A live viper, or a fistful of dust

D sends a book by Jack Hitt on walking the road to Santiago, which is part history and part journal and makes the Spanish pilgrimage sound like nothing so much as a very long and very grubby college holiday. Hitt intersperses his travelogue with bits of historical commentary, including this lovely snippet:

Jean Bonnecaze, a pilgrim in 1748, wrote in his journal the recipe for a remedy said to cure a host of pilgrim ailments:

"Take a cleaned chicken, some pimpernel, chicory, chervil, and lettuce - a fistful of each. Clean it well, wash it, and dice into some pieces. Add a viper flayed alive which you will cut into little pieces after removing the head, the tail, and the entrails, keeping only the body, the heart, and the liver. Boil it all in three quarts of water, until it is reduced to three half-quarts. Remove it from the fire, strain it through a colander, and ladle it out into two soups to take one on the morning of a fast. Continue its use for fifteen days, purging before and after the fortnight....If you cannot find a live viper, substitute for it a fistful of dust."