¹ For an account of the history and meaning of the word, effluvium, see my article, “Three Terms of the Corpuscularian Philosophy,” M.P., xxxiii (1936), 243–260.

² Ennead, iv, iii, 1.

³ Psychozoia (Cambridge, 1647), More's address “To the Reader.”

⁴ Poetical Works, ed. W. Hankins (1721), i, 500.

⁵ Poems on Several Occasions (London, 1718), p. 311.

⁶ Cf. Ennead, v, iii, 12.

⁷ Diogenes Laertius, vii, trans. R. D. Hicks (Loeb Library: London, 1925), ii, 243–245.

⁸ De Magnete (London, 1600), p. 52.

⁹ Ibid., 54.

¹⁰ For a discussion of the contribution of the magnetical philosophy to the conception of effluvia, see my article, “The Lodestone and the Understanding of Matter in Seventeenth Century England,” Philosophy of Science, iv (1937), 75–95.

¹¹ Treatise of Bodies (London, 1658), p. 372.

¹² Quoted by J. B. Craven, Doctor Robert Fludd (Kirkwall, 1902), p. 193.

¹³ The particles of the off-flow are either individual atoms or minute groups of atoms (neither the philosopher nor the poet was specific about this); in the Epicurean writings the simples are called indivisibles (the adjective means uncut); Lucretius for metrical reasons never Latinized (as Cicero did), but he employed primordia and semina in its place. Indivisible particles raining downward and slightly deflected had clustered together to produce the first masses; by constant accumulation they made our world, a swarming system of atoms and void in turbulent motion. From the surface of all things atoms continually stream, being replaced by atoms free in the air; in every direction flow these effluvia (the Epicurean word is, the Lucretian, aestus).

¹⁴ Syphilis sive Morbus Gallicus (Verona, 1530). Cf. also D. and C. Singer, Annals of Medical History, i, 1, 11.

¹⁵ “For does any of us wonder, if a man has caught in his limbs a fever gathering with burning heat, or any other painful disease in his members? For a foot will swell suddenly, often a sharp pain seizes on the teeth or makes its way right into the eyes; the holy fire (sacer ignis, erysipelas) breaks out and creeping about in the body burns any part which it has seized, and crawls through the limbs, because, as we may be sure, there are seeds of many things (multarum semina rerum), and this earth and heaven has enough disease and malady, from which the force of measureless disease might avail to spread abroad” De Natura Rerum, vi, 655–664, translated by Cyril Bailey, Lucretius on the Nature of Things (Oxford, 1929), p. 257.

¹⁶ De Contagione, i, vi.

¹⁷ Ibid., i, vi, translated by W. C. Wright, Eieronymi Fracastorii, De Contagione (New York, 1930), p. 27.

¹⁸ The phenomenon of “antipathy” working by a spiritual quality rather than a material medium is discussed in Fracastorius's De Sympathia et Antipathia (1546). In i, xi of the De Contagione he explains that there are two kinds of poisons, those that work by a spiritual quality, such as most of the poisons of snakes and the glance of the catablepha, and those that act by a material quality (vero materiali qualitate operantur). Those that work by a spiritual quality (qualitas spiritualis) or by spiritual images (per spirituales species) never generate their like in the victim, and that is the reason why people who have been poisoned by a viper or a basilisk never in turn give off an emission like that of the viper or basilisk. Of those poisons which work by material qualities, however—“Eorum vero, quae per materialem qualitatem operantur, alia calida sunt, ut vocata caustica et urentia, alia frigida, ut opium, et hyosciamus, et id genus.” Examples of cold poisons which work by material qualities are opium and “hog-bean” or henbane (cf. Wright's note, op. cit., p. 304).

¹⁹ De Contagione, i, vii.

²⁰ Sir Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646), iii, vii.

²¹ “Opportet autem in hisce contagionibus non putrefactionem solem fieri, sed a primis seminariis et alia quoque gigni, et propagari, quae ipsis similia natura sint, et mistione, non aliter quam spiritus in animali e sanguine soient alios sibi consimiles generare, …” (De Contagione, i, vi). Professor Wright's note on Fracastoro's word, seminaria, is so clear and so useful that I quote it in full: “In the poem Syphilis, where the metre would not admit the word seminaria, he always uses semina. But in the present, much later, work he prefers seminaria, evidently because he wished to convey the idea of the seed-bed as well as the seeds. In prose he uses semina only once … [De Contagione, ii, x]:, apparently by inadvertence. In every case, he is of course echoing, but adapting for his own purpose, the poem of Lucretius, De Rerum Natura vi. 1093 foll., who says that ‘many seeds fly about bringing disease and death.’ I translate seminaria ‘germs’ as the nearest English equivalent; Fossel translates, ‘Keime.‘ C. and D. Singer (p. 22) [i.e., of ”The Scientific Position of Girolamo Fracastoro“ in Annals of Medical History, i, i, 1917] say that R. Fuchs, in 1541, speaks of the seminarium of disease” (op. cit., p. 302).

²² De Contagione, i, vi.

²³ De Sympathia et Antipathia in Opera Omnia (Venice, 1574), f. 63 B (recto).

²⁴ Ibid., f. 60 D (verso).

²⁶ Ibid., f. 63 B (recto).

^26a De Abditis Rerum Causis, Praef. Lib. ii (Paris, 1560), p. 195.

²⁷ Cf. Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, i, 2; also Galen, De Elementis, cap. ult.

²⁸ Hypomneta Physica, iii, i, in Opera (Venice, 1641), i, 18a-20.

²⁹ Ibid., p. 20.

³⁰ Ibid., p. 21.

³¹ Cf. De Generatione et Corruptione, 317a; also Physica, 231, 21 ff; De Caelo, 303a ff.

³² Cf. Kurd Lasswitz, Geschichte der Atomistik (Leipzig, 1926), i, 269.

³³ Cf. De Mente Idiotae, iii, ix; also De Ludo Globi in Opera (Basil, 1555), i, i, p. 211.

³⁴ Cf. J. L. McIntyre, Giordano Bruno (London, 1903), pp. 246, ff., 163.

³⁵ Fasciolae tenues or bandelettes. Cf. Principia (1644), iv, clxxxvi.

³⁶ Robert Boyle, Languid and Unheeded Motion (London, 1685), p. 39. Quoted by J. F. Fulton, A Bibliography of the Honourable Robert Boyle, The Oxford Bibliographical Society Proceedings and Papers, iii, i, 101–102. The italics are Dr. Fulton's.

³⁷ Robert Boyle, Works (London, 1772), iii, 704.

³⁸ Ibid., iii, 682.

³⁹ For a discussion of the specialized meaning of this term in the early seventeenth century cf. my “Sir Thomas Browne and Hieroglyphs,” Virginia Quarterly, Autumn, 1935.

⁴⁰ Works, ed. by Simon Wilkin (London, 1835–36), ii, 416–417. The torpedo, like the magnet, the amber, the heliotrope, and the basilisk, was one of the famous examples in natural philosophy of action without apparent corporeal contact.

⁴¹ Works, ed. Wilkin, ii, 417–418.

⁴² Ibid., ii, 419.

⁴³ Ibid., ii, 399.

⁴⁴ Ibid., ii, 340.

⁴⁵ Ibid., ii, 341.

⁴⁶ Cf. J. B. Craven, op. cit., p. 202.

⁴⁷ Hoplocrisma-Spongus (London, 1631), p. C3.

⁴⁸ Quoted by Craven, op. cit., p. 209.

⁴⁹ J. B. van Helmont, A Ternary of Paradoxes, translated by Walter Charleton (London, 1650), p. 24. Van Helmont pretended that Gilbert had supported his theories of the curative properties of the magnet.

⁵⁰ Ibid., pp. 49–50.

⁵¹ Sir Kenelm Digby, A Late Discourse … Touching the Cure of Wounds by the Powder of Sympathy (London, 1658), p. 151.

⁵² Ibid., p. 76.

⁵³ Ibid., p. 116.

⁵⁴ Nathaniel Highmore, A Discovery of the Cure of Wounds by Sympathy (London, 1651), p. 116.

⁵⁵ Works (London, 1772), ii, 168.

⁵⁶ Works ed. Wilkin, ii, 324–325.

⁵⁷ On Sir Thomas Browne's standing as an investigator, see my article, “Sir Thomas Browne, true Scientist,” Osiris, ii, 3 (1935). Mr. C. T. Harrison's two essays, “Bacon, Hobbes, Boyle, and the Ancient Atomists” (Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature, xv, 191–218) and “The Ancient Atomists and English Literature of the Seventeenth Century” (Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, xlv, 1–79) give a lucid and analytical account of the revival of Epicurean ideas in England. Mr. Harrison's statement about Sir Thomas Browne, however, requires qualification. He says, “Epicurus' appeal to Sir Thomas was in no wise on grounds of natural philosophy as it was to Boyle a few years later” (Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, xlv, 12). Browne developed the conclusions of his experiments and observations on magnetism, contagion, the flint and steel, the antimonial cup, some aspects of sensation, and the structure of gems in terms derived ultimately from Epicurus. His library and his son's, when it was sold thirty years after his death, contained the Estienne edition of Diogenes Laertius (1570) (A Catalogue of the Libraries of the Learned Sir Thomas Brown, and Dr. Edward Brown, his son … which will begin to be Sold by Auction, … on Monday, the 8th Day of January, 1710–11, … n.p.n.d., p. 14). Evidently Browne had read the Epicurean writings by 1635 when he wrote Religio. In Pseudodoxia he sometimes acknowledged his debt to the Epicurean natural philosophy, even if he did not always indicate its ancient origin. He read Digby's version of Des Cartes's and Gassendi's ideas on natural philosophy (Digby, A Treatise of Bodies, Paris, 1644) before preparing his first edition of Pseudodoxia (1646) (cf. Works, ed. Wilkin, ii, 286). Browne also read Des Cartes's Principia (Amsterdam, 1644) (cf. Works, ed. Wilkin, ii, 286, 303). Both these books, indirectly or directly reflecting the Epicurean teaching, Browne used as reputable studies of natural philosophy. In 1650 he referred to “the learned pen of Gassendus (Works, ed. Wilkin, iii, 362), and his library contained several of Gassendi's Epicurean works, including the great Syntagma (Lyons, 1649) (Sale Catalogue, p. 19). Alexander Roos in his Arcana Microcosmi…. With a Refutation of Doctor Brown's Vulgar Errors … (London, 1651) says: ”Because the Doctor speaks oftentimes in his book of Epicurean Atomes, which first were hatched in the brains of Leucippus, then entertained by Democritus, and by him recommended to his Scholar Epicurus; and because some giddy heads of this Age loathing wholesome doctrine, desire to embrace any trash,. I will propose to the Readers' view, the absurdities of this whimsical opinion concerning atomes.“ (London, 1652), p. 263.

⁵⁸ Works, ed. Wilkin, ii, 286–287.

⁵⁹ Op. cit., p. 117.

⁶⁰ Henry Power, 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 (London, 1664), “Preface,” iii.

⁶¹ Ibid. p. 58.

⁶² John Donne, “The Extasie,” Poems (London, 1633).

⁶³ London, 1701, p. 23.

⁶⁴ Essay on Man (1732–33), Epistle i, 11. 199–200.