Pharmacologia / by J.A. Paris.

Date:
1825
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Pharmacologia / by J.A. Paris. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    pellier. Whenever any wound had been inflicted, this powder was applied to the weapon that had inflicted it, which was, moreover, covered with ointment, and dres- sed two or three times a-day.+ The wound itself in the from Sir Kenelm the discovery of his secret, which he pretended had been taught him by a Carmelite Fliar, who had learned it in America or Persia. The Sympathetic Powder was, as we learn from cotemporary physicians, * calcined green vitriol.’ + This superstitious practice is repeatedly alluded to by the poets: thus Sir Walter Scott, in the Lay of the Last Minstrel— “ But she has ta’en the broken lance, And wash’d it from the clotted gore, And salved the splinter o’er and o’er. William of Deloraine, in trance, Whene’er she turn’d it round and round, Twisted, as if she gall'd his wound, Then to her maidens she did say, That he should be whole man and sound.’’ Canto iii. St. xxiii. Dryden has also introduced the same superstition in his En- chanted Island. Act. v. Scene ii. Ariel. Anoint the sword which pierced him with this Weapon salve, and wrap it close from air Till I have time to visit it again. Again, in Scene 4th, Miranda enters with Hippolito’s sword, wrapt 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. Mir. Does it still grieve you ? [She wipes and anoints the sword. ] Hip. Now, methinks, there’s something laid just upon it: Mir. Do you find no ease ? Hip. Yes, Yes; upon the sudden all this pain Is leaving me—Sweet heaven, how am I eased !