wonderful, after the body had been buried for several days, which
naturally occasions the blood to congeal, upon Philip touching it, the
blood darted and sprang out, to the great astonishment of the
chirurgeons themselves, who were desired to watch this event;
whereupon Philip, astonished more than they, threw down the body, and
became so faint that they were forced to give him a cordial."

In the middle of the seventeenth century, Christina Wilson was
accused, in one of the supreme courts of Scotland, of having killed
her brother by sorcery. On being suspected of the crime by the
minister and others, she was brought in to touch the corpse. At the
first sight of the dead body, she prayed that He who made the sun to
shine on their house would bring the murder to light, and immediately
thereafter she touched the corpse. It bled, though it did not do so
before when touched by others. Of course this was held sufficient
proof against the unfortunate woman, and she suffered according to her
supposed guilt.

In another case a man was condemned on similar evidence for the murder
of his father; but the prisoner insisted that the bleeding was owing
to an incision made on the body, and not to his presence. The defence
was disregarded; but this need not be a matter of surprise, when such
men as Sir K. Digby and Sir George Mackenzie took it for granted that
the corpse of a murdered person would bleed on being touched by the
murderer. He (Sir K. Digby) says in his _Religio Medica_: "And to this
cause, peradventure, may be ascribed the strange effect which is
frequently seen in England, when, at the approach of the murderer, the
slain body suddenly bleedeth afresh: for certainly the souls of them
that are treacherously murdered by surprise leave their bodies with
extreme unwillingness, and with vehement indignation against them that
forced them to so unprovided and abhorred a passage. The soul then, to
wreak its evil talent against the hated murderer, and to draw a just
and desired revenge upon his head, would do all it can to manifest the
author of the fact. To speak it cannot, for in itself it wanteth
organs of voice, and those it is parted from are now grown too heavy,
and are too benumbed for it to give motion unto; yet some change it
desireth to make in the body, which it hath so vehement inclination
to, and therefore it is the aptest for it to work upon. It must then
endeavour to cause a motion in the sublimest and most fluid