by William Gilbert

“ Whereas if the liver be hardened and weakened by old age or a chronic obstruction, or the spleen be shrivelled and contracted to a schirrus, by which troubles the fleshy parts of the limbs grow flaccid, and water under the skin invades the body, in the case of these conditions the introduction of iron accelerates the fatal end, and considerably increases the malady. ”

“ But Avicenna wrongly and old-womanishly makes out that the proper antidote to this iron poison is loadstone to the weight of a drachm taken as a draught in the juice of mercurialis or of Beet; for loadstone is of a twofold nature, usually malefiant and pernicious, nor does it resist iron, since it attracts it; nor when drunk in a draught in the form of powder does it avail to attract or repel, but rather inflicts the same evils. ”

“ Further that iron is astringent, also that Chalybeate water quenches thirst: and they adduce the cooling effect of thermal iron waters. Others, however, maintain that it is Warm, because of Hippocrates making out that waters are warm which burst forth from places where iron exists. Galen says that in all metals there is considerable substance, or essence, of fire. Paolo affirms that iron waters are warm. Rhazes will have it that iron is warm and dry in the third degree. The Arabians think that it opens the spleen and liver; wherefore also that iron is warm. ”

“ By Manardus, Curtius, Fallopius and others, many reasons are adduced on both sides; each settles it according to his own sentiment. Some make it to be cold, saying that iron has the property of refrigerating, because Aristotle in his Meteorologica would put iron in the class of things which grow concreted in cold by emission of the whole of their Heat: Galen, too, says that iron has its consistency from cold ”