The universe, or, The infinitely great and the infinitely little / by F.A. Pouchet ; translated from the French.

  • Pouchet, F.-A. (Félix-Archimède), 1800-1872.
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The universe, or, The infinitely great and the infinitely little / by F.A. Pouchet ; translated from the French. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    802/838 (page 768)
    caverns the bones of bears, hyenas, and other mammals, nothing more was necessary in times of such creduUty to make men assign (as was particularly the case in Franconia) the fossilized remains of these ancient animals to fabulous reptiles. It is particularly at the height of the Eenaissance that we see this love of monstrosity reach its climax; every author then thought himself obliged to devote a few chap- ters of his work to it. Aldrovandus, a naturalist of Bologna, a profoundly learned man, even wrote a big work on mon- sters, in which are delineated some of the most fantastic kind. Ambrose Paré, surgeon to Henry III. of France, though he had travelled with the army, Avas no less credul- ous than the others. In his celebrated work he represents sirens, monks, and men-at-arms of the sea, all covered with scales, and as fresh as if they had been just withdrawn from the gulfs of Neptune. One asks with astonishment how the old Huguenot could believe such rubbish. I will not speak of the treatise on monsters by Licetus, as that is an imjDortant work, in which the anatomist has onlj^ exag- gerated some details in order to give interest to his subject. But if anything can surprise us more it is the fact that the history of monsters is found with all its exaggerations at two periods widely distant from each other. We find it in the height of its extravagances in the middle ages and the Renaissance, and then at the beginning of the present century it returns in ordei* to astonish us by the audacity of its flights. In the middle ages it was the sombre countries of northern Europe that harboured this belief, and it is in the works of Olaus Magnus, the Albertus Magnus of the north, that we find the most incredible display of it. From this work our moderns have taken their horrible