cked up the package, when immediately
the most fragrant odor pervaded the apartment, being exhaled by the
miraculous packet, while the hand that held it was seen perceptibly to
swell and stiffen; investigation proved it to be the holy prepuce stolen
by the miscreant mercenary from St. John Lateran. It is related that in
1559, a canon of the church of St. John Lateran, impelled by a worldly
curiosity untempered by piety, undertook to make a critical examination
of this relic, in the process of which, to better satisfy himself, he
had the indiscretion to break off a small piece; instantly the most
dreadful tempest broke over the place, followed by crashing peals of
thunder and blinding flashes of lightning; then a sudden darkness
covered the country, and the luckless priest and his assistants fell
flat on their sacerdotal noses, feeling that their last hour had
arrived.[26]

Wonderful and miraculous cures are performed at these shrines, and some
of the cures are of a nature that would baffle the intelligence of the
most learned mind to ascertain the intricate and devious way that
nature must at times journey to accomplish some of these changes. The
writer well remembers seeing, in the Church of Corpus Christi, in
Turin,[27] a long hall, covered, from marble pavement to ceiling, with
votive tablets, after the manner inaugurated in the old temples of
Greece. Modern votaries have the advantage of being able to record their
cure, safe venture or escape from peril, by means of faithful
representation of the event in painting or drawing, as the material and
art is more common now than in the days of ancient Greece, who recorded
its cures by simple inscription in laconic terms. Modern medicine labors
under the disadvantage of presuming that the people are endowed with an
intelligence that was unknown to ancient or mediaeval people, when, in
fact, the people are as credulous and as subject to imposition as they
were in the earlier centuries of the present era. With all its supposed
superior intelligence, there is no fatter pasture for quacks and
impostors than that presented by the people of the United States.
Whenever I see the poor, intelligent, broad-minded physician struggling
along, barely able to procure for himself the necessaries required to
maintain himself with proper books and appliances, while the itinerant
quack or dogmatic practitioner rolls in undeserved affluence, I question
the wisdom of our ethical code. Braddoc