_Charming for Warts_ (Vol. i., p. 19.; vol. ii. p. 150.).--In Lord
Bacon's _Sylva Sylvarum, or a Natural History in Ten Centuries_ (No.
997.), the great philosopher gives a minute account of the practice,
from personal experience, in the following words:--
"The taking away of warts, by rubbing them with somewhat that
afterwards is put to waste and consume, is a common experiment;
and I do apprehend it the rather, because of mine own
experience. I had from my childhood a wart upon one of my
fingers; afterwards, when I was about sixteen years old, being
then at Paris, there grew upon both my hands a number of warts
(at least an hundred), in a month's space; the English
Ambassador's lady, who was a woman far from superstition, told
me one day she would help me away with my warts; whereupon she
got a piece of lard with the skin on, and rubbed the warts all
over with the fat side, and amongst the rest, that wart which I
had from my childhood; then she nailed the piece of lard with
the fat towards the sun, upon a post of her chamber window,
which was to the south. The success was, that within five weeks'
space all the warts went quite away, and that wart which I had
so long endured for company; but at the rest I did little
marvel, because they came in a short time and might go away in a
short time again, but the going of that which had stayed so long
doth yet stick with me. They say the like is done by rubbing of
warts with a green elder stick, and then burying the stick to
rot in muck."