This is the power of the “powder of sympathy”, which Digby supposedly had learned about from a Carmelite in Florence who had traveled extensively through present-day China, India, and Iran. Claiming that he was now the only person in Europe to know the value of this powder (the Carmelite had conveniently returned to live out his life in Persia), Digby sought scientific priority in the court of King James. The powder acts through a property that Digby names “the remembrance of bodies”. Things connected or similar — that share an origin, weight, density, rarity, or figure — have the capacity to participate in sympathetic relations and even to act upon each other at a distance. This is why, during times of contagion, you must carry a toad, because the venomous creature attracts and absorbs “the poison of a plague sore”. Digby’s most curious suggestion is a version of the so-called weapons salve, a magical balm that perhaps first appeared in the Pseudo-Paracelsian book Archidoxis Magica (1570), whereby a wound can be healed by applying a salve to the offending blade rather than its victim.
