[26] See Dr. Prout’s account of the experiments of professor Autenrieth of Tubingen. Phil. Trans. 1827, p. 381. This discovery, which renders famine next to impossible, deserves a higher degree of celebrity than it has obtained.
[27] Greenwich.
[28] Maskelyne’s.
[29] Thomson’s First Principles of Chemistry, vol. ii. p. 68.
[30] Galileo exposes unsparingly the Aristotelian style of reasoning. The reader may take the following from him as a specimen of its quality. The object is to prove the immutability and incorruptibility of the heavens; and thus it is done:—
I. Mutation is either generation or corruption.
II. Generation and corruption only happen between contraries.
III. The motions of contraries are contrary.
IV. The celestial motions are circular.
V. Circular motions have no contraries.
α. Because there can be but three simple motions.
1. To a centre.
2. Round a centre.
3. From a centre.β. Of three things, one only can be contrary to one.
γ. But a motion to a centre is manifestly the contrary to a motion from a centre.
δ. Therefore a motion round a centre (i. e. a circular motion) remains without a contrary.
VI. Therefore celestial motions have no contraries—therefore among celestial things there are no contraries—therefore the heavens are eternal, immutable, incorruptible, and so forth.
It is evident that all this string of nonsense depends on the excessive vagueness of the notions of generation, corruption, contrariety, &c. on which the changes are rung.—See Galileo, Systema Cosmicum, Dial. i. p. 30.
[31] Macquer justly observes, that the alchemists would have rendered essential service to chemistry had they only related their unsuccessful experiments as clearly as they have obscurely related those which they pretend to have been successful.—Macquer’s Dictionary of Chemistry, i. x.
[32] Paracelsus performed most of these cures by mercury and opium, the use of which latter drug he had learned in Turkey. Of mercurial preparations the physicians of his time were ignorant, and of opium they were afraid, as being “cold in the fourth degree.” Tartar was likewise a great favourite of Paracelsus, who imposed on it that name, “because it contains the water, the salt, the oil, and the acid, which burn the patient as hell does:” in short, a kind of counterbalance to his opium.
[33] See the Life of Galileo Galilei, by Mr. Drinkwater, with Illustrations of the Advancement of Experimental Philosophy.