and itself an immortal spirit. (a) Perchance one man, by this effect of imagination, leaves here the king’s evil that another carries back to Spain. We see, therefore, that in such matters we are wont to require an expectant mind. Why do physicians make use beforehand of the credulity of their patients by so many false promises of recovery, if not that the action of imagination may come to the aid of the imposture of their decoctions? They know that one of the masters of their profession[1] left them in writing the statement that there have been men with whom the mere sight of a medicine did its work; and I have been led to take in hand this vagary by a tale told me by an apothecary in the household of my late father, a simple-minded man, a Swiss, — a nation not unintelligent and little given to lying, — of having known for a long time a tradesman at Toulouse, a sickly man, and subject to the stone, who was often in need of injections, and had them differently prepared by physicians according to the phases of his disease. When they were brought, none of the usual forms was omitted: often he felt of them, to judge if they were too hot; and then he was to be seen on his stomach, every thing in readiness, but no injection was administered. The apothecary having withdrawn after this ceremony, the patient being arranged as if he had actually taken the injection, the same effect was produced as on those who take them. And if the physician found the operation insufficient, he would give him two or three more in the same way. My witness swears that, to save the expense (for he paid for them as if he had taken them), the sick man’s wife having tried sometimes to do with only warm water, the result betrayed the imposture, and that sort being found to be useless, it was necessary to return to the first method.
A woman, thinking that she had swallowed a pin with her bread, cried out and bewailed herself as if she had an intolerable pain in her gullet where she thought she felt that it had lodged; but because there was neither swelling nor un-
- ↑ Guillaume de Maris. See Messie, Diverses Leçons, II, 7.
hoc divinum, et in animali ipso mortali immortale hoc est conceptio scilicet et generatio. This is the Latin translation of Ficino, which Montaigne habitually used.
