Already we have had occasion to refer to Galen’s two works on compound medicines which occupy the better part of two bulky volumes in Kühn’s edition and contain a vast number of prescriptions. It is not uncommon for one of these to contain as many as twenty-five ingredients. It seems unlikely that such elaborate concoctions would have been discovered by chance, as the Empirics held, but the modern reader is ready to agree that it was chance, if anyone was ever cured of anything by one of them. Yet Galen, as we have seen, believes that reasons can be given for the ingredients and would not for a moment admit that they are no better than the messes of witches’ cauldrons. He argues that, if all diseases could be cured by simples, no one would use compounds, but that they are essential for some diseases, especially such as require the simultaneous application of contrary virtues.[798] Also where a simple is too strong or weak, it can be toned up or down to just the right strength in a compound. Plasters and poultices seem always to be compounds. Of panaceas Galen is somewhat more chary, except in the case of theriac; he opines that a medicine which is good for a number of ills cannot be very good for any one of them.[799] [Sidenote: Amulets.] Procedure as well as substances suggestive of magic is found to some extent in Galen’s works. He instructs, for example, to pluck an herb with the left hand before sunrise.[800] He also recommends the suspension of a peony to cure epilepsy.[801] He saw a boy who wore this root remain free from that disease for eight months, when the root happened to drop off and the boy soon fell in a fit. When another peony root was hung about his neck, he remained in good health until Galen for the sake of experiment removed it a second time, whereupon another epileptic fit ensued as before. In this case Galen suggests that perhaps some particles from the root were drawn in by the patient’s breathing or altered the surrounding air. In another passage he holds that there is no medical reason to account for the virtues of amulets, but that those who have tested them by experience say that they act by some marvelous antipathy unknown to man.[802] A ligature recommended by Galen is to bind about the neck of the patient a viper which has been suffocated by tying several strings, preferably of marine purple, about its neck.[803] Galen marvels that _stercus lupinum_, even when simply suspended from the neck, “sometimes evidently is beneficial.”[804] It should not have touched the ground but should have been taken from trees or bushes. It also works better, as Galen has found in his own practice, if suspended by the wool of a sheep who has been torn by a wolf. [Sidenote: Incantations and characters.]