I was much troubled with the tumor in my neck, as the physician and surgeon wished first to disperse this excrescence, afterwards, as they said, to draw it to a head, and at last thought it best to open it; so for a long time I had to suffer more from inconvenience than pain, although towards the end of the cure the continual touching with lunar caustic and other corrosive substances could not but give me very disagreeable prospects for every fresh day.  The physician and surgeon both belonged to the Pious Separatists, although both were of highly different natural characters.  The surgeon, a slender, well-built man, of easy and skilful hand, was unfortunately somewhat hectic, but endured his condition with truly Christian patience, and did not suffer his disease to perplex him in his profession.  The physician was an inexplicable, sly-looking, fair-spoken, and, besides, an abstruse, man, who had quite won the confidence of the pious circle.  Being active and attentive, he was consoling to the sick; but, more than by all this, he extended his practice by the gift of showing in the background some mysterious medicines prepared by himself, of which no one could speak, since with us the physicians were strictly prohibited from making up their own prescriptions.  With certain powders, which may have been some kind of digestive, he was not so reserved, but that powerful salt, which could only be applied in the greatest danger, was only mentioned among believers; although no one had yet seen it or traced its effects.  To excite and strengthen our faith in the possibility of such an universal remedy, the physician, wherever he found any susceptibility, had recommended certain chemico-alchemical books to his patients, and given them to understand, that, by one’s own study of them, one could well attain this treasure for one’s self, which was the more necessary, as the mode of its preparation, both for physical, and especially for moral, reasons, could not be well communicated; nay, that in order to comprehend, produce, and use this great work, one must know the secrets of nature in connection, since it was not a particular, but an universal remedy, and could indeed be produced under different forms and shapes.  My friend had listened to these enticing words.  The health of the body was too nearly allied to the health of the soul; and could a greater benefit, a greater mercy, be shown towards others than by appropriating to one’s self a remedy by which so many sufferings could be assuaged, so many a danger averted?  She had already secretly studied Welling’s “Opus Mago-cabalisticum,” for which, however, as the author himself immediately darkens and removes the light he imparts, she was looking about for a friend, who, in this alternation of glare and gloom, might bear her company.  It needed small incitement to inoculate me also with this disease.  I procured the work, which, like all writings of this kind, could trace its pedigree in a direct line up