242 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



so that, even granting hairs to have an affinity for the 

 resin, that fact in itself, to his mind, seems to negative the 

 idea of their possessing any similar affinity for the gem. 

 The discovery of another substance which, while different 

 from either magnet or amber, still possesses the same sin- 

 gular drawing power, is of no importance to him in com- 

 parison with getting these stubborn facts within the safe 

 confines of a new theory a conclusion eminently charac- 

 teristic of his time. And he is not unsuccessful at least, 

 to his own satisfaction. The amber and the diamond, he 

 finally announces, do not attract hairs and twigs because 

 hairs and twigs are hairs and twigs; but because, in the 

 thing attracted, there is a principle, perhaps in the in- 

 cluded air, which is first drawn by the analogous principle 

 existing in the thing attracting. In other words, the re- 

 ciprocal attraction and repulsion of the magnet, the amber 

 or the diamond, depends upon whether the principles enter- 

 ing into their composition principles of a spiritual char- 

 acter apparently are analogous or contrary. 1 



This was published in 1546. Fracastorio had then at- 

 tained great fame as a physician a fame which lives yet; 

 for he was the first to assert that contagion is due to " in- 

 visible effluvia" and not to occult causes, and to dis- 

 tinguish the exanthematic typhus of the plague, which, 

 up to that time, included all the grave epidemic maladies; 

 while from the hero of his famous poem comes the name 

 of that hideous disease of which the Old World is said to 

 have known nothing until after the discovery of the New. 

 That his simple opinion that Trent was unhealthy should 

 have resulted in the removal of a great council of the 

 Church from that town to Bologna, is sufficient to show 

 the immense influence he exerted. 2 The announcement 

 of the foregoing theory by so high an authority therefore 



1 Hier. Fracastorii, Veronensis: Opera Omnia. Venice, 1555. Lib. 

 de Sympathia et Antipathia. 



2 Biographic Universelle, Art. Fracastorio. La Grande Encyclopedic, 

 Paris, 1893, Vol. 17. 



