nor unpleasant to
the actual senses. Plutarch and Claudius Ptolemy[88], and all the copyists
since their time, think that a loadstone smeared with garlick does not
allure iron. Hence some suspect that garlick is of avail against any
deleterious power of the magnet: thus in philosophy many false and idle
conjectures arise from fables and falsehoods. Some physicians[89] have that
a loadstone has power to extract the iron of an arrow from the human body.
But it is when whole that the loadstone draws, not when pulverized and
formless, buried in plasters; for it does not attract by reason of its
material, but is rather adapted for the healing of open wounds, by reason
of exsiccation, closing up and drying the sore, an effect by which the
arrow-heads would rather be retained in the wounds. Thus vainly and
preposterously do the sciolists {33} look for remedies while ignorant of
the true causes of things. The application of a loadstone for all sorts of
headaches no more cures them (as some make out) than would an iron helmet
or a steel cap. To give it in a draught to dropsical persons is an error of
the ancients, or an impudent tale of the copyists, though one kind of ore
may be found which, like many more minerals, purges the stomach; but this
is due to some defect of that ore and not to any magnetick property.
Nicolaus puts a large quantity of loadstone into his divine plaster[90],
just as the Augsburgers do into a black plaster[91] for fresh wounds and
stabs; the virtue of which dries them up without smart, so that it proves
an efficacious medicament. In like manner also Paracelsus to the same end
mingles it in his plaster for stab wounds[92].

* * * * *

CHAP. XV.

The Medicinal Virtue of Iron.[93]

Not foreign to our present purpose will it be to treat briefly also of the
medicinal virtue of iron: for it is a prime remedial for some diseases of
the human body, and by its virtues, both those that are natural and those
acquired by suitable preparation, it works marvellous changes in the human
body, so that we may the more surely recognize its nature through its
medicinal virtue and through certain manifest experiments. So that even
those tyros in medicine who abuse this most famous medicament may learn to
prescribe it with better judgment for the healing of the sick, and not, as
too often they use it, to their harm. The best iron, Stomoma, or Chalybs,
Acies, or Aciarium, is reduced to a f