Albertus Magnus) being broken into powder, and droonke with water, maketh insensibilitie of torture. Heereby you may understand, that as God hath bestowed upon these stones, and such other like bodies, most excellent and woonderfull vertues: so according to the abundance of humane superstitions and follies; manie ascribe unto them either more virtues, or others than they have."[370:A]
This passage has been closely imitated by Drayton, in the ninth Nymphal of his Muse's Elysium[370:B]; he has made, however, some additions to the catalogue, one of which we have already noticed, and another will be shortly quoted.
Virtues of a kind equally miraculous were attributed to bones and horns; thus Scot tells us, that a bone taken out of a carp's head staunches blood; that the bone in a hare's foot mitigates the cramp, and that the unicorn's horn is inestimable[370:C]; and were we to enumerate the wonders performed by herbs, we might fill a volume. Many of them, indeed, were considered of such potency as to render the persons who rightly used them, either invisible or invulnerable, and, therefore, to those who were engaged to fight a legal duel, an oath was administered, purporting "that they had ne charme, ne herbe of vertue" about them.
Several diseases were held to be incurable, by ordinary means; such as wens, warts, the king's evil, agues, rickets, and ruptures; and the remedies which were adopted present a most deplorable instance of human folly. Tumours were to be dispelled by stroking them nine times with a dead man's hand, and the evil by the royal touch, a miraculous power supposed to have been first exercised by Edward the Confessor, and to have been since hereditary in the royal line, at least to the period of the decease of Queen Anne. Of the discharge of this important function by the Confessor, and of its regal descent, our poet has left us a pretty accurate description:—
"Malcolm. ——— Comes the king forth, I pray you?
Doctor. Ay, Sir: there are a crew of wretched souls,
That stay his cure: their malady convinces
The great assay of art; but, at his touch,
Such sanctity hath heaven given his hand,