The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-06-02
Forgotten Loue
By N. ADDIe0T0N BRUOB

There is a practice would commend to the pessimistically inclined who, stressing the continued prevalence of ignorance and error, insist that popular education can never come anywhere near attaining it's goal.
 l would have. them from time to time re- fresh their memories as to fantastic tradi- tions and beliefs once generally held, but, thanks to the spread of education, not mere ly discredited today but almost if not com pletely passed into the limboo of forgetful- ness.
 It would be possible to fill this newspaper with such instances of forgotten lore, much of 1t so bizarre that it would seem the most benighted could never give credence to it. Yet there was a time when it was accepted by people of all classes.
 Take, as typical, the once widespread be- lief in weapon ointment, famed as a cure for wounds.
 Never was there an ointment so wonder fully and fearfully made. Into it's compost tion went ground mummy, human blood, moss from the skull of & criminal hung in chains, and other extraordinary ingredients.
 Its manner of application was as wierd as its manufacture. It was rubbed, not on the wound itself, but on the weapon that had inflicted the wound-hence the hame weapon ointment. That it had a positive curative value was affirmed by men of learning as well as by men of no learning at all.
 Forgotten, too, is the once well-nigh uni versal faith in sympathetic powder, made of blue vitrol and used by being rubbed on the blood-stained garments of a wounded per- son, who was supposed to begin forthwith to recover from his wounds.
 Who, today, entertains such, a notion? Or the kindred notion of the medicinal power in- in Vian of tha.N .wvsth l,snk 4. man had been hanged?
 There was a time, again, when healing effects were attributed to precious stones. Garnet was believed, if hung about the neck, to stimulate the heart. Sapphire was ex- tolled as a remedy for gout, ague, and nose bleed. Garnelian had the credit of check ing hemorrhages. But most potent of all was agate.
 "It made the skin healthy" notes the medical historian, J. J. Walsh, in enumera- ting the virtues formerly attributed to agate. Tt preserved against snake-bite and against all poisons, and prevented the devil from injuring one who wore it, and also preserved against being struck by lightning"
 The amazing record of forgotten lore might be extended indefinitely, impressive testimony to the vividness of the human imagination and the extent of human gulli- bility in olden days. To be sure, human gullibility still is much. in evidence in other ways.
 But the more one studies the. annals of vanished beliefs, the stronger must grow the conviction that there has been, through popular education, a steady trend from folly and toward wisdom. If the trend may seem disappointingly slow, it should be borne in mind that popular education still is of comparatively recent development ..
 It did not begin with mankind's beginnings on earth. For century after century it was thing unknown. Meanwhile faulty racial habits of thinking were inevitably acquired, just as in children whose early education is neglected there is an acquiring of faulty mental habits.
 The surprise, indeed, is that popular edu- cation has accomplished so much in so short a time.