Chapter XLII, Section 1b

The hairs of a catamenious person, put under compost, breed serpents; and, if they be burnt, will drive away serpents with their smell. So great a poisonous force is in them that they are poison to poisonous creatures. There is, also, hippomanes, which amongst sorceries is not the least taken notice of, and it is a little venemous piece of flesh as big as a fig, and black, which is in the forehead of a colt newly foaled, which unless the mare herself presently eat, she will never after love her foal or let it suckle. And for this cause, they say, there is a most wonderful power in it to procure love, if it be powdered and drank in a cup with the blood of him that is in love. There is another sorcery of the same name, hippo-manes, a venemous humor of the mare in her mating season, of which Virgil makes mention when he sings: Hence comes that poison which the Shepherds call Hippomanes, and from the Mares doth fall, The woeful bane which cruel stepdames use, And with a charme ’mongst pow’rful drugs infuse. Of this doth Juvenal, the satirist, make mention: Hippomanes, poysons that boyled are, and charmes Are given to Sons in law, with such like harmes. Apollonius, also, in his Argonautica, makes mention of the herb of Prometheus, which he saith groweth from corrupt blood dropping upon the earth, whilst the vulture was gnawing upon the liver of Prometheus upon the hill Caucasus. The flower of this herb, he saith, is like saffron, having a double stalk hanging out, one further than the other the length of a cubit; the root under the earth, as flesh newly cut, sends forth a blackish juice as it were of a beech, with which, saith he, if any one shall, after he hath performed his devotion to Proserpina, smear over his body, he cannot be hurt either with sword or fire. Also Saxo Gramaticus writes, that there was a certain man, called Froton, who had a garment which, when he had put on, was such he could not be hurt with the point or edge of any weapon. The civet cat also abounds with sorceries, for, as Pliny reports, the posts of a door being touched with her blood, the arts of jugglers and sorcerers are so invalid that the gods cannot be called up, and will by no means be persuaded to talk with them. Also, that they are anointed with the ashes of the ankle-bone of her left foot, being decocted with the blood of a weasel, shall become odious to all. The same, also, is done with the eye, being, decocted. Also, it is said, that the straight-gut is administered against the injustice and corruption of princes and great men in power, and for success of petitions, and to conduce to the ending of suits and controversies, if any one hath never so little of it about him; and that if it be bound unto the left arm, it is such a perfect charm that if any man do but look upon a woman, it will make her follow him presently; and that the skin of the civet cat's forehead doth withstand bewitchings. They say, also, that the blood of a basilisk, which they call the blood of Saturn, hath such great force in sorcery that it procures for him that carries it about him good success of his petitions from great men in power, and of his prayers from God, and also remedies of diseases, and grant of any privilege.