the primitive practitioners of medicine, and from the pharmaceutical knowledge possessed by many compounders of what are now designated patent medicines.

Of these last, we shall speak more fully in the closing sketch of the present series. As an edifying specimen of the contagion of quackery above two hundred years ago, let us see the effect it had on one of the most illustrious philosophers the world ever knew-the "wisest, brightest of mankind"-the great Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam. The following are his own words, in the "Sylva Sylvarum, or Natural History."

"The sympathy of individuals that have been entire, or have touched, is, of all others, the most incredible; yet according unto our faithful manner of examination of nature, we will make some little mention of it. The taking away of warts, by rubhing them with somewhat that afterwards is put to waste and consume, is a common experiment, and I do apprehend it the rather, because of mine own experience. I had from my childhood a wart upon one of my fingers; afterwards, when I was about sixteen years old, being then in Paris, there grew upon both my hands a number of warts (at least one hundred) in a month's space. The English ambassador's lady, who was a woman far from superstition, told me one day she would help me away with my warts. Whereupon she got a piece of lard with the skin on, and rubbed the warts all over with the fat side, and amongst the rest that wart which I had from my childhood; then she nailed the piece of lard with the fat towards the sun, upon a post of the chamber window, which was to the south. The success was, that within five weeks' space all the warts went quite away, and that wart which I had so long endured for company. But at the rest I did little marvel, because they came in 'a short time, and might go. away in a short time again; but the going away of that which had staid so long doth yet stick with me. They say the like is done by the rubbing of warts with a green elder-stick, and then burying the stick to rot in muck. It should be tried with corns and wens, and such other excrescences: I would have it also tried with some parts of living creatures that are nearest the nature of excrescences, as the combs of cocks, the spurs of cocks, the horns of beasts, etc.; and I would have it tried both ways; both by rubbing those parts with lard or elder as before, and by cutting off some piece of those parts, and laying it to consume, to see whether it will work any effect towards the consumption of that part which was once joined with it.

"It is constantly received and avouched that the anointing of the weapon that maketh the wound, will heal the wound

itself. In this experiment, upon the relation of men of credit (though myself, as yet, am not fully inclined to believe it), you shall note the points following. First, the ointment wherewith this is done, is made of divers ingredients; whereof the strangest and hardest to come by, are the moss on the skull of a dead man, and the fats of a boar, and a bear killed in the act of generation. These two last I could easily suspect to be prescribed as a startling whole, that if the experiment proved not, it might be pretended that the beasts were not killed in due time; for as for the moss, it is certain there is great quantity of it in Ireland, upon slain bodies, laid on heaps uuburied. The other ingredients are the blood-stone in powder, and some other things, which seem to have a virtue to stanch blood, as also the moss hath. And the description of the whole ointment is to be found in the chemical dispensatory of Crolius. Secondly, the same kind of ointment, applied to the hurt itself, worketh not the effect, but only applied to the weapon. Thirdly, (which I like well), they do not observe the confecting of the ointment under any certain constellation, which commonly is the excuse of magical medicines, when they fail, that they were not made under a fit figure of heaven. Fourthly, it may be applied to the weapon, though the party hurt be at great distance. Fifthly, it seemeth the imagination of the party to be cured is not needful to concur, for it may be done without the knowledge of the party wounded: and thus much hath been tried, that the ointment (for experiment's sake), hath been wiped off the weapon, without the knowledge of the party hurt, and presently the party hurt hath been in great rage of pain till the weapon was re-anointed. Sixthly, it is affirmed, that, if you cannot get the weapon, yet, if you put an instrument of iron or wood, resembling the weapon, into the wound, whereby it bleedeth, the anointing of that instrument will serve and work the effect. This I doubt should be a device to keep this strange form of cure in request and use, because many times you cannot come by the weapon itself. Seventhly, the wound must be at first washed clean with white wine, or the party's own water, and then bound up close in fine linen, and no more dressing renewed till it be whole. Eighthly, the sword itself must be wrapped up close as far as the ointment goeth, that it taketh no wind. Ninthly, the ointment, if you wipe it off from the sword, and keep it, will serve again, and rather increase in virtue than diminish. Tenthly, it will cure in far shorter time than ointments of wounds commonly do. Lastly, it will cure a beast as well as a man; which I like best of all the rest, because it subjecteth the matter to an easy trial."

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Other passages might be found in the writings of Bacon, particularly in his History of Life and Death," as marvellous and absurd as the above; and it is therefore less a matter of wonder that persons of inferior minds should become the prey of charlatans. Of all the discerners of knavish pretence of every sort, Ben Jonson was perhaps the keenest. He saw that the extravagance of empiricism was one of the great social abuses of his time; and, in his vocation of satirical dramatist, burlesqued and lashed it to the very "top of his bent." In his admirable comedy "The Fox," he introduces the arch-schemer, Volpone, on the stage, as a pretended mountebank, addressing a street-crowd, and extolling to the skies his wonderful medicaments. The art of paffing can no further go; indeed, it never before nor since pitched so high a flight. Our reader, we think, can hardly fail to be amused with a specimen in verse, and another in prose, of this quack eloquence. What a fortune, as an advertiser's poet, might Ben have amassed, had he now been living!

46 You who'd last long, list to my song;
Make no more coyle, but buy of this oil.
Would you be ever fair, and young?
Stout of teeth, and strong of tongue?
Tart of palate, quick of ear?
Sharp of sight, of nostril clear?
Moist of hand, and light of foot?
Or (I will come nearer to't)

Would you live free from all diseases?

*

*

*

*

Yea, fright all aches from your bones?
Here's a med'cine for the nonce."

[By the bye, it is worthy of remark, that the necessary accentuation of the above word, "aches," is an additional proof of Kemble's correct pronunciation of that word, in "The Tempest."]

Having received from a lady an order for the oil so extolled, Volpone addresses her in the following strain: Madam, I return you, over and above my oil, a secret of that high and inestimable nature, shall make you for ever enamoured on that minute wherein your eye first descended on so mean, yet not altogether-to-be-despised an object as myself. Here is a powder concealed in this paper, of which if I should speak to the worth, nine thousand volumes were but as one page, that page as a line, that line as a word: so short is this pilgrimage of man (which some call life) to the expressing of it. Would I reflect on the price? Why, the whole world were but as an empire, that empire as a province, that province as a bank, that bank as a private purse, to the purchase of it. I will only tell you, it is the powder that made Venus a goddess (given her by Apollo), that kept her perpetually young, cleared her wrinkles, firmed her gums, filled her skin, co

loured her hair: from her, derived to Helen; and at the sack of Troy, unfortunately lost: till now, in this our age, it was as happily recovered, by a studious antiquary, out of some ruins of Asia, who sent a moiety of it to the court of France (but much sophisticated), wherewith the ladies there now colour their hair. The rest, at this present, remains with me, extracted to a quintessence; so that whoever it only touches, in youth it perpetually preserves, in age restores the complexion, seats your teeth, did they dance like virginal jacks, firm as wall, makes them white as ivory, though they were black as ——

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This is the genuine lofty style, the true Cambyses' vein. Venus, Apollo, Helen, the sack of Troy, some ruins of Asia (a sweeping generality, scorning particulars), and the court of France, are all pressed into the service of this miraculous powder; only the modern vendor, not content with removing the French "sophistication," has intensified the virtue of Apollo's gift to Venus, by reducing it to a quintessence." O, rare Ben Jonson!" But even Ben, with all his wit, humour, and satire, could hardly burlesque the preposterous pretences of mountebank empirics, who nevertheless succeeded in cajoling thousands of people; so besotted are the multitude, and so prone to put faith in any flattering lie, be it ever so gross. Oftentimes, indeed, faith is more than half the battle. Make a man believe in the infallibility of a given remedy, and (like pseudo-prophecies, which, by aid of credulity, are apt to fulfil themselves) the business is done. Some amusing instances of this are given by Montaigne, in his "Essay on the Force of Imagination." "Why," says he, "do the physicians tamper with, and prepossess beforehand their patients' credulity with many false promises of cure, if not to the end that the effect of imagination may supply the imposture and defect of their apozem? They know very well that a great master of their trade has given it under his hand, that he has known some with whom the very sight of a potion would work. A woman fancying she had swallowed a pin in a piece of bread, cried out that she had an intolerable pain in her throat, where she thought she felt it stick. But an ingenious practitioner that was brought to her, seeing no outward tumour nor alteration, supposing it to be only conceit taken at some crust of bread that had hurt her as it went down, caused her to vomit, and cunningly, unseen, threw a crooked pin into the bason, which the woman no sooner saw, but, believing she had cast it up, presently found herself eased of her pain. I myself," continues he, “knew a gentleman who, having treated a great deal of good company at his house, three or four days after bragged in jest (for

there was no such thing) that he had made them eat of a baked cat, at which a young gentlewoman, who had been at the feast, took such a horror that, falling into a violent vomiting and fever, there was no possible means of saving her !" Such are the advantages and evils of a strong imagination!

Doctor Millingen has given a very amusing and edifying account of empirical practice two or three centuries ago in his admirable and learned work, "Curiosities of Medical Experience." He tells us that mystery, in the dark ages, and even now, increases confidence in remedial means. "One cannot but wonder," continues he, "when we behold men preeminent in deep learning and acute observation, becoming converts to superstitious practices. Lord Bacon believed in spells and amulets, and Sir Theodore Mayence, who was physician to three English sovereigns, and supposed to have been Shakspeare's Doctor Caius, believed in supernatural agency, and frequently prescribed the most disgusting and absurd medicines, such as the heart of a mule ripped up alive; a portion of the lungs of a man who had died a natural death; or the hand of a thief who had been gibbeted on some particular day. The ancients firmly believed that blood could be stanched by charms; the bleeding of Ulysses was stopped by this means; and Cato the Censor has given us an incantation for setting dislocated bones. Avicenna declares that "he prefers confidence before art, I recepts, and all remedies whatsoever." The learned Burton, in his "Anatomy of Melancholy," says that "this strong imagination, or conceit, is Astrum Hominis, and the rudder of this our ship, which reason should steer, but, overborne by phantasy, cannot manage, and so suffers itself and the whole vessel of ours to be overruled and often overturned."

Doctor Millingen proceeds to tell us that nothing could be more absurd than the notions regarding some of these supposed cures. For example, a ring made of the hinge of a coffin, had the power of relieving cramps; which were also mitigated by having a rusty old sword hung up by the bedside. Nails driven in an oak-tree prevented tooth-ache. A halter that had served in hanging a criminal, was an infallible remedy for a headache, when tied round the head-an affection equally cured by the moss growing on a human skull, dried and pulverised, and taken as a cephalic snuff. A dead man's hand could dispel tumours of the glands by stroking the parts nine times; but the hand of a man who had been cut down from the gallows was the most efficacious. To cure warts, one had nothing to do but to steal a piece of beef from the butcher, with which the warts were to be rubbed; then

inter it in any filth, and, as it rotted. the warts would wither and fall. [This is something like Bacon's notion.] The chips of a gallows on which several persons had been hanged, when worn in a bag round the the neck would cure the ague. A stone with a hole in it, suspended at the head of the bed, would effectually stop the night-mare. Hence it was called a hag-stone, as it prevents the troublesome witches from sitting on the sleeper's stomach. Ricketty children were cured by being drawn through a cleft tree, which was afterwards bound up, and, as the split wood united, the child acquired strength.

By the pretended great benefit derived from the agency of dead murderers and other criminals, as seen in the foregoing, one might think they attained a post-mortem sanctity, and deserved to be ranked with the genuine saints who, according to Burton, presided over the cure of human infirmities; only the men of the gallows were more extensive in their remedial influence than the beatified mortals, each of whom was confined to the relief of certain peculiar maladies. Thus, Petronella took in charge poisons, gout, and agues; St. Romanus watched over such as were possessed; and St. Vitus bestowed his services on madmen; like as, of old, Pliny reckons up gods for all diseases.

"Fashion in everything bears sovereign sway," says the poet. Accordingly, the adoption, observes Doctor Millingen, of any particular medicine by princes and nobles will endow it with as great a power as that which was supposed to be vested in regal hands, in the cure of scrofula, hence called "king's evil," a nonsensical belief, which Shakspeare, in " Macbeth," has gone out of his way to eulogise, as an offering of homage to such a weak and culpable monarch as James I.

In our next sketch, we shall show the altered aspect which empiricism assumed in the reigns of Charles II, Queen Anne, and the first and second Georges. The concluding part will point to the pharmaceutical skill and comparatively beneficial efficacy of some of the Patent Medicines of the present era.

Life Assurance.

Having shown at considerable length, in the series of articles which have appeared in the pages of THE MIRROR on that subject, the general importance of Life Assurance, and explained the ordinary routine of procedure upon taking out a policy, we now furnish our readers with a complete list of all the Life Assurance Offices in the United Kingdom, with the names of their secretaries or corresponding actuaries, &c. &c., a letter addressed to whom will procure for our readers the detailed prospectuses of their respective offices, &c.