68 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO l666, 



into the parts new juice and vigour : And, canon XIII, he affirms, that frictions 

 conduce much to longevity. 



2. The Hon. Robert Boyle, in his Usefulness of Experimental Philosophy 

 {§ 2. ch. 15.) considering the body of a living man or any animal as an en- 

 gine so composed, that there is a conspiring communication betwixt its parts, 

 by virtue whereof a very slight impression of adventitious matter upon some 

 one part may be able to work on some other distant part, or perhaps on the 

 whole engine, a change far exceeding what the same adventitious matter could 

 do upon a body not so contrived : — Representing (I say) an animal in this 

 manner, and thence inferring how it may be altered for the better or worse 

 by motions or impulses confessedly mechanical, observes, how some are re- 

 covered from swooning fits by pricking ; others grow faint and vomit by the 

 motion of a coach ; others by the agitation of a ship, recovering by rest and 

 going a shore. Again, how in our stables a horse well curried is half fed, &c. 

 The same writer upon the authority of Piso, refers to the Brasilian empirics, 

 whose rude frictions do strange things, both in preserving health and curing 

 diseases ; curing cold and chronic complaints by friction, as they do acute dis^ 

 orders by unction. 



3. In this section we have (on the authority of Dr. John Beale) an account 

 of a very large wen of two or three years standing, being cured by the applica- 

 tion of a dead man's hand to it ; and of warts being removed in another person 

 by the same means.* Also, of a gentlemen being cured of a great pain in his 

 feet (probably of a gouty nature) by having them licked night and morning by 

 a spaniel. In the last part of these observations, we are told of a blacksmith, 

 who possessed the particular faculty of Causing vomitings by stroking the 

 stomach, of giving stools by stroking the belly, and of appeasing the gout and 

 other pains by stroking the parts affected.'}- 



Some Particulars communicated from Abroad, concerning the Permanent 

 Spot in Jupiter ; and a Contest between tivo Artists on Optic Glasses, 

 &c. N' 12, p. 209. 



Eustachio Divini, says the informer, has written a long letter, pretending that 

 the permanent spot ;|; in Jupiter was first of all discovered with his glasses ; and 



* The influence of this uncertain and disgusting remedy in the removal of glandular tumors is re- 

 ferable to the imagination ; through the medium of which a considerable effect is sometimes produced 

 upon the absorbent system. 



■[ Thus it appears that animal magnetism is of a more remote date than modern empirics imagine. 



X See Number 1 , of these Transactions ; by the date of which it will appear, that that spot was 

 observed in England, a good while before any such thing was so much as heard of elsewhere. 



