Schultheisz Emil: Traditio Renovata. Tanulmányok a középkor és a reneszánsz orvostudományáról / Orvostörténeti Közlemények – Supplementum 21. (Budapest, 1997)
10. The beginning of quantification in physiology
66 Author: In the Roman forum or market place, a certain poor Idiot or private man, met a very rich Orator, 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 attest 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 thing, and that many thing may be known by a more probable conjecture. 3. Then the text continues with about 15 pages concerned with devices whereby the virtues of stones may be weighed. Then 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 heavier 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 I have said of Wood, so may be done with Herbs, flesh, and other things. 4 The ideas which made John Dee (1570), the well-known physician, praise Nicolaus of Cusa's quantative use of the balance 5 derive from the principles recorded in 'De S a ids Experimentis', while they also prompted Santorio Santorio to write his De statica Medicina 6 in 1614. In the same tradition Stephen Hales wrote his Vegetable Stañcks (1727), to form a part of his two volume Statical Essays (1738) later and which is regarded as the first English treatise on plant physiology 7. Cusa essentially begins with the sceptical idea of the impossibility of attainment of perfect of complete knowledge of this earth, and furthermore the need to approach the truth by short, incomplete steps which are true as far as they go. These are his 'conjectures' which 2 Cusanus, Op. cit., 171. 3 Ibid., p. 171-172. 4 Ibid., p. 187-188. 5 Nicolai de Cusa Opera Omnia iussu et Auctoritate Academiae litterarum Heidelbergensis ad codicum fidem edita. Ludovicus Baur, ed. Lipsiae, 1937. (Idota is in volume V.) See also: Schultheisz, E. and Tardy, L., The contacts of the two Dees and Sir Philip Sidney with Hungarian Physicians. In: Communicationes Hist. Artis Med. Supplementum. Budapest, 6, 1972, p. 97—111.; Deacon, R., John Dee—Scientist, Astrologer and Secret Agent to Elizabeth 1. London, 1968. 6 Santorio, Santorio, De Statica Medicina Aphorismorum Seç iønes Septem cum Commentario Martini Lister. Lugduni Batavorum, 1703. 7 Hales, Stephen, Vegetable staticks or, an account of some statical experiments... London, 1727, 376.
