Fluke (anatomy)

“ The ether strain which results from the lateral movement of lines of electric strain is called the magnetic-flux, and it can be mathematically shown that the movement of an electron, consisting when at rest of a radial convergence of lines of electric strain, must be accompanied by the production of self-closed lines of magnetic flux, distributed in concentric circles or rings round it, the planes of these circles being perpendicular to the direction of motion of the electron. ”

“ The flux is to the right rather than to the left because the veins there are more capacious and numerous than on the left side, for on the one side they spring from the liver, and on the other from the spleen. The defluxion and melting down take place most especially in the case of children in whom the head is heated either by the sun or by fire, or if the brain suddenly contract a rigor, and then the phlegm is excreted. ”

“ I think the Electric Fluid is always the same; yet I find that weaker and stronger Sparks differ in apparent Colour; some white, blue, purple, red; the strongest, White; weak ones, red. Thus different Degrees of Vibration given to the Air produce the 7 different Sounds in Music, analagous to the 7 Colours, yet the Medium, Air, is the same.
"Universal Space, as far as we know of it," he declared in his Loose Thoughts on a Universal Fluid, "seems to be filled with a subtil Fluid, whose Motion, or Vibration is called Light." ”

“ When the waves of ether impinge upon molecules whose periods of vibration coincide with the recurrence of the undulations, the timed strokes of the waves cause the motion of the molecules to accumulate, as a heavy pendulum is set in motion by well-timed puffs of breath. Thousands of millions of shocks are received every second from the calorific waves, and it is not difficult to see that every wave, arriving just in time to repeat the action of its predecessor, the molecules must finally be caused to swing through wider spaces than if the arrivals were not so timed. ”

“ In this respect the fulguration is extremely like another accident which is known under the name of fulgurites or fulminated tubes, splendid specimens of which may be seen at the museum. As the two cuts in Fig. 2 show, there are irregular tubes, the substance of which, a kind of natural glass, is the product of the solution of siliceous sands that have been struck by lightning. The tube is smooth within, but rugose on the outside, on account of the agglutination of imperfectly melted particles of sand. Fulgurites are generally ramified at their lower end. ”

“ Now when a Person throws a Stone into Water, these Undulations or Waves are raised in the Fluid for some Distance, by the Force and Action of one Wave upon another. This is the Case with regard to Sound; only the Air being an elastic Fluid, these Undulations are more quick and brisk in their Motions than in Water. So much for Sound itself. Now for the Cause of this Sound, or of these Undulations.
These Undulations are caused by the Vibration of some elastic Body, which is put into Motion by a Stroke of another Body against it. ”

“ If the parts of this fluid do not cohere in any way, but move frictionless, our little vortex-atom may have qurte a sharp boundary, and if inertia be granted as an original property in our fluid, the little vortex may go on spinning for ever. ”

“ Once admit even the most infinitesimal amount of friction, while retaining the conception of vortex-motion in a universal fluid, and the whole case is so far altered that the material atom can no longer be regarded as absolutely indestructible, but only as indefinitely enduring. It may have been generated, in bygone eternity, by a natural process of evolution, and in future eternity may come to an end. ”

“ Free fall in a vacuum, propagation of light and sound waves without absorption and reflection and unchecked electrical oscillations. All the latter processes are either naturally periodic, or they can be made completely reversible by suitable devices so that no sort of change in Nature remains behind; for example, the free fall of a body by utilizing the velocity acquired to bring the body back to its original height, light and sound waves by suitably reflecting them from perfect mirrors. ”

“ Further, the great mesmerizer teaches us that the faculty of directing this fluid is a “physical property, resulting from our organization ... it passes through all bodies ... everything can be used as a conductor for magical operations, and it will retain the power of producing effects in its turn.” This is the theory common to all hermetic philosophers. Such is the power of the fluid, “that no chemical or physical forces are able to destroy it.... There is very little analogy between [Pg 280] the imponderable fluids known to physicists and this animal magnetic fluid.” ”

“ The defluxion also takes place in consequence of fear, from any hidden cause, if we are the at any person's calling aloud, or while crying, when one cannot quickly recover one's breath, such as often happens to children. When any of these things occur, the body immediately shivers, the person becoming speechless cannot draw his breath, but the breath (pneuma) stops, the brain is contracted, the blood stands still, and thus the excretion and defluxion of the phlegm take place. In children, these are the causes of the attack at first. But to old persons winter is most inimical. ”

“ The vortex theory assumes, therefore, that the universe consists of one uniform primary substance, a fluid which fills all space, and that what we call matter consists of portions of this fluid which have become [34] animated with vortex motion. The innumerable atoms which form molecules, and through molecules all the diversified forms of matter of the material universe, are therefore simply so many vortex rings, each perfectly limited, distinct, and indestructible, both as to its form, mass, and mode of motion. They cannot change or disappear, nor can they be formed spontaneously. ”

“ So, the two poles must be brought into contact. In the act of coition, the two seas of blood in the two individuals, rocking and surging towards contact, as near as possible, clash into a oneness. A great flash of interchange occurs, like an electric spark when two currents meet or like lightning out of the densely surcharged clouds. There is a lightning flash which passes through the blood of both individuals, there is a thunder of sensation which rolls in diminishing crashes down the nerves of each—and then the tension passes. ”

“ In the vessels with the lower degree of exhaustion, the length of the mean free path of the molecules is exceedingly small as compared with the dimensions of the bulb, and the properties belonging to the ordinary gaseous state of matter, depending upon constant collisions, can be observed. But in the phenomena now about to be examined, so high is the exhaustion carried that the dark space around the negative pole has widened out till it entirely fills the tube. ”

“ The flux and reflux, when seen were quite regular. Every flood began gently, its velocity increasing by degrees, until at length it rushed in with great impetuosity, till it had attained its full hight. Having remained for a little time stationary, it then retired, ebbing gently at first, but afterward sinking away with great swiftness. At every flux the whole body of water seemed to be violently thrown against the bank; but neither during the time of the flux, nor that of the reflux, did there appear even the least wrinkle of a wave on the other parts of the moat. ”

“ For if the corpuscles collide with each other between two material bodies, no attraction effect will be produced ; just as in an ordinary gas there is equality of pressure on all sides of an immersed body despite the presence of other bodies. If however we could immerse in an ordinary gas, two bodies sufficiently small, and at a less distance from each other than the free path of the particles of the gas, then there would be a shielding effect and a tendency to come together. ”

“ For, as we have seen, we require a large number of corpuscles impinging in quick succession to give the effect of continuous pressure ; we require a high speed to give absence of resistance to the motion of ordinary matter and to give static attraction, the same value as kinetic ; and we need small dimensions to give impalpability, while at the same time, in virtue of the high velocity, the momentum and energy remain normal. ”

“ This is what happens where either solids or liquids pass over a path; there seems no reason why it should not happen where the thing that passes is a mere wave of rearrangement in matter that does not displace itself, but merely changes chemically or turns itself round in place, or vibrates across the line. The most plausible views of the nerve-current make it out to be the passage of some such wave of rearrangement as this. ”

“ Supposing, now, that we adopt provisionally the vortex theory,—the great power of which is well shown by the consideration just mentioned,—we must not forget that it is absolutely essential to the indestructibleness of the material atom that the universal fluid in which it has an existence as a vortex-ring should be entirely destitute of friction. ”

“ In some cases the flux is simply proportional to the force and in the same direction, but in other cases we can only affirm that the direction and magnitude of the flux are functions of the direction and magnitude of the force.
The case in which the components of the flux are linear functions of those of the force is discussed in the chapter on the Equations of Conduction, Art. 296. There are in general nine coefficients which determine the relation between the force and the flux. In certain cases we have reason to believe that six of these coefficients form three pairs of equal quantities. ”

“ We now know that waves, not fluids, are transmitted in the case of heat and light, and in a like manner gravity as deflection must be considered as wave action or vibration in some form. With these principles the instantaneous action of gravity is simple and self-evident, for speed is not transmitted, but only deflection is caused. ”

“ Nor can even an analogue of the invention be found in the corpuscular theory of gases ; for in the latter case, the free path of the particle is assumed to extend only for the short distance between neighboring molecules, and by reason of incessant collision and deflection among the elements the hydro-dynamic pressure of the medium is equal in all directions, quite irrespective of the number or character of intervening obstructions: while the gravific or ultramundane corpuscle must ex hypothesi travel from infinity in a perfectly straight and undisturbed path to fulfill its appointed mission. ”

“ Even if we supposed light to arise from vibrations of the æther accompanied by condensations and rarefactions, analogous to the vibrations of the air in the case of sound, since such vibrations would be propagated with about 10,000 times the velocity of the earth, we might without sensible error neglect the condensation of the æther in the motion which we are considering. ”

“ The vortex atom belongs, not to physics, but to purely mathematical concepts; being an ideal abstraction—as much so as a surface, or a line, or four-dimensioned space—invented for the purpose of investigating problems in hydrodynamics. A homogeneous, incompressible, continuous, perfectly mobile but not miscible substance is an impossible entity, and it would seem an inconsistent one as to mobility ”

“ But irregular bodies dispersed through a resisting medium, will not move in straight lines towards their common centre of gravity. A mass which presents an irregular face to its line of movement through a resisting medium, must necessarily be deflected from its original course, by the unequal reactions of the medium on its different sides. Hence each flocculus, 252 as by analogy we term one of these precipitated masses of gas or vapour, will acquire a movement, not towards the common centre of gravity, but towards one or other side of it ”

“ And if the pressure of the aether, or any subtiler matter than the air, may unite, and hold fast together, the parts of a particle of air, as well as other bodies, yet it cannot make bonds for ITSELF, and hold together the parts that make up every the least corpuscle of that MATERIA SUBTILIS. So that that hypothesis, how ingeniously soever explained, by showing that the parts of sensible bodies are held together by the pressure of other external insensible bodies, reaches not the parts of the aether itself ”

“ According to the wave theory, the celestial bodies move in an attenuated and subtile ethereal medium; according to the corpuscular theory, they move in a perpetual shower of corpuscles emitted by the sun and stars. In both cases matter exists—inertia exists—therefore resistance must be encountered. The smallness of the resistance, however small we choose to suppose it, does not allow us to escape this certainty. ”

“ We can thus understand how it is that a substance like lampblack produces intense sonorous vibrations in the surrounding air, while at the same time it communicates a very feeble vibration to the diaphragm or solid bed upon which it rests.
This curious fact was independently observed in England by Mr. Preece, and it led him to question whether, in our experiments with thin diaphragms, the sound heard was due to the vibration of the disk or (as Professor Hughes had suggested) to the expansion and contraction of the air in contact with the disk confined in the cavity behind the diaphragm. ”