drebbel's living instruments, hartmann's microcosm, and libavius's ...

DREBBEL’S LIVING INSTRUMENTS · 51more noble than the elements, which corresponds to the stars, and through whoseperennial circulation our blood is nourished with vivifying spirit — the primigenialmoisture”. 62 Linda Allen Deer has clarified the relationship between these entitiesin Fernel’s thought. “All things which burn, Fernel explains do so simply becausethey contain a certain oily material which is able to support flame ... the ‘primigenialmoisture’ ... corresponds to the ‘oil’ which is the fuel of the ordinary flame. Heat:flame: oil: : celestial heat: spiritus: primigenial moisture”. 63Hartmann did not cite Fernel as his source in that dissertation, but he did so inReconciliation of apparent contradictions in dogmatic & Hermetic medicine, a moretraditionally structured disputation. There Hartmann developed a stoicheology whichwould integrate manual investigations into the classic subjects of physics throughthe deployment of Fernelian theory. Hartmann argued that the mere interaction ofelementary qualities could not explain the specificity of natural bodies in generationand development. Rather, “a higher and nobler cause is sought, which like a craftsmangoverns their action and directs them to a certain result”. 64 Like Fernel, Hartmannquoted Aristotle to show that even the Stagirite accepted two different types of heat,a celestial and elementary one. 65Thus, living things had two types of temperament; one which derived from theconcordance of the four elements and was mutable, the other which was the formand remained constant. Had Fernel arrived at this distinction, he could have builthis account of disease upon a more solid foundation. 66 Since the end of mixture isa perpetual succession and renovation aimed at the preservation of the individualsof a species, we can also explain the “aforementioned movement of the perpetualmotion” which corresponds to the motion of the heavens. This form of the elementsis responsible for the constant vicissitudes of terrestrial things. 67Hartmann referred to an account of Drebbel’s perpetual motion appended to thedissertation among the Epithemata. 68 There Hartmann described theperpetual motion of the Dutchman Cornelis Drebbel, which is seen in England,representing the eternal motion of the stars, the passage of time, and the tidesof the ocean precisely, and also his musical organ which emits a most pleasantharmony in the sun, without being touched by any finger, but is silent when it iscloudy. It is agreed that it is moved, turned, and sustained by the anima mundi orspirit of the universe, astral and insensible, attracted, infused, and enclosed withinthat sphere and instrument through a Chymical artifice of magnetic power. 69The source for this account was Johann Hartmann’s associate Johann ErnstBurggrav. A promoter of sympathetic cures, a magnetic blood-lamp, and electricalweapons, Burggrav described himself as a friend of Drebbel’s and a long-termdomesticus of Johann Hartmann. 70 Burggrav travelled to England in 1608, where hemet Drebbel and observed his cosmoscope installed at Eltham Palace in London. 71Indeed, Burggrav wrote to his Dutch friend Marcellus Vranckheim sometime before1609, describing the device. Vranckheim, in the midst of an academic peregrination,responded from Padua with a thirty-nine page tribute to Drebbel’s invention and