certainly shew that he did not understand the true Texture of those Parts because where his Anatomy did not fail him his Ratiocinations are generally speaking exact Wherefore in this particular his Mistakes instruct us as effectually in the Ancients Ignorance as his true Notions do in their Knowledge This will appear at large hereafter where it will be of mighty use to prove That the Ancients cannot be supposed to have known many of the most eminent Modern Discoveries since if they had known them they would not have assigned such Uses to those Parts as are not reconcilable to those Discoveries If Galen had known that the Pancreas had been a Heap of small Glands which all emit into one common Canal a particular Juice carried afterwards through that Canal into the Guts which there meeting with the Bile goes forwards and assists it in the making of the Chyle he would never have said that Nature made it for a Pillow to support the Veins which go out of the Liver in that Place where they divide into several Branches lest if they had been without a Rest they should have been hurt by the violent Eruption of the Blood and this too without the assigning any other Use for it By Anatomy there is seldom any thing understood but the Art of laying open the several Parts of the Body with a Knife that so the Relation which they severally bear each to other may be clearly discerned This is generally understood of the containing Parts Skin Flesh Bones Membranes Veins Arteries Muscles Tendons Ligaments Cartilages Glands Bowels wherein only the Ancients busied themselves As for the Examination of the Nature and particular Texture of the contained Parts Blood Chyle Urine Bile Serum Fat Juices of the Pancreas Spleen and Nerves Lympha Spittle Marrow of the Bones Mucilages of the Joints and the like they made very few Experiments and those too for want of Chymistry very imperfect The Discoveries therefore which have been made in that nobler part which are numerous and considerable are in a manner wholly owing to later Ages In the other a great deal was anciently done though a great deal more was left for Posterity to do I shall begin with the Body in general It is certain that all the great Divisions of the Bones Muscles Veins and Arteries most of the visible Cartilages Tendons and Ligaments were very exactly known in Galen's Time the Positions of the Muscles their several Originations the Insertions of their Tendons and investing Membranes were for the most part traced with great Nicety and Truth the more conspicuous pairs of Nerves which arise either from the Brain or Spinal Marrow were very well known and carefully followed most of the great Branches of the Veins and Arteries almost all the Bones and Cartilages with very many Muscles have still old Greek Names imposed upon them by the Old Anatomists or Latin Names translated from the Greek ones So that not only the easie things and such as are discernable at first Sight were throughly known but even several particulars especially in the Anatomy of Nerves were discovered which are not obvious without great Care and a good deal of practical Skill in diffecting So much in general from which it is evident that as far as Anatomy is peculiarly useful to a Chirurgeon to inform him how the Bones Muscles Blood-Vessels Cartilages Tendons Ligaments and Membranes lie in the Limbs and more conspicuous Parts of the Body so far the Ancients went And here there is very little that the Moderns have any Right to pretend to as their own Discoveries though any Man that understands these things must own That these are the first things which offer themselves to an Anatomist's View Here I shall beg Leave to descend to Particulars because I have not seen any Comparison made between Ancient and Modern Anatomy wherein I could acquiesce whilst some as Mr. Glanvile and some others who seem to have copied from him have allowed the Ancients less than was their Due others as Vander Linden and Almeloveen have attributed more to them than came to their Share especially since though perhaps it may be a little tedious yet it cannot be called a Digression Hippocrates took the Brain to be a Gland His Opinion was nearer to the Truth than any of his Successors but he seems to have thought it to be a similar Substance which it evidently is not And therefore when several Parts of it were discovered not to be glandulous his Opinion was rejected Plato took it to be Marrow such as nourishes the Bones but its Weight and Texture soon destroyed his Notion since it sinks in Water wherein Marrow swims and is hardned by Fire by which the other is melted Galen saw a little farther and he asserts it to be of a nervous Substance only something softer than the Nerves in the Body Still they believed that the Brain was an uniform Substance and as long as they did so they were not like to go very far The first Anatomist who discovered the true Texture of the Brain was Archangelus Piccolhomineus an Italian who lived in the last Age. He found that the Brain properly so called and Cerebellum consist of Two distinct Substances an outer Ash-coloured Substance through which the Blood-Vessels which lie under the Pia Mater in innumerable Folds and Windings are disseminated and an inner every where united to it of a nervous Nature that joins this Bark as it is usually called to the Medulla Oblongata which is the Original of all the Pairs of Nerves that issue from the Brain and of the Spinal Marrow and lies under the Brain and Cerebellum After him Dr. Willis was so very exact that he traced this medullar Substance through all its Insertions into the Cortical and the Medulla Oblongata and examined the Rises of all the Nerves and went along with them into every Part of the Body with wonderful Curiosity Hereby not only the Brain was demonstrably proved to be the Fountain of Sense and Motion but also by the Courses of the Nerves the Manner how every Part of the Body conspires with any others to procure any one particular Motion was clearly shewn and thereby it was made plain even to Sense that where-ever many parts joined at once to cause the same Motion that Motion is caused by Nerves that go into every one of those Parts which are all struck together And though Vieussens and du Verney have in many things corrected Dr. Willis's Anatomy of the Nerves yet they have strengthened his general Hypothesis even at the Time when they discovered his Mistakes which is the same thing to our present purpose Galen indeed had a right Notion of this matter but he traced only the larger Pairs of Nerves such as could not escape a good Anatomist But the manner of the forming of the Animal Spirit in the Brain was wholly unknown In Order to the Discovery whereof Malpighius by his
in a great Measure by Telescopes whose chief Use that comes under our Consideration is to discern the Stars and other celestial Bodies To find out the first Inventor of these sorts of Glasses it will be necessary to learn who first found out the Properties of Convex and Concave Glasses in the Refraction of Light Dr. Plot has collected a great deal concerning F. Bacon in his Natural History of Oxfordshire which seems to put it out of doubt that he knew that great Objects might appear little and small Objects appear great that distant Objects would seem near and near Objects seem afar off by different Applications of Convex and Concave Glasses upon the Credit of which Authorities Mr. Molineux attributes the Invention of Spectacles to this learned Friar the Time to which their earliest Use may be traced agreeing very well with the Time in which he lived but how far F. Bacon went we know not So that we must go into Holland for the first Inventors of these excellent Instruments and there they were first found out by one Zacharias Joannides a Spectacle-maker of Middleburgh in Zeland in 1590 he presented a Tellescope of Two Glasses to Prince Maurice and another to Arch-Duke Albert the former of whom apprehending that they might be of great Use in War desired him to conceal his Secret For this Reason his Name was so little known that neither Des Cartes nor Gerhard Vossius had ever heard any thing of him when they attributed the Invention of Telescopes to Jacobus Metius of Alkmaer However it taking Air Galileo Galilei took the Hint and made several Telescopes by which making Observations upon heavenly Bodies he got himself immortal Honour Thereby he discovered Four Planets moving constantly round Jupiter from thence usually called his Satellits which afterwards were observed to have a constant regular and periodical Motion This Motion is now so exactly known that Mr. Flamstead who is one of the most accurate Observers that ever was has been able to calculate Tables of the Eclipses of the several Satellits according to which Astronomers in different quarters of the World having Notice of the precise Time when to look for them have found them to answer to his Predictions and published their Observations accordingly This is an effectual Answer to all that Rhapsody which Stubbe has collected in his Brutal Answer to Mr. Glanvile's Plus Ultra about the Uncertainty of all Observations made by Telescopes since it is impossible to calculate the Duration of any Motion justly by fallacious and uncertain Methods By the Eclipses of Jupiter's Satellits Longitudes would soon be exactly determined if Tubes of any Length could be managed at Sea But Jupiter is not the only Planet about which things anciently unknown have been revealed by this noble Instrument The Moon has been discovered to be an Earth endued with a libratory Motion of an uneven Surface which has something analogous to Hills and Dales Plains and Seas and a â—â—ew Geography if one may use that Word without a Blunder with accurate Maps has been published by the great Hevelius and improved by Ricciolus by which Eclipses may be observed much more nicely than could be done formerly The Sun has been found to have Spots at some times the Planets to move round their Axes Saturn to have a Luminous Ring round about his Body which in some Positions appears like two Handles as they are commonly called or large Prominencies on opposite Parts of his Limbs carried along with him beside Five Planets moving periodically about him as those others do about Jupiter The milky Way to be a Cluster of numberless Stars the other parts of the Heaven to be filled with an incredible Number of fixed Stars of which if Hevelius's Globes are ever published the World may hope to see a Catalogue These are some of the remarkable Discoveries that have been made by Telescopes And as new Things have been revealed so old ones have been much more nicely observed than formerly it was possible to observe them But I need not enlarge upon particular Proofs of that which every Astronomical Book printed within these Fifty Years is full of If I should it would be said perhaps that I had only copied from the French Author of the Plurality of Worlds so often mentioned already As some Things are too far off so others are too small to be seen without help This last Defect is admirably supplied by Microscopes invented by the same Zacharias Joannides which besides Miscellaneous and Occasional Observations have been applied to Anatomy by Malpighius Leeuwenhoeck Grew Havers and several others The first very considerable Essay to shew what might be discovered in Nature by the help of Microscopes was made by Dr. Hook in his Micrography wherein he made various Observations upon very different Sorts of Bodies One may easily imagine what Light they must needs give unto the nicer Mechanism of most Kinds of Bodies when Monsieur Leeuwenhoeck has plainly proved that he could with his Glasses discern Bodies several Millions of Times less than a Grain of Sand. This may be relied upon because Dr. Hook who examined what Leeuwenhoeck says of the little Animals which he discerned in Water of which he tells the most wonderful Things does in his Microscopium attest the Truth of Leeuwenhoeck's Observations Besides these which are of more universal Use several other Instruments have been invented which have been very serviceable to find out the Properties of Natural Bodies and by which several Things of very great Moment utterly unknown to the Ancients have been detected As 1. The Thermometer invented by Sanctorius an eminent Physician of Padua It s immediate Use is to determine the several Degrees of Heat and Cold of which our Senses can give us but uncertain Notices because they do not so much inform us of the State of the Air in it self as what its Operations are at that Time upon our Bodies But Sanctorius used only open Vessels which are of small Use since Liquors may rise or fall in the Tubes as well from the Increase or Diminution of the Weight of the Air as of Heat and Cold. That Defect was remedied by Mr. Boyle who sealed up the Liquors in the Tubes Hermetically that so nothing but only Heat and Cold might have any Operation upon them The Uses to which they have been applied may be seen at large in Mr. Boyle's History of Cold and the Experiments of the Academy del Cimento 2. The Baroscope or Torricellian Experiment so called from its Inventor Evangelista Torricelli a Florentine Mathematician who about the Year 1643. found that Quick-Silver would stand erect in a Tube above 28 Inches from the Surface of other Quick-Silver into which the Tube was immersed if it was before well purged of Air. This noble Experiment soon convinced the World that the Air is an actually heavy Body and gravitates upon every Thing here below This
Reason to believe that it was cultivated with Abundance of Care by all those who did not place the Perfection of Knowledge in the Art of Wrangling about Questions which were either useless or which could not easily be decided Before I enter into Particulars it is necessary to enquire what are the greatest Excellencies of a compleat History of any one sort of Natural Bodies This may soon be determined That History of any Body is certainly the best which by a full and clear Description lays down all the Characteristical Marks of the Body then to be described so as that its Specifical Idea may be perfectly formed and it self certainly and easily distinguished from any other Body though at first View it be never so like it which enumerates all its known Qualities which shews whether there are any more besides those already observed and last of all which enquires into the several Ways whereby that Body may be beneficial or hurtful to Man or any other Body by giving a particular Account of the several Phaenomena which appear upon its Application to or Combination with other Bodies of like or unlike Natures All this is plainly necessary if a Man would write a full History of any single Species of Animals Plants Insects or Minerals whatsoever Or if he would draw up a General History of any one of these Universal Sorts then he ought to examine wherein every Species of this Universal Sort agrees each with other or wherein they are discriminated from any other Universal Sort of Things Thus by degrees descend to Particulars and range every Species not manifestly Anomalus under its own Family or Tribe thereby to help the Memory of Learners and assist the Contemplations of those who with Satisfaction to themselves and others would Philosophize upon this amazing Variety of Things By this Test the Comparison may be made I shall begin with the simplest Bodies first which as they are the commonest so one would think should have been long ago examined with the strictest Care By these I mean Air Water Earth Fire commonly called Elements The Three first are certainly distinct and real Bodies endued with proper and peculiar Qualities and so come under the present Question Of the History of Air the Ancients seemed to know little more than just what might be collected from the Observation of its most obvious Qualities It s Necessity for the immediate Subsistence of Life and the unspeakable Force of Rapid Winds or Air forcibly driven all one Way made it be sufficiently observed by all the World whilst its Internal Texture and very few of its remoter Qualities were scarce so much as dreamt of by all the Philosophers of Antiquity It s Weight only was known to Aristotle or the Author of the Book de Coelo who observed that a full Bladder out-weighed an empty one Yet this was carried no further by any of the Ancients that we know of dis-believed by his own School who seemed not to have attended to his Word opposed and ridiculed when again revived and demonstrably proved by the Philosophers of the present Age. All which are Evidences that anciently it was little examined into since they wanted Proofs to evince that which Ignorance only made disputable But this has been spoken to already I shall therefore only add that besides what Mr. Boyle has written concerning the Air one may consult Otto Guerick's Magdebourg-Experiments the Experiments of the Academy del Cimento Sturmius's Collegium Curiosum Mr. Halley's Discourses concerning Gravity and the Phaenomena of the Baroscope in the Philosophical Transactions From all which one may find not only how little of the Nature of the Air was anciently known but also that there is scarce any one Body whose Theory is now so near being compleated as is that of the Air. The Natural History of Earth and Water come under that of Minerals Fire as it appears to our Senses seems to be a Quality rather than a Substance and to consist in its own Nature in a Rapid Agitation of Bodies put into a quick Motion and divided by this Motion into very small Parts After this had been once asserted by the Corpuscularian Philosophers it was exceedingly strengthned by many Experimental Writers who have taken abundance of Pains to state the whole Doctrine of Qualities clearly and intelligibly that so Men might know the difference between the Existence or Essential Nature of a Body and its being represented to our Senses under such or such an Idea This is the Natural Consequence of proceeding upon clear and intelligible Principles and resolving to admit nothing as conclusive which cannot be manifestly conceived and evidently distinguished from every Thing else Here if in any Thing the old Philosophers were egregiously defective What has been done since will appear by consulting among others the Discourses which Mr. Boyle has written upon most of the considerable Qualities of Bodies which come under our Notice such as his Histories of Fluidity and Firmness of Colours of Cold his Origin of Forms and Qualities Experiments about the Mechanical Production of divers particular Qualities and several others which come under this Head because they are not Notions framed only in a Closet by the help of a lively Fancy but Genuine Histories of the Phaenomena of Natural Bodies which appeared in vast Numbers after such Trials were made upon them as were proper to discover their several Natures And therefore that it may not be thought that I mistake every plausible Notion of a witty Philosopher for a new Discovery of Nature I must desire that my former Distinction between Hypotheses and Theories may be remembred I do not here reckon the several Hypotheses of Des Cartes Gassendi or Hobbes as Acquisitions to real Knowledge since they may only be Chimaera's and amusing Notions fit to entertain working Heads I only alledge such Doctrines as are raised upon faithful Experiments and nice Observations and such Consequences as are the immediate Results of and manifest Corollaries drawn from these Experiments and Observations Which is what is commonly meant by Theories But of this more hereafter That the Natural History of Minerals was anciently very imperfect is evident from what has been said of Chymistry already to which all the Advances that have ever been made in that Art unless when Experiments have been tried upon Vegetable or Animal Substances are properly to be referred I take Minerals here in the largest Sence for all sorts of Earths Sulphurs Salts Stones Metals and Minerals properly so called For Chymistry is not only circumstantially useful but essentially necessary here since a great many Minerals of very differing Natures would never have been known to have belonged to several Families if they had not been examined in the Furnaces of the Chymists But I think this is so clear that I should lose Time if I should say any Thing more about it and therefore I shall rather mention some other Things wherein Discoveries have been made in and by