Part 43

Footnote 13:

From this art of Solomon, exhibited through the medium of a ring or seal, we have the eastern stories which celebrate the seal of Solomon, and record the potency of its sway over the various orders of demons, or of genii, who are supposed to be the invincible tormentors or benefactors of the human race.

Footnote 14:

The discovery of the virtues of the Peruvian bark may here serve as an instance. The story goes, that an Indian (some say a monkey) being ill of a fever, quenched his thirst at a pool of water, strongly impregnated with the bark from some trees having accidentally fallen into it, and that he was in consequence cured.

Footnote 15:

John Atkins, author of the Navy Surgeon: 1742.

Footnote 16:

Turner, in his collection of Cases, p. 406, gives one of a woman who died hydrophobical, from a mad dog biting her gown; and of a young man who died raving mad, from the scratch of a cat, four years after the accident.

Footnote 17:

This species of delusion reminds us of the Florentine quack, who gave the countryman his pills, which were to enable him to find his lost ass. The pills beginning to operate on his road home, obliged him to retire into a wood, where he actually did find his ass. The clown, as a matter of course, soon spread the report of the wonderful success of the empiric, who, no doubt, in consequence of this circumstance, reaped an ample reward from the proprietors of strayed cattle.

Footnote 18:

James the First wrote a philippic against it, entitled a “COUNTERBLASTE TO TOBACCO,” in which the royal author, with more prejudice than dignity, informs his loving subjects, that “it is a custome loathsome to the eye, hatefull to the nose, painfull to the braine, dangerous to the lungs; and in the black stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomlesse.”

Footnote 19:

The prohibition of the bath was numbered among the restrictions to which certain priestesses were bound by the rigid rules of their order.

Footnote 20:

An eminent physician of the fourth century, born at Pergamus, or, according to others, at Sardis, where he resided for some time.

Footnote 21:

Called Amidenus, from the place of his birth, flourished at Alexandria, about the end of the fifth century.

Footnote 22:

The word Alchymy seems to be compounded of the Arabic augmentative particle al, and the Latin Kemia or Greek χημια, chemistry. This etymology, however, is objected to by some, who deny the Arabians any share in the composition of the word; urging that alchemia occurs in an author who wrote before the Europeans had any commerce with the Arabians, or the Arabians any learning, i. e. before the time of Mahomet.

Footnote 23:

Philosoph. Magazine, Vol. vi. p. 383.

Footnote 24:

Descartes imagined that he had found out a diet that would prolong his life five hundred years.

Footnote 25:

Quædam opera magica mulieribus perfecta fuère, sicut de productione aquarum reperimus apud Chaldæos; si decem Virgines se ornent, vestimenta rubra inducant, saltent ita ut una altera impellat, idque progrediendo et retrogrediendo, digitos denique versus solem certis signis extendant, ad finem perducta illâ actione, aquas illici et prodire dicunt. Sic scribunt, si quatuor mulieres in terga jaceant, et pedes suas cum composione versus cœlum extendant, certa verba, certos item gestus, adhibeat illas turpi hac actione grandinem decidentem avertere.—Tiedman’s “Disputatio de quæstione, quæ fuerit artium magicarum origo.”

Footnote 26:

This method of solving the above problem is supported by the authority of many fathers of the church.