FLUDD, Robert (called in Latin De Fluctibus), a person of some celebrity in his time, was the son of Sir Thomas Fludd. treasurer of war to Queen Elizabeth in France and the Low Countries, and was born at Milgate, Kent, in the year 1574. He received his education at St John’s College, Oxford, and afterwards spent six years in travelling through France, Spain, Italy, and Germany. He acquired a strong attachment to the Rosicrucian philosophy, which consisted chiefly of a mystic or cabbalistical jargon, and those who were initiated therein had certain secrets communicated to them analogous to those of freemasonry. On his return home Fludd took the degree of doctor of medicine, settled in the city of London, and became a fellow of the College of Physicians. His piety was of an enthusiastic kind, and the seeming depth of his knowledge gained him much admiration, and procured him temporary celebrity. It is said that he employed a kind of unintelligible cant when speaking to his patients, which sometimes contributed to their recovery, as it operated on their faith, and through it on the imagination. But he is chiefly known as an adept in philosophy, not as a physician. Blending the incomprehensible reveries of the Cabbalists and Paracelsians, he formed a new physical system, [7:9:630]replete with mystery and absurdity, and believed m two universal principles, the northern or condensing, and the southern or rarefying power. Innumerable genu, as he conceived, presided over these powers, and committed the charge of diseases to legions of spirits collected from the four winds of heaven. In his estimation, a harmony subsisted between the macrocosm and the microcosm, or the world of nature and the world of man. It is impossible to enumerate all his fancies and whims, which, however absurd and extravagant, being supported by mysterious gravity and the semblance of erudition, attracted the notice of the philosophers of that age. Even Kepler himself thought the preposterous jargon of Fludd worthy of refutation, and Gassendi with the same view wrote his Examen Philosophiae Fluddiance, 1629. Fludd wrote two books against Mersenne, the first entitled Sophiae cum Moria certamen, in quo lapis Lydius, a falso structore Patre Marino Mcrsenno monaclìo reprobatus, celeberrima voluminis sui Babylonici in Genesim figmenta accurate examinat, Francfort, 1629, folio; and the second, Summum Bonorum, quod est verum Magice, Cabalae, Alchymiae, Fratrum Roseae Crucis Verorum, Subjectum, etc. 1629, folio. His other works were, 1. Utriusque Cosmi, majoris et minoris, Technica Historia, Appenheim, 1617, in 2 vols. folio; 2. Tractatus Apologeticus integritatem Soc. de Rosea Cruce defendens, Leyden, 1617; 3. Monochordon Mundi symphoniacum, seu Replicatio ad Apologiam Joannis Kepleri, Francfort, 1620; 4. Anatomice Theatrum triplici effigie designatum, ibid. 1623; 5. Philosophia Sacra et vere Christiana, seu Meteorologia Cosmica, ibid. 1626; 6. Medicina Catholica, seu mysticum artis medicandi sacrarium, ibid. 1626; 7. Integrum Morborum mysterium, ibid. 1631; 8. De Morborum Signis, ibid. 1631; 9. Clavis Philosophice et Alchy-mice Fluddiance, ibid. 1633; 10. Philosophia Mosaica, Goudae, 1638; and, 11. Pathologia Daemoniaca, ibid. 1640.