"He must be dress'd again, as I have done it. Anoint the sword which pierced him with this weapon-salve, and wrap it close from air, till I have time to visit him again."
And in the next scene we have the following dialogue between Hippolito and Miranda:
"Hip. O my wound pains me.
Mir. I am come to ease you.
[She unwraps the sword.
Hip. Alas! I feel the cold air come to me;
My wound shoots worse than ever.
[She 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 ease?
Hip. Yes, yes, upon the sudden, all the pain
Is leaving me. Sweet heaven, how I am eased!"
Werenfels says: "If the superstitious person be wounded by any chance, he applies the salve, not to the wound, but, what is more effectual, to the weapon by which he received it. By a new kind of art, he will transplant his disease, like a scion, and graft it into what tree he pleases."
The practice at the time was varied and general. All sorts of disgusting ingredients were gathered together to form the salve. Some idea of the condition of the science of medicine at that time may be gathered when we remember that a serious discussion was long maintained between two factions in the sympathetic school concerning the question "whether it was necessary that the moss should grow absolutely in the skull of a thief who had hung on the gallows, and whether the ointment, while compounding, was to be stirred with a murderer's knife."
There is no doubt that the sympathetic cures were really the most rapid and effective. The modern surgeon wonders how a wound ever healed prior to this treatment. There seemed to be little that could be imagined to prevent a wound from healing that the pre-sympathetic surgeon did not try. When the manipulations, doses, and treatments were transferred from the wound to the weapon, they did not injure the weapon, and did give the wound a chance to heal. In fact, leaving out the weapon part of the treatment, which could have none but a mental influence, the treatment would be recommended to-day. The wound was kept clean, the edges were brought in apposition, temperature was modified, and rest given. Under these circumstances, wounds which the surgeon had irritated so as to take weeks to heal, united in as many days. Mark this, however: the wounds treated were simple incisions, the ones which most readily united if cleansed, brought together, and left alone. Gunshot and similar wounds were not treated by this process.[88]
[76]T. J. Pettigrew, Superstitions Connected with ... Medicine and Surgery, pp. 63 f.
[77]Gentleman's Magazine, LVIII, pp. 586 and 695.
[78]H. Arnot, History of Edinburgh.