In the 17th century Englishman Sir Kenelm Digby, a state-sponsored pirate, compiler of recipes, a collector of antiques, and dabbler in philosophy and alchemy, science and magic, food and flavours, developed the idea of the ‘powder of sympathy’. It was a form of ‘Sympathetic medicine’, popular in the 17th century in Europe, whereby a remedy was applied to the weapon that had caused a wound in the hope of healing the injury it had made. So, if someone was wounded by sword, this powder, a green vitriol that was first dissolved in water and afterward recrystallised or calcined in the sun, was applied to the sword. Digby believed that the sun’s rays extracted the spirits of the blood and the vitriol, while, at the same time, the heat of the wound caused the healing principle thus produced to be attracted to it by means of a current of air.