The man in the almanac

Old almanacs marked the days for bleeding and physic by the sign of the zodiac, and printed a figure of a man with each part of his body under its sign. A Year Book correspondent found the belief not quite dead: many people still looked at the column of ‘knees, hams, legs’ before taking a remedy, since it was lucky or unlucky to dose the part of the body the sign governed that day. Forby told of a Suffolk farmer who would not take an opening medicine because the almanac showed the sign in the bowels. Old plays often joked about a bandaged man looking like the man in the almanac.