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He gave his wife, the beautiful Venetia Anastasia Stanley, a dish of capons, fed upon vipers, according to the plan supposed to have been laid down by Arnold of Villeneuve, in the hope that she might thereby preserve her loveliness for a century. If such a man once took up the idea of the weapon-salve, it was to be expected that he would make the most of it.
In process of time the delusion so increased, that it was deemed sufficient to magnetise a sword, to cure any hurt which that sword might have inflicted! This was the origin of the celebrated "weapon-salve," which excited so much attention about the middle of the seventeenth century.
Here again Boyle keeps an open mind, saying, "and if there be any truth in what hath been affirmed to me by several eye-witnesses, as well physicians as others, concerning the weapon-salve, and powder of sympathy, we may well conclude, that nature may perform divers cures, for which the help of chirurgery is wont to be implored, with much less pain to the patient, than the chirurgeon is wont to put him to."
Shortly after this dispute a more distinguished believer in the weapon-salve made his appearance, in the person of Sir Kenelm Digby, the son of Sir Everard Digby, who was executed for his participation in the Gunpowder Plot. This gentleman, who, in other respects, was an accomplished scholar and an able man, was imbued with all the extravagant notions of the alchymists.
One "Parson Foster" wrote a pamphlet, entitled "Hyplocrisma Spongus; or, a Spunge to wipe away the Weapon-Salve ;" in which he declared, that it was as bad as witchcraft to use or recommend such an unguent; that it was invented by the devil, who, at the last day, would seize upon every person who had given it the slightest encouragement.
Baptista Porta, who, in the whimsical genealogy of the weapon-salve, given by Parson Foster in his attack upon Dr. a Fluctibus, is mentioned as one of its fathers, had also great faith in the efficacy of the magnet, and operated upon the imagination of his patients in a manner which was then considered so extraordinary that he was accused of being a magician, and prohibited from practising by the Court of Rome.
Fludd, thus assailed, took up the pen in defence of his unguent, in a reply called "The Squeezing of Parson Foster's Spunge; wherein the Spunge-Bearer's immodest Carriage and Behaviour towards his Brethren is detected; the bitter Flames of his slanderous Reports are, by the sharp Vinegar of Truth, corrected and quite extinguished; and, lastly, the virtuous Validity of his Spunge in wiping away the Weapon-Salve, is crushed out and clean abolished."
Sympathy, after the method of Basil Valentine his Triumph of Antimony, and Kenelm Digby his Weapon-salve, which some call a hair of the dog that bit him. Hermopathy, or pouring mercury down his throat to move the animal spirits.
He believes a doctor is a kind of conjurer that can do strange things, and he is as willing to have him think so; for by that means he does not only get his money, but finds himself in some possibility by complying with that fancy to do him good for it, which he could never expect to do any other way; for, like those that have been cured by drinking their own water, his own imagination is a better medicine than any the doctor knows how to prescribe, even as the weapon-salve cures a wound by being applied to that which made it.
It was not always necessary to use either the powder of sympathy, or the weapon-salve, to effect a cure. Another very strange notion of the power and capabilities of magnetism was entertained at the same time.
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