Burnet is the Bishop Gilbert Burnet (1643-1715) who was so strongly anti-Romanistic that he left England during the reign of James II and joined the ranks of the Prince of Orange. William made him bishop of Salisbury. [191] There is some substantial basis for De Morgan's doubts as to the connection of that _mirandula_ of his age, Sir Kenelm Digby (1603-1665), with the famous _poudre de sympathie_. It is true that he was just the one to prepare such a powder. A dilletante in everything,--learning, war, diplomacy, religion, letters, and science--he was the one to exploit a fraud of this nature. He was an astrologer, an alchemist, and a fabricator of tales, and well did Henry Stubbes characterize him as "the very Pliny of our age for lying." He first speaks of the powder in a lecture given at Montpellier in 1658, and in the same year he published the address at Paris under the title: _Discours fait en une celebre assemblee par le chevalier Digby .... touchant la guerison de playes par la poudre de sympathie_. The London edition referred to by De Morgan also came out in 1658, and several editions followed it in England, France and Germany. But Nathaniel Highmore in his _History of Generation_ (1651) referred to the concoction as "Talbot's Powder" some years before Digby took it up. The basis seems to have been vitriol, and it was claimed that it would heal a wound by simply being applied to a bandage taken from it. [192] This work by Thomas Birch (1705-1766) came out in 1756-57. Birch was a voluminous writer on English history. He was a friend of Dr. Johnson and of Walpole, and he wrote a life of Robert Boyle. [193] We know so much about John Evelyn (1620-1706) through the diary which he began at the age of eleven, that we forget his works on navigation and architecture. [194] I suppose this was the seventh Earl of Shrewsbury (1553-1616). [195] This is interesting in view of the modern aseptic practice of surgery and the antiseptic treatment of wounds inaugurated by the late Lord Lister. [196] Perhaps De Morgan had not heard the _bon mot_ of Dr. Holmes: "I firmly believe that if the whole _materia medica_ could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be all the better for mankind and all the worse for the fishes."