The “Vulnerary Powder, and Tincture of the Sulphur of Venus,” performed wonders, one of which Dr. Colebatch relates of a Mr. Pool, who was run through the body with a sword, and lost four quarts of blood. The medicines being applied, the bleeding stopped; on the following day he “was gnawing tough ill-boiled mutton,” and drank a quart of ale; and in the course of five days he returned to duty in the camp. “A Mr. Cherry also, sergeant of grenadiers at the attack of the castle of Namur, was wounded in twenty-six places, twenty-three with bullets, and three large cuts on the head with a sword. He lay forty-eight hours stripped naked upon the breach, without a bit of bread or drop of drink, or any thing done to his wounds; yet this man was cured by the vulnerary powder and tincture alone, and never had any fever.”[16]
The materials of the sympathetic powder were more heterogeneous and horrid than those which the witches used to drop into the caldron; human fat, human blood, mummy, the moss that grows in dead men’s skulls, or hogs’ brains; and the chief schism among the great masters of the sympathetic school arose from the question, whether it was necessary that the moss should grow absolutely in the skull of the thief who had hung on the gallows, and whether the medicine, while compounding, was to be stirred with a murderer’s knife?
Some, anxious to avoid the damnable charges which were urged against this practice, defended it on philosophical principles, and from the analogy of other natural operations. Any lute, said they, being tuned in unison with another, is affected when the other is struck, the magnet turns by sympathy to the pole, amber attracts light bodies, loadstones hung to the breast make us cheerful and merry, and the wearing of jewels secures chastity.
All acknowledged sympathetic cures were successful, and the established surgeons of that day refused to practise the treatment, only because it was impious and unlawful; for, said they, how can we contradict matters of fact?
We come now to the second of the great medical delusions, that which attributed to the royal touch a sanative power in scrofulous cases. This is supposed to have been a monkish invention, to increase the reverence for kings, and was practised in England and France.
Becket, a writer in the time of Charles II., fully describes the royal gift of touching for the evil, which gift had been confirmed and continued for six hundred and forty years. It is proved out of Corinthians I. chap. xii. ver. 9. “To another the gift of healing by the same spirit,” and they must needs be allowed no good subjects who dare deny this sanative faculty, when so many thousands had received benefit!
Clovis I., the fifth king of France, who reigned about five hundred years after the birth of Christ, is reputed to have been the first who had the gift of curing this disease. William of Malmesbury states, that Edward the Confessor was the first in England who healed strumous patients by the touch. Dr. Plott describes a piece of gold of this monarch, found in St. Giles’s Fields, near Oxford, having E. C. over the head, as well as two small holes through it by which it was hung on a riband, and used at the ceremony of touching for the evil. Some have considered this gift as the most efficacious part of the cure; some imagined that the success was principally owing to the sign of the cross made on the swellings.
The power of healing by the royal touch does not seem to have been very frequently practised till the time of Charles I. and II., after which it almost ceased.
Mr. Evelyn gives a full description of the ceremony. “His majesty,” says he, “began to touch for the evil according to custom, thus:—His Majesty, sitting under his state in the Banqueting House, the chirurgeons cause the sick to be brought or led up to the throne, where, they kneeling, the king strokes their faces or cheeks with both his hands at once, at which instant a chaplain, in his formalities, says, ‘He put his hands upon them and he healed them;’ this is said to every one in particular. When they have all been touched they come up again in the same order, and the other chaplain kneeling, and having angels of gold strung on white ribands on his arm, delivers them one by one to his majesty, who puts them about the necks of the touched as they pass, whilst the first chaplain repeats, ‘That is the true light who came into the world.’ Then follows an Epistle, with the Liturgy, and prayers for the sick, with some alteration; lastly the blessing. Then the lord chamberlain and comptroller of the household bring a basin, ewer, and towel, for his majesty to wash. John Bird says, the king expresses his belief in the cure being effected through the grace of God, saying, at the time of the ceremony, ‘I touch, God heals.’”