Sympathetic Remedies.
Among the strange theories which have found acceptance in medical history, mainly it would seem by reason of their utter baselessness and absurdity, none is more unaccountable than the belief in the so-called sympathetic remedies. There is abundant material for a long chapter on this particular manifestation of faith in the impossible, but a few prominent instances of the remarkable method of treatment comprised in the designation will suffice to prove that it was seriously adopted by men capable of thinking intelligently.
The germ of the idea goes back to very early ages. Dr. J. G. Frazer, the famous authority on primitive beliefs, traces the commandment in the Pentateuch, “Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk,” to an ancient prejudice against the boiling of milk in any circumstances, on the ground that this would cause suffering to the animal which yielded the milk. If the suffering could be thus conveyed, it was logical to believe that healing was similarly capable of transference.
Pliny (quoted by Cornelius Agrippa) says: “If any person shall be sorry for a blow he has given another, afar off or near at hand, if he shall presently spit into the middle of the hand with which he gave the blow, the party that was smitten shall presently be free from pain.”
Paracelsus developed the notion with the confidence which he was wont to bestow on theories which involved far-fetched explanations. This was his formula for “Unguentum Sympatheticum”:—
Take 4 oz. each of boar’s and bear’s fat, boil slowly for half an hour, then pour on cold water. Skim off the floating bit, rejecting that which sinks. (The older the animals yielding the fat, the better.)
Take of powdered burnt worms, of dried boar’s brain, of red sandal wood, of mummy, of bloodstone, 1 oz. of each. Then collect 1 drachm of the moss from the skull of a man who died a violent death, one who had been hanged, preferably, and had not been buried. This should be collected at the rising of the moon, and under Venus if possible, but certainly not under Mars or Saturn. With all these ingredients make an ointment, which keep in a closed glass vessel. If it becomes dry on keeping it can be softened with a little fresh lard or virgin honey. The ointment must be prepared in the autumn.
Paracelsus describes the methods of applying this ointment, the precautions to be taken, and the manner in which it exerts its influence. It was the weapon which inflicted the wound which was to be anointed, and it would be effective no matter how far away the wounded person might be. It would not answer if an artery had been severed, or if the heart, the brain, or the liver had suffered the lesion. The wound was to be kept properly bandaged, and the bandages were to be first wetted with the patient’s urine. The anointment of the weapon was to be repeated every day in the case of a serious wound, or every second or third day when the wound was not so severe, and the weapon was to be wrapped after anointment in a clean linen cloth, and kept free from dust and draughts, or the patient would experience much pain. The anointment of the weapon acted on the wound by a magnetic current through the air direct to the healing balsam which exists in every living body, just as the heat of the sun passes through the air.
Paracelsus also prescribed the leaves of the Polygonum persicaria to be applied to sores and ulcers, and then buried. One of his disciples explains that the object of burying the leaves was that they attracted the evil spirits like a magnet, and thus drew these spirits from the patient to the earth.
The sympathetic egg was another device to cheat diseases, attributed to the same inventive genius. An empty chicken’s egg was to be filled with warm blood from a healthy person, carefully sealed and placed under a brooding hen for a week or two, so that its vitality should not be impaired. It was then heated in an oven for some hours at a temperature sufficient to bake bread. To cure a case this egg was placed in contact with the affected part and then buried. It was assumed that it would inevitably take the disease with it, as healthy and concentrated blood must have a stronger affinity for disease than a weaker sort.
Robert Fludd, M.D., the Rosicrucian, who fell under the displeasure of the College of Physicians on account of his unsound views from a Galenical standpoint, was a warm advocate of the Paracelsian Weapon Salve. In reply to a contemporary doctor who had ridiculed the theory he waxes earnest, and at times sarcastic. He explains that “an ointment composed of the moss of human bones, mummy (which is the human body combined with balm), human fat, and added to these the blood, which is the beginning and food of them all, must have a spiritual power, for with the blood the bright soul doth abide and operateth after a hidden manner. Then as there is a spiritual line protracted or extended in the Ayre between the wounded person and the Box of Ointment like the beam of the Sun from the Sun, so this animal beam is the faithful conductor of the Healing nature from the box of the balsam to the wounded body. And if it were not for that line which conveys the wholesome and salutiferous spirit, the value of the ointment would evaporate or sluce out this way or that way and so would bring no benefit to the wounded persons.”
Van Helmont, Descartes, Batista Porta, and other leaders of science, in the seventeenth century, espoused the theory cordially enough. Van Helmont’s contribution to the evidence on which it was founded is hard to beat. In his “De Magnetica Vulnerum Curatione,” written about 1644, he relates that a citizen of Brussels having lost his nose in a combat in Italy, repaired to a surgeon of Bologna named Tagliacozzi, who provided him with another, taking the required strip of flesh from the arm of a servant. This answered admirably, and the Brussels man returned home. But thirteen months later he found his nose was getting cold; and then it began to putrefy. The explanation, of course, was that the servant from whom the flesh had been borrowed had died. Van Helmont adds, “Superstites sunt horum testes oculati Bruxellae”; there are still eye-witnesses of this case at Brussels.
Moss from a dead man’s skull is a principal ingredient in all the sympathetic ointments, and the condition that the dead man should have died a violent death is generally insisted on. But Van Helmont, quoting from one Goclenius, adds another condition still more absurd. It is that the dead man’s name should only have three letters. Thus, for example, Dod would do, but not Dodd.
Sir Gilbert Talbot (in the time of Charles II) communicated to the Royal Society particulars of a cure he had made with Sympathetic Powder. An English mariner was stabbed in four places at Venice, and bled for three days without intermission. Sir Gilbert, who happened to be at Venice at the same time, was told of this disaster. He sent for some of the man’s blood and mixed Sympathetic Powder with it. At the same time he sent a man to bind up the patient’s wounds with clean linen. Soon after he visited the mariner and found all the wounds closed, and the man much comforted. Three days later the poor fellow was able to call on Sir Gilbert to thank him, but even then “he appeared like a ghost with noe blood left in his body.”
Marquise de Sévigné.
Born 1626, died 1696, whose famous “letters” are of great historical importance, frequently introduces references to the medicine of the period, and was herself a faithful disciple of many of its quackeries.
Madame de Sévigné, an experienced amateur in medical matters, provides interesting evidence of the popularity of the powder of sympathy. Writing to her daughter on January 28th, 1685, she tells her that “a little wound which was believed to have been healed had shown signs of revolt; but it is only for the honour of being cured by your powder of sympathy. The Baume Tranquille is of no account now; your powder of sympathy is a perfectly divine remedy. My sore has changed its appearance and is now half dried and cured.” On February 7th, 1685, she writes again:—“I am afraid the powder of sympathy is only suitable for old standing wounds. It has only cured the least troublesome of mine. I am now using the black ointment, which is admirable.” Even the black ointment proved unfaithful, for in June of the same year the marchioness writes that she has gone to the Capucins of the Louvre. They did not believe in the powder of sympathy; they had something much better. They gave her certain herbs which were to be applied to the affected part and removed twice a day. Those removed are to be buried; “and laugh if you like, as they decay so will the wound heal, and thus by a gentle and imperceptible transpiration I shall cure the most ill-treated leg in the world.”
Sir Kenelm Digby.
(From a painting by Vandyke in the Bodleian Gallery, Oxford.)
The name of Sir Kenelm Digby is more closely associated with the “powder of sympathy” than that of any other person, and indeed he is often credited with the invention of the idea; but this was not the case. He was an extraordinary man who played a rather prominent part in the stirring days of the Stuarts. His father, Sir Everard Digby, was implicated in the Gunpowder Plot, and was duly executed. Kenelm must have been gifted with unusual attractions or plausibility to have overcome this unfortunate stain on his pedigree, but he managed it, and history introduces him to us at the court of that suspicious monarch,
James I., while he was quite a young man. He had inherited an income of £3,000 a year, and seems to have been popular with the King and with his fellow courtiers. But he was not contented to lead an idle life, so he pressed James to give him a commission to go forth and steal some Spanish galleons, which was the gentlemanly thing to do in those days. James consented, but at the last moment it was discovered that the commission would not be in order unless it was countersigned by the Lord High Admiral, who was away from England at the time. James therefore simply granted the buccaneer a licence to undertake a voyage “for the increase of his knowledge.” Digby scoured the Mediterranean for a year or two, captured some French, Spanish, and Flemish ships, and won a rather severe engagement with French and Venetian vessels at Scanderoon in the Levant. This exploit was celebrated by Digby’s friend, Ben Jonson, in verse, which can only be termed deathless on account of its particularly imbecile ending:—
Witness his action done at Scanderoon
Upon his birthday, the eleventh of June.
The writer of Digby’s epitaph plagiarised the essence of this brilliant strophe in the following lines:—
Born on the day he died, the eleventh of June,
And that day bravely fought at Scanderoon.
It’s rare that one and the same day should be
His day of birth and death and victory.
On his return home after thus distinguishing himself, Digby was knighted, changed his religion occasionally, was imprisoned and banished at intervals, and dabbled in science between times, or shone in society in London, Paris, or Rome, visiting the two last-named cities frequently on real or pretended diplomatic missions.
During his residence in France, in 1658, he lectured to the University of Montpellier on his sympathetic powder, and the fame of this miraculous compound soon reached England. When he came back he professed to be shy of using it lest he should be accused of wizardry. But an occasion soon occurred when he was compelled to take the risk for the sake of a friend. Thomas Howel, the Duke of Buckingham’s secretary, was seriously wounded in trying to prevent a duel between two friends of his, and the doctors prognosticated gangrene and probably death. The friends of the wounded man appealed to Sir Kenelm, who generously consented to do his best. He told the attendants to bring him a rag on which was some of the sufferer’s blood. They brought the garter which had been used as a bandage and which was still thick with blood. He soaked this in a basin of water in which he had dissolved a handful of his sympathetic powder. An hour later the patient said he felt an agreeable coolness. The fever and pain rapidly abated, and in a few days the cure was complete. It was reported that the Duke of Buckingham testified to the genuineness of the cure and that the king had taken a keen interest in the treatment.
Digby asserted that the secret of the powder was imparted to him by a Carmelite monk whom he met at Florence. His laboratory assistant, George Hartman, published a “Book of Chymicall Secrets,” in 1682, after Sir Kenelm’s death, and therein explained that the Powder of Sympathy, which was then made by himself (Hartman), and “sold by a bookseller in Cornhill named Brookes” was prepared “by dissolving good English vitriol in as little warm water as will suffice, filter, evaporate, and set aside until fair, large, green crystals are formed. Spread these in the sun until they whiten. Then crush them coarsely and again dry in the sun.” Other recipes say it should be dried in the sun gently (a French formula says “amoureusement”) for 365 days.
Sir Kenelm’s scientific explanation of the action of his sympathetic powder is on the same lines as the others I have quoted. Briefly it was that the rays of the sun extracted from the blood and the vitriol associated with it the spirit of each in minute atoms. At the same time the inflamed wound was exhaling hot atoms and making way for a current of air. The air charged with the atoms of blood and vitriol were attracted to it, and acted curatively.
In a letter written by Straus to Sir Kenelm, it is related that Lord Gilborne had followed the system, but his method was described as “the dry way.” A carpenter had cut himself severely with an axe. The offending axe still bespattered with blood was smeared with the proper ointment and hung up in a cupboard. The wound was going on well, but one day it suddenly became violently painful again. On investigation it was found that the axe had fallen from the nail on which it was hung.
Inscribed on the plate attached to the portrait of Sir Kenelm Digby in the National Portrait Gallery, it is stated that “His character has been summed up as a prodigy of learning, credulity, valour, and romance.” Although this appreciation is quoted the author is not named. Other testimonials to his character and reliability are to be found in contemporary literature. Evelyn alludes to him as “a teller of a strange things.” Clarendon describes him as “a person very eminent and notorious throughout the whole course of his life from his cradle to his grave. A man of very extraordinary person and presence; a wonderful graceful behaviour, a flowing courtesy, and such a volubility of language as surprised and delighted.” Lady Fanshawe met him at Calais with the Earl of Strafford and others and says, “much excellent discourse passed; but, as was reason, most share was Sir Kenelm Digby’s who had enlarged somewhat more in extraordinary stories than might be averred.” At last he told the company about the barnacle goose he had seen in Jersey; a barnacle which changes to a bird, and at this they all laughed incredulously. But Lady Fanshawe says this “was the only thing true he had declaimed with them. This was his infirmity, though otherwise of most excellent parts, and a very fine-bred gentleman.” In John Aubrey’s “Brief Lives” (“set down between 1669 and 1696”) Digby is described as “such a goodly person, gigantique and great voice, and had so graceful elocution and noble address, etc., that had he been drop’t out of the clowdes in any part of the world he would have made himself respected.”
It may be of interest to add that a daughter of Sir Kenelm Digby’s second son married a Sir John Conway, of Flintshire. Her granddaughter, Honora, married a Sir John Glynne whose great-grandson, Sir Stephen Glynne, was the father of the late Mrs. W. E. Gladstone.
In 1690, Lemery had the courage to express some doubts about this powder of sympathy, and in 1773 Baumé declared its pretensions to be absolutely illusory.
To conclude the account of this curious delusion, a few quotations from English literature may be added.
There are several allusions to sympathetic cures in Hudibras. For instance,
For by his side a pouch he wore
Replete with strange hermetick powder
That wounds nine miles point blank would solder,
By skilful chemist at great cost
Extracted from a rotten post.
And again,
’Tis true a scorpion’s oil is said
To cure the wounds the vermin made;
And weapons dress’d with salves restore
And heal the wounds they made before.
In Dryden’s Tempest, the sympathetic treatment is referred to. Hippolito has been wounded by Fernando, and Miranda instructed by Ariel, visits him. Ariel says, “Anoint the sword which pierced him with this weapon salve, and wrap it close from air.” The following is the next scene between Hippolito and Miranda.
Hip. Oh! my wound pains me.
Mir. I am come to ease you.[Unwrapping the sword.
Hip. Alas! I feel the cold air come to me.
My wound shoots worse than ever.
[Miranda wipes and anoints the sword.
Mir. Does it still grieve you?
Hip. Now, methinks, there’s something laid just upon it.
Mir. Do you find no ease?
Hip. Yes, yes; upon the sudden all the pain
Is leaving me; Sweet heaven, how I am eased.
Lastly, in the Lay of the Last Minstrel, Scott alludes to this same superstition in the lines
But she has ta’en the broken lance
And washed it from the clotted gore
And salved the splinter o’er and o’er.
It would appear from the explanations already given that by washing the gore away she destroyed the communication between the wound and the remedy.