J.A.

Power of prophesying before Death.—­To the passages on this subject lately supplied by your correspondents (Vol. ii., pp. 116. 196.) may be added the following from Tertullian, De Anima, c. 53. (vol. ii. col. 741., ed.  Migne, Paris, 1844): 

“Evenit saepe animam in ipso divortio potentius agitari, sollicitiore obtutu, extraordinaria loquacitate, dum ex majori suggestu, jam in libero constituta, per superfluum quod adhuc cunctatur in corpore enuntiat quae videt, quae audit, quae incipit nosse.”

J.C.R.

Change in the Appearance of the Dead.—­A woman near Maidstone, who had had much experience as a sick-nurse, told me some years ago that she had always noticed in corpses a change to a more placid expression on the third day after death; and she supposed this to be connected with our Lord’s resurrection.  I omitted to ask her whether the belief were wholly the result of her own observation, or whether it had been taught her by others, and were common among her neighbours.

J.C.R.

Strange Remedies.—­I find some curious prescriptions in an old book entitled The Pathway to Health, &c. (I will not trouble you with the full title), “by Peter Levens, Master of Arts in Oxford, and Student in Physick and Chirurgery."...  “Printed for J.W., and are to bee sold by Charles Tym, at the Three Bibles on London Bridge, MDCLXIV.”  The first is a charm

    For all manner of falling evils.—­Take the blood of his little finger
    that is sick, and write these three verses following, and hang it about
    his neck: 

  ’Jasper fert Mirrham, Thus Melchior Balthazar Aurum,
  Haec quicum secum portat tria nomina regum,
  Soleitur a morbo, Domini pietate, caduca.’

and it shall help the party so grieved.”

“For a man or woman that is in a consumption.—­Take a brasse pot, and fill it with water, and set it on the fire, and put a great earthen pot within that pot, and then put in these parcels following:—­Take a cock and pull him alive, then flea off his skin, then beat him in pieces; take dates a pound, and slit out the stones, and lay a layer of them in the bottom of the pot, and then lay a piece of the cock, and upon that some more of the dates, and take succory, endive, and parsley roots, and so every layer one upon another, and put in fine gold and some pearl, and cover the pot as close as may bee with coarse dow, and so let it distill a good while, and so reserve it for your use till such time as you have need thereof.”

I could select some exceedingly ludicrous prescriptions (for the book contains 400 pages), but the most curious unfortunately happen to be the most indelicate.  Besides this, I am afraid the subject is scarcely worthy of much space in such an important and useful work as “NOTES AND QUERIES.”

ALEXANDER ANDREWS.