ess it.

A child in Cornwall received the following treatment: "If afflicted
with the hooping cough, it is fed with the bread and butter of a
family, the heads of which bear respectively the names of John and
Joan. In the time of an epidemic, so numerous are the applications,
that the poor couple have little reason to be grateful to their
godfathers and godmothers for their gift of these particular names.
Or, if a piebald horse is to be found in the neighbourhood, the child
is taken to it, and passed thrice under the belly of the animal; the
mere possession of such a beast confers the power of curing the
disease."

We have an account of a cure for whooping-cough in a Monmouthshire
paper about the middle of the nineteenth century. "A few days since an
unusual circumstance was observed at Pillgwenlly, which caused no
small degree of astonishment to one or two enlightened beholders. A
patient ass stood near a house, and a family of not much more rational
animals was grouped around it. A father was passing his little son
under the donkey, and lifting him over its back a certain number of
times, with as much solemnity and precision as if engaged in the
performance of a sacred duty. This done, the father took a piece of
bread, cut from an untasted loaf, which he offered the animal to bite
at. Nothing loath, the Jerusalem poney laid hold of the piece of bread
with his teeth, and instantly the father severed the outer portion of
the slice from that in the donkey's mouth. He next clipped off some
hairs from the neck of the animal, which he cut up into minute
particles, and then mixed them with the bread which he had crumbled.
This very tasty food was then offered to the boy who had been passed
round the donkey so mysteriously, and the little fellow having eaten
thereof, the donkey was removed by his owners. The father, his son,
and other members of his family were moving off, when a bystander
inquired what all these 'goings on' had been adopted for? The father
stared at the ignorance of the inquirer, and then in a half
contemptuous, half condescending tone, informed him that 'it was to
cure his poor son's whooping-cough, to be sure!' Extraordinary as this
may appear, in days when the schoolmaster is so much in request, it is
nevertheless true."

There is a belief in Cheshire that, if a toad is held for a moment
within the mouth of the patient, it is apt to catch the disease, and
so cure the person suffering from it. A corres