LA UFER— CARDAN'S SUSPENSION 



to Painting"), treating in the main of recipes giving substitutes for 

 gold and silver, recipes for writing in gold and silver, purple dyeing 

 and technique of pigments. The work is of especial importance for 

 the first indubitable mention of alcohol. It is extant in an English 

 manuscript of the twelfth century edited by Sir Thomas Phillipps in 

 Archceologia, 1 and in a German manuscript of the tenth century in 

 Schlettstadt, found by A. Giry in 1877. H. Diels 2 dates the com- 

 pilation of the Latin work in the time of Charles the Great, on the 

 basis of linguistic arguments, and, like Berthelot, traces its contents 

 to the Alexandrian school of alchemists. The text of the mediaeval 

 book in many cases agrees exactly, even in particulars, with the 

 sources of Greek alchemy; and if more of these had been preserved 

 to us, the coincidences would presumably be still more numerous. 

 This point of view should be emphasized, as the ideas emanating 

 from the MappcB clavicula point straight to Alexandria. The passage 

 relative to a suspension a la Cardan is embedded in a series of recipes 

 for magicians or jugglers, and runs as follows: "Given four concentric 

 circles revolving the one about another, so arranged that their diam- 

 eters coincide; if a vase is suspended in their interior, in whatever 

 way they may be turned, nothing will be spilled." Berthelot thought 

 it probable that this idea would be traceable to Greek physicists, but 

 at that time could not prove his supposition. In this estimate, how- 

 ever, he was not mistaken, for about a decade later the fact was 

 established in the writings of Philo of Byzantium, a Greek mechani- 

 cian who in all probability lived in Alexandria during the third cen- 

 tury B.C. 3 His work on mechanics (/nzx """? owra&s) is lost, except the 

 fourth book dealing with military engines (the oldest extant work 

 on artillery) and excerpts from the seventh and eighth books. The 

 fifth book on pneumatics is preserved in the Latin translation of an 

 Arabic manuscript and in an Arabic recension. The latter has been 

 edited and translated by Baron Carra de Vaux. Here we read in 

 article 56 as follows: "Construction of the octagonal inkwell, a very 

 elegant apparatus. We make an inkwell octagonal, hexagonal, square, 

 pentagonal, or whatever form may be given to prismatic glasses. 

 This inkwell has on each side a place whence ink may be drawn, and 

 in whatever position this object is placed, its upper face presents you 

 an opening for the introduction of the pen without anything being 

 overturned. The pen is dipped in, it meets the ink, and you write 



1 Vol. xxxii, 1847, p. 187. 



2 Die Entdeckung des Alkohols, Abhandlungen Preuss. Akad., 1913, pp. 6-17. 



3 W. Schmidt, Heronis Alexandrini opera, vol. I, p. lxx; F. Susemihl, Gesch. d. griech. Lit. in 

 der Alexandrinerzeit, vol. I, p. 744. Others assign his lifetime to the second century B.C. The 

 problem is still controversial. 



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