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922 [Doc. 313.
SWEDENBORG’S WRITINGS.
1740. (56, B.) Dr. J. J. Garth Wilkinson says, in his
biography of Swedenborg (p . 39), "It is recorded in one list
of Swedenborg’s works, and we have obtained collateral evi
dence of the fact, that he published Two Dissertations on
the Nervous Fibre and the Nervous Fluid, at Rome in 1740 ;
yet it is hardly probable that he had returned to Rome in
that year, and accordingly his authorship of such a publication
is doubtful. Nevertheless it is easiest to account for the
assertion by supposing its truth ; and certainly the title of the
work bears a Swedenborgian aspect. "
The editor of these Documents was instructed by the
"American Document Committee," to whose zeal the present
collection of Documents respecting the life and character of
Swedenborg is mainly due, to establish, if possible, the truth
on this matter. One of the editor’s aims in starting on a tour
to Italy in 1869 was, accordingly, to endeavour to possess
himself of a copy of the book in question. He first made a
thorough bibliographical exploration for the purpose of testing
its existence. The only anatomical work published in Rome
in 1740, which bore in its title a similarity to the one attri
buted to Swedenborg, he found to be the following, which was
noticed in Haller’s Bibliotheca Anatomica for 1774 and 1777,
viz., "Dissertationes de febribus, una de secretione fluidi ner
vorum, ipsius indole, motu ac usibus, Roma, 1740, 4to. Edidit
Felix Rossetti." The first of these dissertations, it is true,
treats de febribus, while the subject of the work ascribed to
Swedenborg, is de fibris ; yet as in the second dissertation, in
both instances, the nervous fluid is discussed, and as there is
such a great similarity between the words febribus and fibris,
rendering it probable that they were mistakenly used for one
another ; besides, as both works purport to have been printed
in Rome in 1740, and as the work as described by Haller was
evidently an anonymous publication of which Felix Rossetti
was the publisher, the editor considered himself to be on the
track of the right book.
He commenced his search after the above publication
in Bologna, in the famous Library of the University, and
afterwards he continued it in Florence in the Biblioteca
Laurenzia and Magliabechiana, and in Rome in the Biblioteca
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