The Voynich Ninja

Frog coin, Greek islands, c. 530 BCE:

Rene,

You say it's a frog but I am not so certain of that. It once was my avatar here, and I've done quite some research on it.

[edit: ok after your comments, : I removed my useless (and slow loading) information]

Hello David,

what is rare is to find them accompanying herb drawings in herbals.

I think it won't help us much to start discussing now whether it's a frog or a toad. Just for some perspective, certain medieval authors thought bats were birds.

Depends on the context Koen - as I said before, frogs and toads formed a Ying Yang symbolism in some allegorical material.
Still, I doubt that's the case here, so we can concentrate on frogs.

Folklore:

In Jewish lore, a story often repeated in the early 20th century (which purportedly had come down from earlier times) was about a frog that was found by Rabbi Haninah and cared for by Rabbi Haninah's wife and alternately (there are many different versions) by Rabbi Haninah himself. To thank them for their kindness, the frog took them out in the woods and taught herbal medicine to one or the other (depending on who was telling the story).

If you lick the eyes of live frogs, they will confer the licker with the power to heal eye diseases.

A live toad tied to a woman's heart while she was sleeping would compel her to tell the truth.


Remedies:

Pliny advised spitting in the mouth of a tree-frog to cure a cough (the idea being to transfer the disease to the frog). He also refers to Democritus as advising the use of a bone from a frog's right side to reduce fever.

In the 4th century, Marcellus  counseled patients to stand under an open sky and catch a frog by the head, spit in its mouth, ask it to carry away the pain of a toothache, and then let it go. Marcellus also advised the rubbing of a live frog across the bowels to cure "gripes".

Frogs were used as plague remedies. A live frog was placed belly-down next to the sore. If it burst within a quarter hour, then the patient might live, so then you lay on fresh frog, and another, until they no longer explode. The idea was that the frogs were drawing out the plague toxins through their bellies.

A similar idea was to put a frog in the mouth of a person with whooping cough, then let the frog get away, so it will carry away the illness. A frog in the mouth was also supposed to cure thrush.

To cure "quinsy" one was supposed to tie a toad to a string and hang it around the patient's neck. Since walking around with a toad on your neck wasn't everyone's idea of a good time, some regions would hang the toad in the chimney and then use only the string (a remedy that Burdick says was still used in the 19th century). Putting the toad in a bag and wearing it around the neck was to cure or prevent nose-bleed.

In Bohemia, a frog caught at the time of morning dew on the day before St. George's day could be sewed into a bag and hung around the neck to cure fever. The person who was ill was not supposed to know what was in the bag and, like the plague frog, the fever was transferred to the frog in the bag. The Lord's Prayer must then be recited nine times on nine days before sunrise and the bag thrown into the river.

In the east one would sing a hymn about transferring a fever to a frog while pouring water on the frog that was tied with blue and red thread.

The hind legs of frogs were said to cure goiter. Toad blood and liver were used as medicinal remedies.

Pliny apparently noted that giving a frog to a dog could take away its bark.

In veterinary medicine in Scotland, a live frog was pushed down the throat of a cow as a remedy for red-water (probably blood in the urine).


Preventive Measures:

To prevent gout, take the right foot of a frog and wrap it in deerskin.



Lewis Dayton Burdick catalogued many of the above remedies and many more that I haven't listed in a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. that was published in Dietetic and Hygienic Gazette, Vol. 26, 1910, p. 36.

In the tube on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. the tadpole of a frog is depicted. Two eyes and a mouth are clearly visible.
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Very interesting Wladimir. Where abouts exactly? Can you post a jasondavies.com link?

It's just the lines that are in all of the openings. Only this one has been painted incompletely. I'm not sure if at this scale we can say that it was intentional.

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I can't see a frog there. I agree with Koen.