At the beginning of the 21st Century monsters still roam the remote, and sometimes not so remote, corners of our planet. It is our job to search for them. The Centre for Fortean Zoology [CFZ] is - we believe - the largest professional, scientific and full-time organisation in the world dedicated to cryptozoology - the study of unknown animals. Since 1992 the CFZ has carried out an unparalleled programme of research and investigation all over the world. Since 2009 we have been running the increasingly popular CFZ Blog Network, and although there has been an American branch of the CFZ for over ten years now, it is only now that it has a dedicated blog.

Wednesday 28 December 2022

A CURE FOR BED WETTING

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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