TOTEMISM AND TELEPATHY. [To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR. "]
`Sru,—The connexion of pre-natal suggestion with birth-marks is treated with curious detail in Sir Kenelm Digby's Discourse Touching the Cure of Wounds by the Power of Sympathy,
&e. My copy is the third edition, London, 1660; see pp. 83 et seq. In his desire to cure a lady of the habit of wearing ,patches— "I related unto her also the strange antipathy which the late 'King James had to a naked sword, whereof the cause was ascribed in regard some Scotch Lords had entered once violently into the bed-chamber of the Queen his mother, while she was with child of him, where her secretary, an Italian, was dispatching some letters for her, whom they hacked and killed with naked
swords before her face, and threw him at her feet. . .
Hence it came that her eon King James had such en aversion all his lifetime after to a naked sword that he could not see one without a great emotion of his spirits, although otherwise courageous enough, yet he could never over-master his passions in this particular. I remember when he dubbed me Knight, in the ceremony of putting the point of a naked sword upon my shoulder, he could not endure to look upon it., but turned his face another way, insomuch that in lieu of touching my shoulder, he had almost thrust the point into my eyes had not the Duke of Buckingham guided his hand aright."
Sir Kenelm told the lady, his niece, so many terrifying tales that although she discarded patches she said it was because her uncle had told her if she wore them
"the infant would have a large black patch in the midst of his forehead. Now this conceit was so lively engraven in her imagination that she could not be rid of it. And so this poor lady, who was so fearful). that her child might not bear some b'ack mark in his face she could not prevent, but that it came so into the world, and had a spot as large as a Crown of Gold in the midst of its forehead, according as she had before figured in her imagination: it was a daughter that she brought forth, very beautiful throughout, this excepted. And 'tis but few moneths ago that I saw her bearing the said mole or spot, which proceeded from the force of the imagination of her mother" (pp. 107-8)—
or rather, we may say, from her uncle's singular insist- ence in telling her fearsome professional anecdotes, for which I must refer the reader to Sir Kenelm's pages.—I am,
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