Joseph Francis Borri flourished, about the middle of the seventeenth century, and a most complicated scoundrel he was--heresiarch, traitor, alchymist, and empiric. He had spiritual revelations, of course. He was an intelligent and audacious liar, and converts came in apace. At his suggestion, his followers took upon themselves an oath of poverty, and placed all they possessed in the hands of Borri, who told them he would take care it should never again interfere with their devotions, but would be spent in prayers and masses, for their ulcerated souls. The bloodhounds of the Inquisition were soon upon his track, at the moment he was about to raise the standard of insurrection in Milan. He fled to Amsterdam--made capital of his persecution by the Inquisition; and won the reputation of a great chemist, and wonderful physician. He then went to Hamburg, and persuaded Queen Christina, to advance him a large sum of money, to be reimbursed, from the avails of the philosopher's stone, which Borri was to discover. This trick was clearly worth repeating. So thought Borri; and he tried it, with still better success, on his Majesty of Denmark. Still the stone remained undiscovered; and the thought occurred to Signor Borri, that it might not be amiss, to look for it, in Turkey. He accordingly removed; but was arrested at Vienna, by the Pope's agents; and consigned to the prisons of the Inquisition, for life. His fame, however, had become so omnipotent, that, upon the earnest application of the Duke d'Etrée, he was let loose, to prescribe for that nobleman, whom the regular physicians had given over. The Duke got well, and the world gave Borri the credit of the cure. When a poor suffering mortal is given over, in other words, _let alone_, by half a dozen doctors--I am speaking now of the regulars, not less than of the volunteers--he, occasionally, gets well. A wit replied to a French physician, who was marvelling how a certain Abbé came to die, since he himself and three other physicians were unremitting, in their attentions--"_My dear doctor, how could the poor abbé sustain himself, against you all four?_" The doctors do much as they did of old. Pliny, lib. xxix. 5, says, of consultations--"_Hinc illæ circa ægros miseræ sententiarum concertationes, nullo idem censente ne videatur accessio alterius. Hinc illa infelicis monumenti inscriptio_, TURBA SE MEDICORUM PERIISSE." Hence those contemptible consultations, round the beds of the sick--no one assenting to the opinion of another, lest he should be deemed his subaltern. Hence the monumental inscription, over the poor fellow, who was destroyed in this way--KILLED BY A MOB OF DOCTORS! Who has not seen a fire rekindle, _sua sponte_, after the officious bellows have, apparently, extinguished the last spark? So, now and then, the vital spark, stimulated by the _vis medicatrix naturæ_ will rekindle into life and action, after having been well nigh smothered, by all sorts of complicated efforts to restore it.