468 History of Luminescence 



In answer to question 3, why fatty and membranous parts were 

 mostly observed to shine, Puerarius believed it was not only because 

 they were white but because fatty substances retain warmth and fire. 



The fatty lumbar parts are especially warm, as the doctors know, and 

 some, with good reason, derive from there the stimuli of desire by which 

 the animals are driven. It was clear to everybody that the lambs were 

 excited with this frenzy, and this explains why the other parts did not 

 diffuse so many rays, since they do not enclose so many fiery particles 

 nor can they prevent them from breaking forth, nor do they possess a 

 disposition so favorable for the reflection of light. 



In answer to the final question, why the fires in the meat went 

 out during decay, Puerarius answered: 



The evident reason for this being that with the elements completely 

 broken up and severed, the shining light gradually wasted away and soon 

 gave way to darkness. But why, then, should some things acquire light 

 by putrefaction and retain it for a long time, e. g. wood? 



The answer is to be found in the above quoted principles; only in 

 the case of wood, putrefaction takes a slow course. Wood, as con- 

 trasted with flesh, retains its structure for a long time until finally 

 it is resolved into ashes or earth, and it shines as long as the elements 

 are not completely dissolved. 



The reasoning of Puerarius is fully as ingenious and somewhat 

 similar to that of Lemery (see Chapter IV) , who also attributed 

 the light of meat at Orleans to " spirituous herbs " the animals had 

 eaten, and held that it was most bright in meat from spirited ani- 

 mals, which were overheated or not sufficiently rested before they 

 were killed. Lemery wrote: " when the flesh begins to stink, there 

 appears no more light in it because these vigorous spirits are then 

 spent, or else they come to be confused in the meat by the means of 

 another fermentation." ^° 



The light of lamb flesh at Montpellier and Padua was stirprising 

 enough, but Johann Wesling or Vesling ^^ (1598-1649) in 1664 had 

 " distinctly seen the brilliance of light in the brain of freshly slaugh- 

 tered cattle that had been finely dissected, and when he dissected 

 the pericardium of a living young hyena, the heart had shone for a 

 while with a fiery shine, to the great amazement of Aloysius Cor- 

 nelius, the Venetian consul, who was present." 



Wesling believed that " in the body of living beings the heavenly 



^° Kiell translation (1698:698) of Lemery's Coiirs de chymie. 



^^ Vesling was a German physician, professor of anatomy at Padua. See Epistolae 

 medicae 34: 1664. The incident was reported both by Bartholin (1647: 169) and by 

 Sachs (Gammerologia, 1665: 896) . 



