xii Contents 



PAGE 



Paracelsus and Sixteenth-Century Alchemists ... 63 



Conrad Gesner and the First Book on Luminescence . 64 



Luminous Stones 70 



Rondelet, Aldrovandi, and Other Natural Historians . 72 



Sixteenth-Century Entomology 74 



Ulysses Aldrovandi and Others 74 



Thomas Muffet 77 



Liquor Lucidus 80 



Perpetual Lamps 82 



Strange Lights 83 



Shining Flesh 86 



Summary 88 



Chapter IV. The Seventeenth Century 90 



Introduction 90 



Francis Bacon 91 



The Bolognian Stone and Phosphorescence .... 94 



Rene Descartes and the French Point of View ... 95 



Scientific Societies and Luminescence 98 



Scientific Museums and Luminescence 100 



Athanasius Kircher and Kaspar Schott 103 



Lignum Nephriticum and Fluorescence of Solutions . 107 



Thomas Bartholin 107 



Naturalists and New Luminous Animals . . . 116 



New Phosphors 119 



Textbooks of Chemistry and Physics 121 



Theses on Things that Shine at Night 122 



Robert Boyle 124 



Robert Hooke 127 



Fermentation and Luminescence 131 



Miscellaneous Writers 134 



Robert Plot 134 



Paolo Casati 135 



Domenico Bottoni 137 



Jacques Rohault 138 



Antoine Le Grand 141 



Nicolas Lemery 143 



Isaac Newton 147 



Summary 148 



