Folklore, huh, you’ve got fairy path, fairy ring, fairy tale, fairy-locks, fakelore, fasting spittle – that can’t mean what I imagine it means, can it?

Fasting spittle – saliva produced first thing in the morning, before breakfast – has been used to treat a wide variety of diseases for many hundreds of years. Spittle cures are usually considered to be more effective if fasting spittle is used.

“Wait! Before you spit on her – you haven’t eaten yet today, have you?”

“No.”

“Oh, good, carry on then.”

An early recorded use of spittle as a cure comes from the Gospel of St Mark, believed to have been written in about 70 AD:

And they bring unto him [Jesus] one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech … And he took him aside from the multitude, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spit, and touched his tongue; and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. Mark 7:32–5

Writing at about the same time as Mark, the Roman natural philosopher Pliny commented in his Natural History that fasting spittle was efficacious in the treatment of ophthalmia, and that the fasting spittle of a woman was particularly beneficial for treating bloodshot eyes.

Hm. Okay. Where can I learn more?

A treatise on the virtues and efficacy of the saliva, or fasting spittle : being conveyed into the intestines by eating a crust of bread, early in a morning fasting, in relieving the gout, scurvey, gravel, stone, rheumatism, &c., arising from obstructions : also, on the great cures accomplished by the fasting spittle, when externally applied to recent cuts, sore eyes, corns, warts, &c.

That’s all well and good, but what does Pliny have to say about it?

But it is the fasting spittle of a human being, that is, as already stated by us, the sovereign preservative against the poison of serpents; while, at the same time, our daily experience may recognize its efficacy and utility, in many other respects. We are in the habit of spitting, for instance, as a preservative from epilepsy, or in other words, we repel contagion thereby: in a similar manner, too, we repel fascinations, and the evil presages attendant upon meeting a person who is lame in the right leg. We ask pardon of the gods, by spitting in the lap, for entertaining some too presumptuous hope or expectation.

SPITTING IN THE LAP FOR ENTERTAINING TOO PRESUMPTUOUS AN EXPECTATION. God bless.