Curiosities of Olden Times
asks the Puritan in his metrical version of Psalm lxxxiii, and Dr. Paullini promptly answers: "Certainly, it is good for health of soul and body that they should so act towards one another."
Scorpius atque fabæ nostra fuere salus.
Had our learned author been acquainted with the Rabbinical gloss on the account of the Fall of Man, he would, maybe, have hesitated to attribute universal benefit to the application of the rod. For, say the Rabbis, when Adam pleaded that the woman gave him of the tree, and he did eat, he means emphatically that she gave it him palpably. Adam was recalcitrant, Eve dedit de ligno; the branch was stout, the arm of the "mother of all living" was muscular, and the first man succumbed, and "did eat" under compulsion.
There is nothing like the rod, says the doctor; it is a universal specific, it stirs up the stagnating juices, it dissolves the precipitating salts, it purifies the coagulating humours of the body, it clears the brain, purges the belly, circulates the blood, braces the nerves; in short, there is nothing which the rod will not do, when judiciously applied.
Antidotum mortis si verbera dixero, credas!
Attonitum morbum nam cohibere valent.
Having laid down his principle, the doctor proceeds to apply it to various complaints, giving instances, the result of experience.
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