Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/240

 features, he noted down my virtues, vices, and qualities so exactly, that he even said in what part of my body I had got a mole, and mentioned the small mark on my shoulder, where Mr. Cline removed a tumour. There's for you? do you believe these things, or do you not?

"A man's destiny may be considered as a graduated scale, of which the summit is the star that presided over his birth. In the next degree comes the good angel attached to that star; then the herb and the flower beneficial to his health and agreeable to his smell; then the mineral, then the tree, and such other things as contribute to his good; then the man himself: below him comes the evil spirit, then the venomous reptile or animal, the plant, and so on; things inimical to him. Where the particular tree that is beneficial or pleasurable to him flourishes naturally, or the mineral is found, there the soil and air are salubrious to that individual; and a physician who understood my doctrines, how easily could he treat his patients!—for, by merely knowing the star of a person, the simples and compounds most beneficial to him in medicine would be known also.