Volume 1

The philosophy of medicine : being medical extracts on the nature and preservation of health, and on the nature and removal of disease.

  • Thornton, Robert John, 1768?-1837.
Date:
1813
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The philosophy of medicine : being medical extracts on the nature and preservation of health, and on the nature and removal of disease. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    that it liad, however, some other source of wealth than the fertUity of the soil. It is not improbable, that the ancient Egyptians carried on a commerce into the inland parts of Africa, where gold ore, or gold dust, was found, and per- haps silver; which traffic, for political reasons, they might conceal from other nations. As the priests ingrossed all the learning', as well as wealth, of the country, they were therefore the smelters and refiners of these ores; and the method of treating them they would probably keep to themselves, both for national and private considerations. Hence, if they wrote u])on the subject, whatever they de- livered was so involved in allegory, and designedly obscured, that nobody but their own order could find out the mean- ing, It is even probable, that they pretended to the art of converting baser metals, which they used in their processes, into real gold, the better to conceal the true sources of their wealth. Now when men of learning, in after ages, met with their books, not being able to understand their true meaning, and not knowing how to decypher them, they might take their allegories in a literal sense, and thus be- lieve, that there really was a method of making gold from other metals. When such a notion, foolish as it was, had once begun to prevail, it was natural enough for the avarice of mankind to leave nothing untried for the revival of so beneficial an art, supposed to be lost. This mistake was, probably, the foundation for all those researches which have been made after the transmutation of metals; for I can never believe, that there ever was, in reality, any such art; the converting of one metal into another, being in my apprehension, attended with as much difficulty as the con- verting a stone into a diamond. The mistake was, how- ever, very fortunate for chemistry; because the experi- ments made on this account gave occasion to the develope- iiient of many importaut chemical discoveries.