Or stem a hurricane with ease.
“Many schemes” (it is said in Rees’s Cyclopædia, article Aerostation) “have been proposed for directing the horizontal motion of balloons. Some have thought of annexing sails to a balloon, in order to give it the advantage of the wind; but to this proposal it has been objected, that as the aerostatic machines are at rest with respect to the air that surrounds them, they feel no wind, and consequently can derive no benefit from the sails.” None but a conjurer, however, could have made that discovery. But Dr Rees says further, that “An ingenious writer observes, that the case of vessels at sea is quite different from that of balloons; because that the former move with a velocity incomparably less than that of the wind impelling them, on account of the resistance of the water,” &c. This ingenious writer must have had a new edition of Friar Bacon’s head on his shoulders.
Our mode of steering a balloon is an improvement on the invention of Professor Danzel, which is thus described by Dr Rees. “Professor Danzel has constructed two cylinders, or axles, to the ends of which are fixed, in the form of a cross, four sails or oars, moveable at the point of their insertion in the cylinder, in such a manner, that when made to move round by means of a handle, the eight oars, like the cogs of a water mill wheel, present, successively, sometimes their flat side and sometimes their edge,” &c.
It is very possible that you may have heard of some of our American mechanical geniuses, who have sometimes come very nigh to the art of navigating boats against the stream by the force of the current. But our invention is very materially different from that. We manage much like a crab or lobster that paddles himself forward under water, and proceeds as well as if he actually carried sail.
And its contagion is outrageous.
Some people, who appear to be fond of an opportunity of spoiling a beautiful theory, have produced against contagion the following arguments, and thereby very much perplexed a simple subject which ought to have been decided solely by the ipse dixit of some famous personage of the faculty.
1. The disorder is propagated more rapidly than could be possible on the theory of contagion; as it spreads over a large city quicker than the small pox would pervade a single alley.
2. It assimilates to itself all other diseases, and forces them to wear its livery; which never is the case in contagious disorders.