"thunder-stone" = "thunderbolt" in the 18th century

[Jonathan Lighter]

I'd have thought that "thunderstone" applied more specifically - though not
necessarily exclusively - to meteorites or presumed meteorites.  Their
existence was roundly doubted and denied in the 18th C.

JL

On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 12:47 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

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> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      "thunder-stone" = "thunderbolt" in the 18th century
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> My further research for "thunder-stone" = "thunderbolt" in the 18th
> century, for my Hawthorne project, turned up a scattering in
> ECCO.  (The OED has no citations for this sense between 1678 and
> 1819, even I think Jesse told me in its database.)  Two of these
> seemed especially interesting:
>
> 1)  The New Book of Knowledge.  Shewing The Effects of the Planets
> [etc. etc.].  London: printed for A. Wilde, 1758.  Page 101.
>
> "Of Thunder-bolts or Thunder-stones."  [Section title.]
>
> "Thunder-bolts and Thunder-stones are nothing else but the soeculent
> Matter of those Vapours and Exhalations, which are the material Cause
> of the Thunder and Lightning, for we see by Experience, that even our
> Urine has always some such concreted Dregs belonging to it; and
> sometimes pefrect [sic] Stones made out of it, either in the Reins or
> Uterers [sic] or Bladder; and why there may not be a Petrifaction in
> this Case, I know no reason."
>
> (The author of this "new book of knowledge" seems a bit out of touch
> -- Franklin's and the French experiments were in 1752.)
>
> 2)  The History and Philosophy of Earthquakes, from the Remotest to
> the Present Times [etc.]. By a Member of the Royal Academy of
> Berlin.  London: Printed for J. Nourse, 1757.  ESTC attributes this
> to John Bevis, saying "A member of the Royal Academy = John Bevis."
>
> Page 189.
>
> "As to the thunder stones which the vulgar believes [sic] always to
> accompany lightning, their existence may in my opinion well be
> questioned, and I verily believe there never was an instance of any
> such thing: it is not however absolutely impossible, that by a rapid
> ascent of an hurricane to the clouds there may sometimes be carried
> up with it some stones or mineral substances [or Kansan houses],
> which being softened and melted together by heat, may form what is
> called a thunder stone: but such stones are not found in places where
> it thunders; and if any such should be found, it would be more
> reasonable to believe that it arose from a mineral substance melted
> and formed by the inflamed sulphur of thunder in the earth itself,
> than to imagine that it was formed in the air or the clouds, and
> projected downwards with the thunder."
>
> (German -- or Berlin-sanctioned -- science was better -- or perhaps
> only more wordy -- even in those days. Although this author too is
> post-Franklin,.  And I am skeptical about "the inflamed sulphur of
> thunder in the earth itself":  did he still think the flash of
> lightning was sulphur burning?)
>
> Joel
>
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