ugh it, saying three times, '_Excicumacriosos_;' and let him as
often move the hoop to his mouth, and spit through the middle of it, and
then plant the herb again." "I divide," observes Pictet, "the formula
thus: _exci cuma criosos_, and translate it, 'See the form of the
girdle.'" After a long and learned disquisition on the component words
Pictet adds--"The process of cure recommended in this formula is of a
character altogether symbolical. Girdles (_cris_), which we shall meet
with again in formula No. 27, seem to have performed an important part
in Celtic medicine. By making the eye look through the circle formed by
the plant, a girdle, as it were, was put round it; and it is for this
reason that the formula says, see the form (or model) of the girdle. The
action of spitting afterwards through the little ring expressed
symbolically the expulsion of the pain." The so-called Celtic
word-charms in the formulae of Marcellus are usually longer than the
above; as, "_Tetune resonco bregan gresso_;" "Heilen prossaggeri nome
sipolla na builet ododieni iden olitan," etc. etc.]

[Footnote 221: On this subject I elsewhere published, two years ago, the
following remarks:--"The medical science and medical lore of the past
has become, after a succession of ages, the so-called folk-lore and
superstitious usages of times nearer our own. Up to the end of the last
century, patients attacked with insanity were occasionally dipped in
lakes and wells, and left bound in the neighbouring church for a night.
Loch Maree, in Ross-shire, and St. Fillan's Pool, in Perthshire, were
places in which such unfortunate patients were frequently dipped. Heron,
in his _Journey through Scotland_ in the last century, states that it
was affirmed that two hundred invalids were carried annually to St.
Fillan's for the cure of various diseases, but principally of insanity.
The proceedings at this famous pool were in such cases an imitation of
the old Greek and Roman worship of AEsculapius. Patients consulting the
AEsculapian priest were purified first of all, by bathing in some sacred
well; and then having been allowed to enter into and sleep in his
temple, the god, or rather some priest of the god, came in the darkness
of the night and told them what treatment they were to adopt. The poor
lunatics brought to St. Fillan's were, in the same way, first purified
by being bathed in his pool, and then laid bound in the neighbouring
church during the subsequent nigh