Medicina Magica

Samuel Boulton, a medical writer in the mid-seventeenth century, wrote this tractate on magical medicine and herbal healing after recovering from a serious illness. Boulton describes the mainly Paracelsian approach to the nature of the soul, the vital spirit, and how healing may be performed at a distance, or diastatically. He provides several examples of magical medicines, preparations and unguents, including a method for making the Weapon-salve. In later chapters, he lists healing plants and their planetary associations, and then, using the Doctrine of Signatures, goes on to assign plants and minerals to the diseases they are supposed to cure.