Natural history in Shakespeare's time : being extracts illustrative of the subject as he knew it / Made by H. W. Seager, M. B., &c. Also pictures thereunto belonging.

  • Seager, H. W. (Herbert West), 1848-
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Natural history in Shakespeare's time : being extracts illustrative of the subject as he knew it / Made by H. W. Seager, M. B., &c. Also pictures thereunto belonging. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    may not be overcome, and though it despise fire and iron, yet it is broke with new hot blood [of a he-goat {Bartholo- mezv)']. This stone is contrary to Magnes. For if an Adamas be set by iron, it suffereth not the iron come to the Magnes, but it draweth it by a manner of violence from the Magnes, so that though the Magnes draweth iron to itself, the Adamas draweth it away from the Magnes. It is said that this stone warneth of venom as Electrum doth ; and putteth off divers dreads and fears, and withstandeth witchcraft. Dioscorides saith that it is called a precious stone of reconciliation and of love. For if a woman be away from her husband, or trespasseth against him : by virtue of this stone she is the sooner reconciled to have grace of her husband. And hereto he saith, that if a very Adamas be privily laid under a woman's head that sleepeth: her hus- band may wit whether that she be chaste or no. For if she be chaste by virtue of that stone she is compelled in her sleep to beclip [embrace] her husband ; and if she be untrue, she leapeth from him out of the bed, as one that is unworthy to abide the presence of that stone. Also, as Dioscorides saith, the virtue of such a stone borne in the left shoulder, or in the left arm-pit, helpeth against enemies, against woodness, chiding, and strife, and against fiends that noy [annoy] men that dream in their sleep, against fantasy, against swevens [dreams] and venom, Bartkolo7new (Berthelet), bk. xvi. § 9. There is nowadays a kind of Adamant which draweth unto it flesh, and the same so strongly, that it hath power to knit and tie together two mouths of contrary persons, and draw the heart of a man out of his body without offending any part of him. Edivard Fentons Certaine Secrete Wonders of Nature (apud Steevens). Of the Magnet Bartholomew says : Magnes is a stone of Ind, coloured somewhat as iron. And is found in Ind among the Troglodytes, and draweth to itself iron in such wise, that it maketh as it were a chain of iron rings. Also it is said, that it draweth glass molten as it doth iron. In certain temples is made an image of iron, and it seemeth that that image hangeth in the air.