Copy 1, Volume 1

The wonders of the little world: or, a general history of man, displaying the various faculties, capacities, powers and defects of the human body and mind / By Nathaniel Wanley.

  • Nathaniel Wanley
Date:
1806
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The wonders of the little world: or, a general history of man, displaying the various faculties, capacities, powers and defects of the human body and mind / By Nathaniel Wanley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    17/432 (page 9)
    THE PERFECTIONS, POWERS, CAPACITIES, DEFECTS, IMPERFECTIONS, : AND DEFORMITIES : HAT the’ original of man’s body is nothing else besides the:dust of the ground is a certain and unquestionable truth. Yet as out of that dust there springs _ such variety of trees, plants, and fowers, with different forms, colours and virtues, as may reasonably solicit a considering mind toa just veneration of the wisdom and bounty of the Creator; so, though all human bodies are’ framed of the same coarse materials, yet some of them are endowed with such peculiar properties, stitution of others, that man need travel theme wherein he may at once enlargé his thoughts to the praises of h‘s Maker, and’ admiration of his own wonderful composure.- : a Every man is @ moving miracle: but ¢ wonder ofall the rest. - For, ; 1, Saint Austin saith he knew a man, who could sweat of! his own accord as often ‘as he pleased. . 2; Avicenna writes of one, that when he pleased could put himself into a palsy’; ~ hor was he hurt by any venomous creature, but when he forced and provoked them to ( 4 De Civ. Dei, 1. 14,'c, 23. it; of which, notwithstanding, themselves would die, so poisonous was his body. 3. 1 knew one, saith Maranta, who was of that strange constitution of body ples, and. on the contrary bound -up by those that were of a lodsening nature. 4. ‘There are some families of that mar- vellous constitution that no serpent will hurt them, but instead of that they fly their presence. ‘The spittle of these men; or their sucking the place, is medicinal to suchas have been bitten or stung with them: of this kind are the Psylli and Marsi; those also in the island of Cyprus, whom they call Ophiogenes, and of this race and house there came one Exagon, ambassador from that island, who by the . command of the Roman consul was.put into a great tunor pipe, wherein were many serpents, on purpose ‘to make ex- periment and trial of the truth of this pro- perty. ‘Phe issue was; the serpents licked his boily, in all parts, gently with their tongues, as if they had been little dogs, der of them who beheld the manner. of’ _ & When Pyrrhus, King of Ep'rus, was .£. ¥6, Schenck. Obs. Med. ]. 1. Obs. 3. p. 85.—-(3.) Schenck, Obs. Med. 1. 3, Obs. 3. p. 384,.—(4.) Plin. Nat. Hist.1. 98. c. 3. P. 298,299, Pasch. Leg. c.+8. p. 43, Solin. c, 8. p. 207. Plate in Catunem minorem, p. 797. + ng ia ete *: ; VoL. 1) sae B dead,