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Bartholinus, Fabricius Hildanus, Pliny, Rhodius, Schenck, Marcellus Donatus, Riedlin, and Garengeot speak of death from fright and fear, and the Ephemerides describes a death the direct cause of which was intense shame.
The Ephemerides speaks of epilepsy manifested only on the birthday. Testa mentions epilepsy recurring at the festival of St. John, and Bartholinus reports a case in which the convulsions corresponded with the moon's phases. Paullini describes epilepsy which occurred during the blowing of wind from the south, and also speaks of epilepsy during the paroxysms of which the individual barked.
And who shone brighter in his day, than Benjamin Bannaker, of Baltimore county, Maryland, who by industry and force of character, became a distinguished mathematician and astronomer, "for many years," says Davenport's Biographical Dictionary, "calculated and published the Maryland Ephemerides."
They gave me at parting the astronomical Ephemerides for those years which I had not been able to procure in France or Spain. I am indebted to Captain Garnier for the observations I was enabled to make on the satellites beyond the equator and I feel it a duty to record here the gratitude I feel for his kindness.
The rule adopted, therefore, is to have all the ephemerides which refer to absolute time, without any reference to a meridian, given for Greenwich noon, unless there may be some special reason to the contrary. For the needs of the navigator and the theoretical astronomer these are the most convenient epochs.
There are representations of curiosities, which we shall give an account of from the Ephemerides of the Curious.
Among the older writers who have mentioned abnormal modes of exit of the urine is Baux, who mentions urine from the nipples; Paullini and the Ephemerides describe instances of urination from the eyes. Blancard, the Ephemerides, Sorbalt, and Vallisneri speak of urination by the mouth.
Schenck tells of a man who swooned at the sight of pork. The Ephemerides contains an account of a person who lost his voice at the sight of a crab, and also cites cases of antipathy to partridges, a white hen, to a serpent, and to a toad. Lehman speaks of an antipathy to horses; and in his observations Lyser has noticed aversion to the color purple.
I am the more ready to adopt this change because when the eclipses are to be computed for our own country the change of meridians will be very readily understood by those who make the computation. It may be interesting to say something of the tables and theories from which the astronomical ephemerides are computed. To understand them completely it is necessary to trace them to their origin.
The Nautical Almanac of the present day had its origin in the Astronomical Ephemerides called forth by the needs of predictions of celestial motions both on the part of the astronomer and the citizen. So long as astrology had a firm hold on the minds of men, the positions of the planets were looked to with great interest.
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