Whether Witches Kill by their Blowings and their Breaths.
Thirdly, witches cause death and affliction by their blowings and their breath; and Clauda Gaillard, called la Fribolette, will serve as witness to the truth of this. For meeting Clauda Perrier in the church of Ebouchoux, she breathed upon her, and the woman was at once stricken with an illness and was made impotent and died after having lingered for a year in poverty and weakness. And again, because Marie Perrier had once refused her alms, she blew strongly upon her so that Marie fell to the earth and, being with difficulty raised up, was ill for some days, until her nephew Pierre Perrier threatened the witch. Mall. Malefic. II. 1. c. 11.Sprenger also recounts that a witch of the diocese of Constance breathed upon a man and so afflicted him with leprosy all over his body that he died soon after; he has many other examples of this sort of thing, to which the reader may refer. Dan. Point 4.Now there are some who think that, when witches do this sort of offence, they have in their mouth some evil drug or root by the strength and reek of which they cast the spell. And in my opinion this is possible, and I do not think it needful to linger over Bodin’s argument that the witches would, in that case, be the first to die; for they have the antidote and countercharm to protect them
