e state of the
art in England, and the superstitions which they saw all around them in
other departments of knowledge or belief.

English medical literature must have been at a pretty low ebb
when Sydenham recommended Don Quixote to Sir Richard Blackmore for
professional reading. The College Pharmacopoeia was loaded with the most
absurd compound mixtures, one of the most complex of which (the same
which the Reverend Mr. Harward, "Lecturer at the Royal Chappel in
Boston," tried to simplify), was not dropped until the year 1801. Sir
Kenelm Digby was playing his fantastic tricks with the Sympathetic
powder, and teaching Governor Winthrop, the second, how to cure fever
and ague, which some may like to know. "Pare the patient's nails; put
the parings in a little bag, and hang the bag round the neck of a live
eel, and put him in a tub of water. The eel will die, and the patient
will recover."

Wiseman, the great surgeon, was discoursing eloquently on the efficacy
of the royal touch in scrofula. The founder of the Ashmolean Museum at
Oxford, consorting with alchemists and astrologers, was treasuring
the manuscripts of the late pious Dr. Richard Napier, in which certain
letters (Rx Ris) were understood to mean Responsum Raphaelis,--the
answer of the angel Raphael to the good man's medical questions. The
illustrious Robert Boyle was making his collection of choice and safe
remedies, including the sole of an old shoe, the thigh bone of a hanged
man, and things far worse than these, as articles of his materia medica.
Dr. Stafford, whose paper of directions to his "friend, Mr. Wintrop," I
cited, was probably a man of standing in London; yet toad-powder was his
sovereign remedy.

See what was the state of belief in other matters among the most
intelligent persons of the colonies, magistrates and clergymen. Jonathan
Brewster, son of the church-elder, writes the wildest letters to John
Winthrop about alchemy,--"mad for making gold as the Lynn rock-borers
are for finding it."

Remember the theology and the diabology of the time. Mr. Cotton's
Theocracy was a royal government, with the King of kings as its nominal
head, but with an upper chamber of saints, and a tremendous opposition
in the lower house; the leader of which may have been equalled, but
cannot have been surpassed by any of our earth-born politicians. The
demons were prowling round the houses every night, as the foxes were
sneaking about the hen-roosts. The men of Glouc