In 1593 it was reported that a Silesian child, seven years old, had lost all its teeth, and that a golden tooth had grown in the place of a natural double one. In 1595 Horstius, professor of medicine in the University of Helmstadt, wrote the history of this golden tooth. He said it was partly a natural event and partly miraculous, and that God had sent it to the child to console the Christians for their persecution by the Turks. In the same year Rullandus drew up another account of the golden tooth. Two years afterwards, Ingosteterus, another learned man, wrote against the opinion which Rullandus had given on this golden tooth. Rullandus immediately replied in a most elegant and erudite dissertation. Libavius, a very learned man, compiled all that had been said relative to this tooth, and subjoined his remarks upon it. Nothing was wanting to recommend these erudite writings to posterity but proof that the tooth was gold. A goldsmith examined it, and found it a natural tooth artificially gilt. _The Devil Regarded as a Benefactor of the Human Race._ The Ophites were a sect who, like most Gnostics, regarded the Jehovah of the Old Testament with great abhorrence. Regarding the emancipation of man from the power and control of Jehovah as the most important end, they considered the serpent who tempted Eve and introduced "knowledge" and "revolt" into the world, to have been the great benefactor of the human race. They worshipped the serpent, and sought to engraft Ophism upon Christianity by causing the bread designed for the Eucharistic sacrifice to be licked by a serpent which was kept in a cave for the purpose, and which the communicants kissed after receiving the Eucharist. _Curse of Scotland._ This is a term applied to the nine of diamonds in a pack of playing cards. Much uncertainty prevails respecting the origin of the phrase. The most probable explanation is that it refers to the detestation entertained in Scotland toward John Dalrymple, first Earl of Stair, on account of his connection with the Massacre of Glencoe, for which he had to resign office in 1695. The heraldic bearing of this person consisted of nine lozenges on a field of azure. These nine lozenges resembled the nine of diamonds, and hence the popular phrase, the "Curse of Scotland." _Curse of Innocent Blood._