" Yet the principle
of modern classification is different. In the same place, it is
curious to find a good deal of pretty nonsense concerning the virtues
of the ashes of a hedgehog, the heart of an ape, the moss that
groweth upon the skull of a dead man unburied, and the comfort that
proceeds to the system from wearing beads of amber, coral, and
hartshorn; -- or from rings of sea horse teeth worn for cramp; -- to
find all these masses of moonshine side by side with the gravest and
most valuable observations.
The good Sir Thomas Browne recommends as empirical cures for
the gout:
"To wear shoes made of a lion's skin.
"Try transplantation: Give poultices taken from the part to
dogs.
"Try the magnified amulet of Muffetus, of spiders' legs worn in
a deer's skin, or of tortoises' legs cut off from the living tortoise
and wrapped up in the skin of a kid."
Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy is an encyclopaedia of authors
and of opinions, where one who should forage for exploded theories
might easily load his panniers. In daemonology, for example; "The
air," he says, "is not so full of flies in summer as it is at all
times of invisible devils.
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