The weapon-salve continued to be much spoken of on the Continent, and Dr. Fludd, or A Fluctibus, the Rosicrucian, introduced it into England. He tried it with great success in several cases, but in the midst of his success an attack was made upon him and his favorite remedy, which, however, did little or nothing to diminish the belief in its efficacy. One "Parson Foster" wrote a pamphlet entitled "Hyplocrisma Spongus; or a Spunge to wipe away the Weapon-salve," in which he declared that it was as bad as witchcraft to use or recommend such an unguent; that it was invented by the devil, who, at the last day, would seize upon every person who had given it the least encouragement. "In fact," said Parson Foster, "the Devil himself gave it to Paracelsus; Paracelsus to the emperor; the emperor to the courtier; the courtier to Baptista Porta; and Baptista Porta to Dr. Fludd, a doctor of physic, yet living and practising in the famous city of London, who now stands tooth and nail for it." Dr. Fludd, thus assailed, took up his pen and defended the unguent in a caustic pamphlet.
The salve changed into a powder in the hands of Sir Kenelm Digby, the son of Sir Edward Digby who was executed for his participation in the Gunpowder Plot. Sir Kenelm was an accomplished scholar and an able man, but at the same time a most extravagant defender of the powder of sympathy for the healing of wounds. This powder came into sudden and public notoriety through an accident to a distinguished person. Mr. James Howell, the well-known author of the Dendrologia, in endeavoring to part two friends in a duel, received a severe cut on the hand. Alarmed by the accident, one of the combatants bound up the cut with his garter and conveyed him home. The king sent his own surgeon to attend Mr. Howell, but in four or five days the wound was not recovering very rapidly and he made application to Sir Kenelm. The latter first inquired whether he possessed anything that had the blood upon it, upon which Mr. Howell produced the garter with which his hand had been bound. A basin of water in which some powder of vitriol had been dissolved was procured, and the garter immediately immersed in it, whereupon, to quote Sir Kenelm, Mr. Howell said, "I know not what ails me, but I find that I feel no more pain. Methinks that a pleasing kind of freshness, as it were a wet cold napkin, did spread over my hand, which hath taken away the inflammation that tormented me before." He was then advised to lay away all plasters and keep the wound clean and in a moderate temperature.
To prove conclusively the efficacy of the powder of sympathy, after dinner the garter was taken out of the basin and placed to dry before the fire. No sooner was this done than Mr. Howell's servant came running to Sir Kenelm saying that his master's hand was again inflamed, and that it was as bad as before. The garter was again placed in the liquid and before the return of the servant all was well and easy again. In the course of five or six days the wound was cicatrized and a cure performed.
This case excited considerable attention at court, and on inquiry Sir Kenelm told the king that he learned the secret from a much-travelled Carmelite friar who became possessed of it while journeying in the East. Sir Kenelm communicated it to Dr. Mayerne, the king's physician, and from him it was known to even the country barbers. Even King James, the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Buckingham, and many other noble personages believed in its efficacy.
It would be a waste of time, had we space, to present fully Sir Kenelm's profound and lengthy explanation of the cure. He tried to make the cure more reasonable and acceptable by bringing forth certain alleged phenomena which he thought proved sympathy, and were therefore analogous in character. Surgeon-General Hammond calls attention to the fact that these inferences were invariably 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 in "The Tempest" (Act V, Sc. I) makes Ariel say, in reference to the wound received by Hippolito from Ferdinand: