Page:The history of Witchcraft and demonology.djvu/183

 of humbler station went to the scaffold, one hundred and forty-seven were imprisoned for longer or shorter terms, not a few finding it convenient to leave the country, or, at any rate, to obscure themselves in distant châteaux. But many of the leaves had been torn out of the archives, and Louis himself forbade any mention of his favourite’s name in connexion with these prosecutions. However, she was disgraced, and it is not surprising that after the death of Maria Teresa, 31 July, 1683, the king early in the following year married the pious and conventual Madame de Maintenon.

Ludovico Maria Sinistrari writes that witches “promise the Devil sacrifices and offerings at stated times: once a fortnight, or at least each month, the murder of some child, or an homicidal act of sorcery,” and again and again in the trials detailed accusation of the kidnapping and murder of children are brought against the prisoners. In the same way as the toad was used for magical drugs so was the fat of the child. The belief that corpses and parts of corpses constitute a most powerful cure and a supreme ingredient in elixirs is universal and of the highest antiquity. The quality of directly curing diseases and of protection has long been attributed to a cadaver. Tumours, eruptions, gout, are dispelled if the afflicted member be stroked with a dead hand. Toothache is charmed away if the face be touched with the finger of a dead child. Birthmarks vanish under the same treatment. Burns, carbuncles, the herpes, and other skin complaints, fearfully prevalent in the Middle Ages, could be cured by contact with some part of a corpse. In Pomerania the “cold corpse hand” is a protection against fire, and Russian peasants believe that a dead hand protects from bullet wounds and steel. It was long thought by the ignorant country folk that the doctors of the hospital of Graz enjoyed the privilege of being allowed every year to exploit one human life for curative purposes. Some young man who repaired thither for toothache or any such slight ailment is seized, hung up by the feet, and tickled to death! Skilled chemists boil the body to a paste and utilize this as well as the fat and the charred bones in their drug store. The people are persuaded that about Easter a youth annually disappears in the hospital for these purposes. This