The Weapon-Salve
Curing the wound by anointing the blade, and the harm of the remedies it replaced.
In the Texts
Paracelsus’s ointment of skull-moss, mummy, and human fat went on the weapon, and the wound was washed, bound, and left; Fludd defended it in 1631, the parson Foster called it witchcraft, van Helmont was tried for his tract on it, and Digby’s powder of sympathy, vitriol in water, made it respectable in 1658. The demonologists’ question was whether a cure at a distance could be anything but the devil’s.
What Medicine Makes of It
The wounds healed because they were left alone: the surgeon’s alternative was cautery, boiling oil, and balsams in a dirty dressing, and Paré had found in 1537 that the untreated did better. Bacon proposed the controlled test in 1627 and did not run it. Modern wound care arrived by another road at the same place (Winter, 1962): clean, cover, leave; Digby’s copper sulfate was in addition a weak antiseptic.
The Evidence
- The controversy ran from Paracelsus to Digby’s lecture at Montpellier (1658): Fludd defended the salve (1631), the parson William Foster attacked it as witchcraft (Hoplocrisma-spongus, 1631), and van Helmont was tried before the Inquisition for his tract on it (1621); Debus (1964) and Thorndike (vol. 7) give the history.
- Francis Bacon in Sylva Sylvarum (1627) proposed the test, to anoint the weapon in some cases and not in others and compare the wounds, and did not run it; the first controlled trials in medicine came a century later.
- The wounds healed because they were washed, bound, and left alone: a seventeenth-century surgeon’s usual treatment was cautery, hot oil, and balsams in a dirty dressing; Ambroise Paré had found in 1537 that the untreated gunshot wounds did better than those with boiling oil.
- Modern wound care arrived at the same place by another road: Winter (1962) showed moist, covered wounds heal faster, and the surgical principle is cleaning, closure, and leaving the dressing be; Digby’s bandage soaked in copper sulfate solution was in addition a weak antiseptic.
- The salve is the clearest case in medicine of a treatment that worked because it removed the physician from the patient, and the reading is less about sympathy than about the harm of the remedies it replaced.
Where They Part
The salve claimed a sympathy between blade and wound; the reading finds a treatment that worked by removing the physician. It is the clearest case in the Materia Medica of a remedy that cured by doing nothing, and the argument of the whole collection in one jar.
In the Materia Medica
Sources
- Debus, A. G. (1964). “Robert Fludd and the use of Gilbert’s De Magnete in the weapon-salve controversy.” Journal of the History of Medicine 19.
- Digby, K. (1658). A Late Discourse Touching the Cure of Wounds by the Powder of Sympathy.
- Winter, G. D. (1962). “Formation of the scab and the rate of epithelization of superficial wounds in the skin of the young domestic pig.” Nature 193.
Historical and interpretive; not medical advice.