Man of Misconceptions : The Life of an Eccentric in an Age of Change (9781101597033) by John Glassie Page B

people go there for rejuvenating soaks in brine.
    Kircher taught Latin there, and renewed his study of languages and mathematics with what he described as “the utmost zeal.” He built another sundial, on the tower of the Church of St. Mary’s. He immersed himself in the literature of the Neoplatonists and the practitioners of natural magic, and there’s little doubt he became familiar with a volume called
Magia Naturalis
(
Natural Magic
) by Giambattista della Porta. The author, a sixteenth-century polymath from Naples, had written plays, made optical devices, designed military fortifications, and collected, as he claimed, “more than 2,000 secrets of medicine, and other wonderful things.” The book, published in many different editions and languages over a number of decades, served as a guide on everything from cooking to the occult correspondences within nature.
    â€œThe Wolf is afraid of the Urchin,” della Porta explained in one section. “Thence, if we wash our mouth and throats with Urchin’s blood, it will make our voice shrill, though before it was hoarse and dull like a Wolf’s voice. A Dog and a Wolf are at great enmity. And therefore a Wolf skin put upon anyone that is bitten by a mad Dog assuages the swelling of the Humor. A Hawk is a deadly enemy to Pigeons, but is defended by the Kestrel, which the Hawk cannot abide either to hear or see. And this the Pigeons know well enough.”
    Natural Magic
went into detail on the spontaneous generation of small creatures from various forms of putrefaction—specifying what kind of dung produced which kind of insect, for example. It also told readers how to hybridize flowers and preserve fruit, distill oils and essences, extract tinctures, breed dogs, lure animals, tenderize meat, temper steel, write with invisible ink, and send secret messages. It covered medicines and remedies for common wounds, poison, and the pox, plus ways to engender sleep and different kinds of dreams. Della Porta knew how to put “a Man out of his senses for a day.” And he spent thirty chapters on how “to Adorn Women, and Make them Beautiful,” including how to dye hair, remove hair, curl hair, and “take away Sores and Worms that spoil hair.”
    Readers like Kircher learned in
Natural Magic
about various “experiments” related to light and heavy bodies, wind, air, music, and sound. Della Porta devoted many chapters to “Looking-Glasses,” spectacles, and lenses—some that could be used to project “diverse apparitions of images,” others to “see very far, beyond imagination.” (In the years before he died in 1615, della Porta even claimed, with some reason, to have invented the telescope.) There were fifty-six chapters on “the Wonders of the Lode-stone,” or the magnet. And there was a big section on “Artificial Fires,” including “Fire-compositions for Festival days” made from potassium nitrate, sulfur, and charcoal, which Kircher put to use there soon enough.
    â€”
    AROUND THIS TIME, the region of Eichsfeld came under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop and Prince-Elector of Mainz, Johann Schweikhard von Kronberg. As the head of the electoral college that chose each new emperor, he was the most powerful Catholic official in German lands. He planned to send a formal embassy of representatives to Heiligenstadt, which in turn prepared to greet the officials with a proper reception and entertainment. As Kircher recalled, “A magnificence not to be scoffed at was being deemed appropriate for rightly receiving this group.” Twenty-four-year-old Kircher was apparently so well versed in the natural magic of della Porta and others that he took charge of the “scenic proceedings.”
    On the evening of the event, he produced “optical illusions on a grand scale as well as a pyrotechnic display” for the visiting dignitaries, sending “fiery