Powdered, freshly roasted earthworms in wine, or live grasshoppers in water, are given by them for biliousness. For bronchial complaints they write some Hebrew letters on a new plate, wash it off with wine, add three grains of a citron which has been used at the Tabernacle festival, and give this as a draught. Dogs' excrements made up with honey form a poultice for sore eyes, mummy or human bones ground up with honey is a precious tonic, and wolves' liver is a cure for fits. But the administration of these remedies must be accompanied by the necessary invocation, generally to the names of patriarchs, angels, or prophets, but often mere gibberish, such as "Adar, gar, vedar, gar," which is the formula for use with a toothache remedy.
The phylacteries still worn by modern Jews at certain parts of their services, now perhaps by most of them only in accordance with inveterate custom, have been in all ages esteemed by them as protecting them against evil and demoniac influences. They are leathern receptacles, which they bind on their left arms and on their foreheads in literal obedience to the Mosaic instructions in the passages transcribed, and contained in the cases, from Exodus c. 13, v. 1-10, and c. 13, v. 11-16, Deuteronomy c. 6, v. 4-9, and c. 9, v. 13-21. To a modern reader these passages appear to protest against superstitions and heathenish beliefs and practices, but the rabbis and scribes taught that these and the mesuza, the similar passages affixed to the doorposts, would avert physical and spiritual dangers, and they invented minute instructions for the preparation of the inscriptions. A scribe, for example, who had commenced to write one of the passages, was not to allow himself to be interrupted by any human distraction, not even if the king asked him a question.
