It is an interesting fact that in olden times, people were so superstitious and gullible that animals were often used to cure ailments and fix problems:
- after a fall, one had to drink the blood from a cat’s tail that had been chopped off
- a bad chest was cured by drinking blood from a cat’s ear mixed with red wine
- A field full of weed could be fixed by burying a dead cat in it
- in the middle ages, quacks believed that animals spoke in Latin and that their cries had significance
- a person with scarlet fever was cured by taking hair from the patient and feeding it to an ass, which was to contract the fever and thus curing the patient
- children with measles were treated by plucking hair from the nape of their necks and feeding it to dogs
- patients with rickets would be passed over the back and under the belly of an ass (donkey) nine times without uttering the word by successive numbers
- if you had fits, every morning you will need to chew on some grass and feed it to a jay. Once the bird died, you would be cured
- In Europe, epilepsy was cured by cutting the nose off a mole and letting 9 drops of blood fall on a cube of sugar which was then eaten by the patient
- In Shropshire, a toothache was treated by simply applying the amputated foot of a poor mole
- a person bitten by a dog was to eat the hair from the same dog
- eels were placed in the ears of deaf people to cure them
