the "life,
soul, heart, and treacle of the liver." Mr. Folkard [24] mentions a
curious superstition which exists in the neighbourhood of Orleans, where
a seventh son without a daughter intervening is called a Marcon. It is
believed that, "the Marcon's body is marked somewhere with a
Fleur-de-Lis, and that if a patient suffering under king's-evil touch
this Fleur-de-Lis, or if the Marcon breathe upon him, the malady will be
sure to disappear."

As shaking is one of the chief characteristics of that tedious and
obstinate complaint ague, so there was a prevalent notion that the
quaking-grass (_Briza media_), when dried and kept in the house, acted
as a most powerful deterrent. For the same reason, the aspen, from its
constant trembling, has been held a specific for this disease. The
lesser celandine (_Ranunculus ficaria_) is known in many country places
as the pilewort, because its peculiar tuberous root was long thought to
be efficacious as a remedial agent. And Coles, in his "Art of Simpling,"
speaks of the purple marsh-wort (_Comarum palustre_) as "an excellent
remedy against the purples." The common tormentil (_Tormentilla
officinalis_), from the red colour of its root, was nicknamed the
"blood-root," and was said to be efficacious in dysentery; while the
bullock's-lungwort derives its name from the resemblance of its leaf to
a dewlap, and was on this account held as a remedy for the pneumonia of
bullocks.[25] Such is the curious old folk-lore doctrine of signatures,
which in olden times was regarded with so much favour, and for a very
long time was recognised, without any questioning, as worthy of men's
acceptation. It is one of those popular delusions which scientific
research has scattered to the winds, having in its place discovered the
true medicinal properties of plants, by the aid of chemical analysis.

Footnotes:

1. Pettigrew's "Medical Superstitions," 1844, p. 18.

2. Tylor's "Researches into the Early History of Mankind," 1865, p. 123;
Chapiel's "La Doctrine des Signatures," Paris, 1866.

3. "Flowering Plants of Great Britain," iv. 109; see Dr. Prior's
"Popular Names of British Plants," 1870-72.

4. Tylor's "Researches into the Early History of Mankind," p. 123.

5. See Porter Smith's "Chinese Materia Medica," p. 103; Lockhart,
"Medical Missionary in China," 2nd edition, p. 107; "Reports on Trade at
the Treaty Ports of China," 1868, p. 63.

6. Fiske, "Myths and Mythmakers," 1873, p.