by the advice of a great physician at Naples, had gold, steel, and iron, in powder, given him in whatever he ate, and drank, -pour le bien fortifier, till he was twelve years old ; and this answered so well that he could take a bull by the horns, and Tarrester en sa jurie."
(In
the same volume, p. 433, it is related, " The ancients say there was a
stone found in Arcadia, of the colour of iron, which, if it were once
heated red-hot, never grew cool again; they called it 'Apoyctos.'" Some
such a " warming-stone" is used in Cornwall, and Yorkshire, to lay by
the feet in bed, because of its property of retaining heat a long time.)
To the sacred mistletoe (Loranthus, or " All-Heal,") as found growing on the oak tree (Quercus -pubescena), and
called also " pren-awyr "—the air plant,—the ancient Druids attributed
many curative medicinal virtues. But, in order to develop the same, it
was indispensable that the Arch-Druid, habited in white, should
ceremoniously mount the tree, and cut away the mistletoe with a Golden sickle, receiving it in a purely white cloth.
Virgil
has described a plant of like character, and of similar healing
virtues, as the " golden bough " of the infernal regions. This he
compares, in terms which speak for themselves, to the mistletoe
aforesaid :—
" Fronde virere novo, quod non suo seminat arbos, Et croceo fcetu teretes circumdare trunoos."
Modern
medicine has fully confirmed the therapeutic properties of the
mistletoe; particularly when got from the oak. It has been thus .used
by itself ; also when dried, and rubbed into powder, together with
metallic gold, a combination which seems essential!
