The anodyne necklace, which was the result of some ridiculous superstition respecting the efficacy of Sir Hugh’s bones, is still gravely offered for sale, to facilitate the cutting of the teeth. In 1717, a “philosophical treatise” was published, wherin it says, “The effluvia and atoms, driven off by the heat of the body, bear such a tendency to the ailing part, as the loadstone does to iron, and that they will never leave off acting till they have given ease, and consequently it is a thing most capable of curing sympathetically the diseases of a human body, of any thing in the whole world. Since this famed necklace has been published, the bills of mortality have so decreased, as to be less than ever they have been known to be.” But the _summum bonum_, with which this series of medical deceptions may appropriately be closed, was the “universal medicine, or virtues of the magnetical antimonial cup, addressed to the houses of parliament by John Evans, minister and preacher of God’s word. It is warranted to be alone the phœnix and miracle of all physical miracles: the elixir of life, balsam of nature. It containeth mystically and essentially the quintessence of all minerals and vegetables, and magnetically sympathiseth with all animals.” In spite, however, of such admirable _never-failing_ specifics, which, it would seem, ought to have exterminated every malady from the face of the earth, diseases, hydra-headed, still baffle their assailants, and return to the charge with renewed force and provoking obstinacy. But the matter is too serious for the subject of a joke. If even practitioners who have conscientiously studied their profession are unavoidably in some degree open to the old charge of “pouring medicines, of which they know little, into a body of which they know less,” what must be said, or what ought to be the punishment, of such villanous pretenders as those who have been described in this chapter,--men without talent or education, and who seem to think that, like charity, impudence covers a multitude of sins! CONCLUDING CHAPTER. MISCELLANEOUS. Superstition of the Hindoos--The Malays--Asiatic superstitions--The Chinese--Miracle of the Blessed Virgin--Stratagem of an architect--Michael Angelo’s Cupid--Statue of Charles I.--Ever-burning sepulchral lamps--Lamp in the tomb of Pallas--The art of mimicry--Superiority of the ancients--Fable of Proteus--Personation of the insane Ajax--Archimimes at funerals--Demetrius the cynic converted--Acting portraits and historical pictures--War dances of the American Indians--The South Sea Bubble--Gay the poet--Law’s Mississippi scheme--Numerous bubbles--Speculations in 1825.