It was believed that the transplanted piece of flesh kept a close sympathy with the original limb so that its owner was still aware of any injury done to it.
On the transplanted flesh was tattooed an alphabet whereby, by pricking the letters with a magnetic needle, the users believed they could communicate instantaneously across great distances.
[2][3] A similar myth from the same time period claimed that needles alone could be used to communicate over long distances.
After touching two needles against a "special species of lodestone," they would become "sympathetic" to each other, and from then on always point in the same direction regardless of distance.
[4] The 1862 novel Le nez d'un notaire by Edmond About, adapted as a television movie in 1972,[5] is based on the concept of a sympathetic alphabet.