That no direct benefit could have been derived from such a mode of treatment must be obvious, but De Morgan very plausibly claims that in the then state of surgical and medical knowledge, it was really the very best that could have been adopted. His argument is as follows: "The sympathetic powder was that which cured by anointing the weapon with its salve instead of the wound. I have been long convinced that it was efficacious. The directions were to keep the wound clean and cool, and to take care of diet, rubbing the salve on the knife or sword. If we remember the dreadful notions upon drugs which prevailed, both as to quantity and quality, we shall readily see that any way of _not_ dressing the wound, would have been useful. If the physicians had taken the hint, had been careful of diet, etc., and had poured the little barrels of medicine down the throat of a practicable doll, _they_ would have had their magical cures as well as the surgeons. Matters are much improved now; the quantity of medicine given, even by orthodox physicians, would have been called infinitesimal by their professional ancestors. Accordingly, the College of Physicians has a right to abandon its motto, which is, _Ars longa, vita brevis_, meaning, _Practice is long, so life is short_." As set forth by Digby and others, the use of the Powder of Sympathy is free from all taint of witchcraft or magic, but, in another form, it was wholly dependent upon incantations and other magical performances. This idea of sympathetic action was even carried so far as to lead to attempts to destroy or injure those whom the operator disliked. In some cases this was done by moulding an image in wax which, when formed under proper occult influences, was supposed to have the power of transferring to the victim any injuries inflicted on the image. Into such images pins and knives were thrust in the hope that the living original would suffer the same pains and mutilations that would be inflicted if the knives or pins were thrust into him, and sometimes the waxen form was held before the fire and allowed to melt away slowly in the hope that the prototype would also waste away, and ultimately die. Shakespeare alludes to this in the play of King John. In Act v., Scene 4, line 24, Melun says: "A quantity of life Which bleeds away, even as a form of wax, Resolveth from his figure 'gainst the fire?" And Hollinshed tells us that "it was alleged against Dame Eleanor Cobham and her confederates that they had devised an image of wax, representing the king, which, by their sorcerie, by little and little consumed, intending thereby, in conclusion, to waste and destroy the king's person."