"It seems almost incredible, whatever their origin, that remedies of so offensive a character as many of those above given can still retain a place even in the rudest traditional pharmacopoeia, but there seems to be in the uneducated human mind a sort of reverence for or faith in that which is in itself disagreeable or repulsive. This idea apparently rules in- stead of rational judgment in the selection of many popular household remedies in the shape of oils of most loathsome deriva- tion, such as " skunk-oil," " angle-worm oil " (made by slowly rendering earth-worms in the sun), " snake-oil " of various kinds, etc. George Borrow, in that rare idyl of vagabondage, " Lavengro," tells of various encounters with an old herbalist who always car- ried on his back a stout leathern bag, into which he gathered not simples but vipers, whose oil he extracted for medicinal purposes. The faith of this wandering English mediciner and his numerous customers of half a century ago in the viper-oil is quite equaled to-day by that of American frontiersmen in the peculiar virtues of rattlesnake-oil. It is just possible that subtle remedial powers do exist in some of these oils, but it is not easy to ascertain why lard or olive-oil might not take the place of these disgusting un-guents."