A Key to Physic, and the Occult Sciences

An ambitious work of philosophy and medical theory, attempting to marry occult understandings of the body with Enlightenment science.

Ebenezer Sibly (Author)

9781108044288, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 23 February 2012

428 pages, 11 b/w illus.
29.7 x 21 x 2.2 cm, 1.02 kg

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.

A key to physic and the occult sciences: 1. God, and nature
2. Of nature
3. Of the visible and occult properties of nature
4. Of the first matter
5. Of atoms, and their nature
6. The properties, magnitude, figure, weight, and motion, of atoms
7. Of sympathy and antipathy in natural bodies
8. Of the occult properties of generation in plants and herbs
9. Of sympathy, antipathy, sagacity, and occult instinct, in brutes
10. Of animal flowers
11. Of the polypus
12. Of animalcules
13. Of instinct
14. Of scent
15. Of man
16. Of nutrition
17. Of food, or aliment
18. Of air
19. Of exercise
20. Of sleep
21. Of dreams
22. Of intemperance
23. Of the passions
24. Of impotency occasioned by fear
25. Of grief
26. Of love
27. Of melancholy
28. Of the prognostics of diseases, with rules for preserving health
29. Angina pectoris
30. Dangerous affection of the oesophagus
31. Observations on the means of preserving health
32. Of fixed air as a medicine
33. Of medical electricity
34. Of animal magnetism
35. Arguments to prove, that animal magnetism is the cause of sympathy in man and other animals, and in plants, etc.
36. Of antipathy
37. Effects of antipathy and sympathy in brute animals
38. Of attraction and repulsion, otherwise called sympathy and antipathy in plants
39. Considerations on the indispositions and diseases of man
40. Of indisposition and disease
41. Of human impregnation
42. Of feminine, or lunar diseases
43. Chlorosis, or green sickness, by some called, the love-fever
44. Of the fluor albus, or whites
45. Of barrenness, or infertility
46. Indispositions attendant on pregnancy
47. State of women at the turn of life
48. Of masculine, or solar diseases
49. Scrophula, scurvy, or king's evil
50. Debilitated, tainted, and enfeebled, constitutions
51. A relaxed habit
52. Hypochondriacal debility, or weak nerves
53. Nocturnal emisions, or incontinence of the semen
54. Onanism
55. An impure or tainted habit
56. A tainted habit in a state of pregnancy
57. Tabes dorsalis, or consumption of the back
58. Rheumatic gout
59. Agues, convulsions, cholic, bloody-flux, and violent spasms in the stomach and bowels
60. Diseases of the breast and lungs, asthma, dropsy, or consumption
61. Mental depression, or lowness of spirits
62. Bile on the stomach
63. Bite of a mad dog, or any venomous reptile
64. For gun-shot wounds, cuts, stabs, etc.
65. Of the principles of life and death
66. Of the crisis, or critical turn of a disease
67. A lunar table
68. On the difference betwixt a natural and violent death, exemplified by the fate of the late King and Queen of France.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX]