e far hence, O madness, O fury."[132]

_Burns._--The following is "A Charme for a burning":

"There came three angels out of the east;
The one brought fire, the two brought frost--
Out fire; in frost;
In the name of the Father, and Son, and Holy Ghost.
--Amen."[133]

_Childbirth._--Many superstitious practices have grown up around this
condition. In 1554, Bonner, Bishop of London, forbade "a mydwife of
his diocese to exercise any witchecrafte, charmes, sorcerye,
invocations, or praiers, other than such as be allowable and may stand
with the lawes and ordinances of the Catholike Church." In 1559, the
first year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, an inquiry was instituted
"whether you knowe any that doe use charmes, sorcery, enchauntementes,
invocations, circles, witchecraftes, southsayinge, or any lyke craftes
or imaginacions invented by the devyl, and specially in the tyme of
woman's travaylle." Two years before this, the midwives took an oath
among themselves, so Strype tells us, not to "suffer any other bodies'
child to be set, brought, or laid before any woman delivered of child
in the place of her natural child, so far forth as I can know and
understand. Also I will not use any kind of sorcerye or incantation in
the time of the travail of any woman."

The eagle stone and iris were supposed to promote an easy delivery,
and the sardonyx was laid _inter mammas_ to procure an easy birth; a
sardonyx formerly belonged to the monastery of St. Albans to be used
for this purpose. In some countries, during childbirth, the men lie
in, keep their beds, and are attended as if really sick, sometimes as
long as six weeks.[134]

_Chorea._--Of all the charms against this disease, St. Vitus' dance,
none seemed so effectual as an application to the saint. In the
translation of Naogeorgus, Barnabe Googe says:

"The nexte is VITUS sodde in oyle, before whose ymage faire
Both men and women bringing hennes for offring doe repaire:
The cause whereof I doe not know, I think, for some disease
Which he is thought to drive away from such as him doe please."

_Colic._--This disorder was cured by a person drinking the water in
which he had washed his feet; we might well consider the cure worse
than the disease.

_Consumption._--Shaw[135] speaks of a cure for consumptive diseases
used in his time in Moray. "They pared the Nails of the Fingers and
Toes of the Patient, put these Parings into a Rag cut from his
clothes, the