The belief in cure by sympathy, however, is much older than DIGBY’S or TALBOT’S Sympathetic Powder.  PARACELSUS described an ointment consisting essentially of the moss on the skull of a man who had died a violent death, combined with boar’s and bear’s fat, burnt worms, dried boar’s brain, red sandal-wood and mummy, which was used to cure (?) wounds in a similar manner, being applied to the weapon with which the hurt had been inflicted.  With reference to this ointment, readers will probably recall the passage in SCOTT’S Lay of the Last Minstrel (canto 3, stanza 23), respecting the magical cure of WILLIAM of DELORAINE’S wound by “the Ladye of Branksome":—­

  “She drew the splinter from the wound
  And with a charm she stanch’d the blood;
  She bade the gash be cleans’d and bound: 
  No longer by his couch she stood;
  But she had ta’en the broken lance,
  And washed it from the clotted gore
  And salved the splinter o’er and o’er. 
  William of Deloraine, in trance,
  Whene’er she turned it round and round,
  Twisted as if she gall’d his wound. 
  Then to her maidens she did say
  That he should be whole man and sound
  Within the course of a night and day. 
  Full long she toil’d; for she did rue
  Mishap to friend so stout and true.”

FRANCIS BACON (1561-1626) writes of sympathetic cures as follows:—­“It is constantly Received, and Avouched, that the Anointing of the Weapon, that maketh the Wound, wil heale the Wound it selfe.  In this Experiment, upon the Relation of Men of 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