Discours fait en une célèbre assemblée touchant la guérison de playes par la poudre sympathie. Où sa composition est enseignée, & plusieurs autres merveilles de la nature sont développées.

8vo: 195-[2] pp. (very sm. def. to upper corner, usual spotting).

Contemp. vellum (some def. at sides), flat spine titled in ink. Good copy.

Rare and curious second French translation (first French 1658) on the powder of sympathy by the eccentric English courtier, diplomat and highly reputed natural philosopher Sir K. Digby (1603-1665). Digby bought the secret of the powder, which had vitriol as a base, from an Italian monk and caused outrage at the court of Jacques I and in France. Digby's principles of healing are similar to the principle of "animal magnetism", which a hundred years later was written up as a theory by Mesmer. In this work Digby states that "tout corps envoye une continuelle émanation d'atomes hors de soy" and "l'imagination forte d'une personne agit merveilleusement sur celle d'une autre qui l'a plus faible et passive". Which can be seen as the existence of a natural energy transference occuring between all animated and inanimate objects, sometimes later referred to as "mesmerism" after the German doctor Franz Mesmer (1734-1815).
Ref. Ferguson I:213. - Krivatsy 3242. - BnF.