"So great was the confidence in him, that the blind fancied they saw the light which they did not see--the deaf imagined that they heard--the lame that they walked straight, and the paralytic that they had recovered the use of their limbs. An idea of health made the sick forget for a while their maladies; and imagination, which was not less active in those merely drawn by curiosity than in the sick, gave a false view to the one class, from the desire of seeing, as it operated a false cure on the other from the strong desire of being healed. Such was the power of the Irishman over the mind, and such was the influence of the mind over the body. Nothing was spoken of in London but his prodigies; and these prodigies were supported by such great authorities that the bewildered multitude believed them almost without examination, while more enlightened people did not dare to reject them from their own knowledge." That there were real cures, however, seems most probable. The Bishop of Dromore testifies thus from his own observation: "I have seen pains strangely fly before his hands till he had chased them out of the body; dimness cleared, and deafness cured by his touch. Twenty persons at several times, in fits of the falling sickness, were in two or three minutes brought to themselves.... Running sores of the 'King's evil' were dried up; grievous sores of many months' date in a few days healed, cancerous knots dissolved, etc." [74] The celebrated Flamstead, the astronomer, when a lad of nineteen, went into Ireland to be touched by Greatrakes, and he testifies that he was an eyewitness of several cures, although he himself was not benefited. In a letter to Lord Conway, Greatrakes says: "The King's doctors, this day (for the confirmation of their majesties' belief), sent three out of the hospital to me, who came on crutches; but, blessed be God! they all went home well, to the admiration of all people, as well as the doctors."[75] Several pamphlets were issued by medical men and others criticising his work, and in 1666 he published a vindication of himself entitled "A Brief Account." This contained numerous testimonials by Bishop Wilkins, Bishop Patrick, Dr. Cudworth, Dr. Whichcote, and others of distinction and intelligence. After the retirement of Greatrakes, John Leverett, a gardener, succeeded to the "manual exercise," and declared that after touching thirty or forty a day, he felt so much goodness go out of him that he was fatigued as if he had been digging eight roods of ground. About the same time that Greatrakes was working among the people of London, an Italian enthusiast, named Francisco Bagnone, was operating in Italy with equal success. He had only to touch the sick with his hands, or sometimes with a relic, to accomplish cures which astonished the people.