f Credit_, (though my
selfe, as yet, am not fully inclined to beleeve it,) you shal note
the _Points_ following; First, the _Ointment_... is made of Divers
_ingredients_; whereof the Strangest and Hardest to come by, are the
Mosse upon the _Skull_ of a _dead Man, Vnburied_; And the _Fats_ of a
_Boare_, and a _Beare_, killed in the _Act of Generation_. These Two
last I could easily suspect to be prescribed as a Starting Hole; That if
the _Experiment_ proved not, it mought be pretended, that the _Beasts_
were not killed in due Time; For as for the _Mosse_, it is certain
there is great Quantity of it in _Ireland_, upon _Slain Bodies_, laid
on _Heaps, Vnburied_. The other _Ingredients_ are, the _Bloud-Stone_
in _Powder_, and some other _Things_, which seeme to have a _Vertue_ to
_Stanch Bloud_; As also the _Mosse_ hath.... Secondly, the same _kind_
of _Ointment_, applied to the Hurt it selfe, worketh not the _Effect_;
but onely applied to the _Weapon_..... Fourthly, it may be applied to
the _Weapon_, though the Party Hurt be at a great Distance. Fifthly, it
seemeth the _Imagination_ of the Party, to be _Cured_, is not needfull
to Concurre; For it may be done without the knowledge of the _Party
Wounded_; And thus much hath been tried, that the _Ointment_ (for
_Experiments_ 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 Paine_, till the _Weapon_ was _Reannointed_. 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 _Annointing_ of that _Instrument_ will
serve, and work the _Effect_. This I doubt should be a Device, to keep
this strange _Forme of Cure_, in Request, and Use; Because many times
you cannot come by the _Weapon_ it selve. Seventhly, the _Wound_ be at
first _Washed clean_ with _White Wine_ or the _Parties_ own _Water_; And
then bound up close in _Fine Linen_ and no more _Dressing_ renewed, till
it be _whole_."(1)

(1) FRANCIS BACON: _Sylva Sylvarum: or, A Natural History... Published
after the Authors death... The sixt Edition_ u.. (1651), p. 217.

Owing to the demand for making this ointment, quite a considerable trade
was done in skulls from Ireland upon which moss had grown owing to
their exposure to the atmosphere, high prices being obtained for fine
specimens.

The idea underlying