To this mineral condition belongeth what is delivered by some, that wounds which are made with weapons excited by the Loadstone, contract a malignity, and become of more difficult cure; which nevertheless is not to be found in the incision of Chyrurgions with knives and lances touched; which leave no such effect behind them. Hither we also refer that affirmative, which sayes the Loadstone is poison; and therefore in the lists of poisons we find it in many Authors. But this our experience cannot confirm, and the practice of the King of _Zeilan_ clearly contradicteth; who as _Garcias ab Horto_, Physitian unto the _Spanish_ Viceroy delivereth, hath all his meat served up in dishes of Loadstone, and conceives thereby he preserveth the vigour of youth. But surely from a magnetical activity must be made out what is let fall by _Ætius_, that a Loadstone held in the hand of one that is podagrical, doth either cure or give great ease in the Gout. Or what _Marcellus Empericus_ affirmeth, that as an amulet, it also cureth the headach; which are but additions unto its proper nature, and hopeful enlargements of its allowed attraction. For perceiving its secret power to draw magnetical bodies, men have invented a new attraction, to draw out the dolour and pain of any part. And from such grounds it surely became a philter, and was conceived a medicine of some venereal attraction; and therefore upon this stone they graved the Image of _Venus_, according unto that of _Claudian_, _Venerem magnetica gemma figurat_. Hither must we also ruler what is delivered concerning its power to draw out of the body bullets and heads of arrows, and for the like intention is mixed up in plaisters. Which course, although as vain and ineffectual it be rejected by many good Authors, yet is it not methinks so readily to be denied, nor the Practice of many Physicians which have thus compounded plaisters, thus suddenly to be condemned, as may be observed in the _Emplastrum divinum Nicolai_, the _Emplastrum nigrum_ of _Augspurg_, the _Opodeldoch_ and _Attractivum_ of _Paracelsus_, with several more in the Dispensatory of _Wecker_, and practice of _Sennertus_. The cure also of _Hernias_, or _Ruptures_ in _Pareus_: and the method also of curation lately delivered by _Daniel Beckherus_,[D] and approved by the Professors of _Leyden_, that is, of a young man of _Spruceland_ that casually swallowed a knife about ten inches long, which was cut out of his stomach, and the wound healed up. In which cure to attract the knife to a convenient situation, there was applied a plaister made up with the powder of Loadstone. Now this kind of practice _Libavius_, _Gilbertus_, and lately _Swickardus_ [SN: _In his Ars Magnetica._] condemn, as vain, and altogether unuseful; because a Loadstone in powder hath no attractive power; for in that form it omits his polarly respects, and loseth those parts which are the rule of attraction. [D] De cultrivoro Prussiaco, 1636. _The cure of the Prussian Knife._