"The vulcano's, or, Burning and fire-vomiting mountains..." The Luxurious Language of Science, 1669

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 2833

I came to be working in the great and problematic Athanasia Kircher's glorious Mundus Subterraneus..., printed in 1665, which is a compendium of most things scientific though with the heavy flavor of application to the world underground. Figuring out what was going on in places that could not be seen or investigated or for the most part quantified didn't stop Kircher from extreme hypothesizing on the nature of the Earth, and so he came into possession of a hermetic-philosophico-alchemical-religio-scientific panspermic theory of the origin of all things. Of course there's a lot of good thinking that goes along with the Grand Theory, and some very innovative scientific thinking, and the expanse of the knowledge of this one man is extremely impressive—there is a LOT in this book.

In 1669, four years after the publication of the Mundus, came the English publication of a somewhat-beautifully and certainly surprisingly-titled book summarizing and cajoling the Mundus, called:

The vulcano's, or, Burning and fire-vomiting mountains, famous in the world, with their remarkables collected for the most part out of Kircher's Subterraneous world, and exposed to more general view in English : upon the relation of the late wonderful and prodigious eruptions of Ætna, thereby to occasion greater admirations of the wonders of nature (and of the God of nature) in the mighty element of fire. (London : Printed by J. Darby, for John Allen, and are to be sold by him ..., and by Benjamin Billingsly ..., 1669.)

How lovely is that? (By the way I cannot find any other book with "fire-vomiting" in its title¹.)

It is a stripped-down 82-page summary of some of the principle ideas of the massive two-volume Mundus, and appears with only one illustration², while the full work was magisterially published with fantastic illustrations and folding plates throughout.

There are many pleasurable turns of phrase and off-brand uses of common words, and unexpected and conjoined vocabulary throughout the work—at least so far as I have seen from the bits that I have read in it. For example, just in the first few pages of browsing I have come across “treasuries of Fire”, “forges in the profoundest Bowels of Nature”, “entrails of the Earth”, “nor as the Vulgar perswade themselves”, “sulphrous unctious matters”, “fire engendering all concocting Nature”, “ever-flowing flames”, are among the notables from the first pages.

Here's one paragraph from page three:

“The Prodigious Vulcano's therefore and Fire-vomitting Moun∣tains visible in the external surface of the Earth, do sufficiently de∣monstrate it full of invisible and under-ground fires. For where∣ever there's a Vulcan, there also is a Conservatory, or Store-house under, as certain, as where there is a Chimney or smoke, there is fire; And argue deeper treasuries and storehouses of fire, in the very heart and inward bowels of the Earth. In so much that from hence the Holy Father's have not incongruously placed the greatest of all the * Fire-conservative Abysses in the Centre of the Earth, for an eternal Jakes and Prison, destin'd for the punishment of the Damned; and some others for Purgatory (according to the received belief of Papists.)”

Sources:

Early English Books online  https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A65153.0001.001/1:11.2?rgn=div2;view=fulltext

Wellcome Library: https://wellcomecollection.org/works/ygm2etrh/items?canvas=9&langCode=eng&sierraId=b1028090x

Notes:

1.  "Vomiting" in the title, however, is not horribly uncommon. For example, here's a long title for a broadside publication that including snake vomiting, as in vomiting up snakes: A warning for all such as desire to sleep upon the grass : By the example of Mary Dudson maid-servant to Mr. Phillips a gardener ... being a most strange, but true relation how she was found in a dead-sleep in the garden, that no ordinary noise could awake her. As also how an adder entered into her body, the manner of her long sickness, with a brief discovery of the cause at length by her strange and most miraculous vomiting up of about fourteen young adders, and one old adder ... the maid is yet living. The like to this hath not been known in this age. The tune is, In summer time.--London, printed for Charles Tyus, 1664.

2. Though there is only the one illustration (a folding frontispiece) in the English summary, it is pretty remarkable: