A Key to Physic, and the Occult Sciences

by Sibly, Ebenezer

• ISBN13: 9781108044288
• ISBN10: 110804428X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-02-23
• Publisher: Cambridge Univ Pr

Summary

Physician, astrologer and occult philosopher, Ebenezer Sibly (1751-99) wrote popular works of medical theory and advice, including Culpeper's English Physician (1789) and this companion volume of 1795. A synthesis of theology, natural philosophy and medical science, the book argues for a microcosmic understanding of the human body as a composite of the four essential elements. An ambitious work, it bears witness to an important era in the development of modern medicine, as Sibly looks to combine an older hermetic tradition with new Enlightenment-era insights into the physical universe. In the final section of the work, Sibly touts his remedies, Lunar Tincture and Solar Tincture, developed to act upon female and male ailments, respectively. Composed from the 'pabulum of the universe', these medicines, Sibly claims, cure everything from gunshot wounds to dog bites.

Table of Contents

A key to physic and the occult sciences

God, and nature

Of nature

Of the visible and occult properties of nature

Of the first matter

Of atoms, and their nature

The properties, magnitude, figure, weight, and motion, of atoms

Of sympathy and antipathy in natural bodies

Of the occult properties of generation in plants and herbs

Of sympathy, antipathy, sagacity, and occult instinct, in brutes

Of animal flowers

Of the polypus

Of animalcules

Of instinct

Of scent

Of man

Of nutrition

Of food, or aliment

Of air

Of exercise

Of sleep

Of dreams

Of intemperance

Of the passions

Of impotency occasioned by fear

Of grief

Of love

Of melancholy

Of the prognostics of diseases, with rules for preserving health

Angina pectoris

Dangerous affection of the oesophagus

Observations on the means of preserving health

Of fixed air as a medicine

Of medical electricity

Of animal magnetism

Arguments to prove, that animal magnetism is the cause of sympathy in man and other animals, and in plants, etc.

Of antipathy

Effects of antipathy and sympathy in brute animals

Of attraction and repulsion, otherwise called sympathy and antipathy in plants

Considerations on the indispositions and diseases of man

Of indisposition and disease

Of human impregnation

Of feminine, or lunar diseases

Chlorosis, or green sickness, by some called, the love-fever

Of the fluor albus, or whites

Of barrenness, or infertility

Indispositions attendant on pregnancy

State of women at the turn of life

Of masculine, or solar diseases

Scrophula, scurvy, or king's evil

Debilitated, tainted, and enfeebled, constitutions

A relaxed habit

Hypochondriacal debility, or weak nerves

Nocturnal emisions, or incontinence of the semen

Onanism

An impure or tainted habit

A tainted habit in a state of pregnancy

Tabes dorsalis, or consumption of the back

Rheumatic gout

Agues, convulsions, cholic, bloody-flux, and violent spasms in the stomach and bowels

Diseases of the breast and lungs, asthma, dropsy, or consumption

Mental depression, or lowness of spirits

Bile on the stomach

Bite of a mad dog, or any venomous reptile

For gun-shot wounds, cuts, stabs, etc.

Of the principles of life and death

Of the crisis, or critical turn of a disease

A lunar table

On the difference betwixt a natural and violent death, exemplified by the fate of the late King and Queen of France

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