Sir KENELM DIGBY appears to have delivered a discourse dealing with the famous Powder before a learned assembly at Montpellier in France; at least a work purporting to be a translation of such a discourse was published in 1658,[1] and further editions appeared in 1660 and 1664.  KENELM was a son of the Sir EVERARD DIGBY (1578-1606) who was executed for his share in the Gunpowder Plot.  In spite of this fact, however, JAMES I. appears to have regarded him with favour.  He was a man of romantic temperament, possessed of charming manners, considerable learning, and even greater credulity.  His contemporaries seem to have differed in their opinions concerning him.  EVELYN (1620-1706), the diarist, after inspecting his chemical laboratory, rather harshly speaks of him as “an errant mountebank”.  Elsewhere he well refers to him as “a teller of strange things”—­this was on the occasion of DIGBY’S relating a story of a lady who had such an aversion to roses that one laid on her cheek produced a blister!

[1] A late Discourse . . . by Sir KENELM DIGBY, Kt.&c.  Touching the Cure of Wounds by the Powder of Sympathy . . .rendered . . . out of French into English by R. WHITE, Gent. (1658).  This is entitled the second edition, but appears to have been the first.

To return to the Late Discourse:  after some preliminary remarks, Sir KENELM records a cure which he claims to have effected by means of the Powder.  It appears that JAMES HOWELL (1594-1666, afterwards historiographer royal to CHARLES II.), had, in the attempt to separate two friends engaged in a duel, received two serious wounds in the hand.  To proceed in the writer’s own words:—­“It was my chance to be lodged hard by him; and four or five days after, as I was making myself ready, he [Mr Howell] came to my House, and prayed me to view his wounds; for I understand, said he, that you have extraordinary remedies upon such occasions, and my Surgeons apprehend some fear, that it may grow to a Gangrene, and so the hand must be cut off....

“I asked him then for any thing that had the blood upon it, so he presently sent for his Garter, wherewith his hand was first bound:  and having called for a Bason of water, as if I would wash my hands; I took an handfull of Powder of Vitrol, which I had in my study, and presently dissolved it.  As soon as the bloody garter was brought me, I put it within the Bason, observing in the interim what Mr Howel did, who stood talking with a Gentleman in the corner of my Chamber, not regarding at all what I was doing:  but he started suddenly, as if he had found some strange alteration in himself; I asked him what he ailed?  I know not what ailes me, but I find that I feel no more pain, methinks that a pleasing kind of freshnesse, as it were a wet cold Napkin did spread over my hand, which hath taken away the inflammation that tormented me before; I replied, since that you feel already so good an effect of my medicament, I advise you to cast away all your