a substance previously hard is unmistakably seen to become gradually soft and then perfectly liquid, as is often the case at Naples—and this seeming liquefaction of the experiment, which consists only in making the loosened grains or particles of the amalgam swim in and on the fluid mercury which has been introduced, they themselves remaining hard and not at all liquefied, but ready to be heaped together again in a hard mass of grains or powder, whenever the liquid mercury is withdrawn. The difference between the two processes is as clear as light, and as great as the difference between the melting of icebergs and a movement of a fleet of ships on the ocean. A child could not mistake it. Fortunately, the icebergs melt and disappear as they are changed into water: with equal good fortune, the ships do not melt, but float on, until they reach their port.
II. He would see that this grayish amalgam, in its dry, powdery state, is totally unlike the hard, dark mass of blood in the ampulla, and, in its pretended liquid state, it is equally unlike the liquid blood. In fact, as the mercury enters below and permeates the mass, its silvery gleam may somewhat enliven the dull-grayish hue of the amalgam, but it can present nothing akin to the rubicund, the bright vermilion, or the dark hue of the liquid blood. Nor is there anything like the film which the liquid blood sometimes leaves on the sides of the glass, nor like the frothing, or the ebullition. On all these points, the experiment failed.
III. After sufficient mercury has been introduced to occupy the interstices in the granular mass, any additional supply will lift the particles, separate them, and allow that motion which the inventor passed off for fluidity; and this seeming fluidity
becomes greater as the quantity of fluid mercury so introduced for the grains to float in is increased in amount. But the mercury occupies space, and so increase of bulk and increased fluidity must go together. A hardening requires, on the contrary, a withdrawal of the mercury, and is consequently always connected with a decrease of bulk. This is directly contrary to one of the most striking features of the real liquefaction, on which we have already commented at length.
IV. It fails to account for the hardenings and the liquefactions which occur when the reliquary is not in the hands of a chaplain or canon to incline it never so coaxingly, but stands and has been standing for hours, untouched and immovable, on its pedestal on the altar. In this point the imitation again signally fails.
V. What we said of ether, we may almost repeat here concerning the bismuth. This is the important ingredient of the amalgam, the intractableness of which keeps the material in a state of powder or grains. When that is overcome, the whole mass coheres and becomes a hard lump; and the liquefactions, such as they were, are over. Now, bismuth was discoved by Agricola in 1529, centuries after the date when the liquefactions are known to have regularly occurred.
VI. The prying eyes of thousands have never discovered in the reliquary any trace of a circular tube containing mercury, nor of the all-important little hollow cones, meeting by their points. More than once, as we shall see, the reliquary has been in the hands of goldsmiths and skilled workmen. They found nothing of this nor of any other contrivance.
These two of Neumann and San Severo are the chief attempts made to
imitate the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius, and they have signally failed. We need not examine, one by one, the various substances which have been proposed as the chemical substance craftily used no this occasion; from the “deep-red sublimate of gold,” which, one tells us, “being easily fusible by the heat of one’s hand, is exhibited by the Neapolitan priests for St. Januarius’s blood,” down to the theory that “the dark-red mass which melts in the ampulla is only a preparation of ice; for everybody knows that in Naples they are more skilful in preparing ices than even in Archangel.” By the way, we suspect that Aulic Councillor Rehfues, a German Protestant traveller, to whom we owe this last explanation, was only making fun of his brother Aulic Councillor Neumann, and of the other theorists, who were proposing, each one, his own guess as to the substance.
Anyway, the fact that the real liquefaction is not caused by the application of heat rules out all these suppositions. The fuller and more accurate our knowledge of chemistry, the more clearly do we realize the truth that all experimental liquefactions are governed by the laws of nature. The more conversant we are with the facts of the real liquefaction, the more clearly do we see that here those laws are set aside. We cannot shut our eyes to the opposition.