SIRIS:

A CHAIN OF

PHILOSOPHICAL REFLECTIONS

AND

INQUIRIES

CONCERNING

THE VIRTUES OF TAR WATER;

AND DIVERS OTHER SUBJECTS CONNECTED TOGETHER AND ARISING ONE FROM ANOTHER.

A preservative and preparative against the small-pox

SECT. 1

3, 116

110

115

2

A cure for foulness of blood, ulceration of bowels, lungs, consumptive coughs, pleurisy, peripneumony, erysipelas, asthma, indigestion, cachectic and hysteric cases, gravel, dropsy, and all inflammations

4.7 Answers all the purposes of elixir proprietatis, Stoughton's drops, best turpentine, decoction of the woods, and mineral waters

And of the most costly balsams
May be given to children

Of great use in the gout

In fevers

Cures a gangrene as well as erysipelas

The scurvy, and all bypochondriac maladies
A preservative for the teeth and gums

Is particularly recommended to seafaring persons,
men of studious and sedentary lives

Its specific virtues consist in its volatile salts

Its virtues heretofore known, but only in part
Tar, whence produced

Resin, whence

Turpentine, what

Tar mixed with honey, a cure for the cough

Resin, an effectual cure for the bloody-flux

Scotch firs what, and how they might be improved

Pine and fir, different species of each

The wonderful structure of trees

Juices produced with the least violence best

SECT.

49

Myrrh soluble by the human body would prolong life
Tar water, by what means and in what manner it operates

50. 57

59

Is a soap at once and a vinegar Aromatic flavours and vegetables depend on light as much as colours Analogy between the specific qualities of vegetable juices and colours

40. 214, 215

165

A fine subtile spirit, the distinguishing principle of all vege

tables

What the principle of vegetation, and how promoted
Theory of acids, salts, and alcalies -

126, 128

129. 186. 227

Air the common seminary of all vivifying principles - 137 Air, of what it consists

147. 151. 195. 197

Pure ether, or invisible fire, the spirit of the universe, which ope

And of the Chinese, conformable to them

Fire worshipped among various nations

Opinion of the best modern chemists concerning it
Ultimately the only menstruum in nature

191

192. 195

Adds to the weight of bodies, and even gold made by the introduction of it into quicksilver The theory of Ficinus and others concerning light - 206. 213 Sir Isaac Newton's hypothesis of a subtile ether examined 221. 228. 237. 246

No accounting for phenomena, either by attraction and repulsion, or by elastic ether, without the presence of an incorporeal agent 231. 238.246. 249. 294. 297 Attraction in some degree discovered by Galilæi Phenomena are but appearances in the soul, not to be accounted for upon mechanical principles The ancients not ignorant of many things in physics and metaphysics, which we think the discovery of -modern times

Had some advantage beyond us

Of absolute space, and fate

Of the anima mundi of Plato

What meant by the Egyptian Isis and Osiris

251, 252. 310

265.269

- 298 270. 273

276. 284. 322 268.299

Plato and Aristotle's threefold distinction of objects

306, 307