ROBERT (called in Latin DE FLUCTUOSIS), an English physician and Rosicrucian philosopher, 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. Blending the incomprehensible reveries of the Cabalists and Paracelsians, he formed a new physical system, replete with mystery and absurdity, and believed in two universal principles, the northern or condensing, and the southern or rarefying power. Innumerable gems, 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 Fluddiana, 1629.

Fludd wrote two books against Mersenne, the first entitled Sophism cum Maria certamen, in quo loqu Lydias, a falsa structura Pater Mariano Mericianno monacho reprehendat, celeberrima voluminum seu Babylonici in Genesim figmenta accurate examinit, Francofurt, 1629, folio; and the second, Summae Bonaventurae ad act verum Magiae Cabalae, Alchymiae, Fratrum Rosae Crucis Verorum Magnum, etc., 1629, folio. His other works were: 1. Uraniae Coeli, mundi, et hominis Technica Historia, Augsburg, 1617, in 2 vols., folio; 2. Tractatus Apologetici integraeque Sac. de Rosa Cruce defendens, Leyden, 1617; 3. Monarchia Mundii symphonica, seu Replicatio ad Apologiae Joannis Kepleri, Francofurt, 1630; 4. Anatomiae Thaumaturgicae quae designantur, ibid., 1623; 5. Philosophiae Sacrae et sacrae Christianae, seu Meteorologiae Compendium, ibid., 1626; 6. Medicinae Catholicae, seu mysticae artis medicandi sacramentum, ibid., 1626; 7. Integrum Morborum mysterium, ibid., 1631; 8. De Morborum Signis, ibid., 1631; 9. Claris Philosophiae et Alchymiae Fluddianae, ibid., 1633; 10. Philosophiae Mosaicae, Gouda, 1638; and, 11. Pathologiae Demonicae, ibid., 1640.

FLUSHING, a town of Holland. See VLISSINGEN.