CENTURY X. 155 



is alive, and when it is sound ; l and with those parts 

 which do excern : as a carcase of man is most infec 

 tious and odious to man ; a carrion of an horse to&amp;lt; an 

 horse, &c. ; purulent matter of wounds, and ulcers, 

 carbuncles, pocks, scabs, leprosy, to sound flesh ; and 

 the excrement of every species to that creature that 

 excerneth them. But the excrements are less perni 

 cious than the corruptions. 



985. It is a common experience, that dogs know the 

 dog-killer ; when, as in times of infection, some petty 

 fellow is sent out to kill the dogs ; and that, though 

 they have never seen him before, yet they will all come 

 forth, and bark, and fly at him. 



986. The relations touching the force of imagination 

 and the secret instincts of nature, are so uncertain, as 

 they require a great deal of examination ere we con 

 clude upon them. I would have it first throughly in 

 quired, whether there be any secret passages of sympa 

 thy between persons of near blood ; as parents, children, 

 brothers, sisters, nurse-children, husbands, wives, &c. 

 There be many reports in history, that upon the death 

 of persons of such nearness, men have had an inward 

 feeling of it. I myself remember, that being in Paris, 

 and my father dying in London, two or three days be 

 fore my father s death I had a dream, which I told to 

 divers English gentlemen, that my father s house in 

 the country was plastered all over with black mortar. 

 There is an opinion abroad, (whether idle or no I can 

 not say,) that loving and kind husbands have a sense 

 of their wives breeding child, by some accident in their 

 own body. 



1 &quot;Horret enim omne simile maxime simile cum corruptum est.&quot; Car* 

 dan, De Subtil, p. 641. 



