flicting us, may so transport us hereafter with such
beautiful and glorious visions, or torment us with such hideous and
ghastly spectres, as might even of themselves suffice to make up the
entire heaven or hell of any future being.

DOCTRINE OF EFFLUVIA--MIRACULOUS CURES BY MEANS OF CHARMS, AMULETS,
ETC.

Dr. Willis, in his Treatise on nervous disorders, does not hesitate to
recommend amulets in epileptic disorders. "Take," says he, "some fresh
peony roots, cut them into square bits, and hang them round the neck,
changing them as often as they dry." It is not improbable that the hint
was taken from this circumstance for the anodyne necklaces, which, some
time ago, were in such repute, as the Doctor, some little way further
on, prescribes the same root for the looseness, fevers, and convulsions
of children, during the time of teething, mixed, to make it appear more
miraculous, with some elk's hoof.

St. Vitus's dance is said to have been cured by the afflicted person
paying a visit to the tomb of the saint, near Ulm, every May. Indeed,
there is no little reason in this assertion; for exercise and change of
air will change many obstinate diseases. The bite of the tarantula is
cured by music; and this only by certain tunes. Turner, whose ideas are
so extravagantly absurd, where he asserts, that the symptoms of
hydrophobia may not appear for forty years after the bite of the dog,
and who maintains that "the slaver or breath of such a dog is
infectious;" and that men bitten by mad dogs, will bite like dogs again,
and die mad; although he laughs at the anodyne necklaces, argues much in
the same manner. It is not, indeed, so very strange that the effluvia
from external medicines entering our bodies, should effect such
considerable changes, when we see the efficient cause of apoplexy,
epilepsy, hysterics, plague, and a number of other disorders, consists,
as it were, in imperceptible vapours.--Blood-stone (Lapis Aetites)
fastened to the arm by some secret means, is said to prevent abortion.
Sydenham, in the iliac passion, orders a live kitten to be constantly
applied to the abdomen; others have used pigeons split alive, applied to
the soles of the feet, with success, in pestilential fevers and
convulsions. It was doubtless the impression that relief might be
obtained by external agents, that the court of king David advised him to
seek a young virgin, in order that a portion of the natural heat might
be communicated to his