Magnets for Health

A nonsense idea is that a loadstone [magnet] would draw minds into a belief that there are in all bodies certain faculties by which they attract their own proper qualities.

Epicurus employs in his Physics elements similar to those of Asclepiades. He believes that:

• iron is attracted by the lodestone [magnet], and chaff by amber.
• the atoms which flow from the stone [magnet] are related in shape to those flowing from the iron, and so they become easily interlocked with one another.

Thus when the stone [magnet] and iron collide they then rebound into the middle and so become entangled with each other, and draw the iron after them.

He is perfectly unconvincing in terms of causation.

Nevertheless, he believes that there is an attraction.

Further, he says that it is on similar principles that there occur in the bodies of animals the dispersal of nutriment and the discharge of waste matters, as also the actions of cathartic drugs.

Asclepiades, however, did not believe Epicurus.

• He shamelessly said that nothing is attracted by anything else.

I believe that:

• Nature is a constructive artist
• the substance of things is always tending towards unity and change because its own parts act on each other

This constructive nature has powers which attract appropriate and expel alien matter.

For in no other way could she be constructive, preservative of the animal, and eliminative of its diseases, unless it be allowed that she conserves what is appropriate and discharges what is foreign.

But Asclepiades maintains that:

• there is no such thing as a crisis, or critical day
• Nature does absolutely nothing to preserve the animal.

His constant aim is to:

• follow out logical consequences
• upset obvious fact
  • This makes him opposed to Epicurus who always stated the observed fact, but could not explain it effectively

These small corpuscles from the lodestone [magnet] rebound and entangle with other similar particles of the iron.

• This entanglement attracts iron.

How could anybody could believe this?

This does not explain why when another piece of iron contacts that iron, it becomes attached.

He believes that:

• the particles that flow from the lodestone [magnet] collide with the iron and then rebound back
• these suspend the iron
• others penetrate into it, and rapidly pass through it by way of its empty channels
• these then collide with the second piece of iron and are not able to penetrate it although they penetrated the first piece
• they then course back to the first piece, and produce entanglements like the former ones

This is absurd. I have seen 5 writing-stylets of iron attached to one another in a line, only the first one being in contact with the lodestone, and the power being transmitted through it to the others.

It cannot be said that if you bring a second stylet into contact with the lower end of the first, it becomes held, attached, and suspended, whereas, if you apply it to any other part of the side it does not become attached.

The power of the lodestone [magnet] is distributed in all directions.

It merely needs to be in contact with the first stylet at any point.

From this stylet again the power flows, as quick as a thought, all through the second, and from that again to the third.

Hang a small lodestone [magnet] in a house, and in contact with it all round a large number of pieces of iron, from them again others, from these others, and so on,—all these pieces of iron must surely become filled with the corpuscles which emanate from the stone.

Therefore, this first little stone is likely to become dissipated by disintegrating into these emanations.

Even if there were no iron in contact with it, it still disperses into the air, particularly if this is also warm.

Epicurus

Yes, but these corpuscles are exceedingly small. Some of them are a ten-thousandth part of the size of the very smallest particles carried in the air.

How can heavy iron be suspended by such small bodies?

If each of them is a ten-thousandth part as large as the dust particles which are borne in the atmosphere, how big must we suppose the hook-like extremities by which they interlock with each other to be?

Then, again, when a small body becomes entangled with another small body, or when a body in motion becomes entangled with another also in motion, they do not rebound at once.

For, further, there will of course be others which break in upon them from above, from below, from front and rear, from right and left, and which shake and agitate them and never let them rest.

Moreover, we must perforce suppose that each of these small bodies has a large number of these hook-like extremities. For by one it attaches itself to its neighbours, by another—the topmost one—to the lodestone, and by the bottom one to the iron.

For if it were attached to the stone above and not interlocked with the iron below, this would be of no use.

Thus, the upper part of the superior extremity must hang from the lodestone, and the iron must be attached to the lower end of the inferior extremity; and, since they interlock with each other by their sides as well, they must, of course, have hooks there too. Keep in mind also, above everything, what small bodies these are which possess all these different kinds of outgrowths.

Still more, remember how, in order that the second piece of iron may become attached to the first, the third to the second, and to that the fourth, these absurd little particles must both penetrate the passages in the first piece of iron and at the same time rebound from the piece coming next in the series, although this second piece is naturally in every way similar to the first.

Such an hypothesis, once again, is certainly not lacking in audacity.

It is far more shameless than the previous ones; according to it, when five similar pieces of iron are arranged in a line, the particles of the lodestone which easily traverse the first piece of iron rebound from the second, and do not pass readily through it in the same way. Indeed, it is nonsense, whichever alternative is adopted.

For, if they do rebound, how then do they pass through into the third piece? And if they do not rebound, how does the second piece become suspended to the first? For Epicurus himself looked on the rebound as the active agent in attraction.

The works of Asclepiades depend on Epicurus’ first principles.

• But they also disagree with observed facts.

Epicurus wants to adhere to the facts.

• So he shows that these agree with his principles.

Whereas Asclepiades:

• safeguards the sequence of principles
• pays no attention to fact

Asclepiades’ tenets have been confuted by Menodotus the Empiricist.

• Menodotus draws his attention to their opposition to phenomena and to each other; and, again, those of Epicurus have been confuted by Asclepiades, who adhered always to logical sequence, about which Epicurus evidently cares little.

The following are magnetic:

• cathartic drugs

• drugs which remove thorns and the points of arrows such as sometimes become deeply embedded in the flesh

Those drugs also which draw out animal poisons or poisons applied to arrows all have the same faculty as the lodestone [magnet].

Thus, I myself have seen a thorn which was embedded in a young man’s foot fail to come out when we exerted forcible traction with our fingers, and yet come away painlessly and rapidly on the application of a medicament.

Yet even to this some people will object, asserting that when the inflammation is dispersed from the part the thorn comes away of itself, without being pulled out by anything.

These people are unaware that:

1. there are:

• drugs for drawing out inflammation
• drugs for drawing out embedded substances

If it was on the cessation of an inflammation that the abnormal matters were expelled, then all drugs which disperse inflammations ought, ipso facto, to possess the power of extracting these substances as well.

2. certain medicaments draw out thorns and others poisons, but that of the latter there are some which attract the poison of the viper, others that of the sting-ray, and others that of some other animal;

These poisons are deposited on the medicaments.

Some refuse to admit that anything is attracted by anything else.

• They are the most ignorant on Nature than peasants.

Our peasants bring corn from the countryside into the city in wagons.

To steal some corn away without being detected, they fill earthen jars with water and stand them among the corn.

The corn then draws the moisture into itself through the jar and gains size and weight.

But this is never detected by the onlookers.

Yet, if you care to set down the same vessel in the very hot sun, you will find the daily loss to be very little.

Thus corn has more power than extreme solar heat to draw to itself the moisture in its neighbourhood.

Thus the theory that the water is carried towards the expanded part of the air surrounding us (particularly when it is warm) is nonsense.

For although it is much more rarefied there than it is amongst the corn, yet it does not take up a tenth part of the moisture which the corn does.