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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A29052	Tracts containing I. suspicions about some hidden qualities of the air : with an appendix touching celestial magnets and some other particulars : II. animadversions upon Mr. Hobbes's Problemata de vacuo : III. a discourse of the cause of attraction by suction / by the honourable Robert Boyle Esq. ...; Selections. 1674	Boyle, Robert, 1627-1691.	1674 (1674)	Wing B4054; ESTC R17545	97,058	324

Vacuum The Experiment which was partly accidental I lately found registred to this sense if not in these words Having to make some Discovery of the weight of the Air and for other purposes caus'd an AEolipile very light considering its bulk to be made by a famous Artist I had occasion to put it so often into the fire for several Tryals that at length the Copper scal'd off by degrees and left the Vessel much thinner than when it first came out of the Artificers hands and a good while after this change in the Instrument being not in my thoughts I had occasion to imploy it as formerly to weigh how many grains it would contain of the Air at such a determinate constitution of the Atmosphere as was to be met with where I then chanced to be For the making this Experiment the more exactly the Air was by a strong but warily applied fire so carefully driven away that when clapping a piece of Sealing-wax to the Pin-hole at which it had been forced out we hindred any communication betwixt the Cavity of the Instrument and the external Air we suppos'd the AEolipile to be very well exhausted and therefore laid it by that when it should be grown cold we might by opening the orifice with a Pin again let in the outward Air and observe the encrease of weight that would thereupon ensue But the Instrument that as I was saying was grown thin had been so diligently freed from Air that the very little that remain'd and was kept by the War from receiving any assistance from without being unable by its Spring to assist the AEolipile to support the weight of the ambient Air this external fluid did by its weight press against it so strongly that it compress'd it and thrust it so considerably inwards and in more than one place so chang'd its figure that when I shew'd it to the Virtuosi that were assembled at Gresham-Colledge they were pleased to command it of me to be kept in their Repository where I presume it is still to be seen FINIS OF THE CAUSE OF Attraction BY SUCTION By the Honourable ROBERT BOYLE Fellow of the Royal Society LONDON Printed by William Godbid and are to be Sold by Moses Pitt at the Angel over against the little North Door of St. Paul's Church 1674. PREFACE HAving about twelve years ago summarily exprest and publish'd my Opinion of the Cause of Suction and a while before or after brought to the Royal Society the Glass Instrument I employ'd to make it out I desisted for some time to add any thing about a Problem that I had but occasionally handled Only because the Instrument I mention'd in my Examen of Mr. Hobbes's Opinion and afterwards us'd at Gresham-College was difficult enough to be well made and not to be procur'd ready made I did for the sake of some Virtuosi that were curious of such things devise a slight and easily made Instrument describ'd in the following Tract Chap. 4th in which the chief Phaenomena I shew'd before the Society were easily producible But afterwards the mistakes and erroneous Opinions that in Print as well as in Discourse I met with even among Learned Men about Suction and the Curiosity of an Ingenious Person engaged me to resume that Subject and treat of it as if I had never before meddled with it for the reason intimated in the beginning of the insuing Paper And finding upon the review of my later Animadversions an Mr. Hobbes's Problemata de Vacuo that some passages of this Tract are referr'd to there I saw my self thereby little less than engaged to annex that Discourse to those Animadversions And this I the rather consented to because it contains some Experiments that I have not elsewhere met with which together with some other parts of that Essay may I hope prove of some use to illustrate and confirm our Doctrine about the Weight and Spring of the Air and supply the less experienced than ingenious Friends to our Hypothesis with more grounds of answering the later Objections of some Learned Men against whose endeavours I perceive it will be useful to employ variety of Experiments and other Proofs to evince the same Truth that some or other of these may meet with those Arguments or evasions with which they strive to elude the force of the rest The Title of the following Essay may sufficiently keep the Reader from expecting to find any other kind of Attraction discours'd of than that which is made by Suction But yet thus much I shall here intimate in general that I have found by Trials purposely made that the Examples of Suction are not the only noted ones of Attraction that may be reduced to Pulsion OF THE CAUSE OF ATTRACTION BY SUCTION CHAP. I. I Might Sir save my self some trouble in giving you that account you desire of me about Suction by referring you to a passage in the Examen I long since writ of Mr. Hobbes's Dialogus Physicus de Natura Aeris if I knew you had those two Books lying by you But because I suspect that my Examen may not be in your hands since 't is a most out of Print and has not for some years been in my own and because I do not so well remember after so long a time the particulars that I writ there about Suction as I do in general that the Hypothesis I proposed was very incidentally and briefly discours'd of upon an occasion ministred by a wrong Explication given of Suction by Mr. Hobbes I shall here decline referring you to what I there writ● and proposing to you those thoughts about Suction that I remember I there pointed at I shall annex some things to illustrate and confirm them that would not have been so proper for me to have insisted on in a short and but occasional Excursion And I should immediately proceed to what you expect from me but that Suction being generally look'd upon as a kind of Attraction it will be requisite for me to premise something about Attraction it self For besides that the Cause of it which I here dispute not of is obscure the very Nature and Notion of it is wont by Naturalists to be either left untouch'd or but very darkly deliver'd and therefore will not be unfit to be here somewhat explain'd How general and ancient soever the common Opinion may be that Attraction is a kind of Motion quite differing from Pulsion if not also opposite to it yet I confess I concur in opinion though not altogether upon the same grounds with some modern Naturalists that think Attraction a Species of Pulsion And at least among inanimate Bodies I have not yet observed any thing that convinces me that Attraction cannot be reduced to Pulsion for these two seem to me to be but extrinsical denominations of the same Local Motion in which if a moved Body precede the Movent or tend to acquire a greater distance from it we call it Pulsion and if upon the score of

to the Air it will after a time for 't is not said how long be so wrought on by the contact of the Air that the superficial part of the blood will appear as florid as the lately mention'd upper part suppos'd to be as it were the flower of the blood did seem before And this Observation I found to hold in the blood of some Beasts whereon I tryed it in which I found it to succeed in much fewer minutes than the Virtuoso's Experiment on Human blood would make me expect On the other side I have often prepar'd a Substance whose effect appears quite contrary to this For though this factitious Concrete whilst kept to the Fire or very carefully preserved from the Air be of a red colour almost like the common opacous Bloodstone of the shops yet if I broke it and left the lumps or fragments of it a little while in the Air it would in a short time sometimes perhaps not amounting to a quarter of an hour it would I say have its superficial parts turn'd of a very dark colour very little and sometimes scarce at all short of blackness A very inquisitive Person of my acquaintance having occasion to make by Distillation a Medicine of his own devising chanc'd to observe this odd property in it That at that time of the year if it were kept stopt it would be coagulated almost like Oyl of Anniseeds in cold weather yet if the stopple were taken out and so access were for a while given to the Air it would turn to a liquor and the vessel being again stopt it would though more slowly recoagulate The hints that I guess'd might be given by such a Phaenomenon making me desirous to know something of it more than barely by Relation I express'd rather a curiosity than a diffidence about it and the Maker of it telling me he thought he had in a small Vial about a spoonful of this Medicine left in a neighbouring Chamber I desired his leave to consider it my self which Request being presently complied with I found it when he brought it into the Room which I stayed in not liquid but consistent though of but a slight and soft contexture And having taken out the Cork and set the Vial in a window which if I well remember was open though the Season which was Winter was cold yet in a little time that I stayed talking with the Chymist I found that the so lately coagulated substance was almost all become fluid And another time when the Season was less cold having occasion to be where the Vial was kept well stopt and casting my Eyes on it I perceiv'd the included substance to be coagulated much like Oyl of Anniseeds And this substance having as the Maker assur'd me nothing at all of Mineral in it nor any Chymical Salt it consisting only of two simple bodies the one of a vegetable and the other of an animal substance distill'd together I scarce doubt but you will think with me that these contrary operations of the Air which seems to have a power in some Circumstances to coagulate such a body and yet to dissolve and make it fluid when fresh and fresh parts are allow'd access to it may deserve to be further reflected on in reference among other things to the opportune operations the inspired Air may have on the consistence and motion of the circulating blood and to the discharge of the fuliginous recrements to be separated from the blood in its passage through the Lungs There are two other Phaenomena that seem favourable to our Suspicion That there are Anonymous Substances and Qualities in the Air which ought not to be altogether praetermitted on this occasion though because to speak fully of them would require far more time than I can now spare I shall speak of them but succinctly The latter of these two Phaenomena is the growth or appearing production of Metals or Minerals dug out of the Earth and expos'd to the Air. And this though it be the last of the two I mention first because it seems expedient lest it should prove too long an interruption to our Discourse to postpone the Observations and annex them to the end of this Paper only intimating to you now that the caution I formerly interposed about the Regeneration of Salts in Nitrous and other Earths may for greater security be applied mutatis mutandis to that production of Metalline and Mineral bodies we are speaking of The other of the two Phaenomena I lately promis'd to mention is afforded me by those various and odd Diseases that at some times and in some places happen to invade and destroy numbers of Beasts sometimes of one particular kind and sometimes of another Of this we have many instances in the Books of approved Authors both Physitians and others and I have my self observ'd some notable Examples of it But yet I should not mention it as a ground of Suspicion that there may be in some times and places unknown Effluvia and powers in the Air but that I distinguish these from those Diseases of Animals that proceed as the Rot in Sheep often does from the exorbitancy of the Seasons the immoderateness of Cold Heat or any other manifest Quality in the Air. And you will easily perceive that some of these Examples probably argue that the Subterraneal parts do sometimes especially after Earthquakes or unusual cleavings of the ground send up into the Air peculiar kinds of venomous Exhalations that produce new and mortal Diseases in Animals of such a species and not in those of another and in this or that particular place and not elsewhere Of which we have an eminent Instance in that odd Plague or Murrain of the year 1514 which Fernelius tells us invaded none but Cats And even in Animals of the same species sometimes one sort have been incomparably more obnoxious to the Plague than another as Dionysius Halicarnaséus mentions a Plague that attack'd none but Maids whereas the Pestilence that raged in the time of Gentilis a fam'd Physitian kill'd few Women and scarce any but lusty Men. And so Boterus mentions a great Plague that assaulted almost only the younger sort of persons few past thirty years of age being attack'd by it Which last Observation has been also made by several later Physitians To which may be added what Learned Men of that Faculty have noted at several times concerning Plagues that particularly invaded those of this or that Nation though confusedly mingled with other People as Cardan speaks of a Plague at Basil with which only the Switzers and not the Italians French or Germans were infected And Iohannes Utenhovious takes notice of a cruel Plague at Copenhagen which though it raged among the Danes spared both the English Dutch and Germans though they freely enter'd infected houses and were not careful to shun the sick In reciting of which Instances I would not be understood as if I imputed these effects meerly to noxious Subterraneal fumes for I am