Inaugural Physico-Medical Dissertation on the Magnetism of the Macrocosm and Microcosm

(3) They are alien and spurious, which by no right deserve to be marked with the title of Magnetisms, and which are commonly thought to intervene between those natural bodies among which there is clearly no positive influence or action. From the aforesaid, therefore, we conclude: Those that are destitute of a magnetic principle or a genuine cause of magnetic influence, or if they suppose some principle, yet a supernatural and suspicious one, and those that are of those bodies between which there is clearly no positive and real influence, those we exterminate as spurious and reproved in rational medicine. We are most persuaded that these things are in thesis entirely consonant with the truth; in hypothesis, however, so that we may shed some light on our statements, we are bound by the strict right of Apodictics: therefore, in examples, the truth will be clearer. Since, however, it is entirely within our power to make a rich harvest of examples in the fields of philosophers, both ancient and recent, as well as in those of the credulous and simple commoners, we will present our case demonstrated in a few words, since the narrowness of the page cannot hold such fertility.

§. 7. The first krineis judges/criteria are marked with a comma as fabulous, old-wives, and traditional Magnetisms, which we read in the writings of philosophers, transcribed from others with a simple and charcoal-like faith, or which we perceive being recited daily at cradles and bedsides, transmitted to posterity by traditional labor among the common people, with no spark of naturalness gleaming in them. We could collect Magnetisms of this flour to the point of nausea from Albert the Great, Cornelius Agrippa, and others, a significant cento of which Antonius Mizaldus stitched together in that splendid diagram of memorabilia or arcana, for example: what is the magnetic power and its cause of rings placed in the nests of sparrows or swallows, of stag’s horn worn by a man, of powdered pigeon’s heart given in food to reconcile the love of others, or to preserve harmony with a spouse? Since love and harmony are acts of the most free will, which knows not how to be impelled in its elicited acts by the exhausted power of the aforementioned things. To this pertain Pictorial Magnetisms, when an influence for certain effects is attributed to pictures and images,