In the hands of Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) hydrostatics assumed the dignity of a science, and in a treatise on the equilibrium of liquids (Sur l'equilibre des liqueurs), found among his manuscripts after his death and published in 1663, the laws of the equilibrium of liquids were demonstrated in the most simple manner, and amply confirmed by experiments.
Diophantine problems were revived by Gaspar Bachet, Pierre Fermat and Euler; the modern theory of numbers was founded by Fermat and developed by Euler, Lagrange and others; and the theory of probability was attacked by Blaise Pascal and Fermat, their work being subsequently expanded by James Bernoulli, Abraham de Moivre, Pierre Simon Laplace and others.
The first printed edition of the book, by a certain Blaise de Vigenbre, dates from 1585, is dedicated to the seigniory of Venice (Villehardouin, it should be said, has been accused of a rather unfair predilection for the Venetians), and speaks of either a part or the whole of the memoirs as having been printed twelve years earlier.
In pre-Reformation England St Blaise was a very popular saint, and the council of Oxford in 1222 forbade all work on his festival.
Owing to a miracle which he is alleged to have worked on a child suffering from a throat affection, who was brought to him on his way to execution, St Blaise's aid has always been held potent in throat and lung diseases.
