FIRE-EATER. We have a great number of mountebanks who have procured the attention and wonder of the public by eating of fire, walking on fire, washing their hands in melted lead, and the like tricks.
The most celebrated of these was our countryman Richardson, much talked of abroad. His secret, as related in the Journal des Savans, of the year 1680, consisted in a pure spirit of sulphur, wherewith he rubbed his hands, and the parts that were to touch the fire; which burning and cauterising the epidermis, hardened and enabled the skin to resist the fire.
Indeed, this is no new thing: Amb. Paré assures us he had tried it on himself, that after washing the hands in urine, and with unguentum aureum, one may safely wash them in melted lead.
He adds also, that by washing his hands in the juice of onions he could bear a hot shovel on them while it melted lard.