¹ Johann Heinrich Cohausen, Dissertatio satyrica physico-medico-moralis de pica nasi, sive tabaci sternutatorii, Amsterdam, J Oosterwyk, 1716.

² An antiquarian study is found in S Baring-Gould, ‘Hermippus Redivivus’, in idem., Curiosities of olden times, New York, Thomas Whittaker, 1896, pp. 135–52. A scholarly dissertation about Cohausen was written by A Beauvois, ‘Un practicien allemand au XVIIIe siècle: Jean-Henri Cohausen (1665–1750)’, PhD thesis, University of Paris, April 1900. My thanks to Mrs Jane Fleeson for translating this work from the French. There is a short bibliographical study of Cohausen in Hermann Paal, Johann Heinrich Cohausen, 1665–1750. Leben und Schriften eines bedeutenden Arztes aus der Blütezeit des Hochstiftes Münster, mit kulturhistorischen Betrachtungen, Jena, G Fischer, 1931.

³ The use of “chymist” and “chymistry” is deliberate; I am using these terms as suggested by William R Newman and Lawrence M Principe in ‘Alchemy vs. chemistry: the etymological origins of a historiographic mistake’, Early Sci. Med., 1998, 3: 32–65, p. 41: “since all the topics we today associate under the two terms ‘alchemy’ and ‘chemistry’ were indiscriminately classed under either term by early modern writers, we advocate the use of the archaically-spelt chymistry to express inclusively the undifferentiated domain. This usage will help evade the potential arbitrariness and consequent misunderstandings evoked when the terms ‘alchemy’ and ‘chemistry’ are used casually in reference to activities between the time of the Reformation and the end of the seventeenth century.”

⁴ A G Debus, ‘The Paracelsian aerial niter’, Isis, March 1964, 55 (1): 43–61, p. 58.

⁵ Stanton J Linden, Darke hierogliphicks: alchemy in English literature from Chaucer to the Restoration, Lexington, University Press of Kentucky, 1996. Linden argues that Chaucer begins “a long tradition of alchemical satire” that is interrupted by a “new tradition of spiritual alchemy” in the poetry of Donne, Herbert, and others, before a return in the work of Butler to the earlier satirical tradition at the turn of the century.

⁶ ‘Hermippus’, in Wikipedia: http://www.answers.com, accessed 13 Oct. 2005; Oskar Seyffert, Dictionary of classical antiquities (1894) online, http://www.ancientlibrary.com/seyffert/index.html, accessed 2 Oct. 2005, s.v. ‘Hermippus’. An exhaustive search for sources for the name of Hermippus revealed only one other possibility—that of St Hermippus, an obscure Christian martyr.

⁷ Johann Heinrich Cohausen, ‘Preface’ to Hermippus redivivus, sive exercitatio physico-medica curiosa de methodo rara ad CXV annos prorogandae senectutis per anhelitum puellarum, ex veteri monumento romano deprompta, nunc artis medicae fundamentis stabilita, et rationibus atque exemplis, nec non singulari chymiae philosophicae paradoxo, Frankfurt am Main, John Benjamin Andrae and Henry Hort, 1742, pp. 1–2; Thomas Reinesius and James Gruter, Syntagma inscriptionum antiquarum cumprimis Romæ veteris, quarum omissa est recensio in vasto Jani Gruteri opere cujus isthoc dici possit supplementum: opus posthumum … cum commentariis absolutissimis et instructissimis indicibus nunc primum editum, Leipzig and Frankfurt, Johann Fritschens Erben, 1682, p. 156. Reinesius says of the inscription, “it is laughable, and unworthy of any concern, from one who understands the pagan world”. (“Jocularia est, et indigna cuiusquam curâ, sapitque seculum semibarbarum.”)

⁸ Cohausen, ‘Preface’ to Hermippus redivivus, op. cit., note 7 above, p. 4. Literally, “L. Clodius Hermippus, who lived 115 years and 5 days on the breath of girls, which after his death astonishes physicians, dedicates this to Æsculapius and to health. Those of you who follow, extend your life in a similar way.”

⁹ Ibid., p. 25. “Conjicio itaque eum in Orphanotrophio Romano puellari seu Gymasio quodam Virgineo … ”.

¹⁰ Ibid., pp. 47–8: “Adjacebat Paedatrophio hortus amoenissimus, in quo florum herbarumque, quae magnum vitae longiori praestant subsidium gratissimis odoribus Spiritus vitales recreantes, et quibus etiam indies conclave exornabant puellae solertiores, uberrimus erat proventus. In hunc quotidie serenius arridente aura cum universo juvencularum grege secedebat et exspaciabatur Hermippus, comitantibus singulas suis pupis inter quas sine cura degebat, ne unam quidem hanc curam sumens, qua solicitus curaret, qua potissimum diligentia curas effugeret. Sine quo uno tanquam omnium praesidiorum vita, omnia ad producendam vitam ad hibita emori cum Platonicis indicabat. Hi cum puellis jocabatur, ludebat, saltabat, cantillabat, et ludiera puerilia exercebat vere repuerascens.”

¹¹ Johann Heinrich Cohausen, Frontispiece, Der wieder lebende Hermippus, oder curioese physicalisch-medicinische Abhandlung von der seltenen Art sein Leben durch das Anhauchen Junger-Mägdchen bis auf 115. Jahr zu verlängern … aus dem Lateinischen übersetzt, Sorau, 1753.

¹² Beauvois, op. cit., note 2 above, pp. 89–90; William Godwin believed the Hermippus was authored by Campbell. See William Godwin, St. Leon: a tale of the sixteenth century, 2 vols, Dublin, P Wogan, G Burnet, P Byrne, W Porter, W Jones, 1800, vol. 1, Preface, p. 1; Johann Heinrich Cohausen, Hermippus redivivus, or, The sage's triumph over old age and the grave, transl. John Campbell, London, J Nourse, 1744.

¹³ James Boswell, The life of Dr. Johnson, 2 vols, London, J M Dent and Sons, 1933, vol. 1, p. 258.

¹⁴ Isaac D'Israeli, Curiosities of literature, 6 vols, London, E Moxon, 1834, vol. 2, p. 102. Isaac was the father of the politician Benjamin Disraeli.

¹⁵ Godwin, op. cit., note 12 above, vol. 1, p. 1. In Godwin's moralistic tale, the main character, the Count St Leon, who suffers from a gambling addiction, learns the secret of the philosophers' stone from a stranger. His immortality and wealth causes him to lose his wife, suffer from a case of mistaken identity, and to be estranged from his son, nearly leading him to fight a duel against him at the end.

¹⁶ William Osler, Bibliotheca Osleriana: a catalogue of books illustrating the history of medicine and science, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1929, p. 215.

¹⁷ Beauvois, op. cit., note 2 above, pp. 89–90.

¹⁸ Dictionary of National Biography (hereafter DNB), Oxford University Press, 1995, CD-Rom version, s.v. ‘John Campbell, LLD’; John Campbell, The travels and adventures of Edward Brown, esq; formerly a merchant in London, London, A Bettesworth and C Hitch, 1739.

¹⁹ Boswell, op. cit., note 13 above, vol. 1, p. 176. Johnson, however, did say that Campbell never “lied with pen and ink”.

²⁰ According to his DNB entry, Campbell was charging nearly 2 guineas a sheet to write the last of his published works, so his business strategy was certainly successful.

²¹ Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, online http://mdz1.bib-bvb.de, accessed 3 Oct. 2005, s.v. ‘Cohausen, Johann Heinrich’; Dictionnaire historique de la médecine ancienne et moderne (Mons, 1778), s.v. ‘Cohausen, Jean-Henri’. The relatively few biographical resources on this physician were also noted by Beauvois, op. cit., note 2 above, p. 1.

²² Beauvois, op. cit., note 2 above, p. 23.

²³ Ibid., p. 24.

²⁴ Ibid., pp. 24, 26; Johann Heinrich Cohausen, Tentamium physico-medicorum curiosa decas, de vita humana, Cosfeld, Johann-Bartholomeus Stein, 1699. This treatise was published at Cohausen's own expense indicating his desire for patronage.

²⁵ Jodocus Hermann Nünning, Commercii litterarii dissertationes epistolicæ historico-physico-curiosæ … J. H. Nunningii et J.H. Cohausen … cum utriusque historica bibliographia et præfatione epicritica S. E. E. Cohausen, 3 vols, Frankfurt am Main, 1746–54, vol. 1, p. 123, as quoted by Beauvois, op. cit., note 2 above, p. 26.

²⁶ Cohausen, ‘Preface’, to Tentaminum physico-medicorum, as quoted by Beauvois, op. cit., note 2 above, p. 24.

²⁷ Beauvois, ibid., pp. 24–5; Urszula Szulakowska, ‘The tree of Aristotle: images of the philosophers’ stone and their transference to alchemy from the fifteenth to the twentieth century', Ambix, Nov. 1986, 33(2/3): 53–77, p. 58.

²⁸ Jean Baptiste van Helmont, Van Helmont's works, transl. John Chandler, London, Lodowick Lloyd, 1664, p. 753.

²⁹ Johann Heinrich Cohausen, Archeus febrium faber et medicus, Amsterdam, Salomon Schouten, 1731, p. 8: “Quibus sic statuminatus patescit definitionem Helmontii Viri ad reformanda & exornanda artis dogmata à Deo electi satis esse concinnam”; see also Beauvois, op. cit., note 2 above, pp. 58–9.

³⁰ Cohausen, ibid., p. 2: “Archeum hunc in stomacho veluti throno residere credidit Helmontii. In eo namque veluti peculiari suo sensorio omnium ingestorum, sive alimenta sive Medicamenta, sive venena sint, utilitates atque noxas percipit et distinguit, suasque indignationes, furores, angorem, metum, variasque morborum ideas, concipit, et mediante fluidorum solidorumque mechanismo regulares motus in irregulares et inordinatos commutando, varios morbos et febres ipsas concitat.” See also Beauvois, op. cit., note 2 above, p. 68. As pointed out by an anonymous reviewer, Paracelsus was the first physician to discuss the archeus, a concept which van Helmont expanded.

³¹ Walter Pagel, Joan Baptista van Helmont: reformer of science and medicine, Cambridge University Press, 1982, p. 161.

³² For more about the archeus, see Van Helmont's works, op. cit., note 28 above, p. 1009.

³³ Antonio Clericuzio, Elements, principles, and corpuscles: a study of atomism and chemistry in the seventeenth century, Dordrecht, Kluwer, 2000, p. 197, describes J Dolaeus, Encyclopaedia medicinae theoretico-practicae, Frankfurt am Main, 1684.

³⁴ Johann Heinrich Cohausen, Helmontius ecstaticus, Amsterdam, Salomon Schouten, 1731, p. 301.

³⁵ William R Newman and Lawrence M Principe, Alchemy tried in the fire: Starkey, Boyle, and the fate of Helmontian chymistry, University of Chicago Press, 2002, p. 137.

³⁶ “Liquid alkahest originates from salt”, Cohausen, op. cit., note 34 above, p. 301.

³⁷ Norma E Emerton, The scientific reinterpretation of form, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1984, p. 214.

³⁸ There were many early modern works on the medical and chemical efficacy of volatile salts. The French court physician Joseph Du Chesne's (1544–1609) Liber de priscorum philosophorum verae medicinae materia (1603) and his Ad veritatem hermeticae medicinae ex Hippocratis veterumque decretis ac therapeusi (1604) had extensive commentaries on salt chemistry and medicine, including a focus on nitre. Du Chesne's works were later translated into English by Thomas Tymme to create The practice of chymicall and hermeticall physicke (1605), which introduced Paracelsian salt chemistry to England. See Allen Debus, The English Paracelsians, Chicago University Press, 1968. Other seventeenth-century works such as Otto Tachenius' Hippocrates chymicus, discovering the ancient foundations of the late viperine salt (London, 1677; Latin. 1666), as well as the works of Nicaise Le Fèvre (1610–69) discussed volatile salts. Le Fèvre was professor of chemistry at the court of Charles II of England, and a Fellow of the Royal Society, and his work on salts was the Traicté de la chymie (Paris, 1660). The English translation was entitled A compleat body of chymistry (London, 1664).

³⁹ Kathleen Ahonen, ‘Johann Rudolph Glauber: a study of animism in seventeenth-century chemistry’, PhD thesis, University of Michigan, 1972, p. 107, n. 59, as cited in Newman and Principe, op. cit., note 35 above, p. 242.

⁴⁰ Newman and Principe, op. cit., note 35 above, p. 242.

⁴¹ Ibid., p. 138.

⁴² A list of Cohausen's unpublished manuscripts can be found in Jodocus Hermann Nünning, op. cit., note 25 above, and a description of them is provided in Beauvois, op. cit., note 2 above, pp. 118–33.

⁴³ Van Helmont's works, op. cit., note 28 above, p. 744.

⁴⁴ Pagel, op. cit., note 31 above, pp. 88–90.

⁴⁵ Ibid., pp. 89–90.

⁴⁶ Debus, op. cit., note 4 above, p. 58; see also Van Helmont's works, op. cit., note 28 above, p. 196.

⁴⁷ Cohausen, Hermippus redivivus, op. cit., note 7 above, p. 12: “Unde è contrario dilucescit, si è corpore sano, vivido sale volatili turgido remittatur, ipsamque, quo apud recentiores plerosque Anatomicos expertissimos hodie certum est … vel virtutem balsamico vitalem juxta doctrinam Philosophorum, vel juxta principia mechanica saltem vim elasticam potentiorem, adeoque motum vivaciorem alterius corporis sanguinis solidisque communicare.”

⁴⁸ Ibid., “Si vera foret Francisci Mercurii Helmontii sententia Alphabet Nat. Colloq. 4 de occulta anhelitus circulatione in abdomine ceu centro corporis, omnibusque membris, ne capillis quidem exceptis, quis dubitet eundem de corporis universi proprietate participare.”

⁴⁹ Ibid., “… et copia spirituum turgeant, sed et quod nonnulli praetendunt, adhuc initiis suis seminalibus proximiores plurimum balsami radicalis, quod tamen singulis annorum periodis magis imminuatur, obtineant patet effluvia ex illarum corpore emanantia eiusdem plane esse conditionis.”

⁵⁰ Antonio Clericuzio, for instance, has illustrated the importance of a vital saline spirit to seventeenth-century English physicians in his article, ‘The internal laboratory: the chemical reinterpretation of medical spirits in England (1660–1680)’, in Piyo Rattansi and Antonio Clericuzio (eds), Alchemy and chemistry in the 16th and 17th centuries, Dordrecht, Kluwer, 1994, pp. 51–83.

⁵¹ Robert Boyle, Suspicions about some hidden qualities of the air with an appendix touching celestial magnets, London, W G for M Pitt, 1674, pp. 59–60; Daniel Coxe, ‘A continuation of Dr Daniel Coxe's discourse … touching the identity of all volatil salts’, Philos. Trans., 1674, 108: 169–82, on p. 172.

⁵² Luigi Cornaro, Sure and certain methods of attaining a long and healthful life, Dublin, Richard Gunne, 1740, pp. 58–59. This account was also published in John Floyer and Edward Baynard, ΨYXPOΔOYΣI′/A or, The history of cold bathing, both ancient and modern in two parts, 4th ed., London, William Innys, 1715, pp. 409–10.

⁵³ Jean Baptiste van Helmont, Ortus medicinae, Amsterdam, Elsevier, 1648; reprint, Brussels, Culture et Civilisation, 1966, pp. 178–92; Cohausen, Hermippus redivivus, op. cit., note 7 above, pp. 51–2: “According to Hippocrates and other the nobles of Medicine, the human body when healthy perspires through the open pores of the skin. [This is] because of the incessant motion and the continuous circular course of the blood in which small particles are incessantly emitted. Sanctorius weighed the mass of these excretions of the body which bodies previously excreted … These effluvia give out a scent through transpiration and are of the nature of the body from which they are emitted, a sickening and harmful scent from those that are unhealthy, and a vigorous and sound scent from the youthful, and but when examined this emanation is humid and unctuous, and as one sweats it likewise condenses into a damp and fatty substance. Likewise the breathing human body has pores and the absorbent vessels in the skin, through which lifeless bodies accept the outward animated corpuscles of exhalations. Undoubtedly, the pores of the skin are engaged in the aeration of the blood, inhaling the surrounding atmosphere and then exhaling it again, reinforcing vital movements, or if the air is virulent, destroying life.” (“Corpus humanum juxta Hippocratem caeterosque Medicinae proceres perspirabile est, quatenus per poros cutis in sanitate patulos ob continuum liquidorum motum sanguinis perpetua circulatione attenuati particulae sive effluvia incessater emittuntur, quae juxta staticen Sanctorii quascunque alias corporis excretiones mole et aliquot librarum pondere … Effluvia haec transpirata, seu per transpirationem emissa corporum suorum redolent naturam; et uti ex aegrotantibus et cacochymicis insalubria et noxia, sic ex juvenilibus vegetis ac sanis non tantum vivida, sana et volatilia, sed et humido—unctuosa excernuntur, quemadmodum et ipse sudor, qui ex transpiratis condensatis constat, humidus quoque et pinguis est. Humanum corpus inspirabile quoque est, idest habet poros et vasa absorbentia in cutis … Indubitatem est aërem effluviis resertum per cutis spiracula ingredi et sanguini ac succo nervoso se insinuare, motusque vitals aut roborare, aut etiam, si virulentus fit, perssumdare.”)

⁵⁴ Robert Boyle, An experimental discourse of some unheeded causes of the insalubrity and salubrity of the air, London, Samuel Smith, 1690, p. 169. Though he does not explicitly refer to van Helmont in this context, it is also possible Cohausen could have been influenced by Helmontian writings on the weapon salve and magnetism, which postulated an action-at-a-distance mechanism of disease. See ‘Of the magnetick or attractive curing of wounds’, in Van Helmont's works, op. cit., note 28 above, pp. 756–92.

⁵⁵ Van Helmont's works, note 28 above, p. 110.

⁵⁶ Sanctorius, Medicina statica: being the aphorisms of Sanctorius, translated into English with large explanations by John Quincy, London, William Newton, 1712, p. 1.

⁵⁷ Ibid.

⁵⁸ Ibid., p. 19.

⁵⁹ Jerome Bylebyl, ‘The medical side of Harvey's discovery: the normal and the abnormal’, in Jerome Bylebyl (ed.), William Harvey and his age: the professional and social context of the discovery of the circulation, Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 1979, pp. 28–102, on pp. 40–1; See also Hermann Boerhaave, Institutions in physick, transl. J Browne, 2nd ed., London, Jonas Browne, 1715, p. xvi; Boerhaave wrote, “Therefore these two kinds of Motion, viz. a Pulse which exerts its Power in the Vessels and the Heart, and drives from the Centre to the Circumference, and the Tone which is seated in all the Fibres, membranous and muscular Parts … if these are in a right State and in due Strength, Equality and Temperment, the Blood is received into the Parts equally and without Impediment, and from the same, a due Quantity is expell'd in due time, the Secretions naturally follow, and so the Business of Health is perform'd”.

⁶⁰ Ku-Ming (Kevin) Chang, ‘Motus tonicus: George Ernst Stahl's formulation of tonic motion and early modern medical thought’, Bull. Hist. Med., 2004, 78: 767–803, p. 789.

⁶¹ Cohausen, Hermippus redivivus, op. cit., note 7 above, p. 52: “Notum est corpus humanum esse machinam pnevmatico-hydraulicam ex fluidis atque solidis contextam, ejusque evexiam et vitam in horum continuo motu atque circulo consistere, liquidorum autem motum à solidorum motu tonico, systole atque diastole unice dependere, ita ut hisce integris ac salvis vita constet, cessantibus atque ablatis pereat.”

⁶² Ibid., pp. 52–3: “Certum porro fluida corporis humani in se spectata, quatenus indies renovantur et per alimenta restaurantur, quam diutissime et vel ultra aevum durare posse, eorum tamen motum tandem necessario imminui ac demum tolli duntaxat et vitio solidorum, quatenus haec tractu temporis, et longo annorum cursu paulatim indurantur, exarescunt, rigida sicque immobilia evadunt, unde tono et motu cessante confectarium quoque est fluida remorari et tandem penitus subsistere. In qua fibrarum ariditate, duritie, inflexilitate et ad vividum motum ineptitudine senectutis ratio formalis consistit, quam proin veteres in siccitate et frigiditate collocarunt … Ex quibus demum concludo, si quis posset solida in sua mollitie, flexilitate ac consequenter justo tono ac motu conservare, eum quoque posse avertere senectutem, et sic vitam ultra centum pluresque annos facile protrahere.” Cohausen refers the reader to his Decas for further discussion of tonus.

⁶³ Ibid., pp. 53–4: “… qui ut memorat Verulamius ad annum tricentesimum aetatem produxisse fertur seu ut alii referunt Pollionis veterani militis apud Caesarem Augustum, qui centesimum annum longe excesserat. Qui rationem rogati, quomodo vigorem corporis tanto tempore conservarint, respondisse dicuntur: Melle intus, foris Oelo – Plinius” 1.2. c 24.]

⁶⁴ Ibid., pp. 54–5: “Corporis vero puellaris perspirabile non duntaxat humidum est, sed et unctuosum, idest ex aqua et oleo constans, ideoque naturam et vim obtinens humectandi et emolliendi siccas rigidasque corporis senilis fibras, quo diuturniori motui, contractioni dilatationi, et fluidorum impulsui sufficiant…. Dixi perspirabile corporis puellaris esse unctuosum, alii vapores oleosos seu halitus sulphureos appellant, quia corpora faeminea prae virilibus, et consequenter etiam puellaria prae puerilibus majore scatent unctuositate, quod experientia antiquos quoque Romanos docuerat, quibus ut scribit Macrobius cadavera comburendi ritum recensens, solenne erat senis virorum cadaveribus muliebre adjicere, qui persuasum erat unius adjectu quasi natura flammei ceatera virorum corpora rapidiori foco absumi.”

⁶⁵ Ibid., pp. 55–6: “… et apud Jo. Fabri in Palladio Chymico puella inter pectendum è capite ingremium ignis scintillas stellarum instar excutiens … Fiendi modum et causam Lumen meum novum phosphoris accensum sufficienter detexit.” Johann Heinrich Cohausen, Lumen Novum Phosphoris Accensum, Amsterdam, Joannem Oosterwyk, 1717.

⁶⁶ E Newton Harvey, A history of luminescence: from the earliest times until 1900, Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 44, Philadelphia, American Philosophical Society, 1957, pp. 151, 154; Beauvois, op. cit., note 2 above, pp. 43–51, passim; Robert Boyle, The aerial noctiluca or some new phoenomena, and a process of a factitious self-shining substance, London, Tho. Snowden, 1680; idem, New experiments, and observations, made upon the icy noctiluca, London, printed by R E for B Tooke, 1682.

⁶⁷ Harvey, op. cit., note 66 above, pp. 155, 321. Balduin's first name sometimes appears as Christoph.

⁶⁸ Cohausen, op. cit., note 65 above, p. 25, as quoted in Harvey, ibid., p. 155; Beauvois, op. cit., note 2 above, p. 47, mentions Cohausen's anecdote about brandy and spontaneous combustion in the Lumen novum. Anecdotes about latent fire in the body, and speculations as to its cause were prevalent in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. For instance, the physician Thomas Willis related in his Practice of physick (1681), “for we have known in some endued with a hot, and vapourous blood, when they have put off their inner garments at night going to bed near a fire of Candle, a very thin and shining flame to have shewn itself, which hath possessed the whole inferiour region of the Body. The reason of which affection seems wholly the same, as when the evaporating fume of a Torch just put out is again inflamed by a light inkindling, and manifestly argues that another flame, the root of this extrinsick one, lyes hid within the Body”. Thomas Willis, Dr. Willis's Practice of physick, being all the medical works of that renowned and famous physician … London, T Dring, C Harper, and J Leigh, 1681, p. 32. As Clericuzio has indicated, Willis believed that heat was generated “by the reaction of particles of nitre coming from the air and mixing with sulphur contained in the blood”, op. cit., note 50 above, pp. 65–6. For a survey of early modern ideas of spontaneous combustion, see Jan Bondeson, A cabinet of medical curiosities, London, I B Tauris, 1997, pp. 1–25.

⁶⁹ Cohausen, Hermippus redivivus, op. cit., note 7 above, p. 56: “Hoc loco saltem scire sufficit, quod lux illa veluti calor summe attenuatus superabundantem in corporibus faemineis ignis vitalis copiam prodat.”

⁷⁰ Lynn Thorndike, ‘Two other passages De complexionibus’, Isis, June 1963, 54 (2): 268–9, p. 269.

⁷¹ Anita Guerrini, ‘The hungry soul: George Cheyne and the construction of femininity’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 1999, 32 (3): 279–91, p. 280; See also Londa Schiebinger, The mind has no sex?: women in the origins of modern science, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1989, ch. 6; Maryanne Cline Horowitz, ‘Aristotle and woman’, J. Hist. Biol., 1976, 9: 183–213; Joan Cadden, The meanings of sex difference in the Middle Ages, Cambridge University Press, 1993.

⁷² Guerrini, op. cit., note 71 above, p. 279.

⁷³ Ibid., p. 285.

⁷⁴ Here Cohausen may have been influenced by Roger Bacon's recommendation that the touch of girls, beautiful song, and the sight of beauty could give longevity. See Bruce Moran, Distilling knowledge: alchemy, chemistry, and the scientific revolution, Cambridge and London, Harvard University Press, 2005, p. 24. My thanks to one of the anonymous reviewers for this reference.

⁷⁵ Cohausen, Hermippus redivivus, op. cit., note 7 above, ch. 3, pp. 37–48 is entitled: “Resolvuntur geminae autori ab Amico propositae Quaestiones: 1. Cur non longaevior fuerit Salomon, cui tot ex integra puellarum legione singulis horis fuerunt Nympharum Aspirationes?” or “Here some questions are solved which were proposed by a friend of the Author: 1. Why was it that Solomon did not have a long life, as every single hour he was surrounded by the breath of a legion of young women?”

⁷⁶ Ibid., pp. 61–2: “Sic passim vetulis os oblinunt juvenes, ut aurea haereditate potiantur. Interim vetulae, quibus putridus oris halitus, et impuri, exsucci squalidique corporis nequam est Spiritus, pravo contactu faedoque commercio maritos juvenes brevi tempore emarcere faciunt, et in senium propero gradu praecipitant”. “Thus everywhere young man defile [themselves] with the breath of their elderly wives to obtain a golden inheritance. Meanwhile the elderly wives, with their unclean breaths from their squalid bodies decay with their crooked touch their youthful husbands in a short time, causing their precipitous aging.”

⁷⁷ Ibid., pp. 63–4: Tanta est cati domestici malignitas ex oculis et ore spirans (nam et ejus cerebrum homini toxicum habetur) … ac hecticam immaturamque mortem inciderint… . Sed nec minus periculum est, si quis uxorem vetulam concubinam habeat, quae juvenilis vitae flammam satis reluctantem non quidem statim difflare et dissipare, paulatim tamen instar cati imminuere et extinguere potest]; Roger Chartier, ‘Texts, Symbols, and Frenchness’, J. Mod. Hist., Dec. 1985, 57 (4): 682–95, has an analysis of cat symbols in the early modern period in its analysis of Robert Darnton's ‘Great cat massacre’. See Robert Darnton, ‘The great cat massacre, 1730’, History Today, Aug. 1984, 34: 7–15; Pierre Roudil, ‘Dieu ou diable: le chat dans L'histoire’, Histoire Magazine, 1983, 36: 66–73.

⁷⁸ Cohausen, Hermippus redivivus, op. cit., note 7 above, p. 84. For a complete description of Cohausen's relatives, see Beauvois, op. cit., note 2 above, pp. 134–9.

⁷⁹ Cohausen, Hermippus redivivus, op. cit., note 7 above pp. 86, 90.

⁸⁰ Ibid., p. 86.

⁸¹ William R Newman, Promethean ambitions: alchemy and the quest to perfect nature, University of Chicago Press, 2004, p. xiii.

⁸² Campbell, ‘Preface’ to Cohausen, op. cit., note 12 above, pp. v–vi.