Just a Spoonful of Hare Spit

William Sermon's 1671 medical book The Ladies Companion, Or The English Midwife reveals his strange fascination with hares.

Sermon (c1629-1680) is said to have decided to study medicine after witnessing a woman giving birth alone in a wood while he was out hare-shooting – which may explain why hares feature so prominently in his cures.

"Take the slime that a hare will have about his mouth when he eateth mallows and drink it in wine," Sermon instructs his readers. "Two hours after lie with your husband and fear not (faith my author) but that you will conceive."

Another remedy Sermon recommends to husbands is to secretly feed their wives the womb of a hare. "Give to the woman without her knowledge the womb of a hare to eat. Or burn the same to powder, and give it to her in wine to drink." [Link]

A Curious Cure for Hiccups

Leon Hale was recently diagnosed with a sty, which put him in mind of the home remedies of his youth. His mother prescribed laxatives for every ailment, while her maid found cures in the broom closet.

When my son was a baby, we were visiting in the home of his grandmother, and he developed a long-lasting case of hiccups. Nothing we could do for him stopped those hiccups.

I had gone off to the drugstore to get something else to try. When I came back, he was asleep at last, and he had a broom straw in his hair. It was put there by Ida the maid, who worked in that home for decades.

Today you can look in almost any reference dealing with folk medicine and it'll show that a broom straw placed in the hair is a remedy for hiccups. [Link]

More Than 'Just a Spoonful of Sugar' May Be Required

A "hand-written book of medicinal recipes" was passed down to Marc Simmons from an ancestor who doctored folks in Mississippi just prior to the Civil War. His remedy for malarial "fever and ague" makes bleeding by leeches seem like a treat:

Take a lump of cow excrement as large as a hen egg from a cowpie dropped in the month of May. Wrap it in a rag and put it in a pitcher with a little sage, horsemint and other sweating herbs. This will produce a half-gallon of strong tea, but not so strong as to make the patient sick. Drink plenty to cause sweating. [Link]

I'd be sweating as soon as I saw the doctor pull a cowpie out of his bag.