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sealing in wax, cements, and lead, is ancient, and paved 

 the way to the printing on paper, or the art of the press. 

 So in cookery, salt preserves meats better in winter than 

 in summer might not this be usefully transferred to baths, 

 and the occasional regulation of their temperature ? So by 

 late experience salt is found of great efficacy in condensing, 

 by the way of artificial freezing might not this be trans 

 ferred to the condensing of metals, since it is found that the 

 aquas- fortes, composed of salts, dissolve particles of gold out 

 of some lighter metals ? So painting refreshes the memory 

 by the image of a thing; and is not this transferred in what 

 they call the art of memory ? And let it be observed, in 

 general, that nothing is of greater efficacy in procuring a 

 stock of new and useful inventions, than to have the experi 

 ments of numerous mechanic arts known to a single person, 

 or to a few, who might mutually improve each other by 

 conversation; so that by this translation of experiments 

 arts might mutually warm and light up each other, as it 

 were, by an intermixture of rays. For although the rational 

 way, by means of a new machine for the mind, promises 

 much greater things; yet this sagacity, or learned experi 

 ence, will in the meantime scatter among mankind many 

 matters, which, as so many missive donatives among the 

 ancients, are near at hand. 



The transferring of experiments from one part of an art 

 to another differs little from the transferring one art to an 

 other. But because some arts are so extensive as to allow 

 of the translation of experiments within themselves, it is 

 proper to mention this kind also, especially as it is of very 

 great moment in some particular arts. Thus it greatly con 

 tributes to enlarge the art of medicine to have the experi 

 ments of that part which treats of the cures of diseases, 

 transferred to those parts which relate to the preservation 

 of health and the prolongation of life. For if any famous 

 opiate should, in a pestilential distemper, suppress the vio 

 lent inflammation of the spirits, it might thence seem prob 

 able that something of the same kind, rendered familiar 



