the neck will mightily help melancholy and drive away fantastical spirits.
Pepys writing on May 28, 1667, says, "My wife went down with Jane and W. Hewer to Woolwich in order to get a little ayre, and to lie there to-night and so to gather May Dew to-morrow morning, which Mrs. Turner hath taught her is the only thing to wash her face with; and I am content with it." But Mrs. Turner ought to have explained to Mrs. Pepys that to preserve beauty it was necessary to collect the May Dew on the first of the month.
Catherine de Medici wore a piece of an infant's skin as a charm, and Lord Bryon presented an amulet of this nature to Prince Metternich. Pascal died with some undecipherable inscription sewn into his clothes. Charles V always wore a sachet of dried silkworms to protect him from vertigo. The Emperor Augustus wore a piece of the skin of a sea calf to keep the lightning from injuring him, and the Emperor Tiberius wore laurel round his neck for the same reason when a thunderstorm seemed to be approaching. Thyreus reports that in 1568 the Prince of Orange condemned a Spaniard to be shot, but that the soldiers could not hit him. They undressed him and found he was wearing an amulet bearing certain mysterious figures. They took this from him, and then killed him without further difficulty. The famous German physician, Frederick Hoffman, tells seriously of a gouty subject he knew who could tell when an attack was approaching by a stone in a ring which he wore changing colour.
