[31] See Appendix, Nos. III. and IV.
[32] Theophrasti Bombast von Hohenheym, 7 Buch in der Artzney. Von den Krankheiten, die der Vernunft berauben. 7th Book on Medicine. Of the diseases which produce insanity. Tract I. chap. 3, p. 491. Tract II. chap. 3, p. 501. Opera. Strassburg, 1616. fol. Tom. I.
[33] Chorea procursiva of the moderns. Bernt, Monographia Choreæ Sti. Viti. Prag. 1810. p. 25.
This proceeding was, however, no invention of his, but an imitation of a usual mode of enchantment by means of wax figures (peri cunculas). The witches made a wax image of the person who was to be bewitched; and in order to torment him, they stuck it full of pins, or melted it before the fire. The books on magic, of the middle ages, are full of such things; though the reader who may wish to obtain information on this subject, need not go so far back. Only eighty years since, the learned and celebrated Storch, of the school of Stahl, published a treatise on witchcraft, worthy of the fourteenth century. “Abhandlung von Kinderkrankheiten.” Treatise on the Diseases of Children. Vol. IV. p. 228. Eisenach, 1751–8.
The ancients were in the habit of employing wax in incantations.
Thus Simoetha in Theocritus:
Ὡς τοῦτον τὸν καρὸν ἐγὼ σὺν δαίμονι τάκω,
Ὡς τάκοιθ’ ὑπ’ ἔρωτος ὁ Μύνδιος αὐτίκα Δέλφις.
See Potter’s Antiquities, Vol. II. p. 251.