Pseudodoxia epidemica, or, Enquiries into very many received tenents, and commonly presumed truths / By Thomas Brown Dr. of Physick.

  • Browne, Thomas, Sir, 1605-1682.
Date:
1658
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Pseudodoxia epidemica, or, Enquiries into very many received tenents, and commonly presumed truths / By Thomas Brown Dr. of Physick. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    559/572 (page 67)
    after the decuflation of the rayes at the hole of the horneycoat, and their refra&ion upon the Chryftalline humour, anfwering the fframe* of the window, and the convex or burning-glafles, which refrad the rayes that enteric^ And if Ancient Anatomy would hold, a like dif* pofure there was of the optick or vifual nerves in the brain, wherein antiquity conceived a concurrence by declaration. And this not onely obfervable in the Laws ofdired Villon, but in fome part alio verified in the refleded rayes of fight. For making the angle of incidence equal tothat of reflexion, the vifual ray retnrneth Quincuncially, and after the form of an V, and the line of reflexion, being continued unto- the place of vifion, there arifeth a femi-decuflation which makes the ob/ed feen in a perpendicular unto it felf, and as far below the re- fledenr, as it is from it above, obfervable in the Sun and Moon beheld in water. And this is alfothe law of reflexion in moved bodies and founds, which though not made by decuflation, obferve the rule of equality between incidence and reflexionjwhereby whilpering places are framed by Elliptical arches laid lide-wife; where the voice being delivered at the fecas of one extremity, obferving an equality unto the angle of incidence, it wilt refled unto the focus of the other end, and lo efcape the ears of the ftanders in the middle. A like rule is obferved in the reflexion of the vocall and fonorous line in Ecchoes, which cannot therefore be heard in all ftations. But hapning in woody plantations, by waters, and able to return lome words; if reachtby a pleafant and well-diviuing voice, there may be heard the fofteft notes in nature* And this not onely verified in the way of fenfe, but in animal! and intellectual receptions. Things entring upon the intellect by a Pyra¬ mid from without,and thence into the memory by another from with¬ in the common decuflation being in the underftanding as is delivered by (a) Bovillus. Whether the intellectual and phantaflical lines be * fBe» not thus rightly difpofed, hilt magnified, diminifhed, diftorted, and ?illnSJfe ill placed in che Mat hematicks of fome brains, whereby they have ir-Mff * l!* regular apprehenfions of things, perverted notions, conceptions, and incurable hallucinations, were no unpleafant Ipeculation. And if ./Egyptian Philofophy may obtain the fcale of influences was thus dilpoled, and the genial fpirits of both worlds, do trace their way in alcending and defending Pyramids, myftically apprehended in the Letter X, and the oyen bill and ftradling Legges of a Stork, which was imitated by that Chara&er. Of this Figure Plato made choice to illuftrate the motion of the foul, both of the world and man ; while he delivered that God divi¬ ded the whole conjunction length-wife, according to figure of a (Jreek X,and then turning it about refleded it into a circle; By the circle implying the uniform motion of the firft Orb, and by the right lines,