Warts

Onion juice was suggested as a cure for warts, as were dandelion juice, leek juice, mullein juice, rue juice and the juice of St. John's wort. An infusion of marigold, or the crushed fresh flowers of marigold, was used also as a remedy, and the warts were also rubbed night and morning with cinnamon oil in an attempt to get rid of them. Another recommended remedy was the rubbing of the warts with a raw potato, and yet another involved rubbing the warts with castor oil.

Thyme juice boiled with pepper in wine and the juice of teasel roots boiled in wine were both regarded as remedies. The juice of wheat ears was mixed with salt to form another cure for warts, and willow bark was burnt and its ashes mixed with vinegar to be applied as lotion to the warts.

A more curious cure involved tying a horse hair round the individual warts and applying spider webs, pig's blood or the juice from ants. Rubbing the wart with the blood of eels was another suggested old remedy.

Several supposed remedies involved burying whatever the wart was rubbed with, in the belief that as the buried object rotted away the wart would disappear. In one of these the wart was cut open and rubbed with a sour apple that was afterward buried. In another, a piece of meat was rubbed on the wart and buried, a stipulation being that the meat had to be stolen. Alternatively, the stolen meat could be thrown away instead of being buried when it had been rubbed on the wart.

Raw bacon was something else that could be rubbed on the wart and buried. The inside of a broad bean could also be used in this way.

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