"But some folks do seem to have what you might call the gift o' healin', Sir Reginald," said Mrs. Jackson. "My mother was a Scotchwoman, and she said there was allus healin' in the touch of a seventh son. Many and many a time has she seen it for herself, and in the place where she came from folks 'ud send all over the country for a seventh son if they was in pain." If Mrs. Jackson had said this to me a year earlier, I should probably have laughed at it as an ignorant superstition. Now, I saw no improbability in it at all. I have learnt that that is the way with many old wives' tales: behind the superstition there lies a scientific truth, but during the march of the centuries the truth has been lost, while the superstition has remained. For instance, in many country places there is a tradition that to carry a potato in one's pocket is a cure for rheumatism, and modern medical science has discovered that one of the best cures for rheumatic affections is the juice of the potato. Again, it was a superstition of our great-grandmothers that if a cat sneezed it was a premonition that colds were coming to all the household; now we know that colds are infectious, and can be caught from animals as well as from human beings. In the same way, doubtless, most of the superstitions about plants had their origin in knowledge of the medicinal properties of those plants, and the old idea that a maid could make herself beautiful by bathing her face in dew on a May morning was, after all, nothing but a testimony to the beneficial effects on the complexion of early rising and soft water. What the "seventh son" had to do with the matter--or whether he had anything to do with it at all--I do not pretend to say; but the tradition about him is a proof that through all ages there have been certain persons endowed with a soothing and a healing touch, with a certain fulness of vitality which they could impart to their fellow creatures. Then one is faced by a difficulty as to how much of this power is natural and how much is supernatural, which to me is no difficulty at all, as I simply decline to differentiate between the two. To me everything in life is natural because everything is supernatural: there is really no difference. The only difference I can discover--which is, after all, only a superficial one--is between the usual and the unusual.