bscess, and had been prescribed for
without relief by more than one medical gentleman. He was urged by some of
his friends, not only in his own village but in neighbouring ones, to
consult the witch-doctor, as they were convinced he was under some evil
influence. He agreed, and sent his wife to the _cunning man_, who lived in
New St. Swithin's, in Lincoln. She was informed by this ignorant impostor
that her husband's disorder was an infliction of the devil, occasioned by
his next-door neighbours, who had made use of certain charms for that
purpose. From the description he gave of the process, it appears to be the
same as that employed by Dr. Fian and Gellie Duncan to work woe upon King
James. He stated that the neighbours, instigated by a witch, whom he
pointed out, took some wax and moulded it before the fire into the form of
her husband, as near as they could represent him; they then pierced the
image with pins on all sides, repeated the Lord's Prayer backwards, and
offered prayers to the devil that he would fix his stings into the person
whom that figure represented, in like manner as they pierced _it_ with
pins. To counteract the effects of this diabolical process, the
witch-doctor prescribed a certain medicine, and a charm to be worn next
the body, on that part where the disease principally lay. The patient was
to repeat the 109th and 119th Psalms every day, or the cure would not be
effectual. The fee which he claimed for this advice was a guinea.

So efficacious is faith in the cure of any malady, that the patient
actually felt much better after a three weeks' course of this
prescription. The notable charm which the quack had given was afterwards
opened, and found to be a piece of parchment covered with some cabalistic
characters and signs of the planets.

The next-door neighbours were in great alarm that the witch-doctor would,
on the solicitation of the recovering patient, employ some means to punish
them for their pretended witchcraft. To escape the infliction, they feed
another cunning man, in Nottinghamshire, who told them of a similar charm,
which would preserve them from all the malice of their enemies. The writer
concludes by saying, that "the doctor, not long after he had been thus
consulted, wrote to say, that he had discovered that his patient was not
afflicted by Satan, as he had imagined, but by God, and would continue
more or less in the same state till his life's end."

An impostor carried on a sim