Antall József szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 89-91. (Budapest, 1980)

KISEBB KÖZLEMÉNYEK - ELŐADÁSOK - Schultheisz, Emil: Az élettani korszak kezdete (angol nyelven)

"Author: In the Roman forum or market place, a certain poor Idiot or private man, met a very rich Oratour, whom courteously smiling he thus spoke unto:" "Orator: How canst thou being an Idiot, be brought to the knowledge of thy ignorance ?" "Idiot: Not by thy bookes, but Gods books." "Orator: Which are they?" "Idiot: Those which he wrote with his own finger."

2 The Idiot claims that such a work would be most welcome, whereupon the Orator attests that no man, could do better than the Idiot. Lack of "leisure" keeps the Idiot from performing the work. The Orator states: "Tell me the profit of it, and the meanes how to doe it, and I will see that I my selfe, or some other, at my entreaty can doe at it." "Idiot: By the differences of weights, I think wee may more truly come to the secret of things, and that many things may be known by a more probable conjecture."

3 There then continue about 15 pages of text concerned with devices whereby the virtues of stones may be weighed. Than the Orator continues: "Orator: These be fine things, but might not the same be done in Herbs, and all kinds of woods, flesh, living creatures, and humors ?" "Idiot: In all I think. For weighing a piece of wood, and then burning it thoroughly, and then weighing the ashes, it is knowne how much water there was in the wood, for there is nothing that hath a heavie weight but water and earth. It is knowne moreover by the divers weight of wood in aire, water and oyle, how much water that is in wood, is heavier or lighter than clean spring water, so how much aire there is in it. So by the diversity of the weight of the ashes, how much fire there is in them: and of the Elements may bee forgotten by a nearer conjecture though precision be inattaingible. And as 1 have said of Wood, so may be done with Herbs, flesh, and other things."* From the beginnings recorded in De Staticis Experimentis derive the ideas which led John Dee (1570), the wellknown physician, to praise Nicholas of Cusa's quantitative use of the balance,

5 which prompted Santorio Santorio to write in 1614 his De Statica Medicina.

6 In the same tradition Stephen Hales later wrote his Vegetable Staticks (1727), later to form a part of his two valume Statical Essays (1738), credibly regarded as the first English treatise on plant physiology.

7 Cusa essentially begins with the Sceptical idea of the impossibility of attainment of perfect or complete knowledge on this earth, and the need for approaching truth by short, incomplete steps which are true as far as they go. These are his "conjectures" which nonetheless comprehend read knowledge, increasingly subject to continuing experience and participating effectively in truth as it is, for, with Plato, he believed 2 Cusanus. Op. cit. p. 171 3 Ibid. pp. 171—172 4 Ibid. pp. 187—188 5 Nicolai de Cusa Opera Omnia iussu et Auctoritate Academiae litterarum heidelbergensis ad codicum fidem édita. Ludovicus Baur, ed. Lipsiae, 1937. (Idiota is in volume V.). See also : Schultheisz, E. and Tardy, L.: The contacts of the two Dees and Sir Philip Sidney with Hungarian physicians. Communicationes Hist. Artis Med. Supplementum (Budapest), 6. 1972. p. 97—111. — Deacon, R.: John Dee — Scientist, Astrologer and Secret Agent to Elizabeth I. London, 1968 8 Santorio, Santorio: De Statica Medicina Aphorismorum Sectiones Septem cum Commentario Martini Lister, Lugduni Bataviorum, 1703 7 Hales, Stephen, Vegetable Staticks or, An account of some statical experiments ... London, 1727. p. 376