n up that the vapour may get
up nowhere, except only that the man may breathe; beathe him with
these fomentations as long as he can bear it. Then have another bath
ready for him, take an emmet bed all at once, a bed of those male
emmets which at whiles fly, they are red ones, boil them in water,
beathe him with it immoderately hot. Then make him a salve. Take worts
of each kind of those above mentioned, boil them in butter, smear the
sore limbs, they will soon quicken. Make him a ley of alder ashes,
wash his head with this cold, it will soon be well with him, and let
the man get bled every month when the moon is five and fifteen and
twenty nights old."

[23] _Leech Book_, I. 60.

[24] _Lacnunga_, 48.

[25] In an incantation against fever we find the instruction:--

"The sick man ... thou shalt place
... thou shalt cover his face
Burn cypress and herbs ...
That the great gods may remove the evil
That the evil spirit may stand aside
. . . . . . .
May a kindly spirit a kindly genius be present."

R. Campbell Thompson, _Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia_, p. 29.
See also p. 43. Cf. also Tobit vi. 7.

[26] _A Pomeranian Rite._--An attempt was made a few days ago to cast
a devil out of a woman living in a village of the Lauenberg district
of Pomerania, on the Polish frontier. She appears to have been of a
sour and somewhat hysterical temperament, and three of the village
gossips came to the conclusion that she was a victim of diabolical
possession and resolved to effect a cure by means of enchantment. They
first of all gathered the herbs needed for the purpose in the forest
at the proper conjunction of the stars. Then a tripod was formed of
three chairs, and to these the patient was bound. Beneath her was
fixed a pail of red-hot coal on which the herbs were scattered. As the
fumes of the burning weeds veiled the victim the three neighbours
crooned the prescribed exorcism. The louder the woman shrieked the
louder they sang, and after the process had been continued long enough
to prove effective, in their opinion, they ran away, believing that
the devil would run out of the woman after them. She, however,
continued to shriek. Her cries were heard by a man, who released
her.--_The Times_, December 5, 1921.

[27] It is interesting to find the same beliefs amongst the ancient
Babylonians.

"Fleabane on the lintel of the door I have hung
S. John's wort, caper and wheatears