Several Tracts Pertaining to the Archidoxa

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my experience brings me to follow it the path of experience and not them. No one should be troubled by long speeches, since I have not yet begun with the magnet, but it is well to mention this beforehand.

The ancient writers say the magnet draws iron and steel to itself. That is true, every farmer knows that; it needs no witness. Now, my motif is: if it is enough that every farmhand sees this, it seems right to me to advise them further and to exert themselves more than just driving through it so sleepily. A writer should be ashamed that he does not compare himself to a farmhand in his philosophy. Namely, I say from experience, which tests all things, together with its theory, which flows from experience, that the magnet is a stone in which there is an attractive power toward iron and steel, as is clear as day. Added to this is an attractive power for all metallic diseases that are in the whole body.

The old humorists have said much about the four humores bodily fluids, through which they have brought error into medicine. I say that the knowledge of diseases is understood more thoroughly according to the planets than according to the humors. But because they could only play their own fiddles, everything was humors to them. Experience proves that the magnet draws all Marcialische kranckheiten Martial diseases, i.e., those of iron/blood to itself, and draws the excrement to it as well, into its place. Now it is necessary to present to you what these Martial diseases are. These are those that the magnet proves by drawing them into itself like steel and iron. Now these diseases are those that include all fluxes of women, however they may occur.

Item: All fluxes of the bowels, also every disease that dilates from its center in a circle, to bring it back into the center.

Item: To keep all diversions of the fluxes that have been accustomed to run from their roots into the branches, back in their roots. These are the virtues that I assign to the magnet, disregarding the defenses of other writers, new and old.