Catholic Churchmen in Science. First Series

The history of Father Kircher's career furnishes perhaps the best possible refutation of the oft-repeated slander that Jesuit education was narrow and was so founded upon and rooted in authority that original research and investigation, in scientific matters particularly, were impossible, and that it utterly failed to encourage new discoveries of any kind. As a matter of fact, Kircher was not only not hampered in his work by his superiors or by the ecclesiastical authorities, but the respect in which he was held at Rome enabled him to use the influence of the Church and of great churchmen all over the world, with the best possible effect, for the assembling at the Roman College of objects of the most various kinds, illustrating especially the modern sciences of archeology, ethnology, and paleontology, besides Egyptian and Assyrian history.

Athanasius Kircher was born 2 May, 1602, at Geisa, near Fulda, in South Germany. He was educated at the Jesuit College of Fulda, and at the early age of sixteen, having completed his college course, entered the Jesuit novitiate at Mainz. After his novitiate he continued his philosophical and classical studies at Paderborn and completed his years of scholastic teaching in various cities of South Germany–Munster, Cologne, and Coblenz–finally finishing his education by theological studies at Cologne and Mainz.

Toward the end of the third decade of the seventeenth century he became Professor of Philosophy and Mathematics at Würzburg. Here his interest in Oriental languages began, and he established a special course in this subject at the University of Würzburg. During the Thirty Years' War, however, the invasion of Germany very seriously disturbed university work, and finally in 1631 Father Kircher was sent by his superiors to Avignon in South France, where he continued his teaching some four years, attracting no little attention by his wide interest in many sciences and by various scientific works that showed him to be a man of very broad genius.

In 1635, through the influence of Cardinal Barberini, he was summoned to Rome, where he became Professor of Mathematics and Oriental Languages in the famous Roman College of the Jesuits, which was considered at that time one of the greatest educational institutions in the world. His interest in science, however, was not lessened by teaching duties that would apparently have demanded all his time; and, as we shall see, he continued to issue books on the most diverse scientific subjects, most of them illustrated by absolutely new experimental observations and all of them attracting widespread attention.

Father Kircher began his career as a writer on science at the early age of twenty-seven, when he issued his first work on magnetism. The title of this volume, "Ars Magnesia tum Theorematice tum Problematice Proposita," shows that the subject was not treated entirely from a speculative standpoint. Indeed, in the preface he states that he hopes that the principal value of the book will be found in the fact that the knowledge of magnetism is presented by a new method, with special demonstrations, and that the conclusions are confirmed by various practical uses and long-continued experience with magnets of various kinds.

Although it may be a source of great surprise, Father Kircher's genius was essentially experimental. He has been spoken of not infrequently as a man who collected the scientific information of his time in such a way as to display, as says the Encyclopedia Britannica, "a wide and varied learning, but that he was a man singularly devoid of judgment and critical discernment." He was in some respects the direct opposite of the opinion thus expressed, since his learning was always of a practical character, and there are very few subjects in this writing which he has not himself illustrated by means of new and ingenious experiments.

Perhaps the best possible proof of this is to be found in the fact that his second scientific work was on the construction of sun-dials, and that one of the discoveries he himself considered most valuable was the invention of a calculating machine, as well as of a complicated arrangement for illustrating the positions of the stars in the heavens. He constructed, moreover, a large burning-glass in order to demonstrate the possibility of the story told of Archimedes, that he had succeeded in burning the enemy's ships in the harbor at Syracuse by means of a large lens.

But Father Kircher's surest claim to being a practical genius is to be found in his invention of the magic lantern. It was another Jesuit, Aquilonius, in his work on optics, issued in 1613, who had first sought to explain how the two pictures presented to the two eyes are fused into one, and it was in a practical demonstration of this by means of lenses that Kircher hit upon the invention of the projecting stereoscope.

After his call to Rome our subject continued his work on magnetism, and in 1641 issued a further treatise on the subject called "Magnes" or "De Arte Magnetica." While he continued to teach Oriental languages and issued in 1644 a book with the title "Lingua AEgyptiaca Restituta," he also continued to apply himself especially to the development of physical science. Accordingly in 1645 there appeared his volume "Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae." This was a treatise on light, illustrated, as was his treatise on magnetism, by many original experiments and demonstrations.

During the five years until 1650 the department of acoustics came under his consideration, so that in that year we have from his pen a treatise called "Musurgia Universalis," with the subtitle, "The Art of Harmony and Discord; a treatise on the whole doctrine of sound with the philosophy of music treated from the standpoint of practical as well as theoretic science." During the next five years astronomy was his special hobby, and the result was in 1656 a treatise on astronomy called "Iter Celeste." This contained a description of the earth and the heavens and discussed the nature of the fixed and moving stars, with various considerations as to the composition and structure of these bodies. A second volume on this subject appeared in 1660.

The variety of Father Kircher's interests in science was not yet exhausted, however. Five years after the completion of his two volumes on astronomy there came one on "Mundus Subterraneus." This treated of the modern subjects of geology, metallurgy, and mineralogy, as well as the chemistry of minerals. It also contained a treatise on animals that live under the ground, and on insects. This was considered one of the author's greatest books, and the whole of it was translated into French, whilst abstracts from it, especially the chapters on poisons, appeared in most of the other languages of Europe. Part of it was translated even into English, though seventeenth-century Englishmen were loath to draw their inspiration from Jesuit writers.

Jesuits were, however, at this time generally acknowledged on the Continent to be leaders in every department of thought, sympathetic coadjutors in every step in scientific progress. Strange as it may appear to those who will not understand the Jesuit spirit of love for learning, two of the most distinguished scientists whose names are immortal in the history of physical sciences in different departments during this century, Kepler and Harvey, were on intimate terms of friendship with the Jesuits of Germany. Harvey, on the occasion of a visit to the Continent, stopped for a prolonged visit with the Jesuits at Cologne, so that some of his English friends joked him about the possibility of his making converts of the Jesuits. These witticisms, however, did not seem to distract Harvey very much, for he returned on a subsequent occasion to spend some further days with his Jesuit scientific friends along the Rhine.

In the meantime Father Kircher was issuing notable books on his always favorite subject of the Oriental languages. In 1650 there appeared "Obeliscus Pamphilius," containing an explanation of the hieroglyphics to be found on the obelisk which by the order of Innocent X, a member of the Pamfili family, was placed in the Piazza Navona by Bernini. This is no mere pamphlet, as might be thought, but a book of 560 pages. In 1652 there appeared "OEdipus AEgyptiacus," that is, the revealer of the sphinx-like riddle of the Egyptian ancient languages. In 1653 a second volume of this appeared, and in 1655 a third volume. It was considered so important that it was translated into Russian and other Slav languages, besides several other European languages. His book, "Lingua AEgyptiaca Restituta," which appeared in 1644, when Kircher was forty-two years of age, is considered to be of value yet in the study of Oriental languages, and was dedicated to the patron, Emperor Ferdinand III, whose liberality made its publication possible.

It is often a subject for conjecture just how science was studied and taught in centuries before the nineteenth, and just what text-books were employed. A little familiarity with Father Kircher's publications, however, will show that there was plenty of very suitable material for text-books to be found in his works. Under his own direction, what at the present time would be called a text-book of physics, but which at that time was called "Physiologia Experimentalis," was issued, containing all the experimental and demonstrative parts of his various books on chemistry, physics, music, magnetism, and mechanics, as well as acoustics and optics. This formed the groundwork of most text-books of science for a full century afterwards. Indeed, until the beginning of the distinctly modern science of chemistry with the discoveries of Priestley and Lavoisier, there was to be little added of serious import in science.

Perhaps the most commendable feature of Father Kircher's books is the fact that he himself seems never to have considered that he had exhausted a subject. The first work he published was on magnetism. Some twelve years later he returned to the subject, and wrote a more extensive work, containing many improvements over the first volume. The same thing is true of his studies in sound. In 1650, when not quite fifty years of age, he issued his "Musurgia Universalis," a sub-title of which stated that it contains the whole doctrine of sound and the practical and theoretical philosophy of music. A little over twenty years later, however, he published the "Phonurgia Nova," the sub-title of which showed that it was mainly concerned with the experimental demonstration of various truths in acoustics and with the development of the doctrine he had originally stated in the "Musurgia."

It is no wonder that his contemporaries spoke of him as the Doctor centum artium--the teacher of a hundred arts–for there was practically no branch of scientific knowledge in his time in which he was not expert. Scientific visitors to Rome always considered it one of the privileges of their stay in the papal city to have the opportunity to meet Father Kircher, and it was thought a very great honor to be shown through his museum by himself.

Of course, it is difficult for present-day scientists to imagine a man exhausting the whole round of science in this way. Many who have read but little more than the titles of Father Kircher's many books are accordingly prone to speak of him as a mine of information, but without any proper critical judgment. He has succeeded, according to them, in heaping together an immense amount of information, but it is of the most disparate value. There is no doubt that he took account of many things in science that are manifestly absurd. Astrology, for instance, had not, in his time, gone out of fashion entirely, and he refers many events in men's lives to the influence of the stars. He even made rules for astrological predictions, and his astronomical machine for exhibiting the motions of the stars was also meant to be helpful in the construction of astrological tables. It must not be forgotten, however, that in his time the best astronomers, like Tycho Brahe and even Kepler, had not entirely given up the idea of the influence of the stars over man's destiny.

As regards other sciences, there are details of information that may appear quite as superstitious as the belief in astrology. Kircher, for instance, accepted the idea of the possibility of the transmutation of metals. It is to be said, though, that all mankind were convinced of this possibility, and indeed not entirely without reason. All during the nineteenth century scientists believed very firmly in the absolute independence of chemical elements and their utter non-interchangeability. As the result of recent discoveries, however, in which one element has apparently been observed giving rise to another, much of this doctrine has come to be considered as improbable, and now the idea of possible transmutation of metals and other chemical elements into one another appears not so absurd as it was half a century ago.

Any one who will take up a text-book of science of a century ago will find in it many glaring absurdities. It will seem almost impossible that a scientific thinker, in his right senses, could have accepted some of the propositions that are calmly set down as absolute truths. Every generation has made itself ridiculous by knowing many things "that are not so," and even ours is no exception. Father Kircher was not outside this rule, though he was ahead of his generation in the critical faculty that enabled him to eliminate many falsities and to illuminate half-truths in the science of his day.

Undoubtedly the most interesting of Father Kircher's scientific books is his work On the Pest, with some considerations on its origin, mode of distribution, and treatment, which about the middle of the seventeenth century gathered together all the medical theories of the times as to the causation of contagious disease, discussed them with critical judgment and reached conclusions which anticipate much of what is most modern in our present-day medicine. It is this work of Father Kircher's that is now most often referred to, and very deservedly so, because it is one of the classics which represents a landmark in knowledge for all time. It merits a place beside such books as Harvey on the Circulation of Blood, or even Vesalius on Human Anatomy. As we have seen, it is now quoted from by our best recent authorities who attempt seriously to trace the history of the microbic theory of disease, and its conclusions are the result of logical processes and not the mere chance lighting upon truth of a mind that had the theories of the time before it. In it Father Kircher's genius is best exhibited. It has the faults of his too ready credibility; and his desire to discuss all possible phases of the question, even those which are now manifestly absurd, has led him into what prove to be useless digressions. But on the whole it represents very well the first great example of the application of the principle of inductive science to modern medicine. All the known facts and observations are collected and discussed, and then the conclusions are suggested.

It is very interesting to trace the development of Father Kircher's ideas with regard to the origin, causation, and communication of disease, because in many points he so clearly anticipates medical knowledge that has only come to be definitely accepted in very recent times. It has often been pointed out that Sir Robert Boyle declared that the processes of fermentation and those which brought about infectious disease, were probably of similar nature, and that the scientist who solved the problem of the cause of fermentation would throw great light on the origin of these diseases. This prophetic remark was absolutely verified when Pasteur, a chemist who had solved the problem of fermentation, also solved the weightier questions connected with human diseases. Before even Boyle, however, Father Kircher had expressed his opinion that disease processes were similar to those of putrefaction. He considered that putrefaction was due to the presence of certain corpuscula, as he called them, and these he said were also probably active in the causation of infectious disease.

He was not sure whether or not these corpuscula were living, in the sense that they could multiply of themselves. He considered, however, that this was very probable. As to their distribution, he is especially happy in his anticipations of modern medical progress. While he considered it very possible that they were carried through the air, he gives it as his deliberate opinion that living things were the most frequent agents for the distribution of the corpuscles of disease. He is sure that they are carried by flies, for instance, and that they may be inoculated by the stings of such insects as fleas or mosquitoes. He even gives some examples that he knew of in which this was demonstrated. Still more striking is his insistence on the fact that such a contagious disease as pest may be carried by cats and dogs and other domestic animals. The cat seemed to him to be associated with special danger in this matter, and he gives an example of a nunnery which had carefully protected itself against possible infection, but had allowed a cat to come in, with the result that some cases of the disease developed.

An interesting bit of discussion is to be found in the chapter in which Father Kircher takes up the consideration of the problem whether infectious disease can ever be produced by the imagination. He is speaking particularly of the pest, but there is more than a suspicion that under the name pest came at times of epidemics many of our modern contagious diseases. Father Kircher says that there is no doubt that worry plays an important role in predisposing persons to take the disease. He does not consider, however, that it can originate of itself, or be engendered in the person without contact with some previous case of pest. With regard to the question of predisposition he is very modern. He points out that many persons do not take the disease, because evidently of some protective quality which they possess. He is sure, too, that the best possible protection comes from keeping in good, general health.

A curious suggestion is that with regard to the grave-diggers and undertakers. It has often been noted in Italy, so Father Kircher asserts, that these individuals as a rule did not succumb to the disease, notwithstanding their extreme exposure, when the majority of the population were suffering from it. Toward the end of the epidemic, however, at the time when the townspeople were beginning to rejoice over its practical disappearance, it was not unusual to have these caretakers of the dead brought down with the disease–often, too, in fatal form. Father Kircher considers that only strong and healthy individuals would take up such an occupation. That the satisfaction of accomplishing a large amount of work and making money kept them in good health. Later on, however, as the result of overwork during the time of the epidemic and also of discouragement because they saw the end of prosperous times for them, they became predisposed to the disease and then fell victims.

With regard to the prevention of the pest in individual cases, Father Kircher has some very sensible remarks. He says that physicians as a rule depend on certain medicinal protectives or on amulets which they carry. The amulets he considers to be merely superstitious. The sweet-smelling substances that are sometimes employed are probably without any preventive action. Certain physicians employed a prophylactic remedy made up of very many substances. This is what in modern days we would be apt to call a "gunshot prescription." It contained so many ingredients that it was hoped that some one of them would hit the right spot and prove effective. Father Kircher has another name for it. We do not know whether it is original with him, but in any case it is worth while remembering. He calls it a "calendar prescription," because when written it resembled a list of the days of the month.

His opinion of this "calendar prescription" is not very high. It seems to him that if one ingredient did good, most of the others would be almost as sure to do harm. The main factor in prophylaxis to his mind was to keep in normal health, and this seemed not quite compatible with frequent recourse to a prescription containing so many drugs that were almost sure to have no good effect and might have an ill effect. It is all the more interesting to find these common-sense views because ordinarily Father Kircher is set down as one who accepted most of the traditions of his time without inquiring very deeply into their origin or truth, simply reporting them out of the fulness of his rather pedantic information. In most cases it will be found, however, that, like Herodotus, reporting the curious things that had been told him in his travels, he is very careful to state what are his own opinions and what he owes to others and gives place to, though without attaching much credence to them.

It must not be forgotten that his great contemporaries, Von Helmont and Paracelsus, were not free from many of the curious scientific superstitions of their time, though they had, like him, in many respects the true scientific spirit. Von Helmont, for instance, was a firm believer in the doctrine of spontaneous generation, and even went so far as to consider that it had its application to animals of rather high order. For instance, one of his works contains a rather famous prescription to bring about the spontaneous generation of mice. What was needed was a jar of meal kept in a dark corner covered by some soiled linen. After three weeks these elements would be found to have bred mice. Too much must not be expected, then, of Kircher in the matter of crediting supposedly scientific traditions.

It may seem surprising that Father Kircher's book did not produce a greater impression upon the medical research work and teaching of the day and lead to an earlier development of microbiology. Unfortunately, however, the instruments of precision necessary for such a study were not then at hand, and the gradual loss of prestige of the book is therefore readily to be understood. The explanation of this delay in the development of science is very well put by Crookshank, who is the professor of comparative pathology and bacteriology at King's College, London, and one of the acknowledged authorities on these subjects in the medical world. Professor Crookshank says, at the beginning of the first chapter of his text-book on bacteriology, in which he traces the origin of the science, that the first attempt to demonstrate the existence of the contagium vivum dates back almost to the discovery of the microscope:–10

Athanasius Kircher nearly two and a half centuries ago expressed his belief that there were definite micro-organisms to which diseases were attributable. The microscope had revealed that all decomposing substances swarmed with countless micro-organisms which were invisible to the naked eye, and Kircher sought for similar organisms in disease, which he considered might be due to their agency. The microscopes which he describes obviously could not admit of the possibility of studying or even detecting the micro-organisms which are now known to be associated with certain diseases; and it is not surprising that his teaching did not at the time gain much attention. They were destined, however, to receive a great impetus from the discoveries which emanated not long after from the father of microscopy, Leeuwenhoek.

This reference to Kircher's work, however, shows that more cordial appreciation of his scientific genius has come in our day, and it seems not unlikely that in the progress of more accurate and detailed knowledge of scientific origins his reputation will grow as it deserves. With that doubtless will come a better understanding of the true attitude of the scholars of the time–so many of whom were churchmen–to so-called physical science in contradistinction to philosophy, in which of course they had always been profoundly interested. The work done by Kircher could never have been accomplished but for the sympathetic interest of those who are falsely supposed to have been bitterly opposed to all progress in the natural sciences, but whose opposition was really limited to theoretic phases of scientific inquiry that threatened, as has scientific theory so often since, to prove directly contradictory to revealed truth.