Weapon Salve in the Renaissance

The weapon salve claimed to be a cure for the healing of wounds at a distance. On the basis of sympathetic or magnetic powers the salve supposedly could heal a wound in a clean and painless manner. Attributed to the Swiss physician Paracelsus, this cure was widely discussed in medical and theological circles throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Several disputes over the weapon salve in the early seventeenth century made the alleged cure widely known and widely discussed. The disputes did not revolve around the efficacy of the cure, but rather concerned the question of whether the nature of the cure was natural or demonic. As such, these disputes had an impact on the ideas of natural philosophy of the time