Lindheim fell victims in four years. In the district of Como, Switzerland, one thousand were burned in one year (1524). In France the destruction of life was equally frightful. Witch-persecutions in England came on later, but were equally ferocious.
James I wrote a treatise on "Demonology," and during the Long Parliament three thousand persons were executed by legal processes alone, not counting the victims by mobs, as a result of this witch-mania.
But, according to Hutchison, chaplain to George I, who wrote upon witchcraft, "there were but two witches executed in England after the Royal Society published their 'Transactions,' and one of these was in the year after their first publication."
And Sir Walter Scott, in his letters on "Demonology and Witchcraft," expresses his belief that the Royal Society "tended greatly to destroy the belief in witchcraft and superstition generally."
What a comment upon the value of scientific studies!
Touching for king's-evil or scrofula, which was long rife in England, was another but more harmless superstition which the Royal Society was active in destroying. Imagine the feelings of the fastidious Charles, under such ordeals as the one related of him by Aubrey in his "Miscellanies": "Arise Evans had a fungous nose, and said it was revealed to him that the king's hand would cure him: and at the first coming of King Charles II in St. James's Park he kissed the king's hand and rubbed his nose with it, which disturbed the king, but cured him."
Even within the Royal Society itself there was a lack of precision in scientific investigation. Upon the same evening that Sir Robert Moray was elected president he brought in a contribution on "A Relation concerning Barnicles," in which he relates of a visit to Scotland, where he found attached to a certain variety of trees innumerable little shells, each containing a little bird. He confesses that, while he found everything for "making up a perfect sea-fowle," he never saw any of the birds alive. "Here we have the absurd notion of the Lepas anatifera breeding geese, brought before the society by their president."
We find in the same minutes that "Dr. Clark was intreated to lay before the society Mr. Pellin's relation of the production of young vipers from the powder of the liver and lungs of vipers."
The Royal Society owes to the Hon. Robert Boyle more than to any other one person for its inception. A bachelor of independent fortune, he devoted his great resources, mental and material, to experimental researches, especially in relation to chemistry and of the atmosphere. An enthusiastic follower of Bacon, he believed and practiced the cherished doctrines of the great philosopher, that experiment and experiment is the only and sure method of
