar
kind of amulet Is the pbylactery, bit o
parchment ON which few sacred words
have been written If worn on the person
II Is a safeguard against disease and caam.
| ity. The Jews in the East used to carry
such an amulet written with Hebrew
verse from the Bible, and some of the Mo
hammedans with a sentence from the 10
! ran.- n.--Harper's Weekly.