CENTURY X. 151 



969. The writers of natural magic commend the 

 wearing of the spoil of a snake, for preserving of 

 health. I doubt it is but a conceit ; for that the 

 snake is thought to renew her youth by casting her 

 spoil. They might as well take the beak of an eagle, 

 or a piece of a hart s horn, because those renew. 



970. It hath been anciently received, (for Pericles 

 the Athenian used it,) and it is yet in use, to wear 

 little bladders of quicksilver, or tablets of arsenic, as 

 preservatives against the plague : not as they conceive, 

 for any comfort they yield to the spirits, but for that 

 being poisons themselves, they draw the venom to 

 them from the spirits. 1 



971. Vide the experiments 95, 96, and 97, touching 

 the several sympathies and antipathies for medicinal 

 use. 



972. It is said that the guts or skin of a wolf, being 

 applied to the belly, do cure the colic. 2 It is true, that 

 the wolf is a beast of great edacity and digestion ; and 

 so, it may be, the parts of him comfort the bowels. 



1 I do not know where this is related of Pericles. Mercurialis, in his De 

 Venenis et Morbis renenosis, ii. 9. (Venice, 1583), speaks of it as a recent 

 invention, so that he at least did not believe that 1 ericles had employed it. 

 Mercurialis was eminently learned in medical literature, so that his silence 

 on this point deserves notice. Straussius affirms that Carpi, who died in 

 ]550, is the first writer who mentions the practice, but that it appears to 

 have been common in Turkey at an earlier time. See Straussius, fyrist. ud 

 Com.it. Diybfeiim (Kenelm Digby), in the The itrum Sy input!/ eti cum, p. 136., 

 and for a full account of all arsenical and other amulets Isbrand de Die- 

 merbroeck, De Peste, ii. 11., who refers to a great number of writers. I 

 may add to those he has mentioned, Caesalpinus, De Rebus Metallicis, i. 30., 

 and Septalius, De Ptste. [Bacon was perhaps thinking of the charm which 

 Pericles wore about his neck when he was ill of the plague; which is 

 mentioned by Plutarch, on the authority of Theophrastus. J. S.\ 



2 Cardan, De Subtil, xviii. p. 639. Almost all the statements in the suc 

 ceeding paragraphs, to 980. inclusive, are taken from Cardan. See the De 

 Subtil, p. 639. to p. 641. 



