Chapter XLVI: A domestic picture is given, an interior, with the (5)

With a well-appointed fleet of thirty ships and a select number of intrepid warriors, he weighed anchor from the harbor of Corunna for Syria. It appears that war was not the sole business of this equipment; for in this fleet were embarked twelve youths of uncommon learning and abilities, who were directed to make remarks on whatever they found new, either in astronomy, navigation, arts, sciences, or manufactures. They were to communicate their remarks and discoveries to each other, and keep an exact account of whatever was worthy of notice. This took place in the year of the world, 2650.

These twelve youths were _reporters_, and if this story be true, the profession constituting “the fourth estate” may boast of an ancient lineage.

THE FIRST EPIGRAM.

Among “first things,” the following is worth preserving, as it is believed to be the first epigram extant in the English language. It was written by Sir Thomas Wyat, who in some of his sonnets did not hesitate to intimate his secret passion for Anne Boleyn.

_Of a new married student that plaid fast or lose._

A studient at his bok so plast,
That wealth he might have wonne,
From bok to wife did flete in hast,
From welth to wo to runne.
Now who hath plaid a feater cast,
Since jugling first begonne?
In _knitting_ of himself so _fast_,
Himself he hath undone.

NEWS.

The word news is commonly supposed to be derived from the adjective _new_. It is asserted, however, that its origin is traceable to a custom in former times of placing on the newspapers of the day the initial letters of the cardinal points of the compass, thus:—

N
│
│
W──────┼──────E
│
│
S

These letters were intended to indicate that the paper contained intelligence from the four quarters of the globe, but they finally came to assume the form of the word _news_, from which the term newspaper is derived.

THE EARLIEST NEWSPAPERS.

The Englishe Mercurie, now in MS. in the British Museum, has been proved to be a forgery. The oldest regular newspaper published in England was established by Nathaniel Butter, in 1662.

The oldest paper in France was commenced by Theophrastus Renaudet, in 1632, during the reign of Louis XIII. It was called the _Gazette de France_.

The first Dutch newspaper, which is still continued under the name of the _Haarlem Courant_, is dated January 8, 1656. It was then called _De Weeckelycke Courante van Europa_, and contained two small folio pages of news.

The first Russian newspaper was published in 1703. Peter the Great not only took part personally in its editorial composition, but in correcting proofs, as appears from sheets still in existence in which are marks and alterations in his own hand. There are two complete copies of the first year’s edition of this paper in the Imperial Library at St. Petersburg.

The first newspaper established in North America was the Boston News-Letter, commenced April 24, 1704. It was half a sheet of paper, twelve inches by eight, two columns on a page. B. Green was the printer. It survived till 1776,—seventy-two years. It advocated the policy of the British Government at the commencement of the Revolution.

From a copy of this paper printed in 1769 is obtained the following announcement:—

“The bell-cart will go through Boston, before the end of next month, to collect rags for the paper-mill at Milton, when all people that will encourage the paper-manufactory may dispose of their rags:

Rags are as beauties, which concealéd lie,
But when in paper, how it charms the eye!
Pray save your rags, new beauties it discover;
For paper truly, every one’s a lover:
By the pen and press such knowledge is displayed
As wouldn’t exist if paper was not made.
Wisdom of things mysterious, divine,
Illustriously doth on paper shine.”

THE FIRST PRINTING BY STEAM.

The first printing by steam was executed in the year 1817, by Bensley & Son, London. The first book thus printed was Dr. Elliotson’s second edition of Blumenbach’s Physiology.

THE FIRST TELEGRAPHIC MESSAGE.

Professor Morse, having returned to his native land from Europe, proceeded immediately to Washington, where he renewed his endeavors to procure the passage of the bill granting the appropriation of thirty thousand dollars. Towards the close of the session of 1844, the House of Representatives took it up and passed it by a large majority, and it only remained for the action of the Senate. Its progress through this house, as might be supposed, was watched with the most intense anxiety by Professor Morse. There were only two days before the close of the session, and it was found, on examination of the calendar, that no less than one hundred and forty-three bills had precedence to it. Professor Morse had nearly reached the bottom of his purse; his hard-earned savings were almost spent; and, although he had struggled on with undying hope for many years, it is hardly to be wondered at that he felt disheartened now. On the last night of the session he remained till nine o’clock, and then left without the slightest hope that the bill would be passed. He returned to his hotel, counted his money, and found that after paying his expenses to New York he would have seventy-five cents left. That night he went to bed sad, but not without hope for the future; for, through all his difficulties and trials, that never forsook him. The next morning, as he was going to breakfast, one of the waiters informed him that a young lady was in the parlor waiting to see him. He went in immediately, and found that the young lady was Miss Ellsworth, daughter of the Commissioner of Patents, who had been his most steadfast friend while in Washington.

“I come,” said she, “to congratulate you.”

“For what?” said Professor Morse.

“On the passage of your bill,” she replied.

“Oh, no: you must be mistaken,” said he. “I remained in the Senate till a late hour last night, and there was no prospect of its being reached.”

“Am I the first, then,” she exclaimed, joyfully, “to tell you?”

“Yes, if it is really so.”

“Well,” she continued, “father remained till the adjournment, and heard it passed; and I asked him if I might not run over and tell you.”

“Annie,” said the Professor, his emotion almost choking his utterance, “the first message that is sent from Washington to Baltimore shall be sent from you.”

“Well,” she replied, “I will keep you to your word.”

While the line was in process of completion, Prof. Morse was in New York, and upon receiving intelligence that it was in working order, he wrote to those in charge, telling them not to transmit any messages over it till his arrival. He then set out immediately for Washington, and on reaching that city sent a note to Miss Ellsworth, informing her that he was now ready to fulfill his promise, and asking her what message he should send.

To this he received the following reply:—

§What hath God wrought!§

Words that ought to be written in characters of living light. The message was twice repeated, and each time with the greatest success. As soon as the result of the experiment was made known, Governor Seymour, of Connecticut, afterwards United States minister at St. Petersburg, called upon Professor Morse and claimed the first message for his State, on the ground that Miss Ellsworth was a native of Hartford. We need scarcely add that his claim was admitted; and now, engraved in letters of gold, it is displayed conspicuously in the archives of the Historical Society of Connecticut.

Nothing New Under the Sun.

FORESHADOWINGS OF THE MAGNETIC TELEGRAPH.

O utinam hæc ratio scribendi prodeat usu,
Cautior et citior properaret epistola, nullas
Latronum verita insidias fluviosve morantes:
Ipse suis Princeps manibus sibi conficeret rem!
_Nos soboles scribarum, emersi ex æquore nigro,
Consecraremus calamum Magnetis ad aras!_

The _Prolusiones Academicæ of Famianus Strada_, first printed in 1617, consist of a series of essays upon Oratory, Philosophy, and Poetry, with some admirable imitations of sundry Roman authors, in the style of _Father Prout’s Reliques_. In the imitation of Lucretius, ii. 6, is a description of the loadstone and its power of communicating intelligence, remarkable as foreshadowing the modern method of telegraphic communication. The following is a literal translation of the curious passage:—

The Loadstone is a wonderful sort of mineral. Any articles made of iron, like needles, if touched by it, derive by contact not only peculiar power, but a certain property of motion by which they turn ever towards the Constellation of the Bear, near the North Pole. By some peculiar correspondency of impulse, any number of needles, which may have touched the loadstone, preserve at all times a precisely corresponding position and motion. Thus it happens that if one needle be moved at Rome, any other, however far apart, is bound by some secret natural condition to follow the same motion.

If you desire, therefore, to communicate intelligence to a distant friend, who cannot be reached by letter, take a plain, round, flat disc, and upon its outer rim mark down the letters of the alphabet, A, B, C, &c., and, traversing upon the middle of your disc, have a needle (which has touched loadstone) so arranged that it may be made to touch upon any particular letter _ad libitum_. Make a similar disc, the exact duplicate of this first one, with corresponding letters on its margin, and with a revolving magnetized needle. Let the friend you propose corresponding with take, at his departure, one disc along with him, and let him agree with you beforehand on what particular days and at what particular hours he will take observation of the needle, to see if it be vibrating and to learn what it marks on the index. With this arrangement understood between you both, if you wish to hold a private conversation with this friend, whom the shores of some distant land have separated from you, turn your finger to the disc and touch the easy-moving needle. Before you lie, marked upon the outer edge, all the various letters: direct the needle to such letters as are necessary to form the words you want, touching a little letter here and there with the needle’s point, as it goes traversing round and round the board, until you throw together, one by one, your various ideas. Lo! the wonderful fidelity of correspondence! Your distant friend notes the revolving needle vibrate without apparent impulse and fly hither and thither round the rim. He notes its movements, and reading, as he follows its motion, the various letters which make up the words, he perceives all that is necessary, and learns your meaning from the interpreting needle. When he sees the needle pause, he, in turn, in like manner touches the various letters, and sends back his answer to his friend. Oh that this style of writing were brought into use, that a friendly message might travel quicker and safer, defying snares of robbers or delaying rivers! Would that the prince himself would finish the great work with his own hands! Then we race of scribblers, emerging from our sea of ink, would lay the quill an offering on the altars of the loadstone.

This idea of Strada is based upon the erroneous impression entertained generally at the time when he wrote, that magnetic power, when imparted by the loadstone to metallic articles like needles, communicated to them a kind of homogeneous impulse, which of necessity caused between them a sympathetic correspondence of motion.

The curious reader will be further interested to learn from the following passage, extracted from the “Tour” of §Arthur Young§, the distinguished agriculturist, who travelled through Ireland in 1775–78, that the theory of electrical correspondence by means of a wire was _practically_ illustrated before Mr. Morse was born:—

In electricity, Mons. Losmond has made a remarkable discovery. You write two or three words on a paper; he takes it with him into a room, and turns a machine enclosed in a cylindrical case, at the top of which is an electrometer, in the shape of a small fine pith ball. A wire connects with a similar cylinder and electrometer in a distant apartment, and his wife, by remarking the corresponding motions of the ball, writes down the words they indicate, _from which it appears that he has formed an alphabet of motions. As the length of wire makes no difference in the effect, a correspondence might be carried on at any distance_, within and without a besieged town, for instance, or for a purpose much more worthy and a thousand times more harmless, between two lovers, prohibited or prevented from any better epistolary intercourse.

A second edition of Mr. Young’s Tour was published in quarto in 1794, and the above extract may be found on page 79, volume i.

THE FIRST DISCOVERIES OF STEAM-POWER.

The following extracts from an address by Edward Everett, at an agricultural fair, embody facts the more interesting from their limited notoriety:—

I never contemplate the history of navigation of the ocean by steam, but it seems to illustrate to me in the most striking manner the slow steps by which a great movement advances for generations, for ages, from the first germ,—then, when the hour is come, the rapidity with which it rushes to a final consummation. Providence offered this great problem of navigating the ocean by steam to every civilized nation almost on the globe. As long ago as the year 1543, there was a captain in Spain, who constructed a vessel of two hundred tons, and propelled it, at Barcelona, in the presence of the Emperor Charles V. and his court, by an engine, the construction of which he kept a secret. But old documents tell us it was a monster caldron boiler of water, and that there were two movable wheels on the outside of the vessel. The Emperor was satisfied with its operation, but the treasurer of the kingdom interposed objections to its introduction. The engine itself seems to have sprung to a point of perfection hardly surpassed at the present day, but no encouragement was given to the enterprise. Spain was not ripe for it; the age was not ripe for it; and the poor inventor, whose name was Blasco de Guerere, wearied and disgusted at the want of patronage, took the engine out of the vessel and allowed the ship to rot in the arsenal, and the secret of his machine was buried in his grave.

This was in 1543. A century passed away, and Providence offered the same problem to be solved by France. In reference to this, we have an extraordinary account, and from a source equally extraordinary,—from the writings of a celebrated female, in the middle of that century, equally renowned for her beauty, for her immoralities, and for her longevity,—for she lived to be one hundred and thirty-four years of age,—the famous Marian de l’Orme. There is a letter from this lady, written to one of her admirers in 1641, containing an account of a visit she made to a mad-house in Paris in company with the Marquis of Worcester. She goes on to relate, that in company with the marquis, while crossing the courtyard of that dismal establishment, almost petrified with terror, and clinging to her companion, she saw a frightful face through the bars of the building, and heard this voice:—“I am not mad—I am not mad: I have made a discovery which will enrich the kingdom that shall adopt it.” She asked the guide what it meant: he shrugged his shoulders and said, laughingly, “Not much; something about the powers of steam.” Upon this, the lady laughed also, to think that a man should go mad on such a frivolous subject. The guide went on to say that the man’s name was Solomon de Coste; that he came from Normandy four years before, and exhibited to the king an invention by which, by the power of steam, you could move a carriage, navigate the ocean: “in short, if you believed him,” said the guide, “there was nothing you could not do by the power of steam.” Cardinal Richelieu, who at that time was France itself, and who wielded the whole power of government,—and, in truth, an enlightened man, as worldly wisdom goes,—was appealed to by Solomon de Coste. De Coste was a persevering man, and he followed Cardinal Richelieu from place to place, exhibiting his invention, until the cardinal, getting tired of his importunities, sent him to the mad-house. The guide stated further that he had written a book entitled _Motive Power_, and handed the visitors a copy of it. The Marquis of Worcester, who was an inventor, was much interested in the book, and incorporated a considerable portion of it in his well-known work called _The Century of Invention_.

It will be seen from this anecdote how France proved in 1641, as Spain had proved in 1543, that she was unable to take up and wield this mortal thunderbolt. And so the problem of navigating the ocean by steam was reserved for the Anglo-Saxon race. Soon after this period, the best mechanical skill of England was directed towards this invention. Experiments were often made, with no success, and sometimes with only partial success, until the middle of the last century, when the seeds implanted in the minds of ingenious men for two hundred years germinated, and the steam-engine—that scarcely inanimate Titan, that living, burning mechanism—was brought nearly to a state of perfection by James Watt, who took out a patent in 1769,—the great year in which Wellington and Napoleon were born; and ages after the names of Austerlitz and Waterloo shall perish from the memory of man, the myriad hosts of intelligent labor, marshalled by the fiery champions that James Watt has placed in the field, shall gain their bloodless triumph, not for the destruction but for the service of mankind. All hail, then, to the mute, indefatigable giant, in the depths of the darksome mines, along the pathway of travel and trade, and on the mountain wave, that is destined to drag, urge, heave, haul, for the service of man! No fatigue shall palsy its herculean arm, no trampled hosts shall writhe beneath its iron feet, no widow’s heart shall bleed at its beneficent victories. England invented the steam-engine; but it seems as if by the will of Providence she could not go farther. Queen of the seas, as she deemed herself, she could not apply the invention she had brought almost to perfection, and that part of the great problem, the navigation of the ocean by steam, was reserved for the other branch of the Anglo-Saxon race,—the branch situated in a region in this Western hemisphere whose territory is traversed by some of the noblest rivers that belt the surface of the globe, and separated by the world-wide ocean from the Eastern hemisphere. It is amazing to consider how, with the dawn of the Revolution, the thoughts of men turned to the application of steam-navigation. Rumsey, Fitch, and Evans made experiments, and those experiments attracted the notice of one whom nothing escaped pertaining to the welfare of his country: I mean Washington. And we have a certificate from him, expressing the satisfaction with which he had witnessed the experiment of Rumsey. The attempt proved rather unsuccessful. I think it a providential appointment that the ocean was not navigated by steam in the Revolutionary age. The enormous preponderance of British capital and skill, if the ocean had been navigated by steam, would have put in her possession facilities for blockading our ports and transporting armies to our coasts, which might have had a disastrous effect on the result of the whole contest. But the Revolution passed and independence was established: the hour had come, and the man was there.

In the year 1799 this system of steam-navigation became matured in the mind of Fulton, who found a liberal and active coadjutor in Chancellor Livingston, who, in the same year, applied to the Legislature of New York for an act of incorporation. I am sorry to say that America at that moment could not boast of much keener perception of the nature of this discovery than France or Spain had done before. Chancellor Livingston at last had a petition drawn up of the act he desired passed. It was drafted by the young men of the Legislature, who, when tired of the graver matters of law, used to call up the “steam bill” that they might have a little fun. Young America, on that occasion, did not show himself much wiser than his senior. Nothing daunted at the coldness he received, nothing discouraged by the partial success of the first experiment, Chancellor Livingston persevered. Twenty years elapsed before steamers were found upon our lakes and rivers, and at that time such a system of steam-navigation was wholly unknown, except by hearsay, in Europe. This application of steam soon became a pressing necessity in this country, but twenty years more passed away before it was adopted in England. I could not but think, when the news of the Atlantic Telegraph came, what must have been the emotions of Fulton and Franklin could they have stood upon the quarter-deck of the Niagara and witnessed the successful termination of that electric communication which is the result of their united discoveries!

ÆRIAL NAVIGATION.

When air-balloons were first discovered, some one flippantly asked Dr. Franklin what was the use of it. The philosopher answered the question by asking another:—“What is the use of a new-born infant? It may become a man.”

The first balloon-ascension was made by Pilatre de Rozier and the Marquis d’Arlandes, November 21, 1783, in a montgolfière.

A century and a half before this, John Gregorie wrote, “The air itself is not so unlike to water, but that it may be demonstrated to be navigable, and that a ship may sail upon the convexity thereof by the same reasons that it is carried upon the ocean.”

In the first number of the Philosophical Collections, 1679, is “a demonstration how it is practically possible to make a ship, which shall be sustained by the air, and may be moved either by sails or oars,” from a work entitled _Prodroma_, published in Italian by P. Francesco Lana. The scheme was that of making a brazen vessel which should weigh less than the air it contained, and consequently float in the air when that which was within it was pumped out. He calculated every thing—except the pressure of the atmosphere, in consequence of which _slight_ oversight he realized no practical result.

THE CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.

Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood in 1619; but we learn from a passage in Longinus (ch. xxii.) that the fact was known two thousand years before. The father of critics, to exemplify and illustrate the use and value of _trope_ in writing, has garbled from the _Timæus_ of Plato a number of sentences descriptive of the anatomy of the human body, where the circulation of the blood is pointed at in terms singularly graphic. The exact extent of professional knowledge attained in the time of the great philosopher is by no means clearly defined. He speaks of the fact, however, not with a view to prove what was contested or chimerical, but avails himself of it to figure the surpassing wisdom of the gods in constructing the human frame.

ANÆSTHESIA.

The use of the vapor of sulphuric ether for the purpose of inducing insensibility to surgical operations was first practically adopted by Dr. Morton, of Boston, in 1846; that of chloroform, by Dr. Simpson, of Edinburgh, in 1847. To this period we must assign the most important epoch in the annals of surgery, and the date of one of the grandest discoveries of science and one of the greatest blessings ever conferred upon humanity.

The idea, however, of saving the human body, by artificial means, from the pains and tortures inflicted by the knife of the surgeon, has been by no means either first broached or first acted upon in recent times. Intense pain is regarded by mankind generally as so serious an evil that it would have been strange indeed if efforts had not been early made to diminish this species of suffering. The use of the juice of the poppy, henbane, mandragora, and other narcotic preparations, to effect this object by their deadening influence, may be traced back till it disappears in the darkness of a remote antiquity.

Intoxicating vapors were also employed, by way of inhalation, to produce the same effects as drugs of this nature introduced into the stomach. This appears from the account given by Herodotus of the practice of the Scythians, several centuries before Christ, of using the vapor of hemp-seed as a means of drunkenness. The known means of stupefaction were very early resorted to in order to counteract pain produced by artificial causes. In executions under the horrible form of crucifixion, soporific mixtures were administered to alleviate the pangs of the victim. The draught of vinegar and gall, or myrrh, offered to the Saviour in his agony, was the ordinary tribute of human sympathy extorted from the bystander by the spectacle of intolerable anguish.

That some lethean anodyne might be found to assuage the torment of surgical operations as they were anciently performed, [cauterizing the cut surfaces, instead of tying the arteries,] was not only a favorite notion, but it had been in some degree, however imperfect, reduced to practice. Pliny the Naturalist, who perished in the eruption of Vesuvius which entombed the city of Herculaneum in the year 79, bears distinct and decided testimony to this fact.

In his description of the plant known as the mandragora or circeius, he says, “It has a soporific power on the faculties of those who drink it. The ordinary potion is half a cup. It is drunk against serpents, and _before cuttings and puncturings_, lest they should be felt.” (_Bibitur et contra serpentes, et ante sectiones, punctionesque, ne sentiantur._)

When he comes to speak of the plant _eruca_, called by us the rocket, he informs us that its seeds, when drunk, infused in wine, by criminals about to undergo the lash, produce a certain callousness or induration of feeling (_duaitiam, quandam contra sensum induere_).

Pliny also asserts that the stone _Memphitis_, powdered and applied in a liniment with vinegar, will stupefy parts to be cut or cauterized, “for it so paralyzes the part that it feels no pain” (_nec sentit cruciatum_).

Dioscorides, a Greek physician of Cilicia, in Asia, who was born about the time of Pliny’s death, and who wrote an extensive work on the materia medica, observes, in his chapter on mandragora,—

1. “Some boil down the roots in wine to a third part, and preserve the juice thus procured, and give one cyathus of it in sleeplessness and severe pains, of whatever part; also _to cause the insensibility_—to produce the anæsthesia ποιειν αναισθησιαν—_of those who are to be cut or cauterized_.”

2. “There is prepared, also, besides the decoction, a wine from the bark of the root, three minæ being thrown into a cask of sweet wine, and of this three cyathi are given _to those who are to be cut or cauterized, as aforesaid_; for, being thrown into a deep sleep, _they do not perceive pain_.”

3. Speaking of another variety of mandragora, called _morion_, he observes, “Medical men use it also for those who are to be cut or cauterized.”

Dioscorides also describes the stone Memphitis, mentioned by Pliny, and says that when it is powdered and applied to parts to be cut or cauterized, they are rendered, _without the slightest danger_, wholly insensible to pain. Matthiolus, the commentator on Dioscorides, confirms his statement of the virtues of mandragora, which is repeated by Dodoneus. “Wine in which the roots of mandragora have been steeped,” says this latter writer, “brings on sleep, and appeases all pains, so that it is given to those who are to be cut, sawed, or burned in any parts of their body, that they may not perceive pain.”

The expressions used by Apuleius of Madaura, who flourished about a century after Pliny, are still more remarkable than those already quoted from the older authors. He says, when treating of mandragora, “If any one is to have a member mutilated, burned, or sawed, [_mutilandum, comburendum, vel serrandum_,] let him drink half an ounce with wine, and _let him sleep till the member is cut away without any pain or sensation_ [_et tantum dormiet, quosque abscindatur membrum aliquo sine dolore et sensu_].”

It was not in Europe and in Western Asia alone that these early efforts to discover some lethean were made, and attended with partial success. On the opposite side of the continent, the Chinese—who have anticipated the Europeans in so many important inventions, as in gunpowder, the mariner’s compass, printing, lithography, paper money, and the use of coal—seem to have been quite as far in advance of the Occidental world in medical science. They understood, ages before they were introduced into Christendom, the use of substances containing iodine for the cure of the goitre, and employed spurred rye (ergot) to shorten dangerously-prolonged labor in difficult accouchements. Among the therapeutic methods confirmed by the experience of thousands of years, the records of which they have preserved with religious veneration, the employment of an anæsthetic agent to paralyze the nervous sensibility before performing surgical operations, is distinctly set forth. Among a considerable number of Chinese works on the pharmacopœia, medicine, and surgery, in the National Library at Paris, is one entitled _Kou-kin-i-tong_, or general collection of ancient and modern medicine, in fifty volumes quarto. Several hundred biographical notices of the most distinguished physicians in China are prefixed to this work. The following curious passages occur in the sketches of the biography of _Hoa-tho_, who flourished under the dynasty of _Wei_, between the years 220 and 230 of our era. “When he determined that it was necessary to employ acupuncture, he employed it in two or three places; and so with the _moxa_ if that was indicated by the nature of the affection to be treated. But if the disease resided in parts upon which the needle, moxa, or liquid medicaments could not operate,—for example in the bones, or the marrow of the bones, in the stomach or the intestines,—_he gave_ the patient a preparation of hemp, (in the Chinese language _mayo_,) and after a few moments he became as insensible as if he had been drunk or dead. Then, as the case required, he performed operations, incisions, or amputations, and removed the cause of the malady; then he brought together and secured the tissues, and applied liniments. After a certain number of days, the patient recovered, _without having experienced the slightest pain during the operation_.”

Almost a thousand years after the date of the unmistakable phrases quoted from Apuleius, according to the testimony of William of Tyre, and other chroniclers of the wars for the rescue of the holy sepulchre, and the fascinating narrative of _Marco Polo_, a state of anæsthesia was induced for very different purposes. It became an instrument in the hands of bold and crafty impostors to perpetuate and extend the most terrible fanaticism that the world has ever seen.

The employment of anæsthetic agents in surgical operations was not forgotten or abandoned during the period when they were pressed into the appalling service just described. In the thirteenth century, anæsthesia was produced by inhalation of an anodyne vapor, in a mode oddly forestalling the practices of the present day, which is described as follows in the surgical treatise of Theodoric, who died in 1298. It is the receipt for the “spongia somnifera,” as it is called in the rubric:—

“The preparation of a scent for performing surgical operations, according to Master Hugo. It is made thus:—Take of opium and the juice of unripe mulberry, of hyoscyamus, of the juice of the hemlock, of the juice of the leaves of the mandragora, of the juice of the woody ivy, of the juice of the forest mulberry, of the seeds of lettuce, of the seed of the burdock, which has large and round apples, and of the water-hemlock, each one ounce; mix the whole of these together in a brazen vessel, and then place a new sponge in it, and let the whole boil, and as long as the sun on the dog-days, till it (the sponge) consumes it all, and let it be boiled away in it. As often as there is need of it, place this same sponge in warm water for one hour, and let it be applied to the nostrils till he who is to be operated on (_qui incidentus est_) has fallen asleep; and in this state let the operation be performed (_et sic fiat chirurgia_). When this is finished, in order to rouse him, place another, dipped in vinegar, frequently to his nose, or let the juice of the roots of fenigreek be squirted into his nostrils. Presently he awakens.”

Subsequent to Theodoric’s time, we find many interesting and suggestive observations in the writings of Baptista Porta, Chamappe, Meissner, Dauriol, Haller, and Blandin. About half a century ago, Sir Humphry Davy thus hinted at the possibility that a pain subduing gas might be inhaled:—“As _nitrous oxide_, in its extensive operation, appears capable of destroying physical pain, it may probably be used with advantage during surgical operations in which no great effusion of blood takes place.” Baron Larrey, Napoleon’s surgeon, after the battle of Eylau, found a remarkable insensibility in the wounded who suffered amputations, owing to the intense cold. This fact afterwards led to the application of ice as a local anæsthetic.

The former general belief that a degree of anæsthetic and prolonged sleep could be induced artificially by certain medicated potions and preparations is also shown by the frequency with which the idea is alluded to by the older poets and storytellers, and made part of the machinery in the popular romance and drama. In the history of Taliesin, (one of the antique Welsh tales contained in the Mabinogion,) Rhun is described as having put the maid of the wife of Elphin into a deep sleep with a powder put into her drink, and as having cut off one of her fingers when she was in this case of artificial anæsthesia. Shakspeare, besides alluding more than once to the soporific property of mandragora, describes with graphic power in Romeo and Juliet, and in Cymbeline, the imagined effects of subtle distilled potions supposed capable of inducing, without danger, a prolonged state of death-like sleep or lethargy. And Thomas Middleton, in his tragedy of _Women beware Women_, published in 1657, pointedly and directly alludes in the following lines, to the practice of anæsthesia in ancient surgery:—

_Hippolito_. Yes, my lord,
I make no doubt, as I shall take the course,
Which she shall never know till it be acted;
And when she wakes to honor, then she’ll thank me for’t.
_I’ll imitate the pities of old surgeons_
To this lost limb; _who, ere they show their art,
Cast one asleep, then cut the diseased part_;
So out of love to her I pity most,
She shall not feel him going till he’s lost;
Then she’ll commend the cure.—Act iv. Sc. 1.

The following curious lines from Du Bartas, translated by Joshua Sylvester (?) are also well worth transcribing in this connection.

Du Bartas died about the year 1590:—

Even as a Surgeon minding off-to-cut
Som cureless limb; before in use he put
His violent Engins on the vicious member,
Bringeth his Patient in a senseless slumber:
And griefless then (guided by Use and Art)
To save the whole saws off th’ infested part.
So God empal’d our Grandsire’s (Adam) lively look,
Through all his bones a deadly chilness strook,
Siel’d-up his sparkling eyes with Iron bands,
Led down his feet (almost) to Lethe’s sands;
In briefe, so numm’d his Soule’s and Bodie’s sense,
That (without pain) opening his side, from thence
He took a rib, which rarely He refin’d,
And thereof made the Mother of Mankind.

The history of anæsthetics is a remarkable illustration of the acknowledged fact that science has sometimes, for a long season, altogether lost sight of great practical thoughts, from being unprovided with proper means and instruments for carrying out those thoughts into practical execution; and hence it ever and anon occurs that a supposed modern discovery is only the rediscovery of a principle already sufficiently known to other ages, or to remote nations.

THE BOOMERANG.

The following paragraph in Pliny’s _Natural History_, xxiv. 72, apparently refers to the Boomerang, with which, according to recent discoveries, the early people of the East were acquainted. See Bonomi’s _Nineveh_, p. 136. Pliny, speaking of the account given by Pythagoras of the _Aquifolia_, either the holm-oak or the holly, says:—

Baculum ex eâ factum, in quodvis animal emissum, etiamsi citra
ceciderit defectu mittentis, ipsum per sese cubitu proprius adlabi;
tam præcipuam naturam inesse arbori.

(If a staff made of this wood, when thrown at any animal, from want of
strength in the party throwing it, happens to fall short of the mark,
it will fall back again towards the thrower of its own accord—so
remarkable are the properties of this tree.)

The readings of the passage vary, _cubitu_ being given in some MSS. for _recubitu_. Pythagoras probably heard of the _baculum_ during his travels eastward, and being unable to understand how its formation could endow it with the singular property referred to, was induced to believe that this peculiarity was owing to the nature of the tree.

THE ATTRACTION OF GRAVITATION.

Both Dante and Shakspeare preceded Newton in knowledge of the principle, if not the law, of gravitation. In their anticipation of its discovery, the poets may not have deemed it other than a philosophic or poetic speculation. But the following passages attest earlier observations of a physical law than those of Pascal or Newton.

Shakspeare says in _Troilus and Cressida_:—

But the strong base and building of my love
Is as the very centre of the earth
Drawing all things to it.—iv. 2.

and

True as earth to its centre.—iii. 2.

Three centuries before Shakspeare, Dante said in the _Inferno_:—

Thou dost imagine we are still
On the other side the central point, where I
Clasped the earth-piercing worm, fell cause of ill.
So far as I continued to descend,
That side we kept; but when I turned, then we
_Had passed the point to which all bodies tend_.
_Canto_ xxxiv. 106–111.

EARLY INVENTION OF RIFLING.

In Sir Hugh Plat’s _Jewel-House of Art and Nature_, 1653, (1st edition 1594) the 17th article runs thus:—

_How to make a Pistol, whose Barrel is 2 Foot in Length, to deliver a Bullet point blank at Eightscore._

A pistol of the aforesaid length, and being of the petronel bore, or a bore higher, having eight gutters somewhat deep in the inside of the barrel, and the bullet a thought bigger than the bore, and so rammed in at the first three or four inches at the least, and after driven down with the scouring stick, will deliver his bullet at such distance. This I had of an English gentleman of good note for an approved experiment.

TABLE-MOVING AND ALPHABET-RAPPING IN THE FOURTH CENTURY.

The following remarkable narration is the confession of a conspirator named Hilarius, who was accused of resorting to unlawful arts for the purpose of discovering who should be the successor to the Roman Emperor Valens, who died §A.D.§ 378. We are told by Ammianus Marcellinus, a contemporary historian, that, while under torture, he thus addressed his judges:—

With direful rites, O august judges, we prepared this unfortunate little table, which you see, of laurel branches, in imitation of the Delphic cortina, (or tripod,) and when it had been duly consecrated by imprecation of secret charms and many long and choric ceremonies, we at length moved it. The method of moving it, when it was consulted on secret matters, was as follows: It was placed in the midst of a house purified with Arabian odors; upon it was placed a round dish, made of various metallic substances, which had the twenty-four letters of the alphabet curiously engraved round the rim, at accurately-measured distances from each other. One clothed with linen garments, carrying branches of a sacred tree, and having, by charms framed for the purpose, propitiated the deity who is the giver of prescience, places other lesser cortinæ on this larger one, with ceremonial skill. He holds over them a ring which has been subjected to some mysterious preparation, and which is suspended by a very fine Carpathian thread. This ring, passing over the intervals, and falling on one letter after the other, spells out heroic verses pertinent to the questions asked. We then thus inquired who should succeed to the government of the empire. The leaping ring had indicated two syllables, (§The-od§;) and on the addition of the last letter one of the persons present cried out, “Theodorus.”

Theodorus, and many others, were executed for their share in this dark transaction, (see Gibbon;) but Theodosius the Great finally succeeded to the empire, and was, of course, supposed to be the person indicated by the magic rites. The above literal translation is given by the learned Dr. Maitland in a little book, lately published, _Essay on False Worship_, London, 1856. The original was hardly intelligible, till light had been thrown on it by recent practices, of which we have all heard so much. The coincidence is, to say the least, extraordinary, and opens views which are briefly considered in the above-mentioned work.

AUSCULTATION AND PERCUSSION.

Laennec invented the stethoscope and perfected his discoveries in the physical diagnosis of the diseases of the heart and lungs, in 1816.

Avenbrugger published his work on Percussion in 1761.

One hundred and fifty years before Laennec’s suddenly conceived act of applying a roll of paper to the breast of a female patient gave birth to thoracic acoustics, that ingenious and philosophic man, Robert Hooke, said in his writings:—

“There may be a possibility of discovering the internal motions and actions of bodies by the sound they make. Who knows, but that as in a watch we may hear the beating of the balance, and the running of the wheels, and the striking of the hammers, and the grating of the teeth, and a multitude of other noises,—who knows, I say, but that it may be possible to discover the motions of internal parts of bodies, whether animal, vegetable, or mineral, by the sounds they make?—that one may discover the works performed in the several offices and shops of a man’s body, and thereby discover what engine is out of order, what works are going on at several times and lie still at others, and the like? I have this encouragement not to think all these things impossible, though never so much derided by the generality of men, and never so seemingly mad, foolish, and fantastic, that as the thinking them impossible cannot much improve my knowledge, so the believing them possible may perhaps be an occasion for taking notice of such things as another would pass by without regard as useless, and somewhat more of encouragement I have from experience that I have been able to hear very plainly the beating of a man’s heart; and it is common to hear the motion of the wind to and fro in the intestines; the stopping of the lungs is easily discovered by the wheezing. As to the motion of the parts one among the other, to their becoming sensible they require either that their motions be increased or that the organ (the ear) be made more nice and powerful, to sensate and distinguish them as they are; for the doing of both which I think it is not impossible but that in many cases there may be §HELPS§ found.”

THE STEREOSCOPE.

Sir David Brewster, inquiring into the history of the stereoscope, finds that its fundamental principle was well known even to Euclid; that it was distinctly described by Galen fifteen hundred years ago; and that Giambattista Porta had, in 1599, given such a complete drawing of the two separate pictures as seen by each eye, and of the combined picture placed between them, that we recognize in it not only the principle, but the construction, of the stereoscope.

PREDICTIONS OF THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA.

Seneca, in his _Medea_, Act ii, thus shadowed forth this event fifteen centuries before its occurrence:—

Venient annis Sæcula seris,
Quibus Oceanus vincula rerum
Laxet, et ingens pateat Tellus,
Tiphysque novos detegat orbes;
Nec sit terris Ultima Thule.

(After the lapse of years, ages will come in which Ocean shall relax
his chains around the world, and a vast continent shall appear, and
Tiphys—the pilot—shall explore new regions, and Thule shall be no
longer the utmost verge of the earth.)

“A prediction,” says the commentator, “of the Spanish discovery of America.”

Before Seneca’s lines were written, Plato had narrated the Egyptian legend that, engulfed in the ocean, but sometimes visible, was the island of Atalantis, supposed to mean the Western world.

Pulci, the friend of Lorenzo de Medici, in his _Morgante Maggiore_, written before the voyage of Columbus and before the physical discoveries of Galileo and Copernicus, introduces this remarkable prophecy; (alluding to the vulgar belief that the _Columns of Hercules_ were the limits of the earth.)

Know that this theory is false: his bark
The daring mariner shall urge far o’er
The western wave, a smooth and level plain,
Albeit the earth is fashioned like a wheel.
Man was in ancient days of grosser mould,
And Hercules might blush to learn how far
Beyond the limits he had vainly set,
The dullest sea-boat soon shall wing her way.
Men shall descry another hemisphere;
Since to one common centre all things tend,
So earth, by curious mystery divine,
Well balanced hangs amid the starry spheres.
At our antipodes are cities, states,
And thronged empires, ne’er divined of yore.
But see, the sun speeds on his western path
To glad the nations with expected light.

Dante, two centuries before, put this language into the mouth of Ulysses:—

The broad Atlantic first my keel impressed,
I saw the sinking barriers of the west,
And boldly thus addressed my hardy crew:—
While yet your blood is warm, my gallant train,
Explore with me the perils of the main
And find new worlds unknown to mortal view.
_Inferno_, Canto 26.

He then proceeds to mention the discovery of a mountainous island, after five months’ sailing.

The probability of a short western passage to India is mentioned by Aristotle, _De Cœlo_, ii., a view confirmed in stronger terms afterwards by Edrisi, the Arabian geographer, Strabo, Francis Bacon, Cardinal de Alliaco (_Imago Mundi_), and Toscanelli.

Triumphs of Ingenuity.

_Though there were many giants of old in physic and philosophy, yet I
say, with Didacus Stella, “A dwarf standing on the shoulders of a
giant may see farther than a giant himself.”_—§Burton§, _Anat. of
Melancholy_.

THE DISCOVERY OF THE PLANET NEPTUNE.

In his solitary study sat a young man, pale and thoughtful. His eyes were fixed upon myriads of numerals, through whose complexity his far-reaching mind saw into the untold mysteries of the solar universe. His glass was not pointed to the heavens, his eyes looked not out upon the stars, but his soul, in deep abstraction, pondered over the perturbations of Uranus, as noted for many a year before by many a casual observer. He measured the intensity and the direction of the disturbing forces, questioned the planet that was seen and known concerning the unknown cause of its irregularities, and compelled a star, itself beyond the reach of the common eye, to tell of the whereabouts, the volume, the orbit, of its fellow, which no eye, even through an optic-glass, had ever yet seen, and whose very existence then came for the first time upon the mental vision of the youthful sage through the power of numerical calculation. His was a faith. It was the evidence of things not seen. But it was like that higher and better faith of which spake the great Apostle of the Gentiles,—fast and sure. Full of his discovery, Le Verrier offered his conclusions to the Academy; but learned men, when assembled in bodies, give to enthusiasts but a cold reception. Le Verrier, sure of his position, then wrote to Dr. Galle, the Astronomer-Royal in Berlin, asking him to point his powerful glass to a certain quarter of the heavens, where must be found at that time the last of the planets. And there it was; and thence it was traced upon its mighty way, bending, like its fellows, to the distant influence of its great centre, the sun. There is something almost affecting in the thought that Le Verrier should have been denied the first direct sight of the sublime star towards which his soul had been so long leaning and which had so long been within his mental vision. It was, however, a fortunate loss, since his adversaries would have charged him with having found by chance what he detected by reason, and thus have placed in a common category one of the most magnificent discoveries of modern times, a beautiful illustration of the gigantic power of calculation.

The distance of Neptune from the sun is 2,810,000,000 miles, and the time required for its orbital revolution, 164 years. Its diameter is 41,500 miles.

THE DISCOVERY OF THE PLANET VULCAN.

Leverrier, encouraged and made illustrious by his success in exploring those infinite spaces beyond the orbit of Herschel, turned his attention to the innermost circles—the central region of our solar system. By theoretical demonstrations, based on irregularities in the movements of Mercury, he proved the existence of some planet or planets lying still more closely within the light and heat of the sun. While proceeding with his calculations, he received a letter from Lescarbault—a poor physician of Orgères, a village in the department of Eure and Loire, in France—announcing the discovery of an intra-Mercurial body, making its transit, in appearance like a small black spot, across the disk of the sun. Possessed of a sensitive and modest soul,—as all true lovers of science are,—the doctor at first doubted the reality of his discovery, and hesitated to make it known. It was only after vainly waiting nine months, to verify his observation by another view of the object, that he prepared a letter, narrating what he thought he had seen, and sent it to the great Leverrier. The latter had just published an article on Mercury’s perturbations in the _Kosmos_ of Paris. Astonished at this coincident proof of the correctness of his theory, he lost no time in starting for the village of Orgères, to obtain a personal interview with the humble discoverer of the new orb. The following account of the meeting was reported in the _Kosmos_ by the Abbé Moigne, who took it from the lips of Leverrier himself:—

Leverrier left Paris for Orgères, in company with Vallee, four days after the date of Lescarbault’s letter. Orgères was twelve miles from the nearest railroad-station, and the party had to foot it across the country. On their arrival, Leverrier knocked loudly at the door, which was opened by the doctor himself; but his visitor declined to give his name. The simple, modest, timid Lescarbault, small in stature, stood abashed before the tall Leverrier, who, in blunt intonation, addressed him thus: “It is you, then, sir, who pretend to have discovered the intra-Mercurial planet, and who have committed the grave offence of keeping your discovery secret for nine months! I come to do justice to your pretensions, to warn you that you have either been dishonest or deceived. Tell me unequivocally what you have seen.” The lamb-like doctor, trembling at this rude summons, stammered out the following reply:—

“On the 26th of March (1859), about four o’clock, I turned my telescope to the sun, when, to my surprise, I saw, at a small distance from its margin, a black spot, well defined, and perfectly round, advancing upon the disk of the sun. A customer called me away, and, hurrying him off as fast as I could, I came back to my glass, when I found the round spot had continued its transit, and I saw it disappear from the opposite margin of the sun, after a projection upon it of an hour and a half. I did not seize the precise moment of contact. The spot was on the disk when I first saw it. I measured its distance from the margin, and counted the time it took to make the same distance, and so approximated the instant of its entry.” “To count time is easy to say,” said Leverrier; “but where is your chronometer?” “My chronometer is this watch, that beats only minutes,—the faithful companion of my professional labors.” “What! with that old watch? How dare you talk of counting seconds? My suspicions are too well founded.” “Pardon me, sir, but I have a pendulum that nearly beats seconds, and I will bring it down to show you.” He goes above-stairs and brings down a silken thread, the upper end of which he fastens to a nail, and brings to rest the ivory ball at the lower end. He then starts it from the vertical, and its oscillations beat seconds very nearly. “This is not enough, sir: how do you count these seconds while in the act of observing?” “My profession is to feel pulses and count their pulsations, and my pendulum puts my seconds into my ears, and I have no difficulty in counting them.”