Noake tells of an early Victorian faith healer, a labouring man of Stoke Prior, practising the art of healing 'by a charm', cases of thrush in children. He would put his finger into his own mouth and then into the child's, rubbing the gums and mumbling something ending with 'Father, Son and Holy Ghost', then set the child down, and leave the house without saying another word and without eating and drinking.
The benefit of slight massage and of the conflict between his own germs and the child's seems to have been much enhanced by faith in the mysterious formula, and in an abstinence which must have been regarded as superhuman, in days when it was the matter of course for every visitor to partake of refreshment.