“When New York’s Frederick Quitman, author of the 1810 ‘Treatise on Magic,’ purchased a purported magical charm and found it to be nothing more than a scrap of paper with the Latin endings for pluperfect verbs, he sternly declared that ‘Government ought to stop such fatal practices, whereby the lives of many are put in jeopardy.’”
— Adam Jortner, Blood from the Sky: Miracles and Politics in the Early American Republic (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2017), 13.
‘Government ought to
stop such fatal practices, whereby the lives of many are put in jeopardy.’
Was he worried that people would think they were safe from
curses and tempt fate, only to end up enchanted because the goggles
Latin endings for pluperfect verbs, they do nothing?!
Mooncustafer 