ILLUMINATI
46
INGEN-HOUSZ
was sent to Liverpool where his work lay among
the poor of the slums of that city. His next post was
that of preacher in London, after which he was
stationed at St. Aloysius' Church, Oxford, where the
Baron and Baroness de Paravicini have erected a
memorial to him. In 1884 he was elected fellow of the
Royal University of Ireland and appointed classical
examiner at Dublin, where he died of a contagious
fever. While still at school he had WTitten verses
of distinctive merit but in his ardour as a novice he
destroyed his poems, a single fragment surviving,
and he wrote no more for nearly ten years. The
poetry which he subsequently wrote at various periods
until the year of his death is of a very high quality.
It resembles the poetry of Crashaw in its exuberance
of language, its l>Tic qualities, and its daring meta-
phors. The poems have never been collected, but
many of them have been publi.shed in various anthol-
ogies such as Beeching's "Lyra Sacra" and Miles'
"Poets and Poetry of the Century".
Br^qt, The Poeta' Chantry (London, 1912), 70-SS.
Blanche M. Kellt.
I
niuminati (.\lumbrados), the name assumed by
some false mystics who appeared in Spain in the
sixteenth century and claimed to have direct inter-
course with God. They held that the human soul
can reach such a degree of perfection that it con-
templates even in the present life the essence of God
and comprehends the mystery of the Trinity. All
external worship, they declared, is superfluous, the
reception of the sacraments useless, and sin im-
possible in this state of complete union with Ilim
Who is Perfection Itself. Carnal desires may be
indulged and other sinful actions committed freely
without staining the soul. The highest perfection
attainable by the Christian consists in the elimination
of all activity, the loss of individuality, and complete
absorption in God (see Quietism). The peasant
girl known as La Beata de Piedrahita (d. 1511) is
cited among the early adherents of these errors; but
it is not certain that she was guilty of heresy. At
Toledo, which was one of the main centres of Illumin-
ism, Isabella of the Cross is said to have carried on
an active propaganda. More celebrated was Mag-
dalen of the Cross, a Poor Clare of Aguilar near
C6rdova, who, however, in 1546, solemnly abjured
the heresjf. So rapidly did the errors gain ground
that the Inquisition proceeded with relentless energj-
against aU suspects, even citing before its tribunal
St. John of Avila and St. Ignatius of Loyola. In
spite of this determined action, however, the heresy
maintained itself until the middle of the seventeenth
century and some of its features reappear in the
Quietism of the Spaniard Michael de Molinos.
Men'^ndez t Pelayo, Historia de los heterodoxos espaflolea (Madrid, ISSOj. II. 521-585; 111,403-408: SraCTZ in Kirchen- Ifxikoti, s. V. ETleuchtete; Moroni, Dizionario di erud. stor-ecdetti-
N. A. Weber.
Ingen-Housz, .J.\n, investigator of the physiology- of plants, physicist, and physician, b. at Breda in North Brabant, 8 Dec, 1730; d. at London,? Sept., 1799. He attended the Latin school at Breda, studied at Louvain, and later at Leyden, medicine, physics, and chemistry, and received the degree of Doctor of Medicine, although when and where the degree was obtained is unknown. Originally (from 1757) he practised medicine at Breda, but after the death of his father and on the invitation of the royal physician John Pringle he settled in London (1765), where he became acquainted wnth William Hunter, Alexander Monro, and George Armstrong. He studied the inocidation of children for small-pox, then a new theory, under Armstrong, and became a zealous advo- cate of it. In the spring of 1768 he wa-s called to Vienna to inoculate the imperial family, a task which he accomjilislu'd successfully, notwithstanding the hostility of the Viennese physician Anton de Haen. In 1780 he travelled from Vieiuia to Paris in order to make tlie acquaintance of Benjamin Franklin. The great, veneration he felt for Franklin caused Ingcn-Housz to determine to settle in America, b\it
unex-pected occurrences, a long illness, and the death
of Frankhn in 1790 prevented the carrying out of
this plan. He returned, therefore, to London to re-
gain his health, and to await the restoration of
political peace before returning to Vienna. The re-
mainder of his Ufe was .spent at London. In 1775 he
married Agatha Maria Jacquin, sister of the Viennese
botanist Nicholas Jacquin; the marriage was childless.
To Ingen-Housz is due the discoverj' of the ex- change of gas in plants under the influence of light. The gi'een parts of plants, especially the leaves, exhale oxygen and absorb carbonic acid. In the dark the green parts exhale carbonic acid. The latter process goes on almost continuously in the parts of plants that are not green, as well as in the flowers and fruits. Before this Joseph Priestly (1733-1804) had ex- plained the exhalation of oxygen as a result of the growth of plants, but later he adopted the views of Ingen-Housz, without mentioning the latter; the same course was followed by Jean Senebier (1742- 1809). Ingen-Housz discovered the vegetable char- acter of alga? and introduced in microscopies the use of the cover glasses (mica-scales). Fired by Franklin's discoveries he devoted himself as early as 1757 to the study of electricity; the ])late electrical machine is his invention. He supported the theory of Franklin's lightning conductor with a pointed tip, while in Eng- land a metal ball was used at the tip. Under his direction the palace and the powder-magazine at Vienna were equipped with Franklin's lightning- conductor. Mention should be made of his pro- posals concerning the construction of the ship's compass, the discover^' that platinum is paramagnetic, the experiments begim with Franklin on the con- duction of heat by metals, the discovery of oxv-- hydrogen gas, and the invention of an air pistol with electrical ignition. Besides introducing inoculation for small-pox into Austria Ingen-Housz proposed the inhalation of oxygen in diseases of the lungs.
His most unportant works are, in botany: "Ex- periments upon Vegetables Discovering Their Great Power of Purifying the Common Air in the Sunshine" (London, 1779; German, 1780, 178t>-1790; Dutch. 1780; French, 1780, 1785); "An Essay on the Food of Plants and the Renovation of Soils" (London, 1796; German, 1798; Dutch, 1797); in physics: treatises in "Philosophical Transactions": "Easy Methods of Measuring the Diminution of Bulk, taking place upon the mixture of common and nitrous air, together with experiments on platina" (1776); "Electrical Ex-periments to Exi^lain how far the Phenomena of the Elect rophorus may be ac- counted for by Dr. Franklin's Theory" (1778); "On Some New Methods of Suspending Magnetic Needles (1779); "Account of a New Kind of Inflammable Air or Gas". "Vermischte Schriften ))hysiscli-medizin- ischen Inhaltes", transl.atcd by Nikl:i.s Karl Molitor (Vienna, 17S2; ^nd ed., 2 vols., 1784), contains all the papers which aii|)eared in the " Philosophical Transac- tions". The same iniscc-llany appeared in French and Dutch in 1785; "Miscellanea physico-medica",
