Kenelm Digby’s *Sympathetic Powder* (edition 1669) — The Public Domain Review

This is the power of the “powder of sympathy,” which Digby supposedly heard about from a Carmelite in Florence who had traveled extensively in what is now China, India, and Iran. Digby claimed that he was now the only person in Europe who knew the value of this powder (the Carmelite had easily returned to live his life in Persia) and sought scientific priority at the court of King James. The powder works through a property that Digby calls ‘the memory of bodies’. Things that are related or similar – that share an origin, weight, density, rarity, or figure – have the ability to participate in sympathetic relationships and even to interact at a distance. This is why you should wear a pad in times of contagion, because the poisonous creature attracts and absorbs “the poison of a plague wound.” Digby’s most curious suggestion is a version of the so-called weapons ointmenta magical balm that perhaps first appeared in the Pseudo-Paracelsian book Archidoxis Magica (1570), where a wound can be healed by applying an ointment to the offending blade rather than to the victim.