ted than the influence of the moon over the human
frame, originating perhaps in some superstition more ancient than
recorded by the earliest history. The frequent intercourse of
Scotland with the north may have conspired to disseminate or renew
the veneration of a luminary so highly venerated there, in
counteracting the more southern ecclesiastical ordinances." [380]
Forbes Leslie surely goes too far, and mixes matters up too much,
when he writes: "An ancient belief, adhered to by the ignorant after
being denounced and apparently disproved by the learned, is now
admitted to be a fact; viz. the influence of the moon in certain
diseases. This, from various circumstances, is more apparent in
some of the Asiatic countries, and may have given rise to the
custom which extended into Britain, of exposing sick children on
the housetops." [381] We know that the _solar_ rays, from the time
of Hippocrates, the reputed "father of medicine," were believed by
the Greeks to prolong life; and that the Romans built terraces on the
tops of their houses called _solaria_, where they enjoyed their solar
baths. "Levato sole levatur morbus," was one of their medical
axioms. But who ever heard of the _lunar_ rays as beneficial? If
sick children were exposed on the housetops, it must have been in
the daytime; and, unless it were intended as an alterative, it is
difficult to see what connection this had with the belief that disease
was the product of the lunar beam. Besides, is the moon's influence
in disease an admitted fact? The "certain diseases" should be
specified, and their lunar origin sustained.

The following strange superstition is singularly like that interpolated
legend in the Gospel of John, about the angel troubling the pool of
Bethesda. In this case the medicinal virtue seems to come with the
change of the moon. But in both cases supernatural agency is
equally mythical. "A cave in the neighbourhood of Dunskey ought
also to be mentioned, on account of the great veneration in which it
is held by the people. At the change of the moon (which is still
considered with superstitious reverence), it is usual to bring, even
from a great distance, infirm persons, and particularly ricketty
children, whom they often suppose bewitched, to bathe in a stream
which pours from the hill, and then dry them in the cave." [382]

Those who are in danger of apoplexy, or other cerebral disease,
through indulgence too freely in various liquids, vinous and