ethod of treatment by his lecture on the "Powder of Sympathy."(17) His
powder was composed of copperas alone or mixed with gum tragacanth.
He regarded the cure as effected through the subtle influence of the
sympathetic spirits or, as Highmore says, by "atomicall energy wrought
at a distance," and the remedy could be applied to the wound itself,
or to a cloth soaked in the blood or secretions, or to the weapon that
caused the wound. One factor leading to success may have been that
in the directions which Digby gave for treating the wound (in the
celebrated case of James Howell, for instance), it was to be let alone
and kept clean. The practice is alluded to very frequently by the poets.
In the "Lay of the Last Minstrel" we find the following:

(17) French edition, 1668, English translation, same year. For a
discussion on the author of the weapon salve see Van Helmont, who
gives the various formulas. Highmore (1651) says the "powder is
a Zaphyrian salt calcined by a celestial fire operating in Leo
and Cancer into a Lunar complexion."

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, xxiii.)

and in Dryden's "Tempest" (V, 1) Ariel says:

Anoint the Sword which pierc'd him with the Weapon-Salve,
And wrap it close from Air till I have time
To visit him again.

From Van Helmont comes the famous story of the new nose that dropped off
in sympathy with the dead arm from which it was taken, and the source
of the famous lines of Hudibras. As I have not seen the original story
quoted of late years it may be worth while to give it: "A certain
inhabitant of Bruxels, in a combat had his nose mowed off, addressed
himself to Tagliacozzus, a famous Chirurgein, living at Bononia, that he
might procure a new one; and when he feared the incision of his own arm,
he hired a Porter to admit it, out of whose arm, having first given
the reward agreed upon, at length he dig'd a new nose. About thirteen
moneths after his return to his own Countrey, on a sudden the ingrafted
nose grew cold, putrified, and within few days drops off. To those of
his friends that were curious in the exploration of the ca