Pare the
patient's nails when the fit is coming on, & put the parings into a
little bag of fine linen or sarsenet, & tie that about a live eel's neck
in a tub of water. The eel will die & the patient will recover. And if a
dog or hog eat that eel, they will also die."
"The man recovered of the bite,
The dog it was that died!"
"I have known one that cured all deliriums & frenzies whatsoever, & at
once taking, with an elixir made of dew, nothing but dew purified &
nipped up in a glass & digested 15 months till all of it was become a
gray powder, not one drop of humidity remaining. This I know to be true,
& that first it was as black as ink, then green then gray, & at 22
months' end it was as white & lustrous as any oriental pearl. But it
cured manias at 15 months' end." Poor Brewster would have been the better
for a dose of it, as well as some in our day, who expect to cure men of
being men by act of Congress. In the same letter Digby boasts of having
made known the properties of _quinquina_, and also of the sympathetic
powder, with which latter he wrought a "famous cure" of pleasant James
Howell, author of the "Letters." I do not recollect that Howell anywhere
alludes to it. In the same letter, Digby speaks of the books he had sent
to Harvard College, and promises to send more.
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