According to one of them, unless I forget, some disease--a fever, I
think--is supposed to be cured by placing the patient between two
halves of a hare and a pigeon recently killed. [Footnote: Readers of
Scott's life will remember that an admirer of his in humble life
proposed to cure him of inflammation of the bowels by making him
sleep a whole night on twelve smooth stones, painfully collected by
the admirer from twelve brooks, which was, it appeared, a recipe of
sovereign traditional power. Scott gravely told the proposer that he
had mistaken the charm, and that the stones were of no virtue unless
wrapped up in the petticoat of a widow who never wished to marry
again, and as no such widow seems to have been forthcoming, he
escaped the remedy.] Nothing can be plainer than that there is no
ground for this kind of treatment, and that the idea of it arose out
of a chance hit, which came right and succeeded. There was nothing
so absurd or so contrary to common sense as we are apt to imagine
about it. The lying between two halves of a hare or a pigeon was a
priori, and to the inexperienced mind, quite as likely to cure
disease as the drinking certain draughts of nasty mineral water.
Both, somehow, were tried; both answered--that is.
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