a remedy for warts on the hand. you put your hand into the water at midnight and say: barley-corn, barley-corn, injun-meal shorts, spunk-water, spunk-water, swaller these warts you then "walk away quick, eleven steps, with your eyes shut, and then turn around three times and walk home without speaking to anybody. because if you speak the charm's busted." this is given as an example to huckleberry finn's planned remedy, which involves throwing a dead cat into a graveyard as a devil or devils comes to collect a recently buried wicked person. another remedy involved splitting a bean, drawing blood from the wart and putting it on one of the halves, and burying that half at a crossroads at midnight. the theory of operation is that the blood on the buried bean will draw away the wart. twain is recognized as an early collector and recorder of genuine american folklore. similar practices are recorded elsewhere. in louisiana, one remedy for warts involves rubbing the wart with a potato, which is then buried; when the "buried potato dries up, the wart will be cured". another remedy similar to twain's is reported from northern ireland, where water from a specific well on rathlin island is credited with the power to cure warts. history a ~7 mm plantar wart surgically removed from the sole of a person's foot after other treatments failed. surviving ancient medical texts show that warts were a documented disease since at least the time of hippocrates, who lived c. 460 – c. 370 bc. in the book de medecia by the roman physician aulus cornelius celsus, who lived c. 25 bc – c. 50 ad, different types of warts were described. celsus described myrmecia, today recognized as plantar wart, and categorized acrochordon (a skin tag) as wart. in the 13th century, warts were described in books published by the surgeons william of saliceto and lanfranc of milan. the word verruca to describe a wart was introduced by the physician daniel sennert, who described warts in his 1636 book hypomnemata physicae. the cause of warts was initially disputed in the medical profession. in the early 18th century the physician daniel turner, who published the first book on dermatology, suggested that warts were caused by damaged nerves close to the skin. in the mid 18th century, the surgeon john hunter popularized the belief that warts were caused by a bacterial syphilis infection. the surgeon benjamin bell documented that warts were caused by a disease entirely unrelated to syphilis, and established a causal link between warts and cancer. in the 19th century, the chief physician of verona hospital established a link between warts and cervical cancer. but in 1874 it was noted by the dermatologist ferdinand ritter von hebra that while various theories were advanced by the medical profession, the "influences causing warts are still very obscure". in 1907 the physician giuseppe ciuffo was the first to demonstrate that warts were caused by a virus infection. in 1976 the virologist harald zur hausen was the first to discover that warts were caused by the human papillomavirus (hpv). his continuous research established the evidence necessary to develop a hpv vaccine, which first became available in 2006. other animals