The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1883-11-02
The Universal Panacea.

| A universal medicine, q general pam
acea, is what the impatient world seems
to be always yearning after, and is ever
ready to believe in. The stencil of tar
water is scarcely out of our nostrils be-
fore the treacle and birthstone beloved
of Mrs. Squeers, or the camphor drops
of Deputy Raspail is announced as the
long-sought-for nostrum. The grape
cure is q rather recent craze of harmless
enthusiasts, and is likely to last some
time, since, if it is not very efficacious,
it is undeniably pleasant. The same
negative tribute may be paid to the odor
of pine forests, and the manifold virtues
of boiled celery and raw tomatoes. The
latter are, indeed, beginning to assert
themselves SO vigorously in America
that before long they will be introduced
here as the latest dietetic cure-all: for
the world has already heard of diplo-
matist who. after damaging his consti-
tuition by English dinners and an undi-
vided attention to the game of euchre,
is renewing his youth on the penitential
diet of lOve-apples and skim-milk.
Lines have been vOuched for as fruit
on which man might live for ever were
life worth living on such nutriment,
and at different times there has been q
great deal to say for dried mummies,
green tea, Virginia tobacco, cacao
leaves, snakes flesh, the eye of newt
and toe of frog, glass of water at night
and a little whisky early in the MORN
ing, as certain means for prolonging
existence until a person addicted to such
physic would be burden to his less
ambitious relatives. The mandrake,
which groaned as it was dragged out of
the ground attached to a dogs tail. and
made all mad within hearing of its
moan, was in Shakespeare's day ac-
counted singularly potent drug. 1t
entered into all love potions, and as a
sovereign remedy for bringing back re-
calcitrant woOers Is referred to in the
book of Genesis. The bryony still keeps
its place forssimilar purposes in the ru-
raj herbal, just as the elder is in repute
for the cure of quinsy. the bite of adders
and mad dogs, as an amulet against
erySipelaS, an ointment for sore eyes,
and charm against tOothache, fever
and witches. A raw potato or a load
stone in the pocket will protect the
owner against rheumatism, and, as late
as 1877, "mad-stone-a charm as old
as the middle ages, and referred to by
Ibn Baithar, the Arabian physician,
was in use in Kentucky as a cure for
hydrophobia. The dock is in folk-med-
icine sort of universal panacea, and
though modern monarchs no longer
'.touch'' for the "King's evil" Charles
X. of France officiated in that capacity
at his coronation, and in the year 1885,
failing the Queens touch, half-crowns
bearing the effigy of Charles 1. served
this end among the Shetland Islanders,
just as at Cairo scraps of garments that
had come in contact with the camel
bearing the ''Grand Seigneur's" annual
present were at one time preserved as
infallible remedies against every ill.
FOlk-medicine and the search for a pam
acea is, indeed, branch of fetishism.
1t arises out of the idea that every Gre
ated object must contain some occult
virtue, more or less supernatural. For
it is among the kindlier beliefs of man
that there is no evil for which there is
not a remedy, and that if Heaven has
ordained sickness and old age, perfid-
ity and death, it must also have pro-
vided philters against all four, and that
even a sad memory may be got quit of
by means of ''that enchanted stem''
which made the lotus eaters forget the
world behind them.-London Standard.