More than two centuries since, Athanasius Kircher published his strange
book on Magnetism, in which he anticipated the supposed virtue of
magnetic traction in the curative art, and advocated the magnetism
of the sun and moon, of the divining-rod, and showed his firm belief
in animal magnetism. “In speaking of the vegetable world,” says Mr.
Hunt, “and the remarkable processes by which the leaf, the flower,
and the fruit are produced, this sage brings forward the fact of the
diamagnetic (repelled by the magnet) character of the plant which was
in 1852 rediscovered; and he refers the motions of the sunflower, the
closing of the convolvulus, and the directions of the spiral formed
by the twining plants, to this particular influence.”[45] Nor were
Kircher’s anticipations random guesses, but the result of deductions
from experiment and observation; and the universality of magnetism is
now almost recognised by philosophers.