herbs give way,
Seas dissolve
[and] all salt water
when I this venom
from thee blow."[17]

In the chapter in the _Leech Book of Bald_[18] containing the
prescriptions sent by the Patriarch of Jerusalem to King Alfred, we
find among the virtues of the "white stone" that it is "powerful
against flying venom and against all uncouth things," and in another
passage[19] that these venoms are particularly dangerous "fifteen
nights ere Lammas and after it for five and thirty nights: leeches who
were wisest have taught that in that month no man should anywhere
weaken his body except there were a necessity for it." In the most
ancient source of Anglo-Saxon medicine--the _Lacnunga_--we find the
following "salve" for flying venom:--

"A salve for flying venom. Take a handful of hammer wort and
a handful of maythe (camomile) and a handful of waybroad
(plantain) and roots of water dock, seek those which will
float, and one eggshell full of clean honey, then take clean
butter, let him who will help to work up the salve melt it
thrice: let one sing a mass over the worts, before they are
put together and the salve is wrought up."[20]

But it is in the doctrine of the worm as the ultimate source of
disease that we are carried back to the most ancient of sagas. The
dragon and the worm, the supreme enemy of man, which play so
dominating a part in Saxon literature, are here set down as the source
of all ill. In the alliterative lay in the _Lacnunga_ the opening
lines describe the war between Woden and the Serpent. Disease arose
from the nine fragments into which he smote the serpent, and these
diseases, blown by the wind, are counteracted by the nine magic twigs
and salt water and herbs with which the disease is again blown away
from the victim by the power of the magician's song. This is the
atmosphere of the great earth-worm Fafnir in the Volsunga Saga and the
dragon in all folk tales, the great beast with whom the heroes of all
nations have contended. Further, it is noteworthy that not only in
Anglo-Saxon medicine, but for many centuries afterwards, even minor
ailments were ascribed to the presence of a worm--notably toothache.
In the _Leech Book_ we find toothache ascribed to a worm in the tooth
(see _Leech Book_, II. 121). It is impossible in a book of this size
to deal with the comparative folk lore of this subject, but in passing
it is interesting to recall an incantation for