spirit of the patient, and
giving it to an inferior animal to swallow. It is pretended that the
animal unites and assimilates the mumia with itself, and imbibes its
vicious qualities, and by that means restores health to the person to
whom the mumia belonged.

Insemination is a cure, in certain respects, not unlike to that of
inescation. It is performed by mixing the medium, impregnated with the
mumia taken from the patient, with earth wherein has been sown the
seed of a plant appropriate to the disease; but care must be taken to
sprinkle it from time to time with water wherein the part affected had
been washed. The disease, we are told, becomes less virulent as the
plant grows.

By pouring molten lead into water held above a sick man, it could be
discovered whether he was bewitched. If his illness arose from wicked
and cruel tormentors, his image appeared in the lead; but if the
disease resulted from natural causes, no distinct impression remained
on the lead.

Montaigne says that it was an Egyptian law that the physician should
for the first three days take charge of his patient at the patient's
own peril, but afterwards at his own. He mentions that, in his time,
physicians gave their pills in odd numbers, appointed remarkable days
in the year for taking medicine, and gathered their simples at certain
hours.

The mode of curing the King's Evil, or scrofula, by royal touch, has
been so often referred to by various writers that we might well pass
it without notice, were it not that our object is to bring together in
these pages the many varied particulars of ancient superstition.
Consequently we shall briefly describe the ceremonies gone through
when sick persons were brought before the king. Let us premise, in the
first place, that all parties are neither agreed as to the time nor
the sovereign who first applied his royal hand to this method of
healing disease. The kings of England and France long pretended to
possess the power of curing scrofula by touching the sore. The right
or faculty, the French people say, existed originally in their
monarch; but the English nation would not admit this, and claimed the
power for their king. In support of England's claim, monkish writers
assert that the virtue was inherent in our kings as early as the days
of Edward the Confessor. Others will have it that King Robert first
exhibited the miraculous gift. Charles VIII. of France touched several
persons at Rome, and cured them.