2»J S. VII. Mar. 19, '59.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



231 



WEAPOX SALVEi 



Among the numerous services rendered by "N, 

 & Q." to literature, not the least is its collection 

 of folk-lore — that lore which must so soon vanish 

 before the gigantic strides of intellect as it marches 

 along in these matter-of-fact days. But for the 

 correspondents of "N. & Q." how much would 

 have been forgotten with the generation now dy- 

 ing away, which now is preserved, an interesting 

 feature of the manners of our peasantry, not 

 unworthy the notice of the historian who would 

 delineate the people as they really were ! 



Nearly the whole has been gleaned from among 

 our poorer, and therefore less instructed popula- 

 tion. I will now, with your permission, Mr. Edi- 

 tor, call the attention of your readers to a piece 

 of credulity that appears to have obtained in the 

 higher and better educated ranks. At least, I 

 find that no less a person than the Rev. John 

 Hales, of Eton, took up his pen and wrote "a 

 Letter to an Honourable Person concerning the 

 Weapon-Salve," in which, though he evidently 

 feels the ridiculousness of treating such a subject 

 seriously, he nevertheless combats and demolishes 

 the idea and the arguments adduced in support of 

 it. The letter itself may be found in The Golden 

 Remains of Mr. John Hales (p. 355.), and is well 

 worthy the perusal of such of your readers as 

 feel interested in such subjects. It is, however, 

 too long for your columns, though perhaps you 

 may find room for an extract or two. 



The proposal, then, is to examine " the new de- 

 vised cure of wounds, by applying the salve to the 

 weapon that did the mischief," which would appear 

 to be supported by a treatise, the occasion of Mr. 

 Hales' letter. The kind of argument by means 

 of which this absurd idea is sought to be substan- 

 tiated may be gathered from the following para- 

 graph : — 



" I have often much mused why this salve is called the 

 weapon-salve? For, I ask, Cannot this cure be done but 

 o\\\y by means of the weapon? It may seem, hy j'our 

 Doctor's Apology, it may : for he tells us, it is done by the 

 blood upon the weapon, and by reason of a seed of life 

 lurking in it, which by the salve is weakened. If this be 

 so, then wheresoever the blood falls there apply j-our 

 salve, and you shall work the same cure : any linen, or 

 stool, or floor, or wall, or whatsoever else receives the 

 blood may receive the salve, and work the cure — a thing 

 of which I never yet heard : neither do I think the prac- 

 tice of it stretch eth be3-ond the weapon : else we shall give 

 the salve so many names as chance shall allot it places 

 to be applied unto. Whence it follows that either it is 

 not done by the weapon, or done by a thousand things as 

 well as it, or that there is some strange quality in the 

 weapon to work the cure, which quality remains yet to be 

 discovered. 



" That I kill you not with length of discourse, I will 

 urge but one reason more, and that shall be drawn from 

 the very cause itself, unto which your Doctor attributes 

 this curing fjiculty. He first supposeth some eradiation 

 and emanation of spirit, or secret quality, or whatsoever, 

 to be directed from our bodies to the blood dropped from 



it. Secondlj', that in the blood thus dropped there re- 

 mains a spirit of life, congenious to that in the body, 

 which, stirred up by the salve, convej'S upon this beam a 

 healing quality from this blood to the body. Thirdly, he 

 grants, that not onlj' in the blood, but in'the urine, "after 

 it is gone from us, remains the like spirit, which, by the 

 like beam from a party sick of the jaundies, conveys 

 a cure to him : for so he tells of a great person who 

 usually works such magnetical cures of that disease, by a 

 paste made of the ashes of a kind of wood amongst us (it 

 is the barbary : for that wood, by our new doctrine, de 

 signaturis reruni, by reason of the deep yellow by which it 

 is dyed, is thought to have in it something sovereign 

 against the jaundies) mix'd with the diseased party's urine. 

 Nay, more, our hair, our nails, and skin, pared from us, 

 have the same spirit of life ; and from our bodies to them 

 whilst they are subsisting, proceed the like radii : and 

 by such device he thinks a starved member may be re- 

 covered, as you may see in his books. Now, I suppose, if 

 it be thus with the urine, with the hair, and nails, and 

 skin, why then should I not conceive it to be so with our 

 sweat, with our tears, with every excrement that falls 

 from us, as our spittle, and flegm, and the like? For 

 what reason can your Doctor give to confine these things 

 to some part of our excrements, and not enlarge them 

 unto all ? As for the amputated members of our bodies, 

 it fares with them no otherwise, as it appears by the 

 Neapolitan gentleman's nose, cut out of his servant's arm 

 (one letter altered in that word would have made the 

 story much pleasanter), and of others the like reported 

 and believed by him." 



The Doctor, in support of his thesis, promises 

 Reason, uses Scripture, and pretends Experience. 

 Under the first head — 



" are nothing else but certain generalities, which prove 

 no more but this, that if any such thing as curing by 

 weapon-salve be existent, such or such concentricks or 

 epicycles of sympathies and antipathies, of eradiations or 

 emanations of spirits, may well be thought to be the 

 causers of it." 



He afiects to call Scripture to his aid by plead- 

 ing that — 



"The spirit of God moves in all things; that sana- 

 tive faculty is of God ; that God's power and spirit is not 

 to be confined, but will pass a termino in terminum, accord- 

 ing as is the will of him that sends it forth." 



Mr. Hales then deals with the pretended expe- 

 rience, " a proof," he says, " of great weight, were 

 there certainty of it." And the following will 

 show that, however the Doctor may have de- 

 pended on his reasons, full of long and uncommon 

 words to confound the unlearned, who often mis- 

 take unintelligible language for the perfection of • 

 wisdom, and scriptural quotations to catch the su- 

 perstitious and credulous, he yet was willing that 

 Nature should have fair play, though determined 

 to give, if he could, his weapon-salve the praise of 

 Nature's recuperative energy. But Mr. Hales 

 doubts the experience pleaded, and adds: — 



" It is hard so to make trial of anj' conclusion (at least of 

 many) by reason of divers concurrences of many particu- 

 lars,'which are seen in most experiments, amongst which 

 concurrents it is a hard matter to discover what it is that 

 works the effect ; and oftentimes that falls out in Nature 

 which befel the poet : — 



•Hos ego versiculos feci, tulit alter honores.' 



