There was no need of this kind of witchcraft, _pour nouer l’aiguilette_, in a timid boy, already subjugated by fear of the devil. Certainly, if the sorcerers had ideas of that force which is known to-day as _suggestion_, they could very easily destroy the virile power of the subject by governing his will and thoughts, his physical and moral personality. When we can confiscate the physical anatomy of a man he is reduced to all manner of impotencies. Who will affirm that suggestion is not one of the mysteries of sorcery? DEMONOLOGICAL PHYSICIANS. After the theosophists, theurgists, and the priests, we will now interrogate the writings of the physicians of antiquity and of the Middle Ages, as to this question of spirits and their connection with the affairs of mankind. We see that Galen is often drawn away by the beliefs of his time, to the most ridiculous prejudices and fancies, and that he is the defender of magical conjurations. He claimed that Æsculapius appeared to him one day in a dream and advised bleeding in the treatment of pleurisy by which he was attacked. After Galen, Soranus of Ephesus used magical chants for curing certain affections. Scribonius Largus, a contemporary of the Emperor Claudius, indicated the manner of gathering plants, so that they might possess the strongest healing properties (the left hand must be raised to the Moon). Plants thus gathered cured even serpent bites. Archigenes suspended amulets on the necks of his patients. And although Pliny often declared that he wished “to examine everything in nature and not to speculate on occult causes” he reproduces in his works all the superstitious practices employed in medicine. In the sixth century, Ætius, physician to the Court of Constantinople, acquired great surgical renown by the preparation of applications of pomades, ointments, and other topical remedies, in which superstition played a leading _role_.[56] Thus, in making a certain salve it was necessary to repeat several times in a low voice, “May the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob accord efficacy to this medicine.” If one had a foreign body in the throat it was necessary to touch the neck of the patient and say, “As Jesus Christ raised Lazarus, and Jonah came out of a whale, come out thou bone”; or, better still, “The Martyr Blase and the Servant of Christ commands thee to come out of the throat or descend to the stomach.”[57] After Ætius, we see Alexander of Tralles indulge in the same follies. In the colic he bids us use a stone on which is represented Hercules seated on a lion, a ring of iron on which was inscribed a Greek sentence, and, on the other, the diagram of the Gnostics (a figure composed of two equilateral triangles); and he adds that sacred things must not be profaned.