We meet with the harpies in the story of PHINEUS, a son of AGENOR, King of Thrace.  At the bidding of his jealous wife, IDAEA, daughter of DARDANUS, PHINEUS put out the sight of his children by his former wife, CLEOPATRA, daughter of BOREAS.  To punish this cruelty, the gods caused him to become blind, and the harpies were sent continually to harass and affright him, and to snatch away his food or defile it by their presence.  They were afterwards driven away by his brothers-in-law, ZETES and CALAIS.  It has been suggested that originally the harpies were nothing more than personifications of the swift storm-winds; and few of the old naturalists, credulous as they were, regarded them as real creatures, though this cannot be said of all.  Some other fabulous bird-forms are to be met with in Greek and Arabian mythologies, etc., but they are not of any particular interest.  And it is time for us to conclude our present excursion, and to seek for other byways.

V

THE POWDER OF SYMPATHY:  A CURIOUS MEDICAL SUPERSTITION

OUT of the superstitions of the past the science of the present has gradually evolved.  In the Middle Ages, what by courtesy we may term medical science was, as we have seen, little better than a heterogeneous collection of superstitions, and although various reforms were instituted with the passing of time, superstition still continued for long to play a prominent part in medical practice.

One of the most curious of these old medical (or perhaps I should say surgical) superstitions was that relating to the Powder of Sympathy, a remedy (?) chiefly remembered in connection with the name of Sir KENELM DIGBY (1603-1665), though he was probably not the first to employ it.  The Powder itself, which was used as a cure for wounds, was, in fact, nothing else than common vitriol,[1] though an improved and more elegant form (if one may so describe it) was composed of vitriol desiccated by the sun’s rays, mixed with gum tragacanth.  It was in the application of the Powder that the remedy was peculiar.  It was not, as one might expect, applied to the wound itself, but any article that might have blood from the wound upon it was either sprinkled with the Powder or else placed in a basin of water in which the Powder had been dissolved, and maintained at a temperate heat.  Meanwhile, the wound was kept clean and cool.

[1] Green vitriol, ferrous sulphate heptahydrate, a compound of iron, sulphur, and oxygen, crystallised with seven molecules of water, represented by the formula FeSO4<.>7H2O.  On exposure to the air it loses water, and is gradually converted into basic ferric sulphate.  For long, green vitriol was confused with blue vitriol, which generally occurs as an impurity in crude green vitriol.  Blue vitriol is copper sulphate pentahydrate, CuSO4<.>5H2O.