" Fit quoque ut a lapide hoc Ferri natura recedat
Interdum, fugere, atque sequi, consueta vicissim.''
These
peoples further held that the magnet is effective in the cure of
disease ; that it affects the brain, causing melancholy ; that it
serves as a love philtre ; that it may be used in testing the chastity
of a woman ; that it loses its power when rubbed with garlic, but
recovers it when treated with goat's blood ; and that it will not
attract iron when in the presence of a Diamond ; all of which notions
were eagerly adopted by the wonderÂworking adherents of the Middle Ages.
Into
the scientific phenomena of magnetic action on the needle in the
mariner's compass, causing the same to point approximately north and
south, at its opposite ends, we do not feel called upon to enter in
these pages. As is commonly known, these opposite ends of the
magnetised needle are called " poles." The first accounts of the
compass in Europe go back to the twelfth century.
Marbodus
has told curiously about the Loadstone, that if its powder be strewn
secretly upon live embers, this proceeding will compel all the inmates
to quit the house ; panic struck, and thus allowing robbers free access
into it unmolested.
When
the Prophet Ezekiel was ordered (by the divine " appearance of fire,"
of the colour of amber; from a throne " having the appearance of a
sapphire stone), to eat a roll, as given him ; and to " go, speak unto
the house of Israel," he was bidden to fear them not, because his face
was made strong against their faces ; "as an Adamant, harder than flint
have I made thy forehead."
The Adamant, (supposed by some early writers to
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