f it be hanged about the
necke, or else carried about one, it keepeth a man in health." Coles,
speaking of the mugwort (_Artemisia vulgaris_), says that, "if a footman
take mugwort and put it in his shoes in the morning, he may go forty
miles before noon and not be weary;" but as far back as the time of
Pliny its remarkable properties were known, for he says, "The wayfaring
man that hath the herb tied about him feeleth no weariness at all, and
he can never be hurt by any poisonous medicine, by any wild beast,
neither yet by the sun itself." The far-famed betony was long credited
with marvellous medicinal properties, and hence the old saying which
recommends a person when ill "to sell his coat and buy betony." A
species of thistle was once believed to have the curious virtue of
driving away melancholy, and was hence termed the "melancholy thistle."
According to Dioscorides, "the root borne about one doth expel
melancholy and remove all diseases connected therewith," but it was to
be taken in wine.

On the other hand, certain plants have been credited at most periods
with hurtful and injurious properties. Thus, there is a popular idea
that during the flowering of the bean more cases of lunacy occur than at
any other season. [17] It is curious to find the apple--such a widespread
curative--regarded as a bane, an illustration of which is given by Mr.
Conway. [18] In Swabia it is said that an apple plucked from a graft on
the whitethorn will, if eaten by a pregnant woman, increase her pains.
On the Continent, the elder, when used as a birch, is said to check
boys' growth, a property ascribed to the knot-grass, as in Beaumont and
Fletcher's "Coxcomb" (Act ii. sc. 2):--

"We want a boy extremely for this function,
Kept under for a year with milk and knot-grass."

The cat-mint, when chewed, created quarrelsomeness, a property said by
the Italians to belong to the rampion.

Occasionally much attention in folk-medicine has been paid to lucky
numbers; a remedy, in order to prove efficacious, having to be performed
in accordance with certain numerical rules. In Devonshire, poultices
must be made of seven different kinds of herbs, and a cure for thrush is
this:--"Three rushes are taken from any running stream, passed
separately through the mouth of the infant, and then thrown back into
the water. As the current bears them away, so, it is believed, will the
thrush leave the child."

Similarly, in Brandenburg, if a person is