General therapeutics and materia medica: adapted for a medical text book (Volume 1).

  • Robley Dunglison
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: General therapeutics and materia medica: adapted for a medical text book (Volume 1). Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    The best of balms, and to the wound applied The healing juice of vulnerary herbs. His only danger was his loss of blood; But now he's waked, my lord, and just this hour He must be dress'd again, as I have done it. Anoint the sword, which pierced him, with this weapon salve, and wrap it close from air, till I have time to visit him again. Act v. scene 2nd. And:—Miranda, when she enters wiih Hippolito's sword wrapped up. Hip. O, my wounds pain me! [She unwraps the sword.] Mir. I am come to ease you. Hip. Alas! I feel the cold air come to me: My wound shoots worse than ever. (She wipes and anoints the sword.) Mir. Does it still grieve you! Hip. Now methinks there's something Laid just upon it. Mir. Do you find no easel Hip. Yes. Yes: upon the sudden all this pain Is leaving me—Sweet Heaven, how I am eased! Act v. scene 2nd. It is likewise referred to in the third Canto of the Lay of the Last Minstrel of Sir Walter Scott. The sympathetic ointments, applied to the weapon, or the 'armatory unguents,' as they were termed, are of various cha- racters, containing the most absurd, disgusting, and often inert ingredients. The following extract from the Sylva Sylvarum, or Natural History of Lord Bacon, strikingly exhibits this. The mode of managing the wound sufficiently accounts for the good effects ascribed to the cure by sympathy. It is constantly received and avouched, that the anointing of the weapon that maketh the wound will heal the wound itself. In this experi- ment, upon the relation of men of credit, though myself, as yet, am not fully inclined to believe to it, you shall note the points following: First, the ointment, with which 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 in heaps unburied. The other ingredients are, the blood- stone in powder, and some other things, which seem to have a virtue to staunch blood; as also the moss hath. And the descrip- tion of the whole ointment is to be found in the chymical dispen- satory of Crollius. Secondly, the same kind of ointment applied
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