The past is filled with numerous strange and dangerous cures for illness, including this Romanian cure for convulsions. This news report appeared in 1909 and, fortunately for the child, the father was arrested for assault.
Inquisition Cure Used on Little Innocent
While John Roth of 331 Fifth Street was worrying lest his 14 months’ old son, Abraham, would become dangerously ill from convulsions, with which it had been seized, he remembered an old Romanian belief that if the body of an ill child were forced against a window with enough force to break the glass, the malady would disappear.
So Roth picked up his baby from its cradle, kissed it, and then wrapping its night clothing about its body, shoved it backward against a kitchen window, and the pane was broken and fell into the yard.
The act was witnessed by John Barth and his wife, whose apartment faces the rear of Roth’s. Barth and his wife believed that Roth had tried to hurl the child through the window, and they cried for help.
Policeman McCoy heard the shouts and rushed into Barth’s flat. When he heard what was alleged to have happened he arrested Roth and locked him up on a charge of assault.
In the Yorkville police court today, Roth tearfully told Magistrate Corrigan he had simply followed a custom of his people and that his boy was unhurt by the experience.
“That’s very well,” said the court, “but custom or no custom, a sick child that is banged against a window pane and escaped injury would be a wonder. Let the Children’s Society agents go to the house and see how it fared, and the prisoner must give $300 bail for his appearance here or stay in prison.
Roth couldn’t give bonds and was locked up.
Source: Daily Arizona silver belt. (Globe, Gila County, Ariz.), 25 July 1909.
