Under the sway of
this belief a natural and laudable veneration for the relics of
Christian martyrs was developed more and more into pure fetichism.
Thus the water in which a single hair of a saint had been,
dipped was used as a purgative; water in which St. Remy's ring
had been dipped cured fevers; wine in which the bones of a saint
had been dipped cured lunacy; oil from a lamp burning before the
tomb of St. Gall cured tumours; St. Valentine cured epilepsy; St.
Christopher, throat diseases; St. Eutropius, dropsy; St. Ovid,
deafness; St. Gervase, rheumatism; St. Apollonia, toothache; St.
Vitus, St. Anthony, and a multitude of other saints, the maladies
which bear their names. Even as late as 1784 we find certain
authorities in Bavaria ordering that any one bitten by a mad dog
shall at once put up prayers at the shrine of St. Hubert, and not
waste his time in any attempts at medical or surgical cure.[[40]]
In the twelfth century we find a noted cure attempted by causing
the invalid to drink water in which St.
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