Clognini, an Italian physician, ordered two or three drachms of crude mercury to be worn as a defensive against the jaundice; and also as a preservative against the noxious vapours of inclement seasons: "It breaks," he observes, "and conquers the different figured seeds of pestilential distempers floating in the air; or else, mixing with the air, kills them where hatched." By others, the power of mercury, in these cases, has been ascribed to an elective faculty given out by the warmth of the body, which draws out the contagious particles. For, according to this entertained notion, all bodies are continually emitting effluvia, more or less, around them, and some whether they are internal or external. The Bath waters, for instance, change the colour of silver in the pocket of those who use them. Mercury produces the same effect; Tartar emetic, rubbed on the pit of the stomach, produces vomiting. Yawning and laughing are infectious; so are fear and shame. The sight of sour things, or even the idea of them, will set the teeth on edge. Small-pox, itch, and other diseases, are contagious; if so, say they, mercurial amulets bid fair to destroy the germ of some complaints when used only as an external application, either by manual attrition, or worn as an amulet. But medicated or not, all amulets are precarious and uncertain, and in the cure of diseases are, by no means, to be trusted to. The Barbary Moors, and generally throughout the Mahommedan dominions, the people are strikingly attached to charms, to which, and nature, they leave the cure of almost every disorder; and this is the most strongly impressed upon them from their belief in predestination, which, according to their creed, stipulates the evil a man is to suffer, as well as the length of time it is ordained he should live upon the land of his forefathers; consequently they imagine that any interference from secondary means would avail them nothing, an opinion said to have been entertained by William III, but one by no means calculated for nations, liberty, and commerce; upon the principle that when the one was entrenched upon, men would probably be more sudden in their revenge, and dislike physic and occupation; and when actuated with religious enthusiasm, nothing could stand them in any service.