The University of Salamanca decreed that no physician should dare to bleed his patient in a pleurisy in the arm of the affected side; declaring that such practice was of no less pernicious consequences to medicine, than Luther's heresy had been to religion. The inquisition having adopted the irrational and foolish doctrine that diseases should be ascribed to fascination, a physician who opposed that doctrine was compelled to accede to it, and to declare that he had seen a beautiful woman break a steel mirror to pieces, and blast trees by a single glance of her fascinating eyes. Superstitious opinions prevailed in regard to the cure of diseases, also. Some were supposed to be cured by a song. Josephus asserted that he saw a certain Jew, named _Eleazer_, draw the devil out of an old woman's nostrils, by the application of Solomon's seal to her nose, in the presence of the Emperor Vespasian. Numerous remedies were employed for expelling the devil, among which was flagellation, purgatives, and antispasmodics. Several bewitched persons being cured by a plaster of assafœtida, the question arose, in what way this article excited so much efficacy. Some supposed, that the devil considered so vile an application an insult, and ran off in a passion; but others very sagely observed, that as devils are supposed to have eyes and ears, it is possible that they have noses also, and that it proved offensive to their olfactory nerves. It may be observed that superstition is not confined to those who are ignorant of the laws of the physical world; but through the infirmity of human nature, it has prevailed to the perversion of the profoundest understanding, and the purest intellect. It has arrested the progress of literature and science, and shackled the mind with vulgar fictions, errors, and prejudices. Even the sublime genius of Lord Bacon was subjected to its influence; he believed in witchcraft, and asserted that he was cured of warts by rubbing them with a piece of lard with the skin on, and then exposing it to the sun. Dr More, and the enlightened Cudworth, applied the epithet _Atheist_ to those who opposed the belief of witchcraft. The celebrated Dr Hoffman, the father of the modern theory and practice of medicine, in the large edition of his work in 1742, says, that the devil can raise storms, produce insects, and act upon the animal spirits and imagination; and, in fine, that he is an excellent optician, and natural philosopher, on account of his long experience.