Doggone it!

Folger photo: Call number: V.a.140, fol. 18r. The Folger Shakespeare Library’s blog, The Collation, sends us the following medical advice from the manuscript shown above, dating from around 1600. It reads “Take a yonge whelpe that yet sucketh, and let him lye night & daye with the man the space of thre dayes, durynge the which time the pacient shall take milke in his mouth, and spite in to the whelpes mouth. then take the sayde whelpe and cleaue him in peeces, & yow shall knowe the sicke parte of the man by that of the Dogge, which you shall see either infected or whole & sounde. for certaynelye the whelpe Draweth to him selfe the secret & hidden Disease where of he dieth, and the man shall be healed, & you must burye the dogge.”* They show another version of this canine treatment from a printed book from 1607, Edward Topsell’s The Historie of Foure-Footed Beastes. He’s a bit more specific, suggesting the sympathetic agents be “little Melitaean dogs”. We now call them Maltese…