An old book says, if you anoint your hands with two ounces of bol
armenian, one ounce of quicksilver, half an ounce of camphor, and two
ounces of brandy (well mixed together), it seems that you may steep them
in a pot of boiling lead. If you prepare yourself with liquid storax (a
juice produced from a tree called casper bauhine in Italy and
elsewhere), you may enter fire—eat fire—have a coal put on your
tongue—or, _finally_, swallow boiling oil (!). This storax also enables
you to undergo baking in an oven: and as for taking poisons, the author
says it is easy enough, if you take an antidote afterwards.
To handle boiling lead, no preparation is required, as the perspiration
generated by the heat forms a coating of steam on the skin, impermeable
to the metal, which feels like liquid velvet.
In the writer’s youth, before he ever thought of parading his
acquirements, he remembers being one of a party of boys around a caldron
of molten lead, used to solder gas-pipes in the street, all of us
scrambling in the pot for coppers which a practical joker dropped in.
The jest was most amusing when a penny had remained some time on the
surface of the dross, and was thoughtlessly put into the cold hand to be
transferred to the pocket.
Nevertheless it is a feat which had better be witnessed than performed
by oneself.
As for dry heat, men have borne it up to 300 deg. Fahrenheit. The writer
has been in the inner drying-rooms of an oil-silk factory where the
workmen put their tea and coffee to boil, and experienced no ill
effects, though a knife could not be touched without a disagreeable
sensation.
To put a coal on the tongue, the skin is prepared, and must be
thoroughly calloused, which no amateur would for a moment think of
doing.