Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: General therapeutics and materia medica (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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![Hip. 0, my wounds pain me! ., [She unwraps the suord.] Mir. I am come to ease you. Hip. Alas ! I feel the cold air come to me : My wound shoots worse than ever. n [She -wipes and anoints the sword.] JMir. Does it still grieve you 1 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 I am eased ! Act v. scene 2d. 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 arma- tory unguents, as they were termed, were of various characters, con- taining 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 experiment, 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 stanch 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 to the part itself worketh not the effect, but only applied to the wea- pon. Thirdly, which I like well, they do not observe the confect- ing of the ointment under any certain constellation, which commonly is the excuse of magical medicines when they fail, that they were not made under a fit figure of heaven. Fourthly, it may be applied to the weapon, though the party hurt be at a great distance. Fifthly, it seemeth the imagination of the party to be cured is not needful to concur; for it may be done without the knowledge of the party wounded ; and thus much has been tried, that the ointment for ex- periment's sake, hath been wiped off the weapon, without the know- ledge of the party hurt, and presently the party hurt has been in great rage of pain, till the weapon was re-anointed. Sixthly, it is](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21116453_0024.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
