[P. 232]. “This is as true a copy.” Apparently a press error for “This is a true copy”, as given in the second edition, the printer having, inadvertently, almost reduplicated the “is”.
[P. 233]. “✠ Thomas.” His and our “N.” (or sometimes “John”, etc.), anyone who may be the invoker.
——— “A popish periapt.” The distances between these letters are somewhat variable, the “ka” and “am” are near enough to be syllables. But I have not misspent my time in a search for the true original.
[P. 234]. “Whistle for a pardon.” An expression still used for other things than pardon. Possibly founded on an ironical reference to the nautical idea, that when you whistle for a wind you get it, and more of it than you want. I have been spoken to for whistling on board ship. More probably, however, because whistling denoting want of care and thought, as in bench-whistler, one might as well expect a pardon or the thing wished for, after merely whistling for it, as expect larks to drop into one’s mouth.
[P. 238]. “Plumme.” I know not whether Scot meant to translate “Stircus” literally, but it would be curious to know whether this signification was formerly given to “plum”. It could well bear it.
[P. 240]. “Constant opinion” = firm belief or firm faith.
——— “Homerica Medicatio.” The physician was “Ferrerius”, alias “Auger”, or “Oger Ferrier”—not “Ferrarius”, as given throughout the text, in his list of authors, and in his contents—born at Toulouse, 1513, physician in ordinary to Catherine de Medicis, and afterwards returned to his birthplace, where he died in 1588. B. 2, ch. ii, of his Vera medendi modus is headed “De Homerica Medicatione”. And here I would at once say, that for the discovery of “Ferrerius” and of the following passages, and of the cause of Scot’s curious blunder, the reader and myself are indebted to my ever-ready Shakespearean friend, the Rev. W. A. Harrison. “When,” says Ferrier, “patients will not yield to ordinary treatment, one must have recourse to another kind,” which he describes generally in the margin as “Amuleta”. And first he speaks of “appensiones et physicæ alligationes”, then of “Caracteras & Carmina”. These, he says, Galen (and Trallianus) at first ridiculed, but that Trallian had seen (I believe in his mind’s eye) a tractate of Galen’s in which, as the heading of a chapter, or somewhere else, were the words “Homericam medicationem; quod Homerus suppressum verbis sanguinem, et mysteriis sanatos effectus prodiderit.” The italicised passage is that nonsense-sentence of Scot’s at the end of the chapter. It could only have arisen from Scot’s haste, but was also due to the fact that, as in the British Museum copy of the Lyons edition, 1574, the “s” of “verbis” is so faint as to give the not careful reader the form “verbi”. But Ferrier, like Scot, attributed such cures to imagination or a “fixed fansie”, or “constant opinion”; on which also I would refer to Sir H. Holland’s book on the Effect of Imagination in Disease. Thus he continues: “Deprehendi itaque curationis hujus eventum non a caracteribus non ex carmina permanare. Sed tanta est vis animi nostri, ut si quid honesti sibi persuaserit, atque in ea persuasione firmiter perseveravit, idipsum quod concepit agat, & potenter operetur.... Si neque fidentem, neque diffidentem nihilominus vis animi agentis operabatur. Id in dentium doloribus ... aperte videre licet. Nam præcantator ita movet non reluctantis ægroti animum, ut dolor ... sensim extinguatur.... At si forte æger diffidet, aut plane ridiculum existimet remedium ... præcantante vis nulla erit.... Non sunt ergo carmina, non sunt caracteres quo talia possunt, sed vis animi confidentis, & cum patiente concordis.” Wier v, 19, §1-4, gives the Ferrerius quotation, as well as his name, rightly. The staunching of blood by words refers to the cure in the Odyssey.
[P. 242]. “Through sudden feare.” Similar cases are known to physicians at the present day, whether through fear or some other sudden emotion. A Protestant medical man can well believe some of the tales of diseased pilgrims cured at, say, the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes, though no more believing in such miracles than do Roman Catholics when Protestant anointers anoint and sometimes cure through the same cause.
[P. 243]. “Hearbe Alysson.” So called because it cured hydrophobia (Pliny). Phil. Holland says, “Some take it to be Asperula, the wood-rose”; Holyokes Rider gives “rubia minor, cannabis agrestis”.
[P. 244]. “Scarifie.” Might be done with a gum lancet; but the magical tooth might have the advantage in some instances of affecting the thoughts, and through them the body, as noted, p. 240.