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