it to the part affected till
suppuration: a hole was then made in the root of an oak towards the
east, and the mixture put into it and the hole plugged up with a peg of
the same tree, and from that time the pain did altogether cease; and
when afterwards the mixture was removed from the tree, immediately the
torments returned worse than before. Sir Francis Bacon records a cure of
warts: he took a piece of lard with the skin on it, and after rubbing
the warts with it the lard was exposed out of a southern window to
putrify, and the warts wore away as it putrified. Harvey tried to remove
tumours and excrescences by putting the hand of a dead person that had
died of a lingering disease upon them till the part felt cold. In
general the application was effective.

This idea of cure by sympathy retained its hold on the people till this
century, and is not yet entirely gone.

There was another theory, which we may call the magnetic theory. The
philosophy of this theory contended that "The body when diseased
resembled a gun; when loaded, it contains powder and ball, which, by the
mere touch of a little spring, sets the whole machinery of the gun in
motion, whereby the ball is expelled. So also the mere touch or outward
contact of certain bodies or substances has power, like a magnet, to set
in action the machinery of nature by which the disease is
dispelled--sometimes slowly, but often suddenly like the bullet from the
gun. Helmont had a little stone, which, by plunging in oil of almonds,
imbued the oil with such sanative power that it cured almost any
disease. It was sometimes applied inwardly, sometimes outwardly. A
gentleman who had an unwieldy groom procured for him a small fragment of
this stone, and, by licking it with the tip of his tongue every morning,
in three weeks he was reduced in bulk round the waist by a span without
affecting his general health. A gentleman in France who procured a small
fragment of this stone cured several persons of inveterate diseases by
letting them lick it. The stone _Lapis Nephriticus_ bound upon the pulse
of the wrist of the left hand prevents stone, hysterics, and stops the
flux of blood in any part. A compound metal called _electrum_, which is
a mixture of all metals made under certain constellations and shaped
into rings and worn, prevents cramps and palsy, apoplexy, epilepsy, and
severe pains; and in the case of a person in a fit of the falling
sickness, a ring of this metal put on t