Imprimatur Geo. Stradling S. T. P. Rev. in Christo Patr. D. Gilb. Episc. Loud à Sac. Domestic Ex Aed Sab. Aug. 5. 1663. EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY In Three-Books Containing New Experiments Microscopical Mercurial Magnetical With some Deductions and Probable Hypotheses raised from them in Avouchment and Illustration of the now famous Atomical Hypothesis By HENRY POWER Dr. of Physick Perspicillum Microscopicum scilicet si vidisset Democritus exiluisset fortè modum videndi Atomum quam ille invisibilem omninò affirmavit inventum fuisse putâsset Fr. Verulam lib. 2. Novi Organi sect 39. Hinc igitur facillimè intelligere possumus quam stuliè quam inaniter sese venditat humana sapientia quóve ferantur nostra Ingenia nisi recta ratione experientiáque scientiarum omnium magistra nitantur opinâ—â—â—is salebras accuratè vitent Muffet De Insect cap. 15. pag. 115. LONDON Printed by T. Roycroft for John Martin and James Allestry at the Bell in S. Pauls Church-yard 1664. The Preface to the Ingenious READER DIoptrical Glasses which are now wrought up to that height and curiosity we see are but a Modern Invention Antiquity gives us not the least hint thereof neither do their Records furnish us with any thing that does Antedate our late discoveries of the Telescope or Microscope The want of which incomparable Artifice made them not onely erre in their fond Coelestial Hypothesis and Crystalline wheel-work of the Heavens above us but also in their nearer Observations of the minute Bodies and smallest sort of Creatures about us which have been by them but sleightly and perfunctorily described as being the disregarded pieces and huslement of the Creation when alas those sons of Sense were not able to see how curiously the minutest things of the world are wrought and with what eminent signatures of Divine Providence they were inrich'd and embellish'd without our Dioptrical assistance Neither do I think that the Aged world stands now in need of Spectacles more than it did in its primitive Strength and Lustre for howsoever though the faculties of the soul of our Primitive father Adam might be more quick perspicacious in Apprehension than those of our lapsed selves yet certainly the Constitution of Adam's Organs was not divers from ours nor different from those of his Fallen Self so that he could never discern those distant or minute objects by Natural Vision as we do by the Artificial advantages of the Telescope and Microscope So that certainly the secondary Planets of Saturn and Jupiter and his Ansulary appearances the Maculae Solis and Lunations of the inferiour Planets were as obscure to him as unknown to his Posterity onely what he might ingeniously ghess at by the Analogie of things in Nature and some other advantageous Circumstances And as those remote objects were beyond the reach of his natural Opticks so doubtless the Minute Atoms and Particles of matter were as unknown to him as they are yet unseen by us for certainly both his and our Eyes were framed by providence in Analogie to the rest of our senses and as might best manage this particular Engine we call the Body and best agree with the place of our habitation the earth and elements we were to converse with and not to be critical spectators surveyors and adaequate judges of the immense Vniverse and therefore it hath often seem'd to me beyond an ordinary probability and somthing more than fancy how paradoxical soever the conjecture may seem to think that the least Bodies we are able to see with our naked eyes are but middle proportionals as it were 'twixt the greatest and smallest Bodies in nature which two Extremes lye equally beyond the reach of humane sensation For as on the one side they are but narrow souls and not worthy the name of Philosophers that think any Body can be too great or too too vast in its dimensions so likewise are they as inapprehensive and of the same litter with the former that on the other side think the particles of Matter may be too little and that nature is stinted at an Atom and must have a non ultra of her subdivisions Such I am sure our Modern Engine the Microscope wil ocularly evince and unlearn them their opinions again for herein you may see what a subtil divider of matter Nature is herein we can see what the illustrious wits of the Atomical and Corpuscularian Philosophers durst but imagine even the very Atoms and their reputed Indivisibles and least realities of Matter nay the curious Mechanism and organical Contrivance of those Minute Animals with their distinct parts colour figure and motion whose whole bulk were to them almost invisible so that were Aristotle now alive he might write a new History of Animals for the first Tome of Zoography is still wanting the Naturalists hitherto having onely described unto us the larger and more voluminous sort of Animals as Bulls Bears Tygers c. whilst they have regardlesly pass'd by the Insectile Automata those Living-exiguities with only a bare mention of their names whereas in these prety Engines by an Incomparable Stenography of Providence are lodged all the perfections of the largest Animals they have the same organs of body multiplicity of parts variety of motions diversity of figures severality of functions with those of the largest size and that which augments the miracle is that all these in so narrow a room neither interfere nor impede one another in their operations Who therefore with the Learned Doctor admires not Regiomontanus his Fly beyond his Eagle and wonders not more at the operation of two souls in those minute bodies than but one in the trunk of a Cedar Ruder heads stand amazed at those prodigious and Colossean pieces of Nature as Whales Elephants and Dromedaries but in these narrow Engines there is more curious Mathematicks and the Architecture of these little Fabricks more neatly set forth the wisdom of their Maker Now as Matter may be great or little yet never shrink by subdivision into nothing so is it not probable that Motion also may be indefinitely swift or slow and yet never come to a quiescency and so consequently there can be no rest in Nature more than a Vacuity in Matter The following Observations seem to make out that the Minute particles of most if not all Bodies are constantly in some kind of motion and that motion may be both invisibly and unintelligibly slow as well as swift and probably is as unseparable an attribute to Bodies as well as Extension is And indeed if the very nature of fluidity consist in the Intestine motion of the parts of that Body call'd fluid as Des-Cartes happily supposed and M r. Boyle has more happily demonstrated Why may we not be bold both to think and say that there is no such thing in the World as an absolute quiescence for 1. the greatest part of the World viz. the aetherial Medium wherein all the Stars and Planets do swim is now confess'd by all
probably as has arrived to some peculiar temper or putrefaction of which I can give you no Characteristical Signs for I have found them in all sorts of Vineger both in the keenest and smartest as well as in the weakest and most watrish Vineger and in all these sorts you shall sometimes find none at all and I have both found them and also vainly sought them in the former Liquors at al seasons and times of the year also Secondly The manner and best way of observing them is upon a plain piece of white glass whereon two or three drops of the said Liquors are laid and so laying that glass on the object-plate and fitting your Microscope to it you may distinctly see them to play and swim in those little Ponds of Vineger for so big every drop almost seems to the very brink and banks of their fluid element Thirdly Nay you may see them especially in old Aleger with the bare eye if you put a little of it into a clear Venice-glass especially into those pure thin white bubbles which they call Essence-glasses you may then see an infinite company of them swimming at the edges of the Liquor nay and in the body of it too like so many shreds of the purest Dutch thread as if the whole Liquor was nothing else but a great shoal or mass of quick Eels or Hair-worms I have another advantageous way of discoverance of them to the bare eye also which is by putting a little of those Liquors into a little cylinder of white glass of a small bore and length either sealed or closed up with cork and wax at the one end therein if you invert this glass cylinder and often turn it topsy turvy no Liquor will fall out onely a little bubble of aire will always pass and repass through the inverted Liquor and one pretty thing I have herein observed that when this bubble has stood in the superiour end of the glass and sometimes it would do so for a pretty while together before it broke I have seen some of those small Snigs or Animals on the top of it crawling over the smooth convexity of the bubble like so many Eels over a Looking-glass without breaking thorow the tender cuticle and film of so brittle and thin a substance Fourthly That as the Liquor dropt upon your object-plate spends and dries up so you shall see those little Quicks to draw nearer and nearer together and grow feebler in their motion and when all the Vineger or Aleger is dried away then they lie all dead twisted and complicated all together like a knot of Eels and after a little time dry quite away to nothing Fifthly Their heads and tails are smaller then the rest of their bodies which is best observed by the Microscope when the Liquor wherin they swim is almost spent and dried up so that their motion thereby is rendred more feeble and weak or when they lie absolutely dead Sixthly Another remarkable thing is their exceeding exiguity for certainly of all Animals they are the least that can be seen by the bare eye which is helped and advantaged also by the refraction of the water wherein they swim Seventhly If you take a spoonful of the foresaid Vineger and heat it over a few coals it presently destroys all the Quick's in it so that you may see them all stretched out at their full length like a pencil chopt small or little bits of hairs swimming up and down the Liquor which in a short time will precipitate and all sink down to the bottom of the glass Nay these poor Vermin are not onely slain by actual heat but by a potential one also for putting but a few drops of the Oyle of Vitriol into an Essence-glass full of that Vineger it also shortly destroyed them in the same manner as the fire had done before Eighthly Now though heat hath that killing property yet it seems that cold hath not for I have taken a jar-glass full of the said Vineger and by applying Snow and Salt to it I have artificially frozen all the said Liquor into a mass of Ice wherein all these Animals it seemed lay incrystalled though I could discover none of them in it though I have taken the Icy-mass out on purpose to look at it so that now I gave them for gone for ever yet when I came again about two or three hours after to uncongeal the Liquor by keeping the glass in my warm hand when the Vineger was again returned to its former liquidity all my little Animals made their re-appearance and danced and frisked about as lively as ever Nay I have exposed a jar-glass full of this Vineger all night to a keen Frost and in the morning have thaw'd the Ice again and these little Vermin have appeared again and endured again that strong and long Conglaciation without any manifest injury done to them which is both a pretty and a strange Experiment Ninthly I have filled an essence-glass half with the said Vineger and half with Oyle which floated on the Vineger in a distinct Region by it self and I have observed that in frosty weather when the Vineger has been congealed that all the little Eels have run up into the super-incumbent oyle to preserve themselves there and would not return till some warmth was applyed to the Vineger again and then they would always presently return down into their native Liquor again Tenthly Their motion is very remarkable which is restless and constant with perpetual undulations and wavings like Eels or Snakes so that it seems that Animals that come nearest the classis of Plants have the most restless motions Eleventhly the innumerable number and complicated motion of these minute Animals in Vineger may very neatly illustrate the Doctrine of the incomparable Des-Cartes touching Fluidity viz. That the particles of all fluid bodies are in a continual and restless motion and therein consists the true nature of fluidity for by this ocular example we see there may be an intestine restless motion in a Liquor notwithstanding that the unassisted eye can discover no such matter which likewise is evinced by Observ. 13. Of the Mites in Meal OBSERVAT. XXXI Of the great Black Snail IN this slimy Animal the slow-paced Engine of Nature are very many rare and excellent Observables The first is his Eyes which are four in number like black atramentous Spots fixed to the end of their horns or rather to the ends of those black filaments or optick nerves which are sheathed in her horns which she can retract or protrude through the hollow trunck of her horns as she pleaseth If with your finger you take hold of the tip of her horn when fully extended and draw out this nervous filament or then nimbly clip off the extremities of her horns you shall in the Microscope see those 2. black spots to be semi-spherical eyes like two large blew Beads and we could afterwards also when she re-extended the stump clearly perceive it with the bare eye
to be fluid and so consequently in a Perpetual Motion 2. All the fixed lights of Heaven are generally concluded to be pure Fire and so consequently fluid also and then subconsequentially in motion also not to mention the dinetical Rotations of their whole Bodies which every one is supposed to have as wel as our Sun and as for the Opace and Planetary Bodies of the Vniverse they are all porous and the aetherial Matter is continually streaming through them their internal fire and heat constantly subliming Atoms out of them the Magnetical Atoms continually playing about them Not to mention also their dinetical Motions about their own Axes and circumrevolutions about their central Suns so that Is it not I say more than probable that rest and quiescency is a meer Peripatetical Notion and that the supreme Being who is Activity it self never made any thing inactive or utterly devoid of Motion Hence wil unavoidable follow some other Principles of the ever-to-be-admired Des-Cartes 1. That as Matter is made greater or less by addition or subduction of parts so is Motion made swifter or slower by addition given to the Movent by other contiguous Bodies more swiftly moving or by subduction of it by Bodies slowlier moved 2. As the parts of Matter can be transfer'd from one Body to another and as long as they remain united would remain so for ever so Motion may be translated from one Body to another but when it is not transfer'd it would remain in that Body for ever But these sublime Speculations I shall with more confidence treat of in another place the Speculation of Motion and its Origin being as I conceive one of the obscurest things in Nature And therfore at present we shal keep within the compass of the Microscope and look at nothing further than what we can discover therein The knowledge of Man saith the learn'd Verulam hath hitherto been determin'd by the view or sight so that whatsoever is invisible either in respect of the fineness of the Body it self or the smalness of the parts or of the subtilty of its motion is little enquired and yet these be the things that govern Nature principally How much therefore are we oblig'd to modern Industry that of late hath discover'd this advantageous Artifice of Glasses and furnish'd our necessities with such artificial Eys that now neither the fineness of the Body nor the smalness of the parts nor the subtilty of its motion can secure them from our discovery And indeed if the Dioptricks further prevail and that darling Art could but perform what the Theorists in Conical sections demonstrate we might hope ere long to see the Magnetical Effluviums of the Loadstone the Solary Atoms of light or globuli aetherei of the renowned Des-Cartes the springy particles of Air the constant and tumultuary motion of the Atoms of all fluid Bodies and those infinite insensible Corpuscles which daily produce those prodigious though common effects amongst us And though these hopes be vastly hyperbolical yet who can tel how far Mechanical Industry may prevail for the process of Art is indefinite and who can set a non-ultra to her endevours I am sure if we look backwards at what the Dioptriks hath already perform'd we cannot but conclude such Prognosticks to be within the circle of possibilities and perhaps not out of the reach of futurity to exhibit however this I am sure of That without some such Mechanical assistance our best Philosophers will but prove empty Conjecturalists and their profoundest Speculations herein but gloss'd outside Fallacies like our Stage-scenes or Perspectives that shew things inwards when they are but superficial paintings For to conclude with that doubly Honourable both for his parts and parentage M r. Boyle When a Writer saith he acquaints me onely with his own thoughts or conjectures without inriching his discourse with any real Experiment or Observation if he be mistaken in his Ratiotination I am in some danger of erring with him and at least am like to lose my time without receiving any valuable compensation for so great a loss But if a Writer endevours by delivering new and real Observations or Experiments to credit his Opinions the Case is much otherwayes for let his Opinions be never so false his Experiments being true I am not oblig'd to believe the former and am left at my liberty to benefit my self by the latter And though he have erroneously superstructed upon his Experiments yet the Foundation being solid a more wary Builder may be very much further'd by it in the erection of a more judicious and consistent Fabrick HENRY POWER From New-Hall near Hallifax 1. Aug. 1661. MICROSCOPICAL OBSERVATIONS OBSERVAT. I. Of the Flea IT seems as big as a little Prawn or Shrimp with a small head but in it two fair eyes globular and prominent of the circumference of a spangle in the midst of which you might through the diaphanous Cornea see a round blackish spot which is the pupil or apple of the eye beset round with a greenish glistering circle which is the Iris as vibrissant and glorious as a Cats eye most admirable to behold How critical is Nature in all her works that to so small and contemptible an Animal hath given such an exquisite fabrick of the eye even to the distinction of parts Had our famous Muffet but seen them he would not have spoke so doubtfully as he did Oculos saith he speaking of Flea's habere verisimile est tùm quod suos eligunt recessus tùm quod appetente luce so subducunt He has also a very long neck jemmar'd like the tail of a Lobstar which he could nimbly move any way his head body and limbs also be all of blackish armour-work shining and polished with jemmar's most excellently contrived for the nimble motion of all the parts nature having armed him thus Cap-a-pe like a Curiazier in warr that he might not be hurt by the great leaps he takes to which purpose also he hath so excellent an eye the better to look before he leap to which add this advantageous contrivance of the joynts of his hinder legs which bend backwards towards his belly and the knees or flexure of his fore-legs forwards as in most quadrupeds that he might thereby take a better rise when he leaps His feet are slit into claws or talons that he might the better stick to what he lights upon he hath also two pointers before which grow out of the forehead by which he tryes and feels all objects whether they be edible or no. His neck body and limbs are also all beset with hairs and bristles like so many Turn-pikes as if his armour was palysado'd about by them At his snout is fixed a Proboscis or hollow trunk or probe by which he both punches the skin and sucks the blood through it leaving that central spot in the middle of the Flea-biting where the probe entred One would wonder at the great strength lodged in so small a Receptacle and that
to be tubulous and hollow And therefore however though the learned Doctor Brown my ever honoured friend hath ranked this conceit of the Eyes of a Snail and especially their quadruplicity amongst the Vulgar errours of the multitude yet through a good Microscope he may easily see his own errour and Nature's most admirable variety in the plurality paucity and anomalous Situation of eyes and the various fabrick and motion of that excellent organ as our Observations will more particularly inform him If by a dextrous Dissection you would see the internal Fabrick of this Animal there are many excellent things that will recompence your curiosity For first you may find her Heart just over against that round hole near her neck which Doctor Harvey ingeniously conjectures to be the place of their respiration which hole you may observe to open and shut as she moves or stands still and out of which I have observed some salivous Matter to be evacuated We have observ'd her Heart to beat fairly for a quarter of an hour after her dissection afterwards we took out her guts which were of a pure green colour by reason of the thinness of their film and transparency of the green juice of hearbs with which they were repleated They were all diaper'd or branched over with pure white Capillary little veins which by help of the Microscope we could discern to be hollow with a blackish kind of pith running through the midst of the smallest of them which doubtless was their nutrimental juice coagulated there like the bloud starkn'd in the veins of dead Animals They are mouthed like a Hare or Rabbit with four or six needle-teeth like those in Leeches Nay this poor Animal how contemptible soever it may seem hath a whole Sett of the same parts and organs with other Animals as Heart Liver Spleen Stomach Guts Mouth and Teeth Veins and Arteries Yea and a pair more of the noblest of the Senses the Eyes Nay this Animal doth autoptically evince us that as sanguineous and more perfect Animals have a circulation of their bloud within them so this more ignoble creature hath also a circulation of its nutritive humour which is to it as Bloud is to other Animals Nay further which is the best Remarkable of all this juice hath not onely a circular motion but also the very Animal Spirits by which she moves seem to have the like Circulation For if you observe her with the bare eye to creep up the sides of a glass you shall see a little stream of clouds channel up her belly from her tail to her head which never return again the same way but probably go backwards again from the head down the back to the tail and thus so long as she is in local motion they retain their circulation which is a pleasant spectacle And more pleasant if you let her creep upon the lower side of your glass-object-plate and so view that wavy Current of Spirits through the Microscope which handsome experiment does not onely prove the Spirit 's circular motion but also ocularly demonstrates that the Animal Spirits are the Soul 's immediate instrument in all Loco-motion Now if you reply that it is onely the parts of her body that moving by a kind of undulation protrude one another forwards as Palmer-worms which we call Wool-boys and some sort of Caterpillars do To this I answer that do but intensly observe any one of the former spots or clouds and you shall see it go quite along from the tail to the head keeping alwayes an equal distance from the precedent and subsequent spot so that it is far more ingenious to believe it to be a gale of Animal Spirits that moving from her head along her back to her tail and thence along her belly to her head again is the cause of her progressive motion OBSERVAT. XXII Of Lampreys THe Lamprey hath seven holes or cavities on eiside three or four and no gills at all as other fishes have whence the common people through ignorance of these cavities and their proper use in nature have affirmed them to be Eyes an errour so gross and palpable that it needs not the Microscope to refute it For these holes or sluces do indeed supply the defect of gills and are assisted by the conduit in the head for like Cetaceous Animals the Lamprey hath a fistula spout or pipe at the back part of the head whereat they spirt out water so that both these cavities and the head-pipe together do very neatly supply the defect of gills and execute their office of receiving and ejecting water again These sluces and the fistula shoot themselves slopewise and not straight forwards into the cavity of her neck The Heart in this Animal is very strangely secured lies immured or capsulated in a Cartilage or grisly substance which includes the Heart and its Auricle as the Scull or Pericranium does the Brains in other Animals it is of a horny and transparent substance of an obtuse conical figure cemented and glewed as it were on all sides to the Pleura or innermost skin of the Thorax the Cone or obtuse Tip of this Capsula butts or shoots it self into the basis of the Liver which to give way thereunto has an oval cavity or hollowness exactly fit to receive it In this Cartilaginous Pericardium or purse of the heart is likewise the Auricle co-included lying not upon the basis of the heart as in other Animals but laterally adjacent thereunto insomuch that it being far more flaggy then the heart they seem to represent the right and left ventricle of the heart Yet is the Heart not onely more solid but seated in the right side and the Auricle in the left If the Lamprey be laid upon her back and you gently lift up with a probe the Heart and Auricle you shall see a fine thin Membrane arise which separates the Heart from the Auricle as the falx cerebri does separate the left side of the brain from the right From this Auricle proceeds a little short Channel which perforates this separating Membrane and brings the bloud from the auricle into the heart we thrust a probe just under this Channel betwixt the Heart and the Auricle to see the bloud passe from the Auricle into the Heart for at every pulse of the Auricle you might see the bloud passe through this Channel into the heart for alwayes as the bloud passed through it was blew and when empty pale and transparent that I could easily see the Probe thorow it Whilest I had the Probe in this position with another Instrument and it together I quite stopped the Channel on purpose to hinder the bloud from coming into the heart which thereupon grew very pale and in a short time ceased its motion the Auricle in the interim swelled and was very red I no sooner opened the Channel to let the bloud have a free passage as formerly but the heart began afresh to beat again We pricked the heart while it
was in its motion with a large pin into the cavity thereof and at every systole or contraction we plainly saw a drop of bloud squeez'd and ejected out of that hole In this Animal you may easily distinguish between the motion of the heart and auricle for there intercedes the time of a pulse twixt the motion of the auricle and the heart and the heart in every diastole is of a fair purple and ruddy colour and in every systole pale and wan as is observable in Frogs and other Fishes also where you may see the heart to shift colours by turns as it receives or ejects the bloud in the performance of the circulation Now the reason of this Cartilaginous Capsula of the heart in this Creature might be its defect of bones and those costal ribs which serve others to secure the heart from all external violence for she wanting these had not Nature wisely secured and capsulated the heart in this gristle it had been subject to all external injuries which might have hindred the motion and endangered the life of the Animal This horny Capsula also served instead of a Diaphragm to part the lower Venter from the Thorax The Lamprey likewise hath no bones for the spine or back-bone it hath a Cartilaginous flexible Tube or Channel without any Vertebrae or Spondyls in it hollowed or tubulous from one end to the other in which lay the Spinal Marrow which was of a serous thin and milky substance In some Lampreys I have found the Liver as Doctor Brown writes of a pure grass-green colour which remain'd and kept that tincture whilst the Animal lived but when I had cut it out of the Body and layd it by it presently turned into a faint Olive-colour Besides I have in the beginning of April cut up many Lampreys whose Livers were of no such colour at all but a dull yellow like that of Eels and other Fishes So that in this Animal and Snakes also you may distinctly see the Bloud 's Circulation OBSERVAT. XXXIII Corns of Sand Sugar and Salt IT is worth an Hour-glass of Time to behold the Crystal Sands that measure it for they all seem like Fragments of Crystal or Alum perfectly Tralucent of irregular polyhedrical figures not any one globular every Corn about the bigness of a Nuttmeg or a Walnutt which from their unequal superficies refracting and reflecting the Suns rays seem here and there of Rainbow colours Being layd of a row or train they seemed like a Cawsy of Crystal Stones or pure Alum Lumps So that now we need not so much wonder with the Vulgar Philosophers how so clear and glorious a body as glass should be made of so durty opace and contemptible Materials as Ashes and Sand since now we are taught by this Observation that Sand and Salt which is in the Ashes the two prime Materials thereof are of themselves so clear and transparent before they unite into that diaphanous Composition OBSERVAT. XXXIV A small Atom of Quick-silver AN Atom of Quick-silver no bigger then the smallest pins-head seemed like a globular Looking-glass where as in a Mirrour you might see all the circumambient Bodies the very Stancheons and Panes in the Glass-windows did most clearly and distinctly appear in it and whereas in most other Mettals you may perceive holes pores and cavities yet in ☿ none at all are discoverable the smallest Atom whereof and such an one as was to the bare Eye tantùm non invisibile was presented as big as a Rounseval-Pea and projecting a shade Nay two other Atoms of ☿ which were casually layd on the same plate and were undiscernable to the bare eye were fairly presented by our Microscope OBSERVAT. XXXV Mercurial Powders IN those Chymical preparations of Mercury which they call Turbith-Mineral Mercurius Vitae dulcis sublimate precipitate and Mercury Cosmetical you may most plainly and distinctly see the globular Atoms of current and quick ☿ besprinkled all amongst those Powders like so many little Stars in the Firmament which shews that those Chymical Preparations are not near so purely exalted and prepared as they are presumed to be nor the Mercury any way transmuted but meerly by an Atomical Division rendred insensible That subtle and pure yellow Powder of Mercury called Mercurius vitae looked like the Yolk of an Egge boyled hard and crumbled to a gross Powder in it and in that Meal-like Powder of Mercurius Cosmeticus were globules of ☿ plainly discernable OBSERVAT. XXXVI Of the seven Terrestrial Planets as the Chymists call them Viz. ☉ Gold ☽ Silver ♂ Steele ♀ Copper ☿ Quick-silver ♃ Tin ♄ Lead LOok at a polish'd piece of any of these Metals and you shall see them all full of fissures cavities and asperities and irregularities but least of all in Lead which is the closest and most compact solid Body probably in the world OBSERVAT. XXXVII Ribbans of all sorts of Colours Silk Satten Silver and mixed IN the Silk Ribbans you might plainly see the Contexture how the Warp and the Weft cross one another at right Angles and how neatly they are platted just as in this Picture In Satten Ribbans one Warp crossed over three or four Wefts most lively and pleasant in Cloth of Silver the Weft being flat wired Silver that crosses the Warp it makes a fine Chequered Representation OBSERVAT. XXXVIII The small Dust Powder or Seeds of the lesser Moon-wort THat small pure yellow Meal or Dust which you may shake off from ripe Moon-wort appears like a heap of little white round Bugles or Seed Pearl and something transparent when the Sun shined like to some other small Seeds with a fiber about every one of them like the semi-circular ribbe in a Pompion So that this Experiment hath decided the old quarrel in Herbalism Which is the least of Seeds for though Mustard-seed do carry the Vogue amongst the People yet its exiguity is to be respectively understood of such Seeds as extend to large productions for we see that the Seeds of sweet Marjerom and wild Poppy are far lesse and the Seeds of Tobacco so small that a thousand of them make not above one single Grain in weight yet must all give place to the super-exiguity of this farinaceous Seed of Wort which is indeed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The exiguity and smalness whereof may very well be one of the Magnolia of Nature somewhat illustrating the great Work of the Creation and vast Production from Nothing OBSERVAT. XXXIX The Seeds of Wall-Rue or white Maydenhair TAke one of the Leafs of Wall-Rue which hath the blackish scurff sticking to the back side of it and lay it upon the object-plate and you shall see all the Seeds look just like a sett of black Buttons upon green Taffata and every Button or Seed compassed with a circle or ribbe somewhat resembling a Catterpillar It hath been the Opinion of old Herbarists that the Capillary Plants had no Seeds which errour did rise meeâ—ly from a popular inadvertency for though these Plants carry
will melt immediately like Wax if you hold them but near the flame of a common Candle without any blast at all by which Artifice I make small Syphons for the Tryal of many notable Experiments of which I have treated at large in our Mercurial Experiments This further I shall adde of Flint that in it you shall see small Sparks of Diamonds angular and growing out of the Stone as out of a Mineral bed OBSERVAT. L. Of Hair WE slit a black Horse's Hair with a Rasor and perceived it to be hollow with a white streak like pith in the middle of it it seemed as big as a Rush and like a Rush slit length-wayes into two They are none of them Cylindrical but angular and corner'd which you may even perceive by your fingers by twirling a Horse-hair in them Now though Borrelius and some of our Anatomists as Bartholin Riolan c. say the like of the Hairs of a mans head that they also are hollow within and angular and corner'd without yet I could never perceive neither the one nor the other in any of the Microscopes I have seen though I have tried it in four excellent ones the worst whereof I am confident was better then that of Borrels In all which I could perceive nothing of an Hair but that it was like a thin horn something diaphanous especially in the full Sun which diaphanity might perchance hinder the appearance both of its cavity and angularity also for I my self have little glass pipes of so little a Cylinder and so small a bore that their hollowness to the bare eye is utterly imperceptible And since the bristles and quils in other Animals are sensibly hollow which are analogous to the hairs in a man I doubt not but every one of our hairs is hollow also which though our Glasses by reason of their transparency cannot present yet it is palpably evinced by an odde Experiment in Poland where there is a disease they call the Plica which makes the very hairs of their heads drop bloud at the ends and if cut any where to drop bloud there also which infallibly proves the tubulous cavity of them Besides we see the hairs do grain and fork themselves when grown too long which is a sign also of their hollowness What shall we judge them too small to be perforated by Nature since we see she has perforated Vessels within the Body as small as hairs as the Venae Lacteae and Lymphae-ducts nay since we see that Art can blow a glass hollow and yet as small as hair and your Wire-drawers know that if they take a short piece of Wire as thick as a quill and drill it through that then though they draw it out to the smalness of a hair yet wil it still remain hollow quite through in despite of their Wurdle which is as great a Miracle in that Engine as that the like Wire once gilt shall remain perfectly gilt all over though it be drawn five hundred yards longer than it was at first which is an experimental truth and the dayly practice of our Wire-drawers in London So that the conclusion of this Observation may be this that every hair of our head is as a little quill or horn hollow and transparent Which seems to be further avouched also by the burning of hair for there you may perceive the same odour and smell as of burnt horn and the Chymists as I remember draw out of hair a volatile Spirit exactly like that of Harts-horn both which experiments do prove an homogeneity and similarity of their substance OBSERVAT. LI. Of Aromatical Electrical and Magnetical Effluxions SOme with a Magisterial Confidence do rant so high as to tell us that there are Glasses which will represent not onely the Aromatical and Electrical Effluxions of Bodies but even the subtile effluviums of the Load-stone it self whose Exspirations saith Doctor Highmore some by the help of Glasses have seen in the form of a Mist to flow from the Load-stone This Experiment indeed would be an incomparable Eviction of the Corporeity of Magnetical Effluviums and sensibly decide the Controversie 'twixt the Peripatetick and Atomical Philosophers But I am sure he had better Eyes or else better Glasses or both then ever I saw that performed so subtle an Experiment For the best Glasses that ever I saw would not represent to me the evaporations of Camphire which spends it self by continually effluviating its own Component Particles nay I could never see the grosser steams that continually perspire out of our own Bodies which you see will foil and besmear a polished Glass at any time and which are the fuliginous Eructations of that internal fire that constantly burns within us Indeed if our Diopticks could attain to that curiosity as to grind us such Glasses as would present the Effluviums of the Magnet we might hazard at last the discovery of Spiritualities themselves however it would be of incomparable use to our Modern Corpuscularian Philosophers who have banished Qualities out of the list of the Predicaments And truly as the Learned Doctor Brown hath it The Doctrine of Effluxions their penetrating Natures their invisible paths and unsuspected effects are very considerable for besides the Magnetical One of the Earth several Effusions there may be from divers other Bodies which invisibly act their parts at any time and perhaps through any Medium A part of Philosophy but yet in discovery and will I fear prove the last Leaf to be turned over in the Book of Nature Some Considerations Corollaries and Deductions Anatomical Physical and Optical drawn from the former Experiments and Observations FIrst Therefore it is Ocularly manifest from the former Observations that as perfect Animals have an incessant motion of their Heart and Circulation of their Bloud first discovered by the illustrious Doctor Harvey so in these puny automata and exsanguineous pieces of Nature there is the same pulsing Organ and Circulation of their Nutritive Humour also as is demonstrated by OBSERV fourth sixth seventeenth c. Nay by OBSERV sixth it is plain that a Louse is a Sanguineous Animal and hath both an Heart and Auricles the one manifestly preceding the pulse of the other and hath a purple Liquor or Bloud which circulates in her as the Noblest sort of Animals have which though it be onely conspicuous in its greatest bulk at the heart yet certainly it is carried up and down in Circulatory Vessels which Veins and Arteries are so exceeding little that both they and their Liquor are insensible For certainly if we can at a Lamp-Furnace draw out such small Capillary Pipes of Glass that the reddest Liquor in the World shall not be seen in them which I have often tried and done how much more curiously can Nature weave the Vessels of the Body nay and bore them too with such a Drill as the Art of man cannot excogitate Besides we see even in our own Eyes that the Sanguineous Vessels that run along the white of the eye
nay and probably into the diaphanous humours also are not discernable but when they are preter-naturally distended in an Ophthalmia and so grow turgent and conspicuous To which we may adde that in most quick Fish though you cut a piece of their flesh off yet will no bloud be discernable though they be sanguineous Animals but the bloud is so divided by the minuteness of their Capillary Vessels or percribration through the habit of the Parts that either it has lost its redness or our eyes are not able to discover its tincture Secondly It is observable also from the former Experiments that in these minute Animals their nutritive Liquor never arises to the perfection of bloud but continually as it were remains Chyle within them for want of a higher heat to dye it into that Spirituous Liquor Nay you shall observe in perfect Sanguineous Animals a Circulation of an albugineous chylie-matter before the bloud have a being if you take Nature at the rise and critically observe her in her rudimental and obscure beginnings For view but an Egge after the second day's Incubation and you shall see the cicatricula in the Yolk dilated to the breadth of a groat or six-pence into transparent concentrical circles in the Centre whereof is a white Spot with small white threads which in futurity proves the Heart with its Veins and arteries but at present both its motion and circulation is undiscernable to the bare eye by reason of the feebleness thereof and also because both the Liquor and its Vessels were concolour to the white of the Eggs they swum in but the Heart does circulate this serous diaphanous Liquor before by a higher heat it be turned into bloud And one thing here I am tempted to annex which is a pretty and beneficial Observation of the Microscope and that is That as soon as ever you can see this red pulsing Particle appear which Doctor Harvey conceited not to be the Heart but one of its Auricles you shall most distinctly see it to be the whole Heart with both Auricles and both Ventricles the one manifestly preceding the pulse of the other which two motions the bare eye judges to be Synchronical and without any interloping perisystole at all So admirable is every Organ of this Machine of ours framed that every part within us is intirely made when the whole Organ seems too little to have any parts at all Thirdly It is peculiarly remarkable from Observation xxxi That not onely the bloud in perfect Animals and the chyle in imperfect ones but also the Animal Spirits have a Circulation which singular observation hath often provoked and entised our endeavours into a further enquiry after the Nature of these Spirits as to their Origin or Generation their activity and motion with some other eminent properties belonging to them we shall draw our thoughts together and so present them to your View I will not say that our discourse hereon shall pass for an un-controllable authentick Truth it is all my ambition if it attain but to the favourable reception of a rational Hypothesis at last A Digression of the Animal Spirits FIrst then we have not those narrow conceptions of these subtle Spirits to think that they are onely included within the Bodies of Animals or generated much less created there but we doe believe that they are universally diffused throughout all Bodies in the World and that Nature at first created this aetherial substance or subtle particles and diffused them throughout the Universe to give fermentation and concretion to Minerals vegetation and maturation to Plants life sense and motion to Animals And indeed to be the main though invisible Agent in all Natures three Kingdoms Mineral Vegetal and Animal And lest they should because of their exceeding volatility and activity be of little or no use Nature hath immersed them in grosser matter and imprisoned them in several Bodies with which she has intermixed them the better to curb the boundless activity of so thin and spirituous a substance and therefore the Spirits of all compound Bodies especially ought to be considered under a triple notion Viz. Under the state of 1. Fixation 2. Fusion 3. Volatilization First of Fixation when they are so complicated with the grosser Particles of Matter and lockt therein so fast that they can hardly be separated and dis-imprisoned as in Minerals but most especially in Gold Secondly The state of Fusion I call that when the Spirits by any kind of help have so wrought themselves towards a Liberty that they are in the middle way to Volatility as in half-concocted Minerals fermenting Vapours or Liquors and half-ripned Fruits c. Thirdly The Spirits are in their third state of Volatility when after a colluctancy with the grosser Particles they have so subjugated and overcome them that they are just upon wings and ready to fly away as in Wine when it is in the height of its fermentation and in some part of our arterial bloud alwayes Now we observe that those Bodies that relax and open the grosser composition of other Bodies do presently create a fermentation for being like so many Keys they set the imprisoned Spirits at Liberty which presently fall on working and by attenuating the grosser parts separating the Heterogeneous volatilizing some precipitating of others digesting of others expelling of others do at last mould it and work it to such a Body as the parts of it are fit to make up In all which interval of time there is a palpable and sensible heat produced Thus this Spirit being embowelled in the Earth and meeting there with convenient matter and adjuvant causes doth proceed to produce Minerals creating an actual heat wheresoever it operates as in Allum or Copperase Mines which being broken exposed and moistned will gather an actual heat and produce much more of those Minerals then else the Mine would yield as Agricola and Thurniseer do affirm and is proved by common experience The like is generally observed in Mines as Agricola Erastus and â—ibanius c. do affirm and avouch out of the dayly experience of Mineral men who affirm that in most places they find their Mines so hot as they can hardly touch them although it is likely that where they work for perfect Minerals the heat which was in fermentation whilst they were yet in breeding is now much abated the Mineral being grown to their perfection as the skilful and excellent Doctor Jordan very well infers The like heat we observe constantly to be in our Cole-Pits Nay we sometimes observe in our Brass-lumps as our Colliers call them which is a kind of Marcasite a very great heat for being exposed to the moist Air or sprinkled with water they will smoak and grow exceeding hot and if they be layd up on a heap and watered they will turn into a glowing red hot fire as I have seen them my self And it was a Casualty once terrible to our Neighbour-Town of Ealand for there one Wilson a Patient
all her operations both of Sense and Motion First for sense it is plain by what is discovered in a Vertigo for the Brain it self is not of such a fluid substance as to turn round and make all objects to do so too wherefore t is a sign that the immediate corporeal instrument of conveying the images of things is the Spirits in the Brain Secondly That they are the chief Engine of Sight is plain not onely because the eye is full of these livid Spirits but also because dimness of sight comes from deficiency of them though the parts of the eye otherwayes be entire enough as in sick and old persons and in those troubled with an Amaurosis or Gutta Serena I had the last year a Patient a young Boy of seventeen years old who fell casually stark blind of his right eye in which you could outwardly discover no fault at all the Disease being an Amaurosis or obstruction of the Optick Nerve for that Nerve being by successful means disobstructed and relaxed so that the Animal Spirits were able to flow done to the Retina again he shortly after perfectly recovered his sight again without any relapse at all to this present day Thirdly If you cast a Ligature upon any Nerve you destroy both the sense and motion of that part whither that Nerve was propagated as by that pleasant Experiment by tying the recurrent Nerves in a living Dogg we have tryed till by relaxing the Ligature the Spirits may have the freedome to channel into the Nerves again Which truth is also handsomely made out by that ordinary example of a mans Leg being asleep as we call it for by compression of the Nerves the propagation of the Spirits into the part is hindred for as sense and motion is restored you may feel something creep into the Leg tingling and stinging like Pismires as Spigelius compares it which is the return of the Animal Spirits into that part again Fourthly That Spontaneous motion is performed by continuation of the Animal Spirits from the common Sensorium to the Muscle which is the gross Engine of Motion is sensibly evinced in dead Palsies where one side is taken away To all which add the former Observation of the Spirits circumundulation when the Snail at any time moved and of their joint quiescency together Having now shown you how these Animal Spirits are generated in our Body or to speak more properly disimprisoned and separated from our nutriment and so from fixation brought through Fusion to Volatilization having also shown you what use Nature makes of them in Sensation and Motion let us screw our Enquiry a little further and see if we can discover how the Spirits move in the Brain and Nerves to perform the same operations First therefore we affirm that a lesser quantity and slower motion of the Spirits is required for Sensation than there is for Motion for in this the Muscle swells that moves the part which is a plain Indication of a greater influx of Spirits directed thither a greater I say for I do not deny but there is required to sensation a moderate quantity and diffusion of the Spirits into all the parts of the Body else we should alwayes be benummed and stupid as when our Leg is asleep by an interception of the Spirits Secondly that their motion is slower in sensation then motion the former Experiment of the Snail does also manifest whose Animal Spirits never begin to undulate till she begin to move whereas she is sensible when they are in Quiescency as you may by pricking her with a Needle easily observe Thirdly in the return of the Spirits into the stupefied Leg we plainly perceive by the prickling what a flow motion the Spirits have All which Phaenomena do seem to favour our former Conjecture that for Motion the Spirits move impetuously down the nervous filaments which are hollow but for Sensation they onely creep by a filtration down their Coats and Membranes Now these Spirits being so subtle and dissipable the Soul spends them every day in using of them and they being much spent she can hardly move the Body any longer The sense whereof we call Lassitude For certainly as Doctor More very ingeniously inferrs if it were an immediate faculty of the Soul to contribute Motion to any matter I do not understand that Faculty never failing nor diminishing no more than the Soul it self can fail or diminish that we should ever be weary Thus are the Phaenomena of Sense and Motion best salved whilst we are awake now what happens when we sleep is a matter of further enquiry Some have defined Sleep to be a migration of all the Spirits out of the Brain into the exteriour parts of the Body whereas by our former Observations it may rather seem to the contrary that is The retraction of the Spirits into the Brain or at least a restagnation of them in the nervous parts does till Nature being recruited by a new supply and regeneration of them in the Brain direct them into the Spinal Marrow and Nerves which being replenished with them again they run their current as before so the whole Animal thereby is made capable of feeling the Impulses of any external object whatever which we call Walking and during this Interval and Non-tearm of sensation for so we may without a Complement call Sleep why may not the Soul be retracted and wholly intent upon and busied about her Vegetative and Plastical Operations So that when she has locked up the doors of this Laboratory the Body she may be busie in augmenting repairing and regenerating all the Organs and Utensils within and painting and plaistring the Walls without This I am sure we observe to be the greatest part of her obscure employment in the Womb where the Embryo for the most part sleeps whilst the Soul is in full exercise of her Plastick and Organo-Poïetical Faculty Now these Animal Spirits being continually transmitted from the Brain through the Spinal Marrow Nerves Tendons Fibers into all the parts of the Body especially whilst we are awaking may some of them at least have a kind of circulation for those which perspire not having lost their motion may either mix with the bloud in habitu partium or relapse into a kind of insipid phlegm as Chymical Spirits do that are not purely rectified and to be returned back by the Lymphiducts again Lastly I have but one paradoxical and extravagant Quaere to make and that is this That since we have proved these Animal Spirits to be the ultimate result of all the concoctions of the Body the very top and perfection of all Nature's operations the purest and most aetherial particles of all Bodies in the World whatsoever and so consequently of nearest alliance to Spiritualities and the sole and immediate instrument of all the Soul's operations here even in statu conjuncto the Body and the Organs thereof being but secondary and subservient Instruments to the Spirits These things being thus premised may
them see that even the greatest Oculists and Dioptrical Writers that the World ever saw Kepler Des-Cartes Schemar and Hugenius have not yet discovered all Nature's Curiosities even in that Organ I will here deliver one or two Optical Experiments The first hints whereof I must ingeniously confess I received from some Fragments and Papers of our famous and never to be forgotten Country-man Master Gascoign of Midleton near Leeds who was unfortunately slain in the Royal Service for His late Majesty a Person he was of those strong Parts and Hopes that not onely we but the whole World of Learning suffered in the loss of him Take a fresh Eye and in a frosty Evening place it with the Pupil upwards where it may be frozen through then in the Morning you may cut it as you please If you cut it with a plain Parallel to the Optick Axis which Section Des-Cartes thought impossible then shall you see all the Parts as he has pictured them pag. 92. and each part will be very different in colour and remain in their natural Site which may be pricked forth in an oyled Paper By this trick also you shall find that there is a double Crystalline humour one circum-included within the other if you do but thaw the Crystalline you shall see the outward will pill off from the inward The right Figures of both which Crystallines are monstrous difficult if not impossible to find out hence it follows that every Ray of incidence is seven times refracted in the Eye before it reach the Retina whatsoever Scheinar says to the contrary The second Experiment is one of the ingenious Excogitations of M. Gascoign's and it is to delineate the prime parts of the Eye after this manner Having a Glass and Table fitted to observe the Eye's spots place an Eye with the Horny Tunicle either upwards or downwards between the inmost Glass and Table so near the Glass as the Eye will almost fill up the compass of the Eye's Image then the representation of the Eye will be very large proportionable to the Eye's Image upon the Table and thus you may prick out the three Figures of the Cornea and the outward and inward Crystallines Many other neat wayes with my Dioptrical Glasses can I take the Figures of the prime Parts of the Eye which shall be discovered in their fit places And now having done with the Fabrick the Observations lead us to the Consideration of the Number and Plurality of Eyes that Nature hath afforded some Creatures I must confess though I have been very curious and critical in observing yet I could never find any Animal that was monocular nor any that had a multiplicity of Eyes except Spiders which indeed are so fair and palpable that they are clearly to be seen by any man that wants not his own And though Argus has been held as prodigious a fiction as Polypheme and a plurality of Eyes in any Creature as great a piece of monstrosity as onely a single one yet our glasses have refuted this Errour as Observat. viii and ix will tell you so that the Works of Nature are various and the several wayes and manifold Organization of the Body inscrutable so that we had need of all the advantages that Art can give us to discover the more mysterious Works of that divine Architectress but especially when she draws her self into so narrow a Shop and works in the retiring Room of so minute an Animal Lastly Many more hints might be taken from the former Observations to make good the Atomical Hypothesis which I am confident will receive from the Microscope some further advantage and illustration not onely as to its first universal matter Atoms but also as to the necessary Attributes or essential Properties of them as Motion Figure Magnitude Order and Disposition of them in several Concretes of the World especially if our Microscopes arise to any higher perfection and if we can but by any artificial helps get but a glimpse of the smallest Truth it is not to tell what a Fabrick of Philosophy may be raised from it for to conclude with that Patriark of Experimental Philosophy the Learned Lord Bacon The Eye of the Understanding saith he is like the Eye of the Sense for as you may see great Objects through small Cranies or Levels so you may see great Axioms of Nature through small and contemptible Instances and Experiments These are the few Experiments that my Time and Glass hath as yet afforded me an opportunity to make which I hasten out into the World to stay the longing thereof But you may expect shortly from Doctor Wren and Master Hooke two Ingenious Members of the Royal Society at Gresham the Cuts and Pictures drawn at large and to the very life of these and other Microscopical Representations The End of the Microscopical Observations EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY In three Books Containing New Experiments Microscopical Mercurial Magnetical With some Deductions and probable Hypotheses raised from them in Avouchment and Illustration of the now famous ATOMICAL HYPOTHESIS By HENRY POWER D r. of Physick LONDON Printed in the Year 1663. Liber Secundus Mercuriall Experiments Begun Anno Domini 1653. By HENRY POWER M ae D r. Itaque sperandum omnino est esse adhuc in Naturae sinu multa excellentis usus Recondita quae nullam cum jam Inventis Cognationem habent aut parallelismum sed omnino sita sunt extra vias phantasiae quae tamen adhuc Inventa non sunt quae proculdubio per multos saeculorum circuitus ambages ipsa quandoque prodibunt Fr. Verulam lib. 1. Novi Organi sect 109. The Second Book These Physico-Mechanical Experiments are of four sorts Hydrargyral Hydraulical Pneumatical and Mixt. Such things as are requisite for the triall of these Experiments are 1. A Quart at least of ☿ Quicksilver 2. Several Glass-Trunks or Cylindrical Glass-Tubes some open at both ends and some exactly closed or as they phrase it Hermetically sealed at the one end All of several Lengths and Bores 3. A Glass-Tunnel or two with wooden dishes and spoons for filling of the Glass-Tubes with Mercury 4. You must have no Metalline Vtensils about you for fear they be spoiled with the Mercury 5. Spread a Blanket or Carpet on the ground when you try these Experiments that so none of the Mercury may be lost but may be taken up again with wooden spoons 6. You may have by you also Glass-Syphons Weather-Glasses of several right and crooked shapes c. the more to advantage the Experiments MERCURIAL EXPERIMENTS CHAP. I. Experiment 1. TAke a Glass-Tube of above 29 inches in length as AB closed at the end B and open at A fill it full of Quicksilver and so close the end A exactly with the thumb as with a stoppel then reverse it and putting it and your finger together into the wooden vessel D fill'd about two inches deep with Quicksilver erect it perpendicularly therein then drawing away your finger from the