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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A61885	Legends no histories, or, A specimen of some animadversions upon The history of the Royal Society wherein, besides the several errors against common literature, sundry mistakes about the making of salt-petre and gun-powder are detected and rectified : whereunto are added two discourses, one of Pietro Sardi and another of Nicolas Tartaglia relating to that subject, translated out of Italian : with a brief account of those passages of the authors life ... : together with the Plus ultra of Mr. Joseph Glanvill reduced to a non-plus, &c. / by Henry Stubbe ...	Stubbe, Henry, 1632-1676.; Tartaglia, Niccolò, d. 1557. Quesiti et inventioni diverse. Libro 3. English.; Sardi, Pietro, b. 1559? Artiglieria. English. Selections.; Stubbe, Henry, 1632-1676. Plus ultra reduced to a non plus.; Henshaw, Thomas, 1618-1700.	1670 (1670)	Wing S6053; Wing S6063_PARTIAL; ESTC R21316	289,570	380

an History of Salt-Petre and Gun-P●wder Th●y are certainely a lamentable sort of Scriblers that write so ill having so good Copies before them That noble Siennoi● whom I have already cited Nicolo Tartaglia in his Quesi●i et inven●ioni diverse and Pietro Sardi in his book L'Artiglieria have written excellently well of this subject and in the year 1650 Casimirus Semienowicz a Lithuanian Knight and formerly Li●uetenant of the Ordnance to the King of Poland published a most Elaborate discourse about the use of the great Artillery He was a man that made those studies his business having signalized himself by his skill in the management of all manner of Artillery he was employed Honoured by Uladislaus the 4th King of Poland Sweden by him incouraged to that work to accomplish it the bett●r at his ●harge sent into Holland there to perfect his knowledge This Eminent personage in the second book of his first part hath handled all that appertaines to the making of Salt-Petre and Gun-powder to the tryall and to the keeping of it And were not the discourse too long I had inserted it h●re but because I have already made use of several passages ou● of him I shall here adde the discourses onely of Pietro Sardi and Nicolo Tartaglia where they are defective or need amendment I shall supply all out of Cas. Semienowicz whom Kircher calls Semienovius in his Mundus Subterraneous and out of him transcribes most that he hath about this subject there The Discourse of Pietro Sardi about Salt-petre Gun-powder in his book L' Artigleria lib. 3. Cap. 49 50 51.52 53 54. printed in Venice in folio Sal Nitri being the Ground-work strength and Spirit of the Powder which by the Quantity and Perfections of the Nitre is said to be more or less fine and effectual it seems good here to discourse somewhat concerning it whence it is Generated how made and Reduc'd to perfection to the end the Gunner in every occasion wanting Powder Powder-makers and Saltpetre-men may know how to make it if not in that perfection which the Saltpeter-men do by their Art yet at least such as may serve in time of Necessity Sal Nitri is Extracted from the Earth in great quantities and from Walls in small to wit from that Salt which some walls of Cellars and vaults under Ground exposed to Humidity do spue forth It is drawn from the Earth but not in all places but such as are Proper as those are that are obscure and Cavernous whe●e the rain falls not as in the stalls of Animals great and small and Particularly Goats Sheep and Hogs In Gascoigne in France I went in the company of the Commissary of the Artigliery of the City of Burdeaux through the Cave●ns of the little hills and Mountains that are scituated on the River Garonne drawing and digging in many places Great quantities of this Salt-petre-Earth and in Brussels I have seen them draw Sal●Nitre from Rubbish and D●st of old walls And in France th●re is Commission given to the Principal officers of the Artillery dispersed through that vast Kingdome to enter into all houses private and publique to find out such Salt-Peter-Earth and the private persons are forced to be patient because it is for the service of the King There are Three ways to know if the Earth be Pregnant of Salt-Petre 1. with the Mouth putting a little on the tongue if there be sense of a biting tas● 2. with a Burning Iron-thrust into a hole made with a Sharpe woodden Stick and suffering it to Coole there and if upon drawing it out it appears of a yellow whitish Colour it is a signe there is Nitre there but if it remains of the natural colour it is unprofitable 3. It is proved likewise taking a handful and sprinkling it lightly on burning Coales if there be perceived any crackling noise and any sparkles issues forth speedily it shall be a sign of Salt-petre-Earth otherwise of none Having got great quantity of this pregnant Earth you ought also to have Ready a good quantity of Ashes made of Oake holme Oake or Vine-branches or some other Strong wood with a sufficient quantity of Quick-lime which things being thus prepared take two parts of the said Lime and three of Ashes and let them be well mingled together Let there be also prepared a Great vessel placed on high in such manner that under it may stand another vessel to Receive the water that shall be strained from that above In the upper Vessel shall be put broom or straw in the Bottom or plain and over the hole where the water is to issue ou● shall be placed a Piece of a Tile or some such thing as the women do in their Bucks and the Hole must be ●hut very well Afterward take the Sal-nitrous Earth moderately dryed and put it into the vessell a handfull thick and upon that a Ground of two or three fingers high of that Ashes and lime mingled together and then a ground of Earth and againe of Ashes and Lime continuing this Course untill the vessell be full within a handful and an half This being thus managed let it be filled up with common water sweet and clear in which is not the least salt and because the Earth will quickly suck up the water let it be put in so by degrees till the Earth will admit no more and the vessell be filled equal to the Earth and not higher It being thus filled let it stand twenty four hours or more after which time open the tap-hole and let the water strain into the vessell underneath which being all strain'd let that water be emptied into another vessel or Tun and reserved and then put in some fresh water into the Earth vessel as before letting it stand for the space of twelve hours then opening the tap-hole again let it strain into the vessel which done put apart into another vessel this liquor and not in the first Do this a third time and empty it into a third Vessel This being done make proof of these three waters by putting some few drops on your tongue and tasting it you shall find the first very biting the second lesse and the third least of all for the first draws more of the substance of the Salt-peter then the second and the second then the third But there may be the fourth operation for sometimes the Earth doth retain so much Nitrous substance therein that it may prove advantageous even to the fift and sixt time and all the waters are to be reserved apart with the distillations of the first second third c. as many as there shall be By this operation of one vessell or ●un may be apprehended the manner of making an hundred or as many as you please according to the Quantity of the Prepared Earth observing always that the first waters strain'd be put in one vessel or in what will contain them and all the

only with the Comical Wi●s who make such a Noise in the world that in them all the rest are as it were drown'd who have deviated from the int●n●ions of the Royal Founder and are so deserted by sober and serious men that I make it my further Request that they would inform us what number of Persons are at pres●nt actual Members of the Royal Socie●y and wh●ch resort thither and pay the usual Contributions and that in their Transactions there may be rel●ted what Persons are present each M●neth from hence we shall be able to judge what repute they deserve and what respects we are to pay them TO THE Reader THE Discourse of Mr. Glanv●ll was the first occasion of my writing about the R●yal Society the provocation which it gave to all sorts of men of different Professions were such that it might stir up any publick spirit to support so ●ommon a cause I was sensible of the injuries he doth unto the dead the affronts he puts upon the living the contempt wherewith he decries that University-Learning and those Studies by which Christianity hath been supported again●t the Arrians the Iews the Mahometans and of late the Papists and Socinians and which if they be relinquished I profess that I think that the Christian Religion must inevitably fall without the aid of a Miracle It is a kind of Apostacy from the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds to ●light Metaphysicks The distinction of the Trinity of Essence and Personality the Hypostatical Union of the two Natures in our Saviour and the meritoriousness of his death which depends thereon are undermined with School-Divinity and whosoever hath any sense or value for the benefits we derive from Controversial-Divinity either as to the quieting of his Conscience or convincing of his Adversaries must detest this Enterprise of Mr. Glanvill And methinks that whosoever doth but call to mind that variety o● foolish Sects which gave the Church so much trouble in its first Infancy and of late years and considers that they had their Original from want of Logick should not condemn that Art by which men argue rightly from sound Principles It was no less strange to me to finde the names of Reverend Sage Grave Disputer and Logician perverted into terms o● Contumely yet had not all those Motives prevailed with me but that he had so defamed the Ancient and Modern Physicians until those late Innovators that many importuned me to revenge my Faculty upon this Insolent Man Besides I had been much troubled with impertinent discourses of some who to excuse their Ignorance in the Prognostick and Therapeutick parts of Medicine indulged themselves in the vilifying all the ancient learning and reading and asserting out of the Writings of the Society the necessity and conveniency of new methods in curing and abbreviating diseases I soon espied my advantages over Mr. Glanvill But perceiving his Defence so complicated with the History of the Royal Society that I could not well meddle with the one without reflecting upon the other I set my self to peruse that also and found the Errors therein so numerous and gross and the tendency of it so dangerous that it seemed but an easie yet necessary work to the Universities and all Learning● as well as the profession of Methodical Physick to write against these new-fashion'd Philosophers I remarked so many defaults in both books that I was at last weary of taking notice of them there being still Plus ultra I resolve to give my Studies no further diversion in pursuing Mr. Glanvill but to leave him to the scorn of some more common Pens who being at the Universities may have more leisure then I have at present A●ter all this Ostentation of Learning the things he talks and writes of are such as he is utterly unacquainted with the Authors he mentions he never saw and all his discourse about the Mathematicks and Mathematicians procured him no other acknowledgements from a Learned and Reverend Prelate to whom he sent one of his Books than a Reprimand for intermedling with what he understood not Who can choose but smile when he reads how Apuleius improved the Mathematicks 〈…〉 who ever heard of such men as Maximus Palanudes Achazen and Orentius I suppose this last should have been Orontius and he is so famous a Geometrician that when Sir H. Savill as I remember was to seek for an instance of a pitiful fellow this was the man he fixed upon He tells us that the most learned men of all sorts and professions Mathematicians Chymists Physicians Anatomists Antiquaries and Philosophers make up the Royal Society but one would not guess so by their History He tells us that the former Methods of Science for so many Centuries never brought the world so much practical beneficial knowledge as would help towards the Cure of a Cut Finger which he says is a palpable Argument that they were fundamental mistakes and that the way was not right Can any one that hath heard of Podalirius and Machaon in Homer prate thus Quos tamen Homerus non in pestilentia neque in variis generibus morborum aliquid attulisse auxilii sed vulneribus tantummodo ferro medicamentis mederi solitos esse proposuit Ex quo apparet has partes medicinae solas ab his esse tentatas easque esse vetustatissimas Had our Virtuoso but known how Hippocrates had writ about Wounds and Ulcers and that Aristotle himself was descended of the line of Aesculapius and that his Ancestor Nicomachus was Physician to Amyntas King of Macedon And that Aristotle also was a Physician and writ several books besides his Anatomy of Man in that Science and was upon that account valued by Alexander the Great as Plutarch saith And how little the Ancients stood in need of modern discoveries and aids to cure Cut Fingers any man may judge that knows what Scribonius Largus and Galen in his books de Compos Medicam sec. genera have written and how this last Author upon Philosophical deductions compounds several Medicaments to that purpose In the Augustane Dispensatory to this day his Tripharmacon his Diapalma his Diadictamnum and others are recorded And if any thing rendred Paracelsus justly famous it was the cure of inveterate Ulcers not green Wounds and that therein he did out-doe the ancient Physicians is a question I cannot grant and have not leisure to dispute He reckons up Five Instruments by which the latter Ages have improved Knowledge above Antiquity The MICROSCOPE TELESCOPE THERMOMETER BAROMETER and the AIR-PUMP Some of which were first invented all of them exceedingly improved by the ROYAL SOCIETY But as for the Telescope he confesses that to have been invented by Metius and Galilaeo Which Confession of his although it take from the Society all pretences to the invention thereof yet it is unbecoming an inquisitive person who might upon better Intelligence from Borellus in his book about the Inventor of Telescopes published in 1656. He might have learned

of the Resurrection hath this passage 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But these Narrations ar● rejected by such as deny that other metalls may be transmuted into Gold It is replied by Erastus that either those Egyptian books contained nothing but the Art of melting down of metalls and separating the latent Gold therefrom or that Suid●● being a late writer living but 500 years ago about 800 years or more after Diocletian might have been imposed upon by the Chymists of those times in Greece and during the disputing Ages mark that Mr. Glanvill who even then might have feigned some such stories as that and the Allegorising of the Golden Fleece just as they have within the last Centuries counterfeited the Works of Mos●s and Solomon and entitle them unto their Fictions There are an infinity of stories in Suidas which render his Assertions suspected and in this he hath not the countenance of any ancient Writer to second him It seems strange that the Romans having so long ruled in Egypt absolutely and their Governours they not being to be supposed free from all desires of gain how they should never apprehend the Artifice nor have the least mention of it in their Writers Greek or Latine till the end of the fourth Century and that so remarkable a passage as this is should be omitted by those ancient Writers who relate both the war and actings of Diocletian after his victory As for that saying of Aenaeas Gazaeus it is replied that he speaks by hear-say rather then certain knowledge of the operation that there have not wanted many learned persons who have with a great deal of confidence illustrated the Resurrection by contemplations of the Phoenix and of the forms of Plants resuscitated in their several Salts as if both were realities yet is there no such thing as either the one or the other Out of all which it is evident that Chymistry was a practice known and in use am●ng the Sectators of Aristotle and that the Grecian and disputing Ages were not unacquainted with those Processes though these latter times have been more various and inquisitive and have reduced that Art into better Method and enlarged the Practice of Physick with an infinity of Medicines and indeed we must confess our ●●●ves very much obliged by the labours of ingenious Chymis●●● and that they have afforded multitudes of Experiments such as contribute to the delight of all Philosophical heads and to the Cure of many that being sick have either better opinion of Chymical Medicines then of others or are pleased with their small and commonly more pleasant d●se But that those parts into which Chymists reduce things are latent in the compound body otherwise then by the Aristotelean distinction of formaliter and materialiter so much laughed at by Mr. Glanvill pag. 119. This is an Assertion which doth not become any man that pretends to have read Mr. Boyle in his Sceptical Chymist where that Point is too amply debated to be here transcribed or ever I think refuted Having denied Mr. Glanvill that by those useful and luciferous processes Nature is unwound and resolved into the minute Rudiments of its composition Which Rudiments were not made use of at the first Creation when one Fiat created those compound bodies which Artful Fires sometimes and but sometimes analyse into several parts as Salts Oyle or Sulphur and Spirit and those grosser Elements of Earth and water All which are not found in many bodies and when they are it is with a great discrepancy betwixt those of one Concrete and those of another nor any of them to be separated from Gold Which Libavius no nor Dr. Willis doth not make to be the last unmixt and simple Constituents of natural bodies sed ●jusmodi tantum substantias in quas veluti partes ultimo sensibiles res Physicae resolvuntur Substances into which natural bodies are resolved finally as far as sense can judge and when the Analysis is prosecuted in one sort of procedure for another method different Solvents and different Fires discover different parts and those sensible too from what the usual Chymistry builds upon Having denied him this I must further tell him that when the Countreywoman sets her Eggs to be hatched she produceth by those means such bodies as no Chymical fires wi●h ●heir vexatious Analysis ever would discover so she doth when she doth brew and churms her butter Nor is this more evident then it is clear that the Chymical principles when they come to be accommodated to the solving of the Phaenomena in nature or in diseases have as much of darkness and dissatisfaction in them as occurs in the Peripatetick way so that now we are more dubious not more knowing then before and this any man that hath considered how the Chymical Physicians disagree about the causes of diseases and even about the common Phaenomena of Nature will easily grant me nor will it appear less manifest that if the Chymical hypotheses do take place that it will subject the Mechanick Philosophy and establish that of Anaximander revived by the ingenious Berigardus But Mr. Glanvill adds That Chymistry directs Medicines less lothsom and far more vigorous and freeth the spirits and purer parts from the clogging and noxious appendices of grosser matter which not only hinder and disable the operation but leave hurtful dregs in the body behind them This Plea for the preferring CHYMICAL Medicines before those commonly called Galenical is much insisted on by Beguinus Quercetanus and others of that way Yet first it is observable that whether we regard taste or smell those very Authors recommend as odious medicaments and as loathsom as ever Coerdus or Foesius in their Dispensatories if not worse Will any man in his Wits condemn Wormwood and Centory because of their bitter taste or Castoreum for the smell Secondly every thing is not the better for being extracted Thus the Extract of Rhubarb though quickned with its Salt is not so efficacious as plain Rhubarb except it be sophisticated with Diagridium Nor is Cynnamom improved by Extraction Their being more vigorous and freed from grosser parts is not always a commendation and sometimes it carries danger with it That those grosser parts and those natural vehicles are requisite seems even thence clear that their spirits essences must be tempered and mixed often with other gross bodies before they be given Those appendices of grosser matter are not always noxious to Nature since in our meats we finde none to be able to live on Chymical viands but good Kitchin-Preparations How many ways are there of preparing Harts-horn yet is there not one that equalls the crude Horn. I shall set down Zwelfers words whose credit no Chymist almost will extenuate Licet ex cornibus vel ossibus ita Philosophice calcinatis distillationi subjectis de spiritu sale volatili oleo ipsorum foetido nonnihil eliciatur non tamen propterea existimandum ipsa adhuc iisdem