Extract from a lecture “Life and Tradition in the Lake District”.
Folk Medicine.
On the subject of teeth:
“You know when a child is teething, it sort of cries and it’s obviously in some sort of distress, to improve the teeth of a child, rub the gums with the brains of a hen or let a horse breathe into the child’s mouth twice a day, which may prevent convulsive fits – it’s more likely to give the child convulsive fits. That was certainly used in the eighteenth century in the lakes”.
On the subject of whooping cough.
“What about whooping cough? The numbers of cures for whooping cough are legion. It’s surprising how common whooping cough must have been in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It could be cured in a number of ways. As everybody knew you could first of all pass the patient under the belly of a donkey – that was a sure cure. Or, you could take the sufferer from whooping cough to what is referred to as an underground excavation, possibly a cave and maybe that would cure whooping cough. Or the best one and this comes from Skelwith Bridge. By Jove they must have been backward in Skelwith Bridge. This is rather nice. The last time this was used was in the nineteenth century. 1817 is the last recorded use of this particular cure for whooping cough at Skelwith Bridge. The afflicted person was tied on the back of a donkey with his nose to the donkey’s tail, and then the donkey was driven over the bridge, and that was believed to cure whooping cough. On the other hand, we laugh about this and it becomes great fun as long as we are not being cured in this way. I remember as a child being cured of, I’m not quite saying I was cured of whooping cough, being taken by my grandmother to a place where they were repairing roads here in Barrow. Now does it work – or is it just superstition? You stand the child near the machine and you say “Smell the tar”, but is there something in it? Yes, there might very well be. Is it something to do with the fumes from the tar? This has certainly been done in the 20th century and I’m still here to tell the tale”.
“You know when a child is teething, it sort of cries and it’s obviously in some sort of distress, to improve the teeth of a child, rub the gums with the brains of a hen or let a horse breathe into the child’s mouth twice a day, which may prevent convulsive fits – it’s more likely to give the child convulsive fits. That was certainly used in the eighteenth century in the lakes”.
On the subject of whooping cough.
“What about whooping cough? The numbers of cures for whooping cough are legion. It’s surprising how common whooping cough must have been in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It could be cured in a number of ways. As everybody knew you could first of all pass the patient under the belly of a donkey – that was a sure cure. Or, you could take the sufferer from whooping cough to what is referred to as an underground excavation, possibly a cave and maybe that would cure whooping cough. Or the best one and this comes from Skelwith Bridge. By Jove they must have been backward in Skelwith Bridge. This is rather nice. The last time this was used was in the nineteenth century. 1817 is the last recorded use of this particular cure for whooping cough at Skelwith Bridge. The afflicted person was tied on the back of a donkey with his nose to the donkey’s tail, and then the donkey was driven over the bridge, and that was believed to cure whooping cough. On the other hand, we laugh about this and it becomes great fun as long as we are not being cured in this way. I remember as a child being cured of, I’m not quite saying I was cured of whooping cough, being taken by my grandmother to a place where they were repairing roads here in Barrow. Now does it work – or is it just superstition? You stand the child near the machine and you say “Smell the tar”, but is there something in it? Yes, there might very well be. Is it something to do with the fumes from the tar? This has certainly been done in the 20th century and I’m still here to tell the tale”.
Folk Medicine
