Miscellanies Upon Various Subjects by John Aubrey
page 57 of 195 (29%)
page 57 of 195 (29%)
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i. e. In his natural history, Pliny, a man the most averse to
superstition, relates to us the following passage. Lately, the mother of one of the guards, who attended upon the General, was admonished by a vision in her sleep, to send her son a draught composed of the decoction of the root of a wild rose, (which they call Cynorrhodon) with the agreeable look whereof she had been mightily taken the day before, as she was passing through a coppice. The seat of the war at that time lay in Portugal, in that part of it next adjoining to Spain, that a soldier, beginning to apprehend mighty dangerous consequences from the bite of a dog, the letter came unexpectedly from her, entreating him to pay a blind obedience to this superstition. He did so, and was preserved beyond all expectation; and everybody afterwards had recourse to the same remedy. Ibid. Galeni "tria Somnia".--- "Tertium magis dignum miraculo, cum bis per somnium admonitus, ut arteriam secaret, quae inter pollicem & indicem est, idque agens liberatus sit a diuturno dolore, quo infestabatur ea in parte, qua septo transverso jecur jungitur, idque in libri de sectione venae fine testatus est. Magno certe exemplo, quod tantus vir in medicina eam adhibuerit somnio fidem, ut in seipso periculum vitae subierit, in arte propria. Deinde probitatem admiror, ut quo potuerit solertia ingenii sibi inventum ascribere, Deo cui debebatur, rediderit. Dignus vel hoc solo vir immortalitate nominis, & librorum suorum." Galen's three dreams. The third more worthy of being called a miracle, was, when being twice admonished in his sleep, to cut the artery that lies between the fore finger and the thumb, and doing it accordingly, he was freed from a continual daily pain with which he was afflicted in that part where the liver is joined to the midriff; and this he has |
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