Note 3 — REPORT
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Paracelsus Arecolus Philippus Theophrastus Bombastus de Hohenheim is to be regarded as the inventor of the magnetical system. He was born at a village near Zurich in Switzerland in 1493, and died in 1541. His profession was that of a physician, and he obtained great reputation by the use of mercury and opium, medicines that were unknown, or not employed by the physicians of those times. But beside this, he was a proficient in alchymy, astrology, and magic. He was acquainted with the philosopher’s stone, and the universal medicine. And he invented an elixir, in the use of which a man could not fail to live to the age of a thousand years.
Van Helmont was the immediate successor of Paracelsus in the pursuit of the magnetical science, and wrote an express treatise De Magnetica Vulnerum Curatione.
All the other persons enumerated, lived in the seventeenth century.
“To Maxwel, we are particularly indebted for the most complete and copious treatise upon the subject, in which he has endeavoured to support its declining credit by calling in the assistance of that theory of the universal spirit, which he derived from the earliest philosophers of antiquity, and in which we are presented with the exact counterpart of the system of M. Mesmer.
“Another inhabitant of this island, the learned and illustrious sir Kenelm Digby, is well known for his invention of the sympathetic powder; which it was only necessary to apply to the linnen which had imbibed the blood or pus of a wound, or to the arm or sword of him who inflicted it, provided they were still stained with the blood of the wounded person. It was necessary however, that the wound should be kept perfectly clean, and protected from the air.
“There was a sympathetic sweating powder, invented so lately as the year 1745. The means of applying it was, by mixing it with the urine of the person diseased, and keeping it boiling over a fire, as long as you wished the perspiration to continue. During the operation, the patient was to keep his bed, to be covered up warm, and to drink several large basons of tea. This medicine was never known to fail of its effect.” Thouret.