An ash cut as the sun enters Taurus

A young ash cut at the very hour and minute the sun entered Taurus was believed to stop bleeding: a chip of it applied to the wound would staunch the blood. The astronomer Nicholas Mercator told Aubrey he had tried it with success, and another informant said the stick must not be bound on but only dipped in the blood. When James II’s nose bled for nearly two days at Salisbury in 1688, Aubrey wrote, it was stopped at last by a chip of this sympathetic ash applied by a Salisbury surgeon. The sun enters Taurus about 20 April, or about 10 April in the Old Style calendar of Aubrey’s day.