CENTURY X. 161 



and by cutting off some piece of those parts, and laying 

 it to consume ; to see whether it will work any effect 

 towards the consumption of that part which was once 

 joined with it. 



998. It is constantly received and avouched, that 

 the anointing of the weapon that maketh the wound, 

 will heal the wound itself. In this experiment, upon 

 the relation of men of credit, (though myself, as yet, 

 am not fully inclined to believe if,) you shall note the 

 points following. First, the ointment wherewith this 

 is done is made of divers ingredients ; whereof the 

 strangest and hardest to come by, are the moss upon 

 the skull of a dead man unburied, and the fats of a 

 boar and a bear killed in the act of generation. These 

 two last I could easily suspect to be prescribed as a 

 starting-hole ; that if the experiment proved not, it 

 might be pretended that the beasts were not killed in 

 the due time : for as for the moss, it is certain there is 

 great quantity of it in Ireland, upon slain bodies, laid 

 on heaps unburied. The other ingredients are, the 

 blood-stone in powder, and some other things, which 

 seem to have a virtue to stanch blood ; as also the moss 

 hath. And the description of the whole ointment is 

 to be found in the chemical dispensatory of Crollius. 1 

 Secondly, the same kind of ointment applied to the 

 hurt itself worketh not the effect ; but only applied to 

 the weapon. Thirdly, (which I like well,) they do 

 not observe the confecting of the ointment under any 

 certain constellation ; which commonly is the excuse 

 of magical medicines Avhen they fail, that they were 



1 See his Basilica Chymica, p. 400. In the edition I have seen, that of 

 1643, nothing is said as to the time of killing the bear and the boar. On 

 the subject of &quot; unguenta armaria,&quot; see a collection of tracts in the Thea- 

 tiitm Sympatheticum. 



VOL. V. 11 



