As I needed a break from an entry I am writing on some very strange medicine a fourteenth century Franciscan alchemist by the name of Rupescissa (‘slashed rocks’ in Latin) recommended in one of his treatises, I picked up a book I had borrowed some time ago and quickly went through the introduction. A passage about ghosts forming over the tombs of the deceased caught my attention and got me to read the rest of the section (number 5). Written in post-Renaissance Latin (with a few expressions showing that its author was well-read in Latin literature*, in addition to being a doctor), the subject matter (to us, definitely pseudo-scientific considerations, even if people like John Dee, roughly 150 years earlier, and the quasi contemporary Isaac Newton probably believed in stuff as weird) together with the Latin syntax the author made use of to convey his ideas caused me to reflect for a minute or two upon the axiom (in Greek, a ‘self-evident principle’) that even the greatest of minds are very much products of their age – i.e. that their thinking is moulded to a very, very large extent by the culture, the ideas, the Weltanschauung which are theirs. Moreover, I could not help but muse upon the correlation that sprung to my mind, which is that the architecture, the music, even the vernacular literatures (plural by design) of the age (and the preceding ones) here in Europe were bound to reflect the ability of the ‘cultural elite’ to express itself in almost Ciceronian Latin. How could it have been otherwise? This, of course, is in stark contrast to our age’s probably text-message moulded and small screen-mediated propensity to opt for more laconic forms of writing...
‘Is life magnetism?’ is the presentation Jean-Baptiste Lebrethon gave before members of the Faculty of Medicine (of Paris?) to open a debate about this subject – a dispute, in those days, still meant ‘an oral or written discussion of a subject in which arguments for and against are put forward and examined’ (SOED) and a quodlibet was ‘a question proposed as an exercise in philosophical or theological debate; a scholastic debate, thesis, or exercise’ (SOED). Lebrethon’s views on magnetism (pre Mesmer, I should add!) have come down to us only because his presentation was printed (probably as a handout for the participants in the ‘dispute’ because the final page of the text bears the names of the participants and even the time of the ‘quodlibetal dispute’ – although this could have been merely for ‘archival purposes’).
The text, only 8 pages long (yet I have not read it in full), is available on the Internet at either https://www.biusante.parisdescartes.fr/histoire/medica/resultats/index.php?do=pages&cote=ms02322_ms02337ax04x0082
or https://archive.org/details/BIUSante_ms02322_ms02337ax04x0082.
The excerpt I present below is available at https://archive.org/details/BIUSante_ms02322_ms02337ax04x0082/page/n5/mode/2up.
Please note that the translation I offer below is not literal and that I relied on Mr Sylvain Matton’s translation into French (see https://livres-d-hermes.com/DOC/LESCL101.HTM for the particulars) probably even more than on the Latin text, which explains the length of ‘my’ translation.
QUÆSTIO MEDICA,
Quodlibetariis disputationibus mane discutienda in ScholisAn Vita Magnetismus ?
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V
Etiam post mortem corpus Magnetismo reviviscere posse quodammodo defunctorum supra tumulos evanida spectra cælo aperto pacatoque sub aëre sæpius noctu visa nonne comprobant ? Quid enim hæc opineris stulte credulus ipsas esse demortuorum animas, vel ficto corpore larvatos Dæmones ? Quin satius iudices ab omni, dum corrumpitur, cadaveris parte manantes halitus eo nexu & ordine ab insitis Magnetismi viribus disponi, ut aliquali cohærentiâ tenues in auras non ita facile dissipentur, umbramque, quasi manes, referant?
[...]
Incassum obloqueris ; rixari define : suum inesse cuilibet corpori Magnetismum fateare sed in vegetantibus & animalibus præsertim vividum ; nec cuiusque modo partis peculiarem, sed totios etiam corporis universalem agnoscito, qui perspirationis insensilis voce apud Medicos audit. Huius materiem pene innumeris partium integrantium Magnetismis spirituasacentes moleculæ ab iptis detritæ partibus tantâ copiâ sufficiunt ut præstent secretionem omnium longe uberrimam. Hæc perspirationis materies tantultum cum ambiente aëre misceri commoratur & eundem arcet aliquatenus, simulata vorticem, dum aëther sincerior ab aëris intercapedinibus expressus per accommoda spiracula corpus intro meat , eâ quantitate quæ particularibus Magnetismis debebatur. Huius porro Magnetismi non idem est in singulis hominibus modus ; sed alter alteri magis minusve consonat & adblanditur. Inde cur hominem non prius visum sponte diligas, averseris alium, non absurda forte ratio. Iam quod sua quemque trahit voluptas aut horror abigit, male arguunt culpantue fata. In causa est Magnetismus. Quibus hic viget, res iuncundas ; quibus ligatur & vincitur, invisas, ingratas exhibet.
[...]
Ergo vita Magnetismus.
Is life magnetism?
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That thanks to magnetism the body can somehow revive after death, do the evanescent ghosts we see quite often at night on the tombs of the deceased, when the sky is clear and the air is calm, not prove this? For why, stupidly gullible, would one consider them to be the very souls of the deceased, or demons masked in a false body? It is far more correct to think that the winds emanating from all parts of the decaying corpse are arranged by the natural forces of magnetism in such an intertwining and order that, finding a kind of coherence, they are not easily dissipated by the weak winds and produce a shadow, as if they were the souls of the deceased.
[...]
Objections are futile; let us stop contesting: let us recognise that each body has its own magnetism, but that this is especially strong in plants and animals; and let us then admit not only a particular magnetism in each part, but also a general magnetism of the whole body, which can be heard by doctors through the voice of insensitive perspiration. The molecules which rise in spirit form because of the almost innumerable magnetisms of the restorative parts, having been worn out by these same parts, produce in such a quantity the matter of this perspiration that they provide by far the most abundant secretion of all. This matter of perspiration retains, however little, from mixing with the ambient air and contains it somewhat, having taken the form of a whirlpool, until a purer ether expressed from the interstices of the air slips into the interior of the body through the appropriate openings, being of the quantity which was due to the particular magnetisms. Moreover, the measure of this magnetism is not the same in all humans, resonating more or less in some but not** in others. This is why it is perhaps not absurd that one can spontaneously love a person one has never seen before and have an aversion to another. Fate is wrongly accused and blamed for the fact that everyone is either attracted by a pleasure of theirs or repelled by an innate horror. It is magnetism that is to blame. It makes beautiful the things that make it vigorous, unpleasant and obnoxious the things it is bound and defeated by.
[...]
So life is magnetism.
*‘sed alter alteri magis minusve consonat & adblanditur’ could be borrowings from both Boetius (‘Sanitatem namque ipsam et iustitiam, alteram altera magis minusve non esse.’) and Thomas More (adblandiri, to flatter, seems quite rare, but More uses it in Utopia, 1, 3; 66: ‘ne praesentibus uidear adblandiri uobis’).
** ‘consonat & adblanditur’ is almost oxymoronic (recall Milton’s ‘darkness visible’)...