The Seven Follies of Science [2nd ed.] / A popular account of the most famous scientific impossibilities and the attempts which have been made to solve them. To which is added a small budget of interesting paradoxes, illusions, and marvels

by John Phin

• Orffyreus—his real name, [77]
  • His fraudulent machine, [77]
• Overbalancing wheels, [43]

• Paint, luminous, [102]
• Palingenesy, [106]
• Patent office U. S. and perpetual motion, [42]
• Pen mightier than the sword, [173]
• Perpetual lamps, [100]
• Perpetual motion, [36]
  • What the problem is, [37]
  • Clock that requires no winding, [38]
  • Watch wound by walking, [39]
  • Clock wound by tides, [41]
  • By electricity, [41]
  • Absurdities, [42]
  • Overbalancing wheels, [43]
  • Dr. Young, on, [44]
  • Bellows action, [45]
  • Hydrostatic paradox, [46]
  • Bishop Wilkins, [48]
  • Archimedean screw, [49]
  • Archimedean screw, by mercury, [51]
  • Congreve's, by capillary attraction, [53]
  • Tube and balls, [56]
  • Tube and rope, [59]
  • Magnetism, [61]
  • Self-moving railway carriage, [63]
  • A child's perpetual motion, [64]
  • Fallacies, [65]
  • Liquid air, [65]
  • Bisulphide of carbon, [66]
  • Frauds, [69]
  • Keeley motor, [69]
  • Geiser's clock, [71]
  • Adams, [71]
  • Redhoeffer, [72]
  • Lukens, [72]
  • How to stop the machine, [73]
  • Marquis of Worcester, [74]
  • Dircks' model, [75]
  • Orffyreus, [77]
  • Possibility of, [78]
• Peters' micrographs, [141]
• Philosopher's stone, [97]
• Phosphorus, discovery of, [101]
• Pigeon-post, [146]
• Population, a question of, [165]
• Power, the, of the future, [40]
• Ptolemy, on the circle, [15]
• Puzzles, arithmetical, [170]

• Railway carriage, self-moving, [63]
• Ramsay, Sir William, [80], [98]
• Ratio of diameter to circumference carried to 127 places, [17]
• Redhoeffer's perpetual motion, [72]
• Rosicrucius, [100]
• Rutherford, [16]

• Schott, Father, and palingenesy, [107]
• Schweirs, Dr., [52]
• Scott, Michael, and his slave demons, [6]
• Scott, Sir Walter, legend of the great Wizard, [6]
  • Powder of sympathy, [112]
• Self-moving railway carriage, [63]
• Senses—illusions of, [148]
  • Taste and smell, [149]
  • Heat and cold, [150]
  • Hearing, [150]
  • Touch, [150]
  • Sight—size of spot, [152]
    • Length of lines, [153]
    • Direction of lines, [154]
  • Objects seen through hand, [156]
  • Looking through a brick, [158]
• Sense, possibility of a new, [123]
• Shadow going backward on dial, [133]
• Shakespeare, cost of first folio, [168]
  • Philosopher's stone, [97]
  • Witchcraft, [114]
• Shanks—value of ratio carried to 707 places, [16]
• Sharp, Abraham, [16]
• Sight, sense of, deceived, [152]
• Smith, James, on squaring circle, [28]
• Snake lifted by spider, [130]
• Solvent, universal, [104]
• Space enlarged by cutting, [126]
• Spider lifting a snake, [130]
• Sun-dial—shadow going backward, [133]

• Taste and smell—illusions, [149]
• Tides, clock moved by, [40]
  • Will be the great source of power of the future, [40]
• Time it would take Archimedes to move the world, [171]
• Touch, sense of, deceived, [150]
• Transmutation of the metals, [79]
  • Ancient fables, [79]
  • Hermes Trismegistus, [80]
  • Treatises not allegorical, [81]
  • Seven metals, [82]
  • Metals named after planets, [82]
  • Methods of cheating, [83]
  • "Brief of the Golden Calf," [84]
  • Story of unknown Italian, [87]
  • Possibility of effecting, [88]
  • Sir William Ramsay, [89]
  • Effect of such discovery on our currency system, [90]
• "Tribune," New York, [29]
• Trisection of angle, [33]
• Tube and balls, [56]
• Tube and rope, [59]

• Universal medicine. See [Elixir of Life].

• Van Ceulen, Rudolph, [16]

• Wallich, Dr., [35]
• Watch that is wound by walking, [39]
  • Used as a compass, [134]
• Webb micrographs, [142]
• Whewell's refutation of 31⁄8 ratio, [28]
• Wilkins, Bishop, [48]
• Witchcraft or magic, [113]
• Worcester, Marquis of, [74]
• Writing, fine, [139]

• Young, Dr. Thomas, [44]

Transcriber's Note: Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.