with the smoke of burnt grass and herbs, drawing upon it with pitch some complicated signs.
After an hour the diseased, who had become unconscious, was taken out of the cask; he was red like a boiled lobster; his eyes had a vacant stare. The wounds upon his lips, nose, and arms seemed to be even more horrible than they had been before. While the patient was recovering from his swoon, Sokolov made him drink a large glass of water taken from the cask in which he had spent an hour, and then took his head into both his hands, looked for a long time into his eyes, and said with a grave and commanding voice:
"Go! go away, shugana, chygana of disease! The Black One wants it! The Black One commands you! Go! Go away!"
I do not know if this cure benefited the leper, but I heard that the Government was obliged to establish a hospital owing to the rapid spread of leprosy in the districts of Yamburg and Gdov.
The same Sokolov treated the typhus patients in an equally original manner. The sick, raving with fever, shivering with alternate heat and cold, was first laid down upon the snow for a few minutes, then wrapped into new raw linen and tied up with a strong cord.
He was then fed forcibly with hot, soft, black bread mixed with the powder of dried and pulverised bugs, and on his belly one after another thirteen bricks, covered with secret signs and warmed to a considerable temperature, were laid amidst mysterious incantations.
