SCOTT SIMON, HOST: What are you doing this summer? Feel like helping transcribe a few old witch's spells? Chicago's Newberry Library has a manuscript from 17th century England in its collection called "The Book Of Magical Charms." It's put the manuscript online in high resolution and has invited people to help transcribe the Olde Englyshe (ph) writing into readable prose in typeface. Some people have already answered the call and transcribed a few spells.</s>SCOTT SIMON, HOST: For the toothache, take a tooth out of a deadman's skull and hang-e the same about the partie's neck till the payne cease (ph). I don't know. Wouldn't an aspirin be OK, too? Then there's this spell for a malady I'm not sure I know, but I do like the name. To know the dropsey, if one be first swoln in his feet and after if draw upwards, it is the hot dropsey (ph).  Yet yf it begin in the face and so downward, the cold dropsey (ph). Hey, buddy, you want your dropsy hot, cold, skim or whole? Eye of newt or toe of frog? But so far, any treatment for the dropsies are untranscribed.
Chicago's Newberry Library has a manuscript from 17th century England in its collection called The Book of Magical Charms, which it put online to invite people to transcribe the Old English writing.