William Gilbert of Colchester, physician of London, On the magnet : magnetick bodies also, and on the great magnet the earth ; a new physiology, demonstrated by many arguments & experiments / William Gilbert.

  • Gilbert, William, 1544-1603.
Date:
1901
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: William Gilbert of Colchester, physician of London, On the magnet : magnetick bodies also, and on the great magnet the earth ; a new physiology, demonstrated by many arguments & experiments / William Gilbert. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    WILLIAM GILBERT ON THE LOADSTONE, BK. I. QHAP. I. ANCIENT AND MODERN WRITINGS on the Loadftone, with certain matters of mention only, various opinions, & vanities. T an early period, while philofophy lay as yet rude and uncultivated in the mills of error and ignorance, few were the virtues and properties of things that were known and clearly perceived: there was a briftling foreft of plants and herbs, things metallick were hidden, and the knowledge of Hones was un- 10 fooner had the talents and toils of many brought to light certain commodities necelfary for the ufe and fafety of men, and handed them on to others (while at the fame time reafon and experience had added a larger hope), than a thorough examination began to be made of forefts and fields, hills and heights ; of feas too, and the depths of the waters, of the bowels of the earth’s body ; and all things began to be looked into. And at length by good luck the magnet-flone was difcovered in iron lodes, probably by fmelters of iron or diggers of metals. This, on being handled by metal folk, quickly difplayed that powerful andftrong attraction for iron, a virtue not latent and obfcure, but ealily proved by all, and highly praifed and commended. And in after time when it had emerged, as it were out of darknefs and deep dungeons, and had become dignified of men on account of its flrong and amazing attraction for iron, many philo- fophers as well as phylicians of ancient days difcourfed of it, in fhort celebrated, as it were, its memory only; as for inftance Plato in the Ioy Arillotle in the De Anima, in Book I. only, Theophraltus the Lefbian, Diofcorides, C. Plinius Secundus, and Julius Solinus. As handed down by them the loadltone merely attracted iron, the reft of its virtues were all undifcovered. But that the ftory of the load- b ftone