Sympathetic Theater

and one morning (four or five days had already passed since this misfortune had happened to him), while I was putting on my clothes, he entered my chamber, earnestly begging that I prescribe some remedy for him to heal the wound, especially since he had heard (he said) that I had the most efficacious remedies for such cases at hand, and furthermore, that things had now reached such a state with his wound that the surgeons greatly feared that gangrene would follow, in which event the hand itself would eventually have to be cut off. And in truth, the pain he was suffering, and which he affirmed was intolerable as the inflammation increased, could be guessed from his countenance. I answered him that I would indeed gladly satisfy his request, but it might happen that if he learned the method by which I am accustomed to heal the wounded—namely, with the affected part untouched and not even seen—he might perhaps no longer trust my effort, firmly believing that this method of curing would either be ineffective or that some sort of superstition lay hidden within it.
What concerns the powers and efficacy of the medicine, he said, the highly admirable successes which many have related to me until now do not permit me to hold it in doubt any longer. But as for the other, I have nothing to say, except that which has passed into the custom of a proverb among the Hispanos Spaniards: