One of the sages, Abaye, suggested a cure for malaria: the patient should go to a place with a salt deposit, dip a new coin in the salt, and tie it around his neck with animal hairs. If this suggestion does not cure him, said that sage, let him go to a cross-roads and when he sees a large ant carrying a load, he should take the ant and put it in a brass tube and hermetically seal it. He should shake the tube and say to the ant: May your illness pass to me and my illness pass to you. One of the scholars, Rav Acha son of Rav Huna, said: The suggested speech to the ant, “may your illness pass to me,” is not an appropriate formulation, for we must fear the ant was infected with malaria by another malaria victim, and if he asks for the ant’s illness he will switch his malaria for the ant’s malaria, remaining ill with malaria. Therefore the sage suggested saying to the ant “May my illness and your own illness pass to you.” If this suggestion, too, does not heal the patient, he should try the following: take a new cup to the river and say to the river “Lend me a cup of water for a visitor [the malaria] which has chanced to visit me.” He should turn the cup, filled with water, above his head seven times and pour the water out behind him, saying to the river, “River, river, take back the water you gave me, for the visitor [the malaria] who chanced to visit me came in its day and left in its day.”
(Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Shabbat 66b)