To leap on through the Void and enter in.
*****
The Steel will move to seek the Stone’s embrace,
Or up or down, or t’ any other place,
Which way soever lies the Empty Space.”
The transmission of the magnetic attraction through rings or chains is also alluded to in Plato’s “Ion,” p. 533, D. E. Ed. Stephanus; by Pliny, lib. xxxiv. cap. 14; St. Augustine, “De Civitate Dei,” XX. 4; Philo, “De Mundi Opificio,” D. ed., 1691, p. 32; likewise by the learned Bishop Hall, “The English Seneca,” as follows: “That the loadstone should by his secret virtue so drawe yron to it selfe that a whole chaine of needles should hang by insensible points at each other, only by the influence that it sends downe from the first, if it were not ordinary, would seeme incredible” (“Meditations,” 1640, con. 3, par. 18).
References.—“Le Journal des Savants” for January 1824, p. 30. also for March 1833, June 1866 and December 1869; Plutarch, “Platon. Quæst.,” Vol. II. p. 1004, ed. par.; St. Isidore, “Etymologiarum, Originum,” lib. xvi., iv.; the Timæus (Bohn, 1849, Vol. II. p. 394); Platonis, “Io,” Lugduni, 1590, pp. 145, 146; “Houzeau et Lancaster, Bibliographie Générale,” Vol. I. part i. pp. 440–442; Geo. Burgess, tr. of Plato’s “Ion,” London, 1851, Vol. IV. pp. 294–295 and notes.
A.D. 50.—Scribonius Largus, Designationus, Roman physician, relates (Chaps. I. and XLI. of his “De Compositione Med. Medica”) that a freedman of Tiberius called Anthero was cured of the gout by shocks received from the electric torpedo, and Dioscorides advises the same treatment for inveterate pains of the head (“Torpedo,” lib. ii.). Other applications are alluded to by Galen (“Simp. Medic.,” lib. xi.; Paulus Ægineta, “De Re Medica,” lib. vii.; “Encycl. Met.,” article “Electricity,” IV. p. 41). See also Bertholon, “Elec. du Corps Humain,” 1786, Vol. I. p. 174.
Fahie states (“History of Electric Telegraphy,” p. 172) that, along the banks of the Old Calabar River, in Africa, the natives employ the electrical properties of the gymnotus for the cure of their sick children. They either place the ailing child close by the vessel of water containing the animal, or the child is made to play with a very small specimen of the fish.
References.—“La Grande Encycl.,” Vol. XXIX. p. 831; Humboldt, “Voyage Zoologique,” p. 88; “New Gen. Biogr.,” London, 1850, Vol. XI. p. 501; “Larousse Dict.,” Vol. XIV. p. 427; “Hœfer Biogr.,” Vol. XLIII. p. 654.