[27]. See “Sir Kenelm Digby’s Discourse upon the Cure by Sympathy, pronounced at Montpellier, before an assembly of Nobles and learned men. Translated into English, by R. White, Gentleman, and published in 1658.” King James the First obtained from Sir Kenelm the discovery of his secret, which he pretended had been taught him by a Carmelite Friar, who had learned it in America or Persia.
The Sympathetic Powder was, as we learn from cotemporary physicians, ‘calcined green vitriol.’
[28]. This superstitious practice is repeatedly alluded to by the poets: thus Sir Walter Scott, in the Lay of the Last Minstrel—
“But she has ta’en the broken lance,
And wash’d it from the clotted gore,
And salved the splinter o’er and o’er.
William of Deloraine, in trance,
Whene’er she turn’d it round and round,
Twisted, as if she gall’d his wound,
Then to her maidens she did say,