financially embarrassed. Though he had openly opposed secession before the election of Lincoln, his conduct after that event, especially after his breach with Buchanan, fell under suspicion, and he was accused of having sent large stores of government arms to Southern arsenals in anticipation of the Civil War. In the last days of his term he apparently had such an intention, but during the year 1860 the Southern States actually received less than their full quota of arms. After the secession of Virginia he was commissioned a brigadier-general in the Confederate service. He was first employed in some unsuccessful operations in western Virginia, and in February 1862 became commander of the Confederate forces at Fort Donelson, from which he fled with his second in command, General Gideon J. Pillow, on the night of February 18, leaving General Simon B. Buckner to surrender to General Grant. A fortnight later President Davis relieved him of his command. He died at Abingdon, Virginia, on the 26th of August 1863.
FLOYER, SIR JOHN (1649–1734), English physician and
author, was born at Hinters in Staffordshire, and was educated
at Oxford. He practised in Lichfield, and it was by his advice
that Dr Johnson, when a child, was taken by his mother to be
touched by Queen Anne for the king’s evil on the 30th of March
1714. He died on the 1st of February 1734. Floyer was an
advocate of cold bathing, introduced the practice of counting the
rate of the pulse-beats, and gave an early account of the pathological
changes in the lungs associated with emphysema.
His writings include:—Φαρμακο–Βάσανος: or the Touchstone of Medicines, discovering the virtues of Vegetables, Minerals and Animals, by their Tastes and Smells (2 vols., 1687); The praeternatural State of animal Humours described by their sensible Qualities (1696); An Enquiry into the right Use and Abuses of the hot, cold and temperate Baths in England (1697); A Treatise of the Asthma (1st ed., 1698); The ancient Ψυχρολουσία revived, or an Essay to prove cold Bathing both safe and useful (London, 1702; several editions 8vo; abridged, Manchester, 1844, 12mo); The Physician’s Pulse-watch (1707–1710); The Sibylline Oracles, translated from the best Greek copies, and compared with the sacred Prophecies (1st ed., 1713); Two Essays: the first Essay concerning the Creation, Aetherial Bodies, and Offices of good and bad Angels; the second Essay concerning the Mosaic System of the World (Nottingham, 1717); An Exposition of the Revelations (1719); An Essay to restore the Dipping of Infants in their Baptism (1722); Medicina Gerocomica, or the Galenic Art of preserving old Men’s Healths (1st ed., 1724); A Comment on forty-two Histories described by Hippocrates (1726).
FLUDD, or Flud, ROBERT [Robertus de Fluctibus] (1574–1637),
English physician and mystical philosopher, the son of
Sir Thomas Fludd, treasurer of war to Queen Elizabeth in France
and the Low Countries, was born at Milgate, Kent. After
studying at St John’s College, Oxford, he travelled in Europe
for six years, and became acquainted with the writings of
Paracelsus. He subsequently returned to Oxford, became a
member of Christ Church, took his medical degrees, and ultimately
became a fellow of the College of Physicians. He practised
in London with success, though it is said that he combined with
purely medical treatment a good deal of faith-healing. Following
Paracelsus, he endeavoured to form a system of philosophy
founded on the identity of physical and spiritual truth. The
universe and all created things proceed from God, who is the
beginning, the end and the sum of all things, and to him they
will return. The act of creation is the separation of the active
principle (light) from the passive (darkness) in the bosom of the
divine unity (God). The universe consists of three worlds;
the archetypal (God), the macrocosm (the world), the microcosm
(man). Man is the world in miniature, all the parts of both
sympathetically correspond and act upon each other. It is
possible for man (and even for the mineral and the plant)
to undergo transformation and to win immortality. Fludd’s
system may be described as a materialistic pantheism, which,
allegorically interpreted, he put forward as containing the real
meaning of Christianity, revealed to Adam by God himself,
handed down by tradition to Moses and the patriarchs, and revealed
a second time by Christ. The opinions of Fludd had the
honour of being refuted by Kepler, Gassendi and Mersenne.
Though rapt in mystical speculation, Fludd was a man of varied
attainments. He did not disdain scientific experiments, and is
thought by some to be the original inventor of the barometer.
He was an ardent defender of the Rosicrucians, and De Quincey
considers him to have been the immediate, as J.V. Andreä
was the remote, father of freemasonry. Fludd died on the 8th
of September 1637.
See J. B. Craven, Robert Fludd, the English Rosicrucian (1902), where a list of his works is given; A. E. Waite, The Real History of the Rosicrucians (1887); De Quincey, The Rosicrucians and Freemasons; J. Hunt, Religious Thought in England (1870), i. 240 seq. His works were published in 6 vols., Oppenheim and Gouda, 1638.
FLÜGEL, GUSTAV LEBERECHT (1802–1870), German
orientalist, was born at Bautzen on the 18th of February 1802.
He received his early education at the gymnasium of his native
town, and studied theology and philology at Leipzig. Gradually
he devoted his attention chiefly to Oriental languages, which he
studied in Vienna and Paris. In 1832 he became professor at the
Fürstenschule of St Afra in Meissen, but ill-health compelled him
to resign that office in 1850, and in 1851 he went to Vienna,
where he was employed in cataloguing the Arabic, Turkish and
Persian manuscripts of the court library. He died at Dresden
on the 5th of July 1870.
Flügel’s chief work is an edition of the bibliographical and encyclopaedic lexicon of Haji Khalfa, with Latin translation (7 vols., London and Leipzig, 1835–1858). He also brought out an edition of the Koran (Leipzig, 1834 and again 1893); then followed Concordantiae Corani arabicae (Leipzig, 1842 and again 1898); Mani, seine Lehren und seine Schriften (Leipzig, 1862); Die grammatischen Schulen der Araber (Leipzig, 1862); and Ibn Kutlûbugas Krone der Lebensbeschreibungen (Leipzig, 1862). An edition of Kitâb-al-Fihrist, prepared by him, was published after his death.
FLÜGEL, JOHANN GOTTFRIED (1788–1855), German lexicographer,
was born at Barby near Magdeburg, on the 22nd of
November 1788. He was originally a merchant’s clerk, but
emigrating to the United States in 1810, he made a special study
of the English language, and returning to Germany in 1819,
was in 1824 appointed lector of the English language in the university
of Leipzig. In 1838 he became American consul, and
subsequently representative and correspondent of the Smithsonian
Institution at Washington and several other leading
American literary and scientific institutions. He died at Leipzig
on the 24th of June 1855.
The fame of Flügel rests chiefly on the Vollständige englisch-deutsche und deutsch-englische Wörterbuch, first published in 2 vols. (Leipzig) in 1830, which has had an extensive circulation not only in Germany but in England and America. In this work he was assisted by J. Sporschil, and a new and enlarged edition, edited by his son Felix Flügel (1820–1904), was published at Brunswick (1890–1892). Another edition, in two volumes, edited by Prof. Immanuel Schmidt and S. Tanger appeared (Brunswick, London & New York) in 1906. Among his other works are—Vollständige engl. Sprachlehre (1824–1826); Triglotte, oder kaufmännisches Wörterbuch in drei Sprachen, Deutsch, Englisch und Französisch (1836–1840); Kleines Kaufmännisches Handwörterbuch in drei Sprachen (1840); and Praktisches Handbuch der engl. Handelscorrespondenz (1827, 9th ed. 1873). All these have passed through several editions. In addition, Flügel also published in the English language: A series of Commercial Letters (Leipzig, 1822), a 9th edition of which appeared in 1874 under the title Practical Mercantile Correspondence and a Practical Dictionary of the English and German Languages (2 vols., Hamburg and Leipzig, 1847–1852; 15th ed., Leipzig, 1891). The last was continued and re-edited by his son Felix.
FLUKE (probably connected with the Ger. flach, flat), a name
given to several kinds of fish, flat in shape, especially to the
common flounder; also the name of a trematoid worm, resembling
a flounder in shape, which as a parasite infects the liver
and neighbouring organs of certain animals, especially sheep,
and causes liver-rot. The most common is the Fasciola hepatica
(see Trematodes). It is also the name of a species of kidney
potato. Probably from a resemblance to the shape of the fish,
“fluke” is the name given to the holding-plates, triangular in
shape, at the end of the arms of an anchor, and to the triangular
extremities of the tail of a whale. The use of the word as a slang
expression for a lucky accident appears to have been first applied
in billiards to an unintentional scoring shot.
FLUME (through an O. Fr. word flum, from the Lat. flumen,
a river), a word formerly used for a stream, and particularly
for the tail of a mill-race. It is used in America for a very
narrow gorge running between precipitous rocks, with a stream
