To Ensure, As They Conceive, A Favourable Produce,
Ten Men Are Disguised Like So Many Devils, Who Dance To The Noise Of
Their Music; And After The Festivities Of The Day, They Pray To The
Devils To Send Them A Plentiful Crop.
When any merchant of these idolaters is sore afflicted with disease and
near death, then certain persons who are accounted physicians among them
ore called to visit the person in extremity.
These persons accordingly
come to his house in the dead of night, dressed like devils, and
carrying burning sticks in their mouth and hands. And there, with mad
cries and boilings, and with the jangling of certain instruments, they
make such a horrible noise in the ears of the sick man, as is enough to
make a healthy man sick. This is the only remedy these pretended
physicians offer to their sick persons, being merely to present to him
when at the point of death the resemblance of him whom, worse than
devils, they honour as the vicegerent of the deity. When any one hath so
engorged himself with eating as to be sick at stomach, he takes the
powder of ginger, mixed in some liquid to the consistence of syrup,
which he drinks, and in three days he recovers his former health.
Their bankers, brokers, and money-changers use weights and scales of
such small size, that the box containing the whole does not exceed an
ounce in weight, yet are they so delicate and just that they will turn
with the weight of a hair.
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