Page:The Harveian oration, delivered before the Royal College of Physicians, Wednesday, June 27th, 1877 (IA b22314623).pdf/25

 duties of the Harveian orator not to allow (as far as in him lies) an aspersion to rest on a name that has been justly called "immortal." Our departed friend Edmund Alexander Parkes, in fervent language, vindicated Harvey's claim to that title, in the posthumous oration which Sir William Jenner read from this chair last year. He He

century as to the influence exerted by evil spirits upon man. Cesalpino relates that "A ship having put into Salamis, in the island of Cyprus, for the purpose of purchasing provisions, a young man left the vessel and bought some eggs of a certain woman. ate them on the shore, and, after the lapse of an hour, lost his voice and became half stupefied. When he assayed to go on board, he was driven back by his associates, who did not recognise him, but regarded him as an ass. As the wretched man was unable to express himself in words, the ship quitted the harbour without him; and he, anxious and having nobody to advise him, returned to the woman by whose influence he suspected that he was detained. obtained no help from her; and therefore, waiting his opportunity, remained three years in the country, occasionally carrying burdens according to the custom of asses. At night he stayed with the woman, but, continuing dumb, was unable to give evidence against the poisoner. However, having been accidentally led to the town, and passing a church, the ass was seen by certain Genoese mer- chants, at the elevation of the host, which happened at the moment to be raised, to bend his hind legs and to raise his forepaws in adoration. The merchants, seeing this miracle, inferred that the woman who was leading the ass was a witch (for this species of transformation was common in Asia). They brought the affair to the notice of the mayor of the town, who ordered the woman to be seized. She confessed her crime, and, in the hope of pardon, restored the young man to his former condition, and he returned home. She, however, suffered condign punishment." Cesalpino adopts this tale as a fact, and infers that such occurrences prove that the accounts given by poets of the metamorphoses of the companions of Ulysses into animals by Circe were not mere fables. It is not difficult to conceive how the sober mind of 1Iarvey would treat these lucubrations of Cesalpino if he were acquainted with them; but they scarcely impress us with the conviction that the latter was a man capable of effecting a great revolution in science. It may be in- teresting to modern demonologists to know that a picture by Gius. Sabatelli-painted in the present century-is to be found in a chapel of Santa Croce in Florence, in which a mule is represented as kneeling before the host, which is being conveyed to a sick person (sec Museo di Pittura e Scultura, Firenze, 1842. Tavola, 1182).