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OMNIANA
191

try, and loyalty; verily it is not error merely, but infatuation.


93. Tractors.

The Tractors are no new mode of quackery,—witness this extract from one of the rogues of the days of old:

"How famous is that martial ring, which carried in some fit place, or rubbed on some such part, will allay and cure the pains of the teeth and head, the cramp, quartain ague, falling sickness, vertigo, apoplexy, plague, and other diseases! insomuch that the great captain of Hetruria commanded the inventor thereof (a brother of St. Augustine's order) to sell none to any but himself for some years. If this same were formed of some long horse shoe nail, pulled out of a horse's hoof on purpose, in the hour Mars reigns, it would be ready to contract itself to fit the least, and amplify itself for the greatest finger as you would.

Tentzelius, 93.