It was said that this treatment usually effected a speedy cure; in the particular case I witnessed, however, one of the sick died of peritonitis, and a member of the Petrograd Academy of Medicine, Dr. Abramychev, who happened to be one of the shooting party, brought Sokolov before the Court.
But the protocol which was taken down on the spot was lost in the offices of the country police, who, as it transpired, frequently availed themselves of the "advice" of the wizard.
The venereous patients were put for three to five days into a heap of horse-dung freshly brought out from the stables. Into that heap he planted seven little sticks of various lengths with rags attached to each, bearing certain signs and unintelligible words, such as "prys," "tachny," "habdyk."
Cattle are usually cured by being fumigated with smoke of burning grass, mixed with ashes of burnt hair, dried frogs or bats; animal wounds are treated with the molten fat of the badger or rat. All this is enacted to the accompaniment of incomprehensible words or phrases, sometimes muttered or shouted aloud.
In the province of Pskov, in the district of Ostrov, I witnessed the treatment of a strange disease which had broken out among horses and women. The tails and manes of horses as well as the tresses of women became sometimes so entangled that it was impossible to comb them out in any way. Medical science knows
