false. "It is a very
curious circumstance," says he, "that of these, there is not one which
is true. Thus he is wrong when he says that if the hand be severely
burnt, the pain and inflammation are relieved by holding it near a hot
fire; that a person who has a bad breath is cured by putting his head
over a privy and inhaling the air which comes from it; that those who
are bitten by vipers or scorpions are cured by holding the bruised
head of either of those animals, as the case may be, near the bitten
part; that in times of great contagion, carrying a toad, or a spider,
or arsenic or some other venomous substance, about the person is a
protection; that hanging a toad about the neck of a horse affected
with farcy dissipates the disease; that water evaporated in a close
room will not be deposited on the walls, if a vessel of water be
placed in the room; that venison pies smell strongly at those periods
in which the 'beasts which are of the same nature and kind are in
rut'; that wine in the cellar undergoes a fermentation when the vines
in the field are in flower; that a table-cloth spotted with mulberries
or red wine is more easily whitened at the season in which the plants
are flowering than at any other; that washing the hands in the rays of
moonlight which fall into a polished silver basin (without water) is a
cure for warts; that a vessel of water put on the hearth of a smoky
chimney is a remedy for the evil, and so on--not a single fact in all
that he adduces. Yet these circumstances were regarded as real, and
were spoken of at the times as irrefragable proofs of the truth of Sir
Kenelm's views."[86]

We need have no doubt concerning the operation of sympathetic cures,
for Sir Kenelm has told us of their virtue in his own words.[87] His
method was what was called the cure by the wet way, but the cure could
also be effected in a dry way. Straus, in a letter to Sir Kenelm,
gives an account of a cure performed by Lord Gilbourne, an English
nobleman, upon a carpenter who had cut himself severely with his axe.
"The axe, bespattered with blood, was sent for, besmeared with an
anointment, wrapped up warmly, and carefully hung up in a closet. The
carpenter was immediately relieved, and all went well for some time,
when, however, the wound became exceedingly painful, and, upon
resorting to his lordship it was ascertained that the axe had fallen
from the nail by which it was suspended, and thereby become
uncovered."

Dryden