The Unicorn Strikes Back

 

A 17th Century scholar named Alexander Ross was having none of this nonsense about unicorns. He has been ridiculed as a fool, of course, but this is winner’s history for his observations on the matter are quite reasonable. While his bitter rival Thomas Browne mused about modern unicorn powder coming from any number of monocorns (such as the rhino or narwhal) Ross insisted that the substance that circulated in his day as unicorn powder was the same substance to which the ancients attributed such marvelous properties. He was adamant that the unicorn question was not to be resolved by simple semantics in spite of the confusion on the question. Moreover, he accepted these properties of unicorn powder as a well attested fact. Why? By what criteria? Testimony! As far as he was concerned the testimony of the ancients was broad and consistent as to the use of the powder and this would not have been the case if the powder had been ineffective (the notion of placebo does not seem to have been at play in this debate). After all, we read in the life of Apollonius of Tyanna that the King of India drank from a unicorn horn as an antidote to poison. The horn was a panacea which would make him immune to assassination (we might note though that Apollonius wryly commented that he would accept the tale when he determined the King was still alive).   

Ross was aware, however, that other doctors and researchers (including the Royal Society!) had not been able to replicate accepted claims about unicorn horn. To this Ross responds EXACTLY as a scientist ought: he invokes a set of auxiliary hypotheses to explain the failure of these experiments. It would be costly, in an epistemic sense, to dismiss the authority of ancient and admired authors so he takes another, easier, route.  Quite correctly, Ross points out that ANY medicine can fail in its effect. A treatment that works on one body may not work on another for bodies are highly individuated. Plus, a disease may be, as all physicians recognize, too powerful or too far gone. Plus, what dosage did the experimenters use?  Finally, did the experimenters use authentic horn? After all, some experiments on unicorn horn DID obtain positive results including one carried out by an Italian cardinal that supposedly cured a pigeon of arsenic poisoning (and yes, alas, the cardinal poisoned the unfortunate pigeon himself). Here we get to the nub of the issue mooted in my previous piece. How does one authenticate unicorn horn? One proposed test was to see if it killed spiders or scorpions but as that was one of the the very points at issue it would obviously be of no help. Ross has a pair of criterion though which he accepts on the authority of one Baccius. TRUE unicorn horn causes liqueurs to bubble and sweats in the presence of poison. Did, one wonders, the Royal Society perform this test on the substance they used? Was it a broadly accepted test or was how to authentic unicorn horn also one of the points at issue? I’ll let you know if I find out. This little episode though indicates that when scientist A claims not to be able to replicate the results of scientist B that is as likely to be the beginning of the discussion as the end.