Two Physical Treatises: On the Imposture of Healing Wounds by the Weapon Salve and On the Bleeding of Corpses

by this very fact, the attractor does not follow nature.

176. While it leads the virtue not to a movable part, but elsewhere and through long intervals.

177. And it takes its principle from the mind, not from nature.

178. Nature rejects that which is superfluous.

179. And what is made by artifice cannot be a cause of natural things by itself.

180. If there is also a single medicine to which the force is infused, it will be capable of contraries at once, or it is made for contrary constellations, or indeed for all of them.

181. For it is said to help all, whether the stars are in agreement or in disagreement, or whether the subject is disposed in this way or that.

182. It cannot be that such a medicine is made from any elemental thing, by any preparation.

183. The virtue of healing either does not exit the subject of the weapon, or having exited from there, it is propagated to the wounded part.

184. If it does not exit, and nevertheless the effect follows by the action of that virtue, we say that either a magical incantation is occurring, or the cause is present by accident.

185. For the passion there is referred from the type to the antitype original: "antitypum" entirely unnaturally.

186. Since the affection of a discontinuous thing