Pagina 958 de 1118

The physicians yielded to the popular belief, and attributed to

poison and diabolical conjurations the ordinary symptoms of the

malady. Even Tadino himself, one of the most celebrated

physicians of his day, who had witnessed the entrance of the

disorder, anticipated its ravages, studied its symptoms, and

admitted it to be the plague, even he, such is the strange

perversity of human reason, drew from all these facts an argument

in proof of the dissemination of some subtle poison, by means of

ointments. Nor was the enlightened Cardinal Frederick himself

altogether uninfected by the general mania. In a small tract of

his on the subject in the Ambrosian Library, he says, "Of the

mode of compounding and dispensing these ointments, various

statements have been made, some of which we hold for true, while

others appear imaginary."