“I asked him then for any thing that had the blood upon it; so he presently sent for his garter, wherewith his hand was first bound, and dissolving some vitriol in a basin of water, I put in the garter, observing in the interim what Mr. Howell did. He suddenly started, as if he had found some strange alteration in himself. I asked him what he ailed? ‘I know not what ails me, but I find that I feel no more pain; methinks that a pleasing kind of freshness, as it were a wet cold napkin, did spread over my hand, which hath taken away the inflammation that tormented me before.’ I replied, ‘Since then that you feel already so good effect of my medicament, I advise you to cast away all your plaisters, only _keep the wound clean_, and in a moderate temper betwixt heat and cold.’ To be brief; there was no sense of pain afterward; but within five or six days the wounds were cicatrized and entirely healed.” The king obtained from Sir Kenelm the discovery of his secret, which he pretended had been taught him by a Carmelite friar, who had learned it in Armenia or Persia. The fact was, the sympathetical physician understood the cure of wounds by adhesion more perfectly than others; but it was necessary to cheat the world into this safe method of cure, and they declined the use of it altogether, where they foresaw, from the nature of the wound, it could not succeed. The public opinion would have been so strong against any open innovation, that the sympathetic doctors got credit for something like witchcraft, and condescended to dress axes and swords, that the wounds might have leave to lie at rest till they healed. All cures by adhesion were mysteriously performed, and one in particular, called the secret dressing, in which great pains were taken, before laying the lips of the wound together, to suck out all the blood. This was chiefly used by drummers in regiments, to conceal the quarrels of the soldiers. The trick of this way of cure consisted in making grimaces and contortions, signing their patients with the cross, and muttering between their teeth some unintelligible jargon. Their care was to keep the profession among themselves, and it was from the profanation of the sign of the cross that there arose a hot war between the priests and the suckers; the former refusing confession, extreme unction, or any sacrament to those who had undergone the magical or diabolical ceremonies of the suckers, who, on the other hand, refused to suck those connected in any way with the priests, being anxious to preserve their trade, which was not without its emoluments; for Verduc observes that they were still more skilful in sucking gold than blood.