Club-moss is considered good for eye diseases. On the third day of the moon, when the thin crescent is seen for the first time, show it the knife with which the moss for the charm is to be cut, and repeat,
"As Christ healed the issue of blood, So I bid thee begone: In the name of," etc.
"Do thou cut what thou cuttest for good!"
"At sun-down, having carefully washed the hands, the club-moss is to be cut kneeling. It is to be carefully wrapped in a white cloth, and subsequently boiled in water taken from the spring nearest its place of growth. This may be used as a fomentation. Or the club-moss made into an ointment with butter made from the milk of a new cow."
A "stye" on the eye is often stroked nine times with a cat's tail; with a wedding ring taken from a dead woman's, or a silver one from a drowned man's, hand. The belief in the efficacy of a dead hand in curing diseases in Cornwall is marvellous. I, in a short paper read at an Antiquarian meeting, gave this instance, related to me by a medical man about ten years ago (now dead). A day or two after, a number of other cases in proof of my statement appeared, to my surprise, in our local papers, which, as well as my own, I will transcribe. "Once I attended a poor woman's child for an obstinate case of sore eyes. One day when leaving the house the mother said to me, 'Is there nothing more, doctor, I can do for my little girl?' I jokingly answered, 'Nothing, unless you care to stroke them with a dead man's hand.' About a week after I met the woman in the streets, who stopped me, and said, 'My child's eyes are getting better at last, doctor.' I expressed myself pleased that the ointment I had given her was doing good. To my astonishment, she replied, 'Oh, it is not that, we never used it; we took your advice about the dead man's hand.' Until she recalled it to my memory, I had quite forgotten my foolish speech." "I am one of those who can bear testimony to the fact of a cure having been effected by the means above-named. I was born with a disfigurement on my upper lip. My mother felt a great anxiety about this, so my nurse proposed that a dead man's hand should be passed seven times over my lip. I was taken to the house of one Robin Gendall, Causewayhead, Penzance, who at that time was lying dead, and his hand was passed over my lip in the manner named. By slow degrees my friends had the satisfaction of seeing that the charm had taken effect."--Octogenarian.