ver under Mars or Saturn. Then, if a splinter of wood, dipped in the
patient's blood, or the bloodstained weapon that wounded him, be
immersed in this ointment, the wound itself being tightly bound up, the
latter infallibly gets well--I quote now Van Helmont's account--for the
blood on the weapon or splinter, containing in it the spirit of the
wounded man, is roused to active excitement by the contact of the
ointment, whence there results to it a full commission or power to cure
its cousin-german the blood in the patient's body. This it does by
sucking out the dolorous and exotic impression from the wounded part.
But to do this it has to implore the aid of the bull's fat, and other
portions of the unguent. The reason why bull's fat is so powerful is
that the bull at the time of slaughter is full of secret reluctancy and
vindictive murmurs, and therefore dies with a higher flame of revenge
about him than any other animal. And thus we have made it out, says
this author, that the admirable efficacy of the ointment ought to be
imputed, not to any auxiliary concurrence of Satan, but simply to the
energy of the posthumous character of Revenge remaining firmly
impressed upon the blood and concreted fat in the unguent. J. B. Van
Helmont: A Ternary of Paradoxes, translated by Walter Charleton,
London, 1650.--I much abridge the original in my citations.

The author goes on to prove by the analogy of many other natural facts
that this sympathetic action between things at a distance is the true
rationale of the case. "If," he says, "the heart of a horse slain by a
witch, taken out of the yet reeking carcase, be impaled upon an arrow
and roasted, immediately the whole witch becomes tormented with the
insufferable pains and cruelty of the fire, which could by no means
happen unless there preceded a conjunction of the spirit of the witch
with the spirit of the horse. In the reeking and yet panting heart,
the spirit of the witch is kept captive, and the retreat of it
prevented by the arrow transfixed. Similarly hath not many a murdered
carcase at the coroner's inquest suffered a fresh haemorrhage or
cruentation at the presence of the assassin?--the blood being, as in a
furious fit of anger, enraged and agitated by the impress of revenge
conceived against the murderer, at the instant of the soul's compulsive
exile from the body. So, if you have dropsy, gout, or jaundice, by
including some of your warm blood in the shell and whi