VAN HELMONT. 375 



the Anatomist, our Censor, happily know the reason why 

 a Dog swings his Tayl when he rejoyces, but a I^yon when 

 he is angry; and a Cat when pleased advances hers in an 

 erect posture. , . . The imbecility of our Understandings 

 in not comprehending the more abstruse and retired causes 

 of things is not to be ascribed to any defect in their nature, 

 but in our own hoodwiukt Intellectuals." 



This, of course, is delightfully subtle ; indeed, to 

 Hoodwink our Intellectuals, and then to say that we can- 

 not understand the hoodwinking deception because our 

 Intellectuals are "hoodwinkt" leaves Van Helmont 

 perched on a pinnacle of effrontery which the modern pro- 

 moter of the electric and magnetic nostrum has yet to 

 climb. "His experiments need to be confirmed by more 

 witnesses than one," says Robert Boyle, 1 in his solemn 

 fashion, delivering the judgment of the next generation, 

 "especially since the extravagances and untruths to be 

 met with in his treatise of the magnetic cure of wounds 

 have made his testimonies suspected in his other writ- 

 ings." Yet perhaps he deceived no one more than he 

 deceived himself, for he invented an "Alkahest" as a 

 remedy for all diseases, and claimed to have discovered 

 the means of prolonging life far beyond its natural term ; 

 but none the less left the world in his sixty-seventh year. 



The Rosicrucian delusions regarding the magnet were 

 taught in England by Dr. Robert Fludd ("a Torrent of 

 Sympathetick Knowledge," says Charleton) who began to 

 practice medicine in London by virtue of a degree from 

 Oxford in 1605. They made headway why not, since 

 after all they were in full accordance with so deep-rooted 

 a national superstition as that the King's touch would 

 cure scrofula? Why not, in a country rapidly nearing the 

 vortex of Civil War, under conditions when differences in 

 theology and politics made a man's neighbors his foes, and 

 every man's sword his best friend? What were all the 



'Boyle: Works, Kd. by Birch, London, 1744 (The Skeptical Chemist), 

 Vol. i, 313. 



