Magnetismus Medicinalium

Part Seven Of The Third Book of The Magnetic World

Iatro-magnetismos

That is,

On the Magnetism of Medicinal Things.

As (magnetism) embraces the whole ambit of Nature, the fact that Medicine, in working, from the natures and creatures of the Great World, to conserve, preserve and (when diseased) restore the Microcosm, above all else takes its power from Magnetism, without which it cannot bring about those most powerful effects, will become shiningly apparent from what is to be adduced shortly; but lest we approach unmethodically such a useful, delightful and necessary material, we shall divide this part into three chapters. Firstly, on truly Magnetic Medicines, that is, on the use of Iron & Lodestone in Medicine. Second, on Magnetic capability, both in Medicinal matters, and toward the nourishment of individual parts of the human body, and on other simple medicaments which are by some analogy magnetic. Finally, in the third chapter, on the [?theoretical] application of Magnetic Medicine.

Chapter 1

On the use of Lodestone & Iron or Steel in Medicine.

Since Lodestone & Iron are in origin, as is profusely demonstrated in Book 1, the same, most Medical men ascribe the same capacities to both, Pliny (Hist.nat.bk.34.ch.15), having listed many things about Iron essential for human use and much else, also surveys its medical capacities, starting with its temperament and quality. For as its force is to bind, dry, restrict, so it is mostly used, with wax and myrtle oil, for correcting alopecias, and for scabrosity of the cheeks and pustules of the whole body; they also use it for inflammations [holy fire] from vinegar, for scabies, infected fingernails, & adhesions [pterygia] in bandages. It is also good for recent lesions, diluted in wine and moderated with myrrh: it soothes gouts, reduces spleen, closes haemorroids: but his chief recommendation is in a wet plaster for purging wounds and fistulae; and eroding any callus. Trallianus [recommends it] for dysentery patients, Ægineta & Dioscorides for those suffering disorders of the spleen; Ætius & Oribasius assert that iron dust mixed with sharp vinegar and brought to smoothness contributes wonderfully to intestinal abrasions. Wine, or water, of iron, in which glowing iron has been quenched, is attested to give wonderful benefit to splenetics and sufferers from melancholic (hypochondriac), abdominal, haemorroidal & liver conditions by Serapio, Avicenna, Hali, Abuccasis, Apharabius and the rest of the Arabs, whose books I have to hand. Of more recent authors, Vitalis de Furno the Medic and Cardinal, dealing with iron in a separate chapter, says that iron filings have a drying and attenuating property, by which they open obstructions of the spleen and cure dysentery, and stem any diarrhoea, whether taken with drink or with food. The same judgment must apply to water, wine or milk in which steel has been quenched. Cardinal Montagnana (Consilio 161) reports, by way of a great secret, that a thick linen cloth steeped in sharp warm vinegar, in which a piece of steel has been quenched, applied for many days to the area of an obstructed spleen, contributes wonderfully; in which he is followed by Savanorola (lib.de Balneis), Nicolaus Florentinus, Bartholemaeus Anglicus, Salicetus and Platearius; Clemens Amerinus says that half a drachm of iron dust mixed with rose sugar, taken fasting, impedes bad humours, protects them from festering, dries dampness of the ventriculus, stimulates

the appetite, strengthens the internal parts and brings back into balance a diseased liver and the other organs. {Instructions for making the powder.} This type of powder is made as follows: take the purest steel, which, when reduced to the finest shavings with a file, you should wash until the water remains clear and transparent, then tip the washed shavings into a glazed earthen pot, and pour in as much white vinegar as will suffice for mixing well with the shavings: having properly sealed the pot and put it in a safe place, allow it to stand for thirty days, mixing it well every week, adding a dash of vinegar if required: after such time, when the shavings have been completely calcined, disperse it into a bigger pot, or onto a table, so it may dry in the shade: once dry, grind it in a brass mortar and pass the resulting powder through a sieve: having thus reduced it to a dust, put it again into a transparent painter's dish, and so regrind it with pestles that when taken in the fingers it is found to have no body. {Another way to make a powder against diseases of the spleen.} Others mix steel filings washed in vinegar with a portion of cloves, add a pound of this mixture into six or seven pounds of the best Spanish wine, and put this blend in a glass bottle, which they expose to the summer sun and agitate often: in this procedure the steel filings almost completely disappear into the liquid: they give one spoonful of this liquid in the morning, mixed with two spoonfuls of Endive or Fumitory water, and tell the patient to walk for an hour: this strengthens the ventriculum, frees the spleen from hardness, heals the abdomen, stops hæmorrhoids (hæmorrhages), benefits the intestines; in a word, it marvellously resolves all obstructions: and most treat this method of preparing iron filings as a great secret: be that as it may, I have seen the admirable effects of this sort of filing, and of steel water on spleen and abdominal cases, and the expeditious cure of the said diseases: for which reason I was unwilling here to leave it hidden from the careful Reader.

Furthermore, most Medics attest that Lodestone shares the same powers as iron, in problems of the spleen Avicenna says, quoting Galen, Lodestone alone has the same powers as hæmatite: Dioscorides relates that a dose of three obols in weight with honeyed water is drunk to draw out thick and melancholic humours: Some report that it has been shown, with honeyed water, to heal hydropsy. {The use of Lodestone among Medics.} Lodestone worn round the neck is held to heal spasm and to control pain of the sinews, and held in the hand to speed childbirth. Some even fall into various superstitions and attribute to it the consciousness of Venus, hence Marbodæus in his laughable way:

{The superstition of Marbodæus} It can reconcile husbands to their wives And restore in turn married women to their husbands. Let one fit the stone in place beneath a snorer's head, And soon she who remains chaste seeks to embrace her man. Soon however every wakeful adulteress falls out of bed As if pushed by hand, compelled by the sudden stench Which the stone emits, the indication of hidden wrongdoing. {The Astrologers' superstition.} But who is so dull and obtuse of intellect as not to see such things as senile ravings, nay rather to laugh at them. Some Astrologers also, to procure love, rather superstitiously carve Venus in Lodestone. Hence Claudianus: he draws Venus on a Lodestone gem, and that ridiculous fellow Marbodæus also teaches the use of Lodestone in pursuance of another enterprise, that of successful burglary, an art at which he is perhaps no novice; as this is particularly ridiculous and frivolous, I include it here for the fun of it.

If a thief, breaking the locks, replete with spoils and treasure, of a house, Going in, places burning coals around the place. And on top of the coals pieces of Lodestone, So that throughout the quadrangle the vapour of smoke diffuses high, Then with minds overturned as if by impending disaster Anyone at all remaining there will flee, And the thief will be free to take whatever he likes.

But on these and similar frivolities, see what I have written in part 1 of the final chapter of Book 1.

CHAPTER II

On Microcosmic Lodestone, or Hoplochrysm [weapon-smear], or Armarium-paste.

A certain ointment, which from its action (it was falsely believed to cure the wounded at a distance) was called Magnetic, did not, I myself think, derive in ancient times from a stygian laboratory. Armarium indeed (because it used to be smeared on armaments) is made up from various ingredients, which were purposely kept quiet, with mummy, or part of a man who had been strangled or made away with in some other sort of violent death, with the Moon waxing, in a good house and standing in the sign (to omit no element of superstition) of a human figure. {Manufacture of magnetic ointment} With this ointment duly prepared they anointed the sword, dagger, club, or any other weapon, by which the wound had been inflicted,

they wrap that weapon in bandages and care for it with great diligence just as if it were a limb of the wounded body. That done, they claim that the wound, at whatever distance and at an unspecified interval, is immediately able to heal, by some virtue, or Magnetic effectiveness, attraction and drawing out, carried by a spirit which like a connecting chain first induces from specific and appropriate constellations a sympathy and coupling, or convergence, from which the healing force is subsequently drawn into the medicated weapon: from that it then goes out and is extended, drawn across, all the way to the wounded part, and eventually the action of that virtue results in a cure. More than anyone else, the begetting of this telungy, or hoplochrysm [Latin and Greek for 'weapon-anointing'] is due to the author of Philosophia Mosaica, a book which seems indeed to have been composed in order to demonstrate this effect of the Magnetic ointment. In reality one can easily make out what to think of it from the foundations upon which the truth of this ointment relies and is constructed. For in the first place the forementioned Author presupposes that no effect which manifests in things proceeds from a natural agent, but that that most central Spirit of Divinity, linked to that which moved on the face of the waters in the beginning, working all in all (Genesis ch. 1), animates all and each, and initiates action though ministering angels by some ineffable emanation, by its will alone most efficacious for love, but against its will for hate. But created beings, he says, are only so many organs, though which and in which the virtue of God, along with his approval, may operate externally through the ministering spirits; thus he asserts that all meteorological phenomena are effects not of competing elements, but are immediate works of God produced through Angels; so in defining wind he says it is nothing other than the breath of God animated and activated, whether for good or ill, by a mediating Angel. Thunder, he says, is indeed the very voice of God, instituted to terrify sinners, and while the devout man wishes to approximate more towards God, the impious and blasphemous is caught out. Furthermore he holds that this Spirit of God is in all things, and it comes first from the Stars, into the last and lowest theatre of the world, and there it animates all the seeds of mineral, vegetable and animal nature. Since therefore this Spirit is incorruptible, eternal, infinite, its actions too will be without end. From which he boldly concludes that there is nothing consequent on natural things to give the virtue a defined range. But that things animated by this Spirit act over any interval indeterminately: and these are the foundations of the Philosophia Mosaica. From which