h a shape as to shake the incredulity of the keenest
thinker of his time. The very same assertion has been since repeated in
favor of Perkinism, and, since that, of Homoeopathy.

The same essential idea as that of the Weapon Ointment reproduced itself
in the still more famous SYMPATHETIC POWDER. This Powder was said to
have the faculty, if applied to the blood-stained garments of a wounded
person, to cure his injuries, even though he were at a great distance at
the time. A friar, returning from the East, brought the recipe to Europe
somewhat before the middle of the seventeenth century. The Grand Duke of
Florence, in which city the friar was residing, heard of his cures, and
tried, but without success, to obtain his secret. Sir Kenehn Digby, an
Englishman well known to fame, was fortunate enough to do him a favor,
which wrought upon his feelings and induced him to impart to his
benefactor the composition of his extraordinary Powder. This English
knight was at different periods of his life an admiral, a theologian, a
critic, a metaphysician, a politician, and a disciple of Alchemy. As is
not unfrequent with versatile and inflammable people, he caught fire at
the first spark of a new medical discovery, and no sooner got home to
England than he began to spread the conflagration.

An opportunity soon offered itself to try the powers of the famous
powder. Mr. J. Howell, having been wounded in endeavoring to part two of
his friends who were fighting a duel, submitted himself to a trial of the
Sympathetic Powder. Four days after he received his wounds, Sir Kenehn
dipped one of Mr. Howell's gaiters in a solution of the Powder, and
immediately, it is said, the wounds, which were very painful, grew easy,
although the patient, who was conversing in a corner of the chamber, had
not, the least idea of what was doing with his garter. He then returned
home, leaving his garter in the hands of Sir Kenelm, who had hung it up
to dry, when Mr. Howell sent his servant in a great hurry to tell him
that his wounds were paining him horribly; the garter was therefore
replaced in the solution of the Powder, "and the patient got well after
five or six days of its continued immersion."

King James First, his son Charles the First, the Duke of Buckingham, then
prime minister, and all the principal personages of the time, were
cognizant of this fact; and James himself, being curious to know the
secret of this remedy, asked it of Sir Kenelm, who rev