FORECASTS
Sic Vos Non Vobis
The iconoclasts are turning their attention to the claims of Harvey and Jenner. They declare that the claim of Andrea Cesalpino, of Avezzo, one of the famous scientists of Italy in the sixteenth century, to the prior discovery of the circulation of the blood, has been established. And as to Jenner, they bring forward this inscription in the graveyard of Worth Maltravers, Dorsetshire, to show that he was anticipated by several years:
“Sacred to the memory of Benjamin Jesty, of Downshay, died April 16, 1816, aged 79. He was born at Yetminster, in this county, and was an upright, honest man, particularly noted for having been the first person known that introduced the cow-pox by inoculation, and who, for his great strength of mind, made the experiment from the cow on his wife and two sons in the year 1774.”
The “strength of mind” referred to would be laughable were it not for the fact that Jesty had already caught the cow-pox from his cows, and so did not need to be inoculated for it.
The Moons of Mars
The following passage, from Voltaire’s “Micromegas Histoire Philosophique,” is curious in view of the discovery of the two moons of Mars, several years ago, by Professor Asaph Hall, of the National Observatory, Washington. The work describes a journey, throughout the solar system, of Micromegas, a philosopher of Sirius, and a being of enormous proportions, who is accompanied by an inhabitant of Saturn, the latter intermediate in size between the great Sirian and the inhabitants of our earth. The extract is from the third chapter:
“Departing from Jupiter, our voyagers traversed a space of a hundred millions of leagues, and coasted the planet Mars, which, as is well known, is about one-fifth of the dimensions of our little globe. They saw two moons which attend this planet, and which have escaped the observations of our astronomers. I know very well that Father Castel will write, good-humoredly, of course (et même assez plaisamment), against the existence of these two moons; but I am in accord with those who reason from analogy. Philosophers of this sort know how difficult it would be for Mars, which is so distant from the sun, to get on with less than two moons, at all events.”
Voltaire’s philosophical romance, published in 1752, was imitated from Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels.” It is therefore easy to trace the quotation to the Voyage to Laputa (Chapter III.) in which Swift, writing in 1727, says,—
“Although their largest telescopes do not exceed three feet, they show the stars with great clearness. This advantage has enabled them to extend their discoveries much farther than our astronomers in Europe; for they have made a catalogue of ten thousand fixed stars, whereas the largest of ours do not contain above one-third part of that number. They have likewise discovered two lesser stars, or satellites, which revolve about Mars, whereof the innermost is distant from the centre of the primary planet exactly three of his diameters, and the outermost five; the former revolves in the space of ten hours, and the latter in twenty-one and a half; so that the squares of their periodical times are very near in the same proportion with the cubes of their distance from the centre of Mars; which evidently shows them to be governed by the same law of gravitation that influences the other heavenly bodies.”
The Suez Canal
In the second part of Marlowe’s “Tamburlaine the Great,” written in 1587, there is a remarkable forecasting of one of the greatest enterprises of modern times, the Suez Canal. In the catastrophe of this powerful drama, Tamburlaine (the historical Timour, or Tamerlane, the “Scourge of God”) being about to die, is made to review his conquests. He calls upon his attendants for a map that he may see how much of the world is left for him to conquer, and may exhibit his plans to his sons for them to execute when he is dead. Placing his finger on the map, he exclaims:
“Here I began to march toward Persia,
Along Armenia and the Caspian Sea,
And thence into Bithynia, where I took
The Turk and his great empress prisoners.
Then marched I into Egypt and Arabia,
And here, not far from Alexandria,
Whereas the Terrene and the Red Sea meet,
Being distant less than full a hundred leagues,
I meant to cut a channel to them both,
That men might quickly sail to India.”
The Panama Canal
Eckermann, in his “Conversations,” under date of February 21, 1827, says,—
“Dined with Goethe. He spoke with admiration of Alexander von Humboldt, whose views as to the project for making a passage through the Isthmus of Panama, appeared to have a particular interest for him. ‘Humboldt,’ said Goethe, ‘has, with a great knowledge of his subject, given other points where, by making use of some streams which flow into the Gulf of Mexico, the end may be, perhaps, better attained than at Panama. All this is reserved for the future and for an enterprising spirit. So much, however, is certain, that if they succeed in cutting such a canal that ships of any burden and size can be navigated through it from the Mexican Gulf to the Pacific Ocean, innumerable benefits would result to the whole human race, civilized and uncivilized. But I should wonder if the United States were to let an opportunity escape of getting such work into their own hands. It may be foreseen that this young State with its decided prediction to the West, will, in thirty or forty years, have occupied and peopled the large tract of land beyond the Rocky Mountains. It may, furthermore, be foreseen that along the whole coast of the Pacific Ocean, where nature has already formed the most capacious and secure harbors, important commercial towns will gradually arise for the furtherance of a great intercourse between China and the East Indies and the United States. In such a case it would not only be desirable, but almost necessary, that a more rapid communication should be maintained between the eastern and western shores of North America, both by merchant ships and men-of-war, than has hitherto been possible with the tedious, disagreeable, and expensive voyage round Cape Horn. I therefore repeat that it is absolutely indispensable for the United States to effect a passage from the Mexican Gulf to the Pacific Ocean; and I am certain that they will do it.’”
Foreshadowing of the Germ Theory
Dr. Samuel Johnson, in a letter to Mrs. Thrale, under date of November 12, 1781, in the course of a sympathetic reference to a friend of theirs who was suffering from dysentery, expressed the opinion that the specific cause of that disease, one of the oldest of which we have any record, was an amœba or animalcule. He says, “If Mr. B—— will drink a great deal of water, the acrimony that corrodes his bowels will be diluted, if the cause be only acrimony; but I suspect dysenteries to be produced by animalculæ which I know not how to kill.” Long before Johnson’s time, Morgagni’s investigations had shown the character of the inflammation of the lower intestines, but that a century before the revelation of pathogenic micro-organisms Johnson should have suspected causal relations between amœboid cells and an infectious disease is very curious. Even the term he employed is used in classification, as of the two forms of dysentery which are recognized, one is known as amœbic, and the other as bacillary.
The Telephone
More than two centuries ago, Robert Hooke, in the preface to his “Micrographia,” said,—
“And as glasses have highly promoted our seeing, so ’tis not improbable but that there may be found many mechanical inventions to improve our other senses, of hearing, smelling, tasting, touching. ’Tis not impossible to hear a whisper at a furlong’s distance, it having been already done; and perhaps the nature of the thing would not make it more impossible, though that furlong should be ten times multiplyed. And though some famous authors have affirmed it impossible to hear through the thinnest plate of Muscovy glass; yet I know a way by which ’tis easie enough to hear one speak through a wall a yard thick. It has not been yet thoroughly examin’d how far Otocousticons may be improv’d, nor what other ways there may be of quick’ning our hearing, or conveying sound through other bodies then [than] the air: for that is not the only medium. I can assure the reader, that I have, by the help of a distended wire propagated the sound to a very considerable distance in an instant, or with as seemingly quick a motion as that of light, at least incomparably swifter then [than] that which at the same time was propagated through the air; and this not only in a straight line, or direct, but in one bended in many angles.”
Stenography
A curious little book has been dug from out the dust of two centuries, and has been partially republished by the German newspapers for the purpose of proving that there is nothing new under the sun. The little book is entitled “Foolish Wisdom and Wise Foolishness,” and was written by an old-fashioned German political economist named Becher. At the time of its publication the book was regarded as something of a Munchausen narrative of the author’s travels through Europe. During his wanderings Becher became acquainted with most of the learned men on the Continent, and acquired much information concerning the scientific work of his day. He describes crude conceptions of the phonograph and the telephone by a Nuremburg optician named Fraur Gründler. He gives foreshadowings of an air-gun, aërial navigation, a universal language like Volapuk, and other things which would have gladdened Wendell Phillips when he was preparing his famous lecture on “The Lost Arts.”
During his tour of inquiry Becher discovered that in several regions outside of Germany many men had learned “to write down what others said, with wonderful rapidity, by means of strange characters.” “Englishmen have discovered a kind of tachygraphy,” he explains, “or an art which enables them to write as rapidly as the fastest speakers can talk. They have brought this wonderful art to such a degree of perfection that young persons often write out full sermons without a mistake. Orations in Parliament can be written out by this means as rapidly as they are delivered, which I regard as a very useful invention.” So much for stenography two centuries ago.
The Great Fire of London
The ever-memorable fire which destroyed fifteen of the twenty-six wards of the city of London, an area of four hundred and thirty-six acres, broke out at two o’clock on Sunday morning, September 2, 1666. On the preceding Friday London was forewarned of this calamity by a Quaker from Huntingdon, named Thomas Ibbott. Entering London on horseback, he dismounted and turned his horse loose; then, unbuttoning his garments, he ran about the streets, scattering his money and crying out, “So should they run up and down scattering their goods, half-undressed, like mad people, as he was a sign to them,”—a prediction to which no attention was paid at the time, but which was verified during the four days’ conflagration.
The Plague of London
Astrology, with its terrestrial theory of the heavens, its belief in planetary influences upon the earth and its inhabitants, and the arbitrary signification it gave to the astral bodies, singly or in conjunction, was largely concerned with the propagation of superstition. It accounted for and predicted the great plague of London, in 1665, by a conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in Sagittarius on the 10th of October, and a conjunction of Saturn and Mars in the same sign on the 12th of November. It took no note of the real causes of that and all other pestilences,—accumulation of sewage and filth, contamination of air and water, effluvia from putrefactive matter, noxious gases, soil exhalations, and overcrowding of man and beast. If, however, in his dealings with simple unsupported superstition the astrologer failed in his reasoning and his conclusions, we must credit him with laborious attempts to find some rationale.
The Reformation
An instance of a dying man punning upon his own name is furnished in the case of John Huss, the Bohemian Reformer. Huss was burned at the stake, in Constance, July 6, 1415, the anniversary of his birth. Shortly before he was overcome by the heat of the flames, he said, “It is thus that you silence the goose (huss = a goose), but a hundred years hence there will arise a swan whose singing you shall not be able to silence.” On November 10, 1483, was born Martin Luther, who is generally regarded, and rightly so, as having fulfilled this remarkable prophecy to the letter.
Emancipation
The following lines, prophetic of our Civil War, were written in 1850 by James Russell Lowell, in his “Capture of Certain Fugitive Slaves near Washington:”
“Out from the land of bondage ’tis decreed our slaves shall go,
And signs to us are offered as erst to Pharaoh;
If we are blind, their exodus, like Israel’s of yore,
Through a Red Sea, is doomed to be, whose surges are of gore.”
The French Revolution
In the “Memoirs of Madame Du Barry” is the following anecdote:
“The duchess (de Grammont) related that one evening, when M. de Carotte was at a large party, of which she made one, he was requested to consult the planets and make known what would be the destiny of the persons assembled there. This he evaded by every possible pretext, until, finding they would take no excuse, he declared that, of the whole of the company then before him, not one would escape a violent and public death, from which not even the king and queen would be exempt.”
The White Lady
The cholera was raging in Bavaria; several of the small mountain villages had been depopulated. King Ludwig, Queen Therese, and the Court remained at Aschaffenburg, as the pestilence was peculiarly fatal at Munich, a place Queen Therese disliked very much, when, unexpectedly, either on account of some state ceremonial or from one of his usual fits of restlessness, Ludwig announced that the Court would return to Munich in three days. On the evening before they started, the queen and several of her ladies were sitting in one of her apartments in the palace, the last but one of the suite. She was in low spirits, and all were unhappy at the prospect of the return to Munich. It was a warm summer evening, drawing towards dusk. Presently a lady, dressed in white, came into the room, and, making a slight reverence to the queen, passed on into the inner room, which opened from the one in which they were sitting. A few moments after she had passed it struck all present that they did not recognize her; also, that none of the other ladies on that day were wearing white dresses. The queen and some others arose from their seats and went into the room to see whom it might be, and found it empty! There was no mode of egress except the door by which they had entered, and the room was on the second story, so that no one could have got out of the window. Suddenly all felt that it must have been “the White Lady,” whose visit is believed to foretell the death of one of the Bavarian royal family, and some of the ladies fainted. The court went to Munich on the next day, according to appointment, and three days after Queen Therese died of cholera.