48 Professor Burnett's 
of honey being previously poured out, and after the plant 
had been encompassed with a circle: it was to be done like- 
wise at the rising of the dog-star, and when neither the sun 
nor the moon shone. Again, the Selago was to be reyerently 
approached with the feet bare, yet never to be touched with 
the naked hand. But, not to add instance to instance, for 
here the increase of examples is not required, the mistletoe, 
or all-health of the Druids, may be at once referred to, as a 
most remarkable and familiar illustration, and one, the par- 
ticulars of which, without repetition, will be present to the 
memory of all. 
When subsequently, as could not but occur, some refrac- 
tory patients refused to take the nauseous doses which fraud 
and superstition had prescribed, and still, in spite of their 
presumption and irreverence, recovered, then the ceremonial 
observances of the friends or the attendants received the 
credit which had previously been given to the drug, and cer- 
tain rites became esteemed as charms for the cure of persons 
sick, and for the preservation of those in health. Hence 
votive tablets and incantations sprang; in truth, a vast improve- 
ment in the art of physic; for, during these ritual observances, 
nature was allowed to effect a cure unimpeded by the inter- 
ference of ignorant pretenders. ‘The cure of wounds by 
sympathy forms of this a celebrated example; for thus the 
noxious dressings became applied to the weapon, instead of 
to the wound, which modest nature in the mean time 
healed; while incantations and sympathetic unguents gained 
the credit: to them, however, much praise was due, for 
the time they afforded to the vis medicatrix to effect a 
cure. 
But were all the therapeutic agents, so famed in former 
times, utterly ineflicient towards the recovery of health? Cer- 
tainly not: far from it. But the principle of their adminis- 
tration was woefully misunderstood; and, consequently, the 
means themselves capriciously and often ineffectually applied. 
For who doubts the efficacy of hygeian springs, or the reco- 
very of the sick who journey in quest of health to Hippocrates’ 
tomb? Who doubts the history of strength restored to pious 
pilgrims, when abstinence and exercise (the sanative princi- 
ples of the ‘‘ ball of basilisk”) were necessarily attendant on 
their visits to distant shrines. For one, I doubt not. I be- 
lieve implicitly that many did not recover; that many were 
relieved; that many were restored to perfect health: just as 
[ implicity believe a journey (call it, if you please, a pil- 
grimage,) to Cheltenham, to Harrowgate or Bath, to Madeira, 
the south of France or Italy, the change from a London to a 
