In this matter Pericles showed his wisdom. For on recovering from a sickness and being asked if his malady had been great, he answered: “You may judge how great it was from the fact that it took half my sense from me: for if I had been in my right mind, I would never have allowed them to tie round my neck these charms which you see hanging there.” And indeed I think that this Captain was more in the right than Galen and the Platonists who put so much faith in charms and amulets, which were condemned by even the Emperor Caracalla and derided by Lucian in his “Dialogue of the Philosophers.”
In the same class I consider the numbers observed by witches in their healing. v. Concil. Trid. Sess. 22. in Decret. de Observat. & Aut. in celeb. miss. sub fin.For they make the sick man fast for so many days, or offer so many candles, or say so many Paternosters; and if he fail in but one point he will never be healed. For in Magic it is a maxim that if a man fails in the smallest possible point, he can derive no benefit at all.
Furthermore, witches in their healing sometimes make use of matters which are contrary to God and Nature; as the Chaldeans did in the case of a gladiator whom they caused to be killed and then gave his blood to drink to Faustina, the wife of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, so that she might lose the love which she bore to that gladiator. Democritus also prescribed as the cure for the dropsy, that a man’s throat should be cut and his blood given to the patient to drink while it was still warm; or else that he should be given certain forbidden and unlawful matters to eat. Riol. ad. Fernel. de abdit. rer. caus. II. 13.Apollonius of Tyana, to cleanse the town of Ephesus from the plague, caused an old man to be stoned by the people. To pass to the Master of