one in particular, which he declares "cannot but be free from all suspect of imposture and illusion of the Devil."

"A certain inhabitant of Bruxels in a combat had his nose mowed off, and addressed himself to Tagliacozzus, a famous Chirurgeon, living at Bononia, that he might procure a new one; and when he feared the incision of his own arm, he hired a Porter to admit it, out of whose arm, having first given the reward agreed upon, at length he dig'd a new nose. About thirteen moneths after his return to his own Countrey, on a sudden the ingrafted nose grew cold, putrified, and within a few days drop't off. To those of his friends that were curious in the exploration of the cause of this unexpected misfortune, it was discovered that the Porter expired neer about the same punctilio of time wherein the nose grew frigid and cadaverous."'

3

"There are at Bruxels yet surviving some of good repute that were eye witnesses of these occurrences," he adds, gravely, oblivious of the difficulties of eye-witnessing events simultaneously happening in Bruxels and Bononia. "But," he demands, triumphantly, "is not this Magnetism of manifest affinity with mummy, whereby the nose, enjoying, by title and right of inoculation, a community of life, sense and vegetation for so many months, on a sudden mortified on the other side of the Alpes? I pray, what is there in this of superstition? what of attent and exalted Imagination?"

Of course, there were people—the anatomists especially -who were not quite satisfied with such evidence, and demanded more definite and physical explanations. But Van Helmont was ready with the retort irrelevant, which in one form or another is still the most serviceable reply in the dialectic armament of the "magneto-therapist."

"Go to, I beseech thee!" he says haughtily. "Does 1 Charleton: Supra, p. 13.

2 This story is evidently the basis of M. Edmond About's novel, The Nose of a Notary. See, also, Tatler, Dec. 7, 1710, No. 260.

The bodily humor of Paracelsus, see p. 222.

the Anatomist, our Censor, happily know the reason why a Dog swings his Tayl when he rejoyces, but a Lyon when he is angry; and a Cat when pleased advances hers in an erect posture. . . . The imbecility of our Understandings in not comprehending the more abstruse and retired causes of things is not to be ascribed to any defect in their nature, but in our own hoodwinkt Intellectuals."

This, of course, is delightfully subtle; indeed, to Hoodwink our Intellectuals, and then to say that we cannot understand the hoodwinking deception because our Intellectuals are "hoodwinkt" leaves Van Helmont perched on a pinnacle of effrontery which the modern promoter of the electric and magnetic nostrum has yet to climb. "His experiments need to be confirmed by more witnesses than one," says Robert Boyle,1 in his solemn fashion, delivering the judgment of the next generation, "especially since the extravagances and untruths to be met with in his treatise of the magnetic cure of wounds have made his testimonies suspected in his other writ. ings." Yet perhaps he deceived no one more than he deceived himself, for he invented an "Alkahest" as a remedy for all diseases, and claimed to have discovered the means of prolonging life far beyond its natural term; but none the less left the world in his sixty-seventh year.

The Rosicrucian delusions regarding the magnet were taught in England by Dr. Robert Fludd ("a Torrent of Sympathetick Knowledge," says Charleton) who began to practice medicine in London by virtue of a degree from Oxford in 1605. They made headway-why not, since after all they were in full accordance with so deep-rooted a national superstition as that the King's touch would cure scrofula? Why not, in a country rapidly nearing the vortex of Civil War, under conditions when differences in theology and politics made a man's neighbors his foes, and every man's sword his best friend? What were all the

'Boyle: Works, Ed. by Birch, London, 1744 (The Skeptical Chemist), Vol. i, 313.

magnetic discoveries of the philosophers since the world began, in comparison with the marvelous magnetic powder which stood ready to heal the wounds of Edgehill and Marston Moor? In fact does not Walter Charleton, King's Physician, positively tell of the cures "neer allied to miracles" wrought "by Sir Gilbert Talbot upon many wounded in the King's Army; chiefly in the Western Expedition?'' And thus, during the period when Charles and Cromwell were fighting, superstition and ignorance and war all united to bring the condition of scientific learning in England to perhaps about the lowest depths which it has sounded in modern times. Then, perforce, it had to rise.

Charleton, in his preface to his translation of Van Helmont, mentions Fludd, but regards as "the choicest flower in our garden" Sir Kenelm Digby. This was because Digby, being of fairly high station, was the promoter of the new cult at Court, and also because Digby had told so many and such variegated fables about the results produced by his vitriol powder as a cure for wounds, as to leave the less fertile Charleton lost in wonder and admiration. He alleged that he had cured a person named Howel, who was pinked in the arm, by the simple expedient of rubbing Howel's garter with the magnetic powder, and that he could set Howel writhing in pain at will by dipping the garter in vinegar. But the new rise of science in England began in the person of Digby. It was very like that of a man clambering out of a mud-hole. The adhering filth was most in evidence.

For by his side, a pouch he wore

Replete with strange hermetic powder,

That wounds nine miles point blank would solder.

-Hudibras, ii, 225.

SIR KENELM DIGBY.

377

Digby was adventurer, conspirator, naval commander, and diplomatist. He rejoiced in probably one of the most extensive collections of personal enemies ever gathered. They included the Pope, the King, Parliament, afterwards the Lord Protector, and so on through all sorts of people, down to and including his wife's relations. The last accused him of murder. Nevertheless his manners were charming. When Parliament locked him up, his coprisoners said that he turned the jail into "an abode of delight." His natural winsomeness accounts for his success in gaining the greatest beauty in Europe as his wife, and in inducing the Queen Dowager of France to wheedle Parliament into permitting him to retain his forfeited head.

But his estates, such as they were, were confiscated, and he went into exile in France, and there produced, in 1644, a treatise on the nature of the soul,' intended, he says, for the instruction of his son, in which he appropriated as much of Descartes' theory of the magnet and the electric as served his purposes, and presented it as his own.

Digby was by no means without ability, as his career amply proves. And in point of scientific attainments he ranked high for his time. He was the first to observe the importance of oxygen to plant life, and he was the first Englishman to write of the magnet and the electrics in the light of the knowledge gained from the continental philosophers. If he had made his work completely a compendium in English of the discoveries and theories of the latter, as it was in part, he would have rendered a service of great value.

In place of Descartes' spirals coming from the heavens and moving through the pores of the magnets, Digby substitutes atoms, caused to rise from the torrid zone of the earth by the sun's heat, to be replaced by others borne on the heavier air which flows to the equator from the poles.

1Digby: Two Treatises, in the one of which The Nature of Bodies; in the other the Nature of Man's Soule is looked into in way of discovery of the Immortality of Reasonable Soules. Paris, 1644.

When cold polar atoms and dry equatorial atoms meet they conglomerate, sink to earth and form stone, which retains the original north and south flowing tendency of the atoms, and hence is magnetic. Then follows an attempt to account for the magnetic phenomena on this theory, palpably modeled on the similar effort of Descartes.

His electric hypothesis is that the electric, being heated by rubbing, breathes out steams which, as they come into the cold air, are condensed and spring back "in such manner as you may observe the little tender horns of snails use to shrink back if anything touched them, till they settled in little lumps upon their heads." These steams, meeting a light body, pierce into it and settle in it, and if it be of "competent bignesse for them to wield," they bring it back with them. It will be observed that Digby's steams behave exactly like Descartes' ribbons. Both make the emanations fly out when the electric is warmed. Descartes brings them back by the cooling of the electric; Digby, by the cooling of the air.

A revival of scientific learning was taking place in France, and Digby had the advantage of being there. The ridotti of the Italians were being copied. Societies for the discussion of scientific subjects were gathering at the houses of Mersenne, Thevenot and De Monmor. There Digby met Descartes, and besides, such men as Gassendus, Paschal, father and son, Hobbes, Roberval and others of less eminence. From that membership came the historic gathering of mathematicians in the Library of Colbert, in June, 1666, and the founding of the Académie Royale des Sciences.

1

Thus, Digby had no lack of sources of information, and, if the generality of his countrymen could have been induced to believe him, he would have come down to us, perhaps, as a great rejuvenator of English science. But, unfortunately for him, this was not to be. Evelyn, who knew him, speaks of him in his diary as an "arrant mounte

1 Fontenelle: Eloges Historiques des Acad., Vol. ii.