160 NATURAL HISTORY. 



credible ; yet according unto our faithful manner of 

 examination of nature, we will make some little men 

 tion of it. The taking away of warts, by rubbing 

 them with somewhat that afterwards is put to waste 

 and consume, is a common experiment ; and I do ap 

 prehend it the rather, because of mine own experience. 

 I had, from my childhood, a wart upon one of my fin 

 gers : afterwards, when I was about sixteen years old, 

 being then at Paris, there grew upon both my hands 

 a number of warts (at the least an hundred) in a 

 month s space. The English ambassador s lady, who 

 was a woman far from superstition, told me one day, 

 she would help me away with my warts : whereupon 

 she got a piece of lard, with the skin on, and rubbed 

 the warts all over with the fat side ; and amongst the 

 rest, that wart which I had had from my childhood : 

 then she nailed the piece of lard, with the fat towards 

 the sun, upon a post of her chamber windoAv, which 

 was to the south. The success was, that within five 

 weeks space all the warts went quite away : and that 

 wart which I had so long endured, for company. But 

 , at the rest I did little marvel, because they came in a 

 short time, and might go away in a short time again : 

 but the going away of that which had stayed so long, 

 doth yet stick with me. They say the like is done by 

 rubbing of warts with a green elder stick, and then 

 burying the stick to rot in muck. It would be tried 

 with corns and wens, and such other excrescences. I 

 would have it also tried with some parts of living crea 

 tures that are nearest the nature of excrescences ; as 

 the combs of cocks, the spurs of cocks, the horns of 

 beasts, &c. And I would have it tried both ways ; both 

 by rubbing those parts with lard, or elder, as before ; 



