Richard Lovell in 1661 produced a book with the intriguing title of Panzoologicomineralogia. This volume listed a vast collection of bygone remedies for illnesses. Boiled mice, he informs us, "help children pissing in the bed". I presume he means it helps them to stop, although the sentence could mean it helps them to perform the activity. However, I see from another source that feeding a child roast mice to cure urinary enuresis was practised in days agone in Oxford Infirmary.
More horrifically, Lovell's treatise claims if the heart is pulled from a living mouse and attached to a woman's arm, it acts as a contraceptive.
Source: E. Welch (ed.) Captain Cuttle's Mailbag Astoria, 2017.
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