Concerning wax, Dr. James says: “All wax is heating, mollifying, and moderately incarning. It is mixed in sorbile liquors as a remedy for dysentery; and ten bits, of the size of a grain of millet, swallowed, prevent the curdling of milk in the breast of nurses.”[715]
[If we might credit the history of former times, says Jamieson, in his Scottish Dictionary, sub. Walx, iv. 642–3, there must have been a considerable demand for this article (wax) for the purpose of witchcraft. It was generally found necessary, it would seem, as the medium of inflicting pain on the bodies of men.
“To some others at these times he teacheth, how to make pictures of waxe or clay, that by the wasting thereof, the persons that they beare the name of, may be continually melted or dried away by continuall sickenesse.” K. James’s Dæmonologie, B. II. c. 5.
In order to cause acute pain in the patient, pins, we are
told, were stuck in that part of the body of the image, in which they wished the person to suffer.
The same plan was adopted for inspiring another with the ardor of love.
Then mould her form of fairest wax,
With adder’s eyes and feet of horn;
Place this small scroll within its breast,
Which I, your friend, have hither borne.