On the lodestone and magnetic bodies and on the great magnet the earth : a new physiology demonstrated with many arguments and experiments / William Gilbert of Colchester, physician of London ... a translation by P. Fleury Mottelay.

  • Gilbert, William, 1544-1603.
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the lodestone and magnetic bodies and on the great magnet the earth : a new physiology demonstrated with many arguments and experiments / William Gilbert of Colchester, physician of London ... a translation by P. Fleury Mottelay. 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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    the MS. copy of De Mundo in the British Museum is not in the author's handwriting; for in the Elzevir Print there is a note stating that the author's original manuscript was partly in English.1 It is unfortunate that Prof. Thompson's atten- tion should not at the time have been called to the fact that Mr. Bernard Quaritch's Rough List No. 99, for September 1889, offered at page 80—No. 747—a 1600 De Magnete Pres- entation copy from the author, with inscription on title Dedit GuiL Gilbertus Jo. Sherwood propriis manidus. This copy, which formerly belonged to Mr. Wm. Constable, F.R.S. and F.A.S., is now the property of Mr. Chas. L. Clarke, C.E., New York City, through whose courtesy the reproduction of the title bearing the inscription appears at page iii. A comparison of the writing in both inscriptions would prove interesting. Mahomet's Tombe at Mecha is said strangely to hang up, attracted by some invisible Load-stone, but the memory of the Doctor will never fall to the ground, which his incompar- able Book De Magnete will support to Eternity. a In his epistle3 to Dr. Walter Charleton (physician in ordi- nary to King Charles I.), the celebrated English poet, John Dryden, predicts that Gilbert shall live till loadstones cease to draw, Or British fleets the boundless ocean awe. 1 A copy in MS. among the Royal collection in the British Museum. . .. . It consists of five books and is written on paper. (Casley's Catalogue, page 212.) The work is alluded to at page 283 Les Elzevier, Alph. Willems, Bruxelles 1880, also at page 203 of Ann. de Impr. Elsevirienne, Chas. Pieters, Gand 1851. 2 Dr. Thomas Fuller, The History of the Worthies of England, London 1840, page 515. See references to Mahomet's Shrine: in Gilbert's De Magnete, 1600, Book I, Chap. I ; in Porta's Natural Magick, 1658, Book VII, Chap. XXVII; in Sir Thomas Brown's Pseudoloxia, Epidemica, 1658, Book II, pages 78-79; in Cabaeus, Philosophia Magnetica, 1629, Lib. IV, Chap. XVIII, page 335. 3 Epistle the Third, at page 15, Vol. XI, of the Works of John Dryden, London 1803.