An experimental manuscript.
A manuscript which belonged to an English family in Northamptonshire in the fifteenth century and received some additional entries in the sixteenth provides a good example of the scope and character of the experimental interest of those times. Omitting some brief family records, we find its main contents to be a calendar, list of eclipses, table and chart of the influences of planets and signs on the human body, treatises on flebotomy, on colors, a problem credited to Aristotle, verses on the seven liberal arts, medical recipes, a compotus, arithmetics, a Sphere of Pythagoras, the treatise of John Paul on experiments with snakeskin, Alfraganus on signs from thunder, what seem to be extracts from the Herbarium of Apuleius and perhaps from the treatise of Sextus Papirius Placitus on animals which so often accompanies it. This last is accompanied by a memorandum to the effect that there are many true things here and also many false ones. Charms and further recipes are followed by a treatise on the conduct of waters and siphoning and how to learn the altitude of objects, which is not unlikely to be an extract from the Secretum philosophorum. A treatise on the moon in the twelve signs is followed by one “on philosophy according to Aristotle with cases and experiments proving its thesis.” It opens with the words, “In these things nature works in an occult fashion.” Next comes a charm in English, then more recipes in Latin, the Physiognomy of Aristotle, a treatise of chiromancy, a Dream Book of Daniel, a further discussion of colors, the familiar charm to find a thief by means of a loaf of bread, and various tricks and fireworks.[2567]
Experimental character of the Sloane manuscripts.
How long this experimental literature, which we have been describing for the medieval period, retained its popularity, and how large a place it had even in the esteem of celebrated scholars and scientists, may be inferred from the very prominent place which it occupies in the manuscript collection of Sir Hans Sloane, which with his books and scientific collections formed the nucleus of the present British Museum. Sir Hans Sloane, who lived for nearly a century from 1660 to 1753, won such a reputation both as a medical man and a naturalist that in 1727 he became physician to the king and succeeded Sir Isaac Newton as president of the Royal Society. Yet the manuscripts collected by this distinguished scientist contain about as much alchemy and astrology as they do medicine, while even in those of the seventeenth century experiments of every sort continue to play as great a part as ever before. Indeed the general tenor of the seventeenth century manuscripts in the collection seems rather more superstitious than in those of any previous century. This may be due to the fact that superstition is being crowded out of the printed page by that time, and finds a refuge only in private manuscripts, but I am doubtful if such was the fact. We must remember that the seventeenth century was marked by the witchcraft delusion, and even Boyle had not quite lost faith in alchemy despite his The Sceptical Chemist. Perhaps, however, the combined influences of the Index Expurgatorius, English censorship of the press, and the natural tendency or pretense of alchemy and magic to adopt secret and cryptic methods, were enough to keep a number of works or “secrets” in manuscript form. Be that as it may, it certainly seems as if the recipe notion dominated the catalogue of the Sloane manuscripts and especially so in those of the seventeenth century. I have not begun to note all the titles with the word or idea of experiment in them, but I should like to run over a considerable number of the subjects of seventeenth century manuscripts which I have jotted down, and which I think will serve to illuminate the character of the science of that time, and its relation to the preceding medieval literature in the same field.
Some seventeenth century experiments.
We may begin with “Notable experimentall receipts taken out of the booke of Hen. Rantzovius de conservanda valetudine.”[2568] We pass on to “Small empirical experiments” in both German and Latin,[2569] and to “Doctor Collette’s Experyment for the memory” and several medical receipts.[2570] “A new system for an experimental college” is dated 1680.[2571] In a long manuscript devoted to alchemy are found, among other items, “the experiment of some unknown,” “some remarks about the magic image in a Benedictine monastery near Florence,” “a marvelous experiment from a book printed in Flanders, but in my opinion a deceit,” and some other “sophistical experiments.”[2572] To a manuscript in which are contained “Severall receipts of my mother’s which she had chiefly in my Lord Berkeley’s family”[2573] soon succeeds another in which four out of the six treatises are respectively anatomical, chemical, medical, and philosophical experiments.[2574] “An experiment with a mirror, for theft” and so forth, is explained by the catalogue as being “rather sundry charms by which experiments may be made.”[2575]
More recipes and experiments.
“Lady Rennelagh’s choise receipts, as also some of Capt. Willis, who valued them above gold,”[2576] are probably not very different from “A Booke of Receipts collected on Sundry occations, being for the moste part such as are commonly used in shopps yett nott to be found in the London Pharmacopaeia; with some other receipts of certaine Chymicall preparations most in use in Apothecaries shopps with the way of makeing them.”[2577] “L’arsenal des secrets,” besides recipes for making potable gold and various elixirs, contains “Diverses secrets curieux” in the way of directions how to stamp or cast metals, to make colors, ink, and dyes.[2578] Thus we see that industrial processes are still “mysteries.” A method of shooting guns without noise[2579] excites our curiosity, but we recall that Thomas Browne classes among his Vulgar Errors the belief in a “white powder that kills without report,” concerning which, he wittily remarks, “there is no small noise in the world.”[2580] We turn to “Experiments made at several times upon Oxe’s galls,”[2581] to “Preparations and Experiments” and “Some excerpts from the experiments of Andreas Michelius.”[2582] In a manuscript which consists chiefly of recipes we find directions for making saltpeter and gunpowder and various kinds of fireworks.[2583] An experimental remedy for the gout[2584] carries our thoughts back to Alexander of Tralles, while a manuscript written in 1579 consists of “A book of certain experiments of physics, copied out of an old written book in old English, bearing the date of 1329, by John Nettleton, with additions of medical receipts and observations in a later hand.”[2585]
Magic experiments.
We come to the books of magic in the manuscripts of the seventeenth century in the Sloane collection and find them full and running over with “experiments.” “An excellent approved experiment to cause a thief to come again with the goods.” “An experiment to call out spirits that are keepers of treasure trove, either by an artificiall inchantment magically, or otherwise by Divine justice.” “An introduction teaching the use of the foregoing treates and thereby other experiments.”[2586] Another manuscript has “some experiments and incantations and imperfect conjurations written by John Evans,” “some experiments for sport,” “an experiment with book and key to reveal the thief by the names of the suspects,” and the equally superstitious experiments of William Bacon.[2587] Elsewhere we meet “A magical treatise containing a number of experiments and directions to those that will call any spirit,”[2588] “Experiments for finding out stolen or hidden things by the help of the Chrystal Stone,” “A noble experiment of King Solomon with astrological tables,”[2589] “Experiments for love,” “Experiments for all games,”[2590] “the doctrine of all experiments,”[2591] “some magical experiments,” “many experiments of magic,”[2592] and so on and so forth; in short, magic experiments galore.