396 FALLACIES. 



accompanying circumstance which was the real agent 

 in the cures ascribed to them. Thus, of the sympa- 

 thetic powder of Sir Kenelm Digby: " Whenever any 

 wound had been inflicted, this*powder was applied to 

 the weapon that had inflicted it, which was, more- 

 over, covered with ointment, and dressed two or three 

 times a day. The wound itself, in the meantime, was 

 directed to be brought together, and carefully bound 

 up with clean linen rags, but above all, to be let alone 

 for seven days, at the end of which period the ban- 

 dages were removed, when the wound was generally 

 found perfectly united. The triumph of the cure was 

 decreed to the mysterious agency of the sympathetic 

 powder which had been so assiduously applied to the 

 weapon, whereas it is hardly necessary to observe 

 that the promptness of the cure depended upon the 

 total exclusion of air from the wound, and upon the 

 sanative operations of nature not having received any 

 disturbance from the officious interference of art. 

 The result, beyond all doubt, furnished the first hint 

 which led surgeons to the improved practice of heal- 

 ing wounds by what is technically called the first inten- 

 tion*." " In all records," adds Dr. Paris, "of extra- 

 ordinary cures performed by mysterious agents, there 

 is a great desire to conceal the remedies and other 

 curative means which were simultaneously administered 

 with them ; thus Oribasius commends in high terms 

 a necklace of Pseony root for the cure of epilepsy ; but 

 we learn that he always took care to accompany its 

 use with copious evacuations, although he assigns to 

 them no share of credit in the cure. In later times 

 we have a good specimen of this species of deception, 

 presented to us in a work on Scrofula by Mr. Morley, 



Pharmacologia, pp. 23-24. 



