There were few sufferers who recovered from the shock of that solemn
ceremony in their chambers. Medical science still labors in Spain under
the ban of ostracism, imposed in the days when all research was impiety.
The Inquisition clamored for the blood of Vesalius, who had committed
the crime of a demonstration in anatomy. He was forced into a pilgrimage
of expiation, and died on the way to Palestine. The Church has always
looked with a jealous eye upon the inquirers, the innovators. Why these
probes, these lancets, these multifarious drugs, when the object in view
could be so much more easily obtained by the judicious application of
masses and prayers?

So it has come about that the doctor is a Pariah, and miracles flourish
in the Peninsula. At every considerable shrine you will see the walls
covered with waxen models of feet, legs, hands, and arms secured by the
miraculous interposition of the _genius loci,_ and scores of little
crutches attesting the marvellous hour when they became useless. Each
shrine, like a mineral spring, has its own especial virtue. A Santiago
medal was better than quinine for ague. St. Veronica's handkerchief is
sovereign for sore eyes. A bone of St. Magin supersedes the use of
mercury. A finger-nail of San Frutos cured at Segovia a case of
congenital idiocy. The Virgin of Ona acted as a vermifuge on royal
infantas, and her girdle at Tortosa smooths their passage into this
world. In this age of unfaith relics have lost much of their power. They
turn out their score or so of miracles every feast-day, it is true, but
are no longer capable of the _tours de force_ of earlier days. Cardinal
de Retz saw with his eyes a man whose wooden legs were turned to
capering flesh and blood by the image of the Pillar of Saragossa. But
this was in the good old times before newspapers and telegraphs had come
to dispel the twilight of belief.