Page:The Lay of the Last Minstrel - Scott (1805).djvu/268

 should be free from that inflammation, it may be before he could possibly return to him: but in case he found no ease, I wished him to come presently back again; if not, he might forbear coming. Thereupon he went; and at the instant I did put again the garter into the water, thereupon he found his master without any pain at all. To be brief, there was no sense of pain afterward; but within five or six dayes the woundes were cicatrized, and entirely healed." p. 6.

The king (James VI.) obtained from Sir Kenelm the discovery of his secret, which he pretended had been taught him by a Carmelite friar, who had learnt it in Armenia or Persia. Let not the age of animal magnetism and metallic tractors smile at the sympathetic powder of Sir Kenelm Digby. Reginald Scot mentions the same mode of cure in these terms: "And that which is more strange they can remedie anie stranger with that verie sword wherewith they are wounded. Yea, and that which is beyond all admiration, if they stroke the sword upwards with their fingers, the partie shal] feele no pain; whereas, if they draw their fingers downwards, thereupon the partie wounded shall feele intolerable pain." I presume that the success ascribed to the sympathetic mode of treatment might arise from the pains bestowed in washing the wound, and excluding the air, thus bringing on a cure by the first intention. It is introduced by Dryden in the Enchanted Island, a (very unnecessary) alteration of the Tempest.