110 i NOVUM ORGAN UM. 



its own nature originally warm. For neither stone, metal, 

 sulphur, fossils, wood, water, nor dead animal carcasses, are 

 found warm. The warm springs in baths appear to be 

 heated accidentally, by flame, subterraneous fire (such as is 

 thrown up by Etna and many other mountains), or by the 

 contact of certain bodies, as heat is exhibited in the disso 

 lution of iron and tin. The degree of heat therefore in in 

 animate objects is not sensible to our touch, but they differ 

 in their degrees of cold, for wood and metal are not equally 

 cold. This, however, belongs to the table of degrees of 

 cold. 



2. But with regard to potential heat and predisposition 

 to flame, we find many inanimate substances wonderfully 

 adapted to it : as sulphur, naphtha, and saltpetre. 



3. Bodies which have previously required heat, as horse- 

 dung from the animal, or lime, and perhaps ashes and soot 

 from fire, retain some latent portion of it. Hence distil 

 lations and separations of substances are effected by burying 

 them in horse-dung, and heat is excited in lime by sprink 

 ling it with water (as has been before observed). 



4. In the vegetable world we know of no plant, nor part 

 of any plant (as the exudations or pith) that is warm to 

 man s touch. Yet (as we have before observed) green weeds 

 grow warm when confined, and some vegetables are warm 

 and others cold to our internal touch, i. e. the palate and 

 stomach, or even after a while to our external skin (as is 

 shown in plasters and ointments). 



5. We know of nothing in the various parts of animals, 

 when dead or detached from the rest, that is warm to the 

 touch. For horse-dung itself does not retain its heat, un 

 less it be confined and buried. All dung, however, appears 

 to possess a potential heat, as in manuring fields. So also 

 dead bodies are endued with this latent and potential heat, 

 to such a degree that in cemeteries where people are interred 

 daily, the earth acquires a secret heat which consumes any 

 recently deposited body much sooner than pure earth : and 

 they tell you that the people of the east are acquainted with 

 a fine soft cloth, made of the down of birds, which can melt 

 butter wrapt gently up in it by its own warmth. 



6. Manures, such as every kind of dung, chalk, sea-sand, 

 salt, and the like, have some disposition towards heat. 



7. All putrefaction exhibits some slight degree of heat, 

 though not enough to be perceptible by the touch. For 

 neither the substances, which by putrefaction are converted 

 into animalculae, as flesh and cheese, nor rotten wood which 



