KIRCHER’S “MAGNETISM.”
More than two centuries since, Athanasius Kircher published his strange book on Magnetism, in which he anticipated the supposed virtue of magnetic traction in the curative art, and advocated the magnetism of the sun and moon, of the divining-rod, and showed his firm belief in animal magnetism. “In speaking of the vegetable world,” says Mr. Hunt, “and the remarkable processes by which the leaf, the flower, and the fruit are produced, this sage brings forward the fact of the diamagnetic (repelled by the magnet) character of the plant which was in 1852 rediscovered; and he refers the motions of the sunflower, the closing of the convolvulus, and the directions of the spiral formed by the twining plants, to this particular influence.”[45] Nor were Kircher’s anticipations random guesses, but the result of deductions from experiment and observation; and the universality of magnetism is now almost recognised by philosophers.