Sir Kenelm Digby's A Late Discourse … Touching the Cure of Wounds by the Powder of Sympathy (1658) is usually read in the context of seventeenth-century explanations of the weapon-salve. The salve supposedly worked by being applied to the weapon that made a wound rather than to the wound itself. But Digby's essay was as much an effort to claim priority for a powdered version of the sympathetic cure as an explanation of how the cure worked. A close examination of Digby's claims in the Late Discourse in the context of his own earlier work and of works by his contemporaries shows his priority claim to have been false. It was recognized as such by his most knowledgeable associates. The story of Digby's fabrications offers a case study of the generic and rhetorical terms in which seventeenth-century English thinkers made and challenged natural-philosophical claims.

Francis Hauksbee (1660–1713) is well known for his double-barrelled air-pump. However, the origin of this pump, and Hauksbee's background, are often described as a mystery. This text seeks to dispel the riddle. It is argued that Hauksbee's competence as an exceptional maker of air-pumps was developed between 1699 and 1703 as a result of his experiences with the construction, manufacturing and sale of cupping-glasses. His cupping utensils embodied a new design, where syringes were used to evacuate the glasses, instead of the traditional way by fire or mouth suction. These syringes, which in fact were small air-pumps, were perfected between 1699 and 1701. A larger syringe, introduced in 1701, served as a transition from the cupping-syringe to his first air-pump for use in natural philosophy. This syringe was described as a ‘combined engine’, which could serve as an air-pump, a condensing engine and a syringe for injecting air, wax or mercury into pathological specimens. Hauksbee's first air-pump was a single-barrelled model introduced in 1702, based on the combined engine. Its various features, such as easy and convenient leak-tightening, exact pressure measurements by an in-built barometer and an air-inlet function for readmission of air into the receiver, are discussed. Finally, it is shown that these activities gave Hauksbee the reputation of being an outstanding instrument-maker, years before the double-barrelled air-pump was in sight.

Thomas Salusbury's Life of Galileo (1664) was the first substantial biography of Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) in any language. All copies but one were destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. The surviving copy was lost in the library of the Earls of Macclesfield at Shirburn Castle in the mid-nineteenth century. With the auction of the library in 2004–7, it temporarily re-emerged. This essay presents a preliminary description of the copy and its contents. It argues that to understand the existence and nature of the book we need to explore the social relations governing the control of information in early modern Europe. It is shown that Salusbury's project was launched in the face of social and political information blockades and in direct competition with other similar ventures. In particular, rumours of the future publication of an official biography by Vincenzo Viviani (1622–1703) and continuing negotiations over the memory and reputation of Galileo in Italy presented insurmountable barriers to the successful completion of his project. Despite these problems Salusbury's biography, produced on the margins of the emerging Royal Society, presents a spirited portrait of Galileo. Moreover, nearly four hundred years after the event, it offers a new and provocative explanation of the famous trial.