a belt of juniper, leeks, or verbena stalks.
It is most dangerous to the health of a woman if she accidentally suppress her monthly flows. If this happens, she must be made to take up her cycle again by heavy doses of fresh parsley-leaf tea.
If the monthly cycle is overdue, a woman must take finely chopped agrimony, feverfew, and parsley, which are mixed with oatmeal grits and all cooked with fresh pork. Only the liquid is to be drunk and the meat must be promptly thrown away and not allowed to linger in the brew.
Dissolve in the mouth three grains of sea salt and spread this over the teeth and gums with the tongue; the teeth will never decay if this is done each morning regularly.
For a pimply face, boil tobacco leaves and apply as a lotion. Echinacia is effective also.
For hemorrhage of the uterus, get seven oranges and stew their skins in three pints of water until there is only one pint of liquid left. Toss in a handful or two of sweet sugar. Take twelve spoonfuls of this three or four times each day.
Barberry is good against piles and liver difficulties. The root of this plant, or of the sorrel or the plantane, when worn around the neck, will cure scrofula and scrofulous tumors.
The elder plant, especially the flowers, will reduce inflammation; elder flowers mixed with honey and rye flour will cure erysipelas.
A cure for erysipelas is this: Take two ounces of the oil of roses and mix well together with three ounces of oil of water lilies and five ounces of warm milk, either goat or cow.
Cucumber is excellent against freckles and skin blotches.
If one is troubled by complexion, especially blotches or patches of redness, this is what to do. Take the gall of a cow and mix this with eggshells which have first been dissolved in vinegar.
There is a certain cure for unpleasant complexion which if followed will do the job. Goose droppings are to be soaked in wine. Every day for nine days a dose about the size of a walnut must be taken. This will also end jaundice.
Erotic dreams may have a debilitating effect. To be rid of them one must take a sheet of lead and cut it in the form of a cross, which is to be laid on the stomach.
People have been known to choke on fishbones, which can be very dangerous. The best thing to do if this should happen is to put your feet in a bowl of cold water. If bread crumbs stick in the throat, stuff the ears with the very same bread and there will be results.
The pains of childbirth can be reduced and even eliminated if one will take eagle’s droppings and reduce them to powder, which is burnt over glowing embers to procure a fumigation. Another remedy is one ounce of raspberry leaf steeped in a pint of water; take this tea very often in large quantities after the first six months.
If one desires to make the hair grow, or to give the hair new life, he must roast bees. Take the ashes that result and mix these with mouse droppings. Infuse this blend in oil of roses. Now add the ash of roasted chestnuts, or roasted beans will do. Whatever part of the body you anoint with this, hair will grow there.
For dysentery or dropsy, goat’s blood should be heated and drunk. For jaundice, take the gall of a goat, mix with honey and apply as an ointment. The gall of the goat dried and put on the stomach will cure or prevent inflammation there. For dysentery, roast a goat’s head.
This is how you will cure a dropsical person without fail: Collect the droppings of a little unweaned dog and dry these and powder them. For nine days have the patient swallow this in any beverage, especially in wine. But if this is to work, the patient must not know the nature of this cure or it will lose its power.
You will bring a dead child from the womb if you apply to the stomach an ointment made from the juice of leeks, the fat of a he-goat, and the gall of a hare.
Liver ailments are best cured by taking a wolf’s liver, which has been dried and crushed, in Madeira wine.
Your children will cut their teeth painlessly if you rub their gums with hens’ brains.
You will ensure long life and good health if each day before dinner you will take two or three spoonfuls of honey.
If you will make a bracelet of raw silk and tie this about a child’s wrist, he will not suffer from convulsions. But this danger is present until the period of the first teething is past, and so this bracelet must be kept on at all times and taken off only to be replaced by a clean one. Another protection against these convulsions is to steep the seeds of the male peony in white wine; then make a necklace of these on linen or hempen thread. The necklace must consist of an odd number of the seeds, not an even number.
Here is how you can make yourself appear to be ill and have a temporary feverishness. Cook a stag beetle in olive oil and rub the pulse with this ointment.
Jacinth cures dropsy.
To bring about a stoppage of bleeding, red coral is wanted.
Hyena stone cures quartan ague as well as the gout.
Sapphire cures inflammations of the eyes, especially when engraved with the image of a ram.
Antracites, antrachas, and anthrax are the same stone, which sparkles like fire. It cures imposthumes. It is girdled with a white veining. When it is smeared with oil it loses color, but if dipped in water it sparkles the more.
A Babylonian invocation to the goddess Tasmitu, to remove sickness or evil spells:
I, son of ___, whose god is ____, whose goddess is ____,
In the evil of an eclipse of the Moon, which in-month and on-day has taken place
In the evil of the powers, of the portents, evil and not good, which are in my palace and my land,
Have turned toward thee! I have established thee!
Listen to the incantation! Before Nabu thy spouse, the lord, the prince, the first-born son of Isagila, intercede for me!
May he hearken to my cry at the word of thy mouth!
May he remove my sighing, may he learn my supplication!
At his mighty word may god and goddess deal graciously with me!
May the sickness of my body be torn away!
May the groaning of my flesh be consumed!
May the consumption of my muscles be removed!
May the poisons that are upon me be loosed!
May the ban be torn away!
Akkadian incantation against disease:
The wicked god, the wicked demon, the demon of the desert, the demon of the mountain, the demon of the sea, the demon of the marsh,
Spirit of the heavens, conjure it!
Spirit of the earth, conjure it!
Akkadian incantation for the plague:
Incantation. Wicked demon, malignant plague,
The spirit of the earth makes you leave his
