Author: win r

"Taking the above into consideration, we do not see why the learned alchemists and physicists - physicists, we say - of the Mosaic period should not also have possessed the natural secret of developing in a few hours myriads of a kind of these bacteria, whose spores are found in the air, the water, and [...]

"From the time of Van Helmont, who, in the seventeenth century, despite the ridicule to which he exposed himself, was willing to give the true directions for the so-called production of eels, frogs, and infusoria of various kinds, down to the champions of spontaneous generation of our own century, it has been known that such [...]

"De Candolle, one of the most distinguished botanists of this century, sought to prove in 1825, at the same time when the waters of the lake of Morat had apparently turned into a thick blood, that the phenomenon could be easily accounted for. He attributed it to the development of myriads of those half-vegetable, half-infusory [...]

"Among the great mass of peoples plunged deep in the superstitious ignorance of the mediaeval ages, there were but a few students of the Hermetic philosophy of old, who, profiting by what it had taught them, were enabled to forecast discoveries which are the boast of our present age; while at the same time the [...]