there was need of a greater moment and necessity And so that neither is the Pulse any more to discuss or puffe away the smoakie Vapours of the venal than of the arterial Bloud not of this more than of that but it meerly especially serveth besides the framing enlightning and continuation of the vital Spirit to prepare the arterial bloud in to an exspiration without a dead Head which thing indeed is altogether requisite to nature Not indeed to chase away smoakie vapours bred by heat although no smoakie vapour doth properly exhale out of moyst Bodies but rather to hinder least by the ordinary endeavour of heat vapours which they undistinctly call smoaks should be bred Or by speaking more properly least vapours departing out of the venal Bloud the other part of the venal Bloud being thickned should cause a totall destruction To which end behold that the finger being pained hot and wounded presently an unwonted Pulse doth bewray it self in that place because the Air is hindred from entrance unto the bloud there chased out of the veins and detained in the lips of the wound And there is a fear least the bloud should grow together and harden into corrupt matter But corrupt matter or Pus being made that fear is diminished because it stops in the deed For before the wound a hidden Pulse straightway a violent one ariseth in the same place even before heat or a presupposed smoakiness were present In like manner also as soon as any night doth invade the inward membranes the Artery doth presently after a wonderfull manner wax hard throughout the whole man and brings forth a hard extended shaken Pulse yea and a Pulse like a Saw But by no meanes as the Schooles think that the Arterie is dried that it may foreshew in the heart and open to a Physitian the quality and nature of the part affected which is ridiculous for nature doth every where intentionally employ it self in the ripenings promoting or removing of Causes but never at all in uttering or setting forth the pathological or sumptomaticall Signes the diagnostical or discernable signes or prognostical or foreshewing signes For these are signes by accident and to be noted and observed by the Physitian besides the intent of nature For if in the progress of nature a thing conringent or happening be drawn into our knowledge that is unto it by accident and wholly forreign which the Stars excepted doth work nothing with an incent of foreshewing But whatsoever it doth that is by a Command which is the natural endowed property thereof The Artery therefore doth not produce a hard Pulse for that it self is made more withered and dry because there should never be any hope after the dryness of the membrane of a softer Pulse as neither of a re-moystning of the part once dried up Old Age it self being dry or withered and without juyce is a witness Neither lastly doth the Pipe or Trumpet of the Artery wax hard for a sign but for the cause end and meanes of another intent to wit if the lesson of the Schooles be true that the Arteries do beat to the end that they may draw Air which refresheth or cooleth the heart Surely if they were alwayes mindful of that their own Doctrine as they ought the Arteries should at least by that hardness of extention more fitly breath-in Air Seeing otherwise a soft Artery doth by attracting fall down it creeping and being watery slides on it self and so that its mouth which in the hardness gapeth in the looseness is closed Therefore a hardned Pulse doth betoken a contracted Artery but not one that is dryed up For if the Pulse should be uttered to this end that the defect and quality of the parts should be bewrayed Surely in an Apoplexie there should be a most soft Pulse because the Brain being wholly a marrowie part shall be concluded to be offended which at the same time is alwayes hard and strong So also the breaking of a Bone should make the hardest Pulse of all And corrupt matter being now made the Pulse should be more great and frequent than while it is making Because the fore-going labour hath brought forth a want of Spirit and the present corrupt matter or putrefaction doth want a speedy discussion Likewise in an enflamed tumour or a Phelgmone the contraction of the Pulse should be more fit or due and far more manifest than the dilating thereof which things seeing in the truth of the deed they are not so the Schools must needs have erred in the ends of the Pulses And moreover the Coat of the Artery at the coming of sweat however it was before harder it again waxeth soft to wit seeing there was a greater necessity of expelling smoakiness than of attracting Air. I say the Artery ought to be both spreading and more hard with a frequent pressing together but not to fall down with a great Pulse more slowly after the manner of waters At length in affects of the Lungs the neighbouring cords being on every side filled with so many veins arteries and gristles the Pulse is loose and watery and in the vomiting of corrupt matter with some kinde of intermission The Lungs I say being opportunely importunate in its own expulsions of smoakiness should want a most hard extended and strong Pulse Whether perhaps is the double Coat of the Artery now besmeared with a future sweat Doth it hitherto wax moist with a strange moisture or else is it void of moisture whether it doth retake its hardness after the hour of sweat and shall almost recompence at pleasure it s own driness by a successive or coursary softness For how full of weakness are the medicinal speculations of the Schools For truly in the aforesaid affects of the Lungs a most loose Artery and watery Pulse do plainly shew unto us that breathing is given for the service of the breast For nature is conscious that there would be no need of a provoked Pulse as neither of an extended Artery when as breathing hath undertaken its office first for the breast and consequently or secondarily for the rest of the body by that very thing is shewn us that the use of breathing was chiefly appointed for another end and over another part than for and over that which the Pulse is As oft therefore as there is need of very much aire for the blood dispersed thorow the Veins to volatize that which threatneth to be hardned so oft doth the Artery strain extend and contract it self but is not dryed But that air is attracted not for the nourishment of the Spirits or the expulsing of smoaky vapours But altogether that as that which is in it self the seperater of the waters from the waters it may adde a spur to the Ferment of the last Digestion that after the performance of its offices it may expell the whole nutritious liquor without any residing remainder of it Therefore the in-breathed air is serviceable to this Ferment not for cooling or refreshment
to the vital scope For from hence there is no seldom offence of the stomach it having arisen from a degree of a forreign sharpness wherefore an Orexis or inordinate appetite to meat and such like perplexities or the stomach do offend in an adulterous tartness For from hence are prickings in the stomach difficult concoctions lastly very soure belchings and vomitings wherefore if a ferment should consist in soureness Vinegar Oyl of Vitriol and the like should ferment the lump of bread and should digest our meats by a perfect transmutation but they do neither of these Therefore the ferment is a free Secret and vital and therefore it every where co-fitteth to it self a retaining quality in its own Borders Because seeing ferments are of the rank of formal and seminal things therefore they have also severed themselves plainly from the society of material qualities But if they have associated unto them a corporeal ministring quality whereby they may the more easily disperse their own vital strength account that to be done for a help and so it cannot but contain a duality with the Ferment And therefore also that quality may offend as well in its excessive as in its diminished degree For in that thing I greatly differ from the Schooles Because first of all they teach that the Gaul is not a vital bowel 2. That it is not a noble member 3. That it is nothing but a very unprofitable superfluity it self and banished from the masse of venal bloud to wit least it should infect the venal bloud 4. That it is therefore a product besides the intention of nature 5. Being onely profitable for the expelling of Dung and Urine 6. And therefore that the little bag of the Gaul is not of the substance of a Bowel but a sack or sink of dregs and superfluities 7. That at length Sanguification or the making of bloud doth begin and is compleated in the Liver which things indeed seem to me dreams For first of all seeing Choler is not required to the constitution of venal bloud that bitter Gaul or Choler should not of necessity be procreated of all kinde of meats unless it be propagated by a proper Agent and in a particular Shop of its own for a profitable vital and necessary end For much lesse hath the Gaul seemed to me to be an excrement than the water of the Pericardium or Case of the heart It is a wonder at least why Fishes of water and Cattel of Grasse do nevertheless alwayes daily make so bitter a Liquor Truly that simple identity or sameliness of the Gaul through so many particular kindes seemed to me to prove some necessity in the Workmanship of life And so the Gaul not to have the necessity of an excrement produced by any nourishments whatsoever but rather the constitution of a necessary Bowel For I ceased to admire by considering how great Tragedies of rule the paunch which is nothing but a Sack and Skin might stir up and that it obtained the room of a principal bowel by considering I say how great a prerogative the membrane of the stomach might challenge to it self so that it hath snatched to it self the name and properties of the heart before the other bowels Whence surely I ceased to admire that the name of a bowel should be given to the little bag of the Gaul and to the Gaul it self especially because the wrathful power is believed by most to be bred in the same Surely I have found in the Family-administration of mans digestion Bodies and Ferments connexed of two bowels the Gaul and the Liver for Sanguification To wit the Gaul to precede in the work of Sanguification and for this cause to be nearer to the Stomach and Entrails than the Liver For the Gaul is nourished in the Bosom and lap of the Liver as it were in its Mothers Bosom for it is the Balsam of the Liver and Bloud For seeing Sanguification is not a transmutation which may be introduced by a momentary disposition and since the Liver is deprived of a remarkable hollowness whereby it may be able to contain within it the juyce that is to be made bloud for the leisure or terme of digestion That is the Liver in it self is a solid Body having few and slender veins and so the whole Cream being accompanied with so great a heap of Urine it ought to passe thorow the Liver with a swift passage but the crude Cream cannot by so swift a passage onely be straightway changed into venal blond Wherefore a perfect Sanguification could in no wise be made in the Liver Because the Liver was not a Kitchin but a family Governour by its own Sanguificative ferment whereby as it were by a Command it chiefly by successive dispositions executes the office enjoyned it from its creation Therefore the plurality of the Mesentery veins is the stomack of the Liver it self and the preparative Shop of the venal bloud And the perfection thereof the Liver doth breath into the venal bloud as yet naked after that it is laid up into the hollow vein Truly as Sanguification is a certain more exquisite digestion and a more manifest transmutation of a thing than is the melting of the meat into Chyle it could not fitly or profitably happen in any large vessel but in many the more straight ones which together may equalize some notable capacity whereby indeed that fermental Archeus may most strictly narrowly and neerly touch and comprehend them all and his Liver may communicate a ferment in changing and may inspire a vital faculty Forthe Spleen doth inspire its Ferment into the Stomack a large vessel for neither doth the Spleen touch the meats immediately So also doth the Liver inspire the act of Sanguification by the breathing or ferment of its own life into the veins subjected under it And even as the meat slides from the Mouth into the Stomack and there expecteth the end of digestion So from the Entrails the Cream is immediately snatched into the stomack of the Liver But seeing that Cream is much and for a great part of it excrementitious for as yet it containeth the Urine in it it ought first to be unloaded of its excrement that it may the more conveniently be made bloud Because that Cream is as yet wholly undistinct neither therefore doth it acknowledge an excrement what therefore shall the Liver act by a single action of Sanguification For shall the severing of the excrement the degeneration of the Cream and Sanguification of the Cream be made and finished by one and the same work Nay Surely the Cream had need of a Ferment its transchanger distinct from the Sanguificative ferment whereby indeed that part of it that is less fit is changed into a meer excrement for the action of Sanguification could not make an excrement of that which is not an excrement For both those do differ too much from each other For the action which prepares an excrement out of the greatest part of the Cream is not made by the coagulation of the venal bloud and separation of the more wheyie part Seeing the venal bloud in the Meseraick Veins is
taking of the solutive medicine I had cast forth almost two little Buckets of stinking and cadaverous choler the ejections being besprinkled with snivelly branches which the Physitians affirmed to be that salt phlegm And in the mean time while I nourished almost throughout my whole body mattery and large wheals especially in my legs I asked them whether the corrupt snotty matter or Pus did not denote the venal blood to be guilty no lesse than choler and phlegm They said seeing that my strength did now fail they should be silent as to a repeated cutting of a vein otherwise meet to be done in the abundance of corrupt Pus remaining But I repentingly considered that before I was in good health except the contagion of my skin drawn from elswhere and that of nothing nothing was or could be made neither could any corporeal body be placed but in a body therefore I leasurely enquired whence so great a plenty of choler had flown from me and in what place it had layen hid For all the veins together could scarce have conteined the tenth part of the filth although they should contein no good blood I knew moreover that so great a weight could neither be entertained in the head nor in the breast nor in the bottom of the belly although they had been empty of all bowels Therefore with earnest repentance and my own dammage I collected by Science Mathematical First That the name of purging was a grand deceit Secondly That a particular Selection of bringing forth such a humour or any other was likewise false Thirdly Because the birth and existence of humours was also false Fourthly That the cause of scabbednesse in respect of burnt choler and salt phlegm was feigned Fifthly That the Liver was guiltlesse in contagions of the Skin Sixthly That my Scab did as yet remain after purgings although not with an equal fury Seventhly That the fury thereof was not slackened because that some one or more imagined humours were expelled and that for this cause the abounding of the same humours had offended For truly the venal blood being straightway recovered the scab persisted the same and so the scab had been a little diminished through a defect of fulnesse At length perhaps after three moneths I recovered from my scabbednesse by an easie anointing or unguent of Sulphur Eighthly That the Scab is an affect of the Skin onely Ninthly That the Schools did name as well choler as phlegm humors ill affected as well in the veins as out of them as well those hurtful as harmlesse Tenthly That any purging things did promiscuously melt resolve and putrifie the venal blood and flesh even while they abode in the stomach and bowels Eleventhly That it is false that the venal bloud doth return into humours from whence it was bred Twelfthly That in this thing an impossible return from a privation to an habit should happen Thirteenthly That it is a grand deceit that those three humours do remain in the venal blood flesh and solid parts that by purging medicines they should be renewed into that which they were before the framing of the flesh c. All which things when I found them fighting with the truth of nature and with the agreement of Phylosophy I manifestly knew the speculations of the Schools to be scabby and false And so I could not any longer doubt whether Choler or Phlegme were the cause of scabbedness And I thus understood that thing by little and little with the Grace of God more certainly than certainty it self the which alike equally knew by an intellectual certainty and as it were by a knowledge Optick or of the sight that there is no Choler in nature nor three humors united with the venal bloud But that which is shewen by the Schools under the mask of both Phlegms and Cholers I have demonstrated in a peculiar Book to be diseasie filths besides nature and the vitious products of the Functions At leastwise in me the scab was contracted and bred onely by touching in a full enjoyment of health before the Liver could even have ever waxed hot for my scabbedness was conceived in the space of a quarter of an hour But the scabby Pustules their having more afterwards broken forth in the succession of some dayes were not so much the scab it self as the fruits of the same If therefore scabbedness ariseth from the distemper of the Liver surely in me the scab it self was before its own cause A Sheep feeding onely of Grasse doth voluntarily get the scab If that be from a hot distemper of the Liver truly ye unjustly prescribe Grasse for a cooling refreshment of the Liver Again the scab in me the Sheep and Dog are cured onely by Oyntments or by an external aid neither is the heat of the Liver heeded Yea Medicines of Sulphur Bayberries and white Helebore do never prevail against the heat of the Liver Finally scabbedness which is suddenly gotten by the touching of a towel is of the same disposition with a voluntary one but if that at least ariseth not from the heat of the Liver therefore neither doth this if there are the same causes of the same thing in the particular kinde object and subject For at the very time wherein the scab is conceived by touching of the hand or by the scabbedness of an infected Towel in the skin of the toucher the scab is already present whose Seed or Ferment is in the aforesaid Skin or Towel and then the Embryo or imperfect Young thereof is conceived in the skin of the toucher the product whereof doth at length visibly break forth In like manner also Ulcers are made either from a wound being badly cured or from a confusion or bruise as a Cancer in a Woman or from an Aposteme breaking forth or at length from poyson bred within which planteth its malignity in the external part and doth there fix the properties of its own poysonsome Ferment from whence also whatsoever of venal bloud is distributed every hour for the nourishing of the part that is turned into poyson according to the race of its own Ferment But humors which may be sent thither from the Liver do not rise again from the dead corrupted The Schools therefore being credulously misled by Galen have mutually signed unto his dreamed humors rising again out of the venal bloud and flesh by reason of the importunate distemper of some certain bowel due to an Elementary fight For Galen in his Therapeuticks or curings of Diseases will have it that an Ulcer ought to consist naturally of a twofold excrement for it hath seemed sufficient for him to have laid down this Doctrine and not to have proved it to wit one of a more liquid Liquor or corrupt matter and the other of a more grosse one that is of a corrupt Pus from hence in the next place he concludeth that every Ulcer ought to betoken to require and be healed by a double Medicine to wit through the offence whereof many
but they being admonished refused to be willing to be wise although they were admonished that they had mooued a Fire-band for its more ready Burning to the destruction of man And first of all I have sufficiently demonstrated that there is not either of the Cholers as neither Phlegm in nature now moreover I have determined to shew that it was not sufficient for the Schools to have been Ignorant of the juyce or Humor Latex and the particular aime thereof but also that they have altogether erred in the Constiâ—â—tion of the same because they are those which do far depart from the Terms of the Latex proposed being deceived by the Similitude of Milk Because Whey is never Severed from Milk but after the Corruption of its Milk and therefore they compare a Dead-Carcase to the Latex Next Whey because it is not made and appeareth but by the Cheesing or turning of the Milk it was of the natiâ—e Constitution of Milk so are not Urine and Sweat of the matter of the Bloud Therefore at least-wise they confess therein if any thing do swim on the out-chased Bloud it is a Whey and of the same Species with the Wheyie body of the Urine therefore now Whey doth formally differ from Choler For that which can be absent from a permanent thing is not of the essential disposition thereof And so they plainly imply that they are of the internal constitution and thingliness of the Bloud and likewise that they are not of the intrinsecal constitution of the Bloud Therefore it is without an absurdity that the Liquor Latex in the venal Bloud but with a lively floating cannot by right be called the Whey of the Bloud and much less a gawly Choler and the fiery part thereof Therefore the Schools have commanded that part of the Bloud which they call the Whey or Urine to have remained in the Bloud rather through a carelesness of the separating Faculty than for the necessities sake of an unexcusable essence Because bloud that is chased out of the Veins is oftimes seen to be without Whey And therefore they deliver that neither is Whey left in the bloud but for the more easie passage thorow the small Fibers of the Veins of the Liver to wit by giving a more fluid consistence to the venal bloud And therefore they say those slender Reeds being overcome nature hath presently meditated of a separation of the Whey and hath commanded it to be brought down into the last Sheath of the Urine by leaving the remainder thereof a companion to the bloud that it may also the more easily pierce throw the slender Trunks the of utmost small Veins By which Doctrine surely meerly Excrementitious they defile the purity of the Digestions because they have not known the principal Scopes of the Latex and have feigned childish uses for the Whey of the bloud but I have alwayes confessed it for an undoubted Foundation that the Parent of nature cannot be frustrated of his ends conceived nor that any thing of Urine was left to be throughly mingled with the venal bloud by an ordinary error of nature In the next place that whatsoever Liquid thing is in the substance of the bloud that very thing is not of the constitution of the bloud nor the Excrement thereof but that it is the Liquor Latex being profitable for its own ends For 〈…〉 〈◊〉 a part of the Urine as neither a part 〈…〉 For 〈…〉 the salt of the Sweat is distinct in its propertiâ—◠〈◊〉 the 〈…〉 Uâ—â—â—â— And the Latex is moreover void of a manifest salt and that â—â— no wonder Because the Urine as it is now seasoâ—ed with a dungy Ferment of the Reins â—â— also transchanged by the same For the Urine is made in its own Shops and 〈◊〉 compleated by its own formal properties being profitable for its own Offices and Aimes Therefore the Urine differs not only from the Sweat but also from it self so long as it is not yet a partaker of the Ferment of the Kidneys and of a liquid dung of the Intestines or greater Bowels And that surely no otherwise than aâ— the dung of the Gut-Colon differs from the Cream of the Stomach or the Chyle from the venal bloud There is not therefore in the bloud a part of the Urine neither is there in the nourishment now refined an Excrement actually corrupt and thaâ— which is for corrupting of another For that error is too daily and direct for the remooving whereof nature hath not so sluggishly every where laboured because she in nothing in all places more industriously laboureth than that she may most swiftly banish Superfluities troublesom unto her For truly all and every of Excrements are now estranged through an Impression of a dungy Ferment from themselves in their former State and therefore they should not be able but by the same natural Endownment to consume or pine away every of the best things which are admixed with them Truly the Humour Latex being thorowly mixed wanders up and down in the venal bloud not indeed as a part of the bloud or as a remaining Excrement of the Urine but as being profitable for divers aims or ends And therefore also I have called it Latex or a peculiar Humour distinct from the venal bloud It is indeed in it self almost without Savour and as to its first Scope it co-tempereth the sharpness of the venal bloud that it may drive the same away But especially after Labours Heats Sweats Baths c. For in so great a breathing thorow or evaporation the bloud would be greatly co-thickned unless it should haue a watery part admixed with it for Sweat Another Scope of the Latex hath been to wit when as in all the more crude Chyle cream and venal bloud there is some Excrement and the bloud doth under digestion reserve an Excrementitious salt even while it is converted into pure nourishment therefore the Humour Latex was a fit companion for it which might receive this salt into it self and brush it out A third end of the Liquor-Latex hath happened to the other two that it may materially cause that no Remainder of a thicker compact doth remain in the last Evaporation of nourishment but that it may together with it be expulsed by puffing thorow the pores by reason of a Ferment of the Arteries as aboue in the Blas of Man or may be washed out by reason of Sweat For Sweat is materially nothing but the Liquor Latex whereunto a superfluous Salt come which thing is apparent For from the drinking of Water or thinner Ale or Beer plentiful Sweat doth in Summer presently flow forth not indeed that the salt Latex of Sweat is carried thorow the body in manner of a Vapour that it may first cloath it self with a Salt under the Skin and also a certain Oyliness But Sweat is expelled in the form of Water as in Health or of its own accord is poured forth as Water in fearful swooning and dying Persons where by way of Impertinency I
Aposteme made in a Pleurisie the bloud of the same cannot be evacuated by a Vein being cut however the name of Revulsion and Derivation be boasted of for fear of the disease and delusion of the Sick And likewise neither doth the cutting of a Vein hinder that any thing doth any more for the future wax sharp seeing blood-letting hath the power only of a Privation neither can the venal bloud which is brought forth hinder that that which being within hath drawn a sharpness should not lay the same aside But a meet Remedy for the Pleurisie is bound to cause an a versness from the conception of a sharpning in the Archeus If therefore the sharpness of the venal bloud be a token of the same putrifying it is certain that a Vein doth receive into it self neither putrified nor putrifying bloud neither that it suffers it to putrifie if as yet after death is defend the same from co-agulating Therefore there is some exorbitant or pestilent Impression in the bloud if it wax sharp never so slenderly But if the Archeus be infected by an Endemical matter breathed into the Breast or a sharp Poyson otherwise bred within and he shall affect the bloud of the Veins or other bloud designed for nourishment any part whatsoever being sore afraid of corrupting doth presently repulse the same bloud from it This I say is the efficient and true Spur of the Pleurisie and that thing Hippocrates the first of Physicians seemeth to have perceived while he writeth Hot Cold Moist or Dry are not diseases but that which is Sharp Bitter Soure and Harsh But that there is sharpness in a Pleurisie is manifest from this because in the Pleurisie the Urine and venal bloud being drawn forth by a cut Vein do wax clotty even in going forth or before the co-thickning of the bloud which clottiness or cheefiness is the effect of sharpness But the Latex which waxeth sharp lighting into the flesh between the Ribs causeth a Pleuritical pain but not a true and constant affect And therefore that which they name a Flatulent or windy one although windy Blasts do never reach thither unless by taking of a transchanging Poyson even as concerning windinesses doth by a slender Remedy presently produce it self discussable to wit by unperceivable Transpirations Therefore the sharpness presently brings forth pain but I have called in the Book of the Disease of the Stone in the Chapter of Sensation the proper companion and cause of pain a Convulsion In which Convulsion the Pulse which before lay hid is manifested the Artery waxeth hard and pain acompanies it But because a Convulsion is for the most part extended and slackened by intervals which the pain of women in Travail doth testifie hence it comes to pass that as oft as the Pleura is intenton its cramp by a proper Blas of motion so often something of the Fibers is rent asunder from the Ribs and while it doth but never so little slacken it self the neighbouring bloud runs to it into the place of the wrinckles made by contracting of the Fracture And this by repeated turns is the cause of a great Aposteme according to the frequency and sharpness of the Contractures But the venal bloud being hunted out or otherwise exceeding a just Dose by reason of the mark of a sharp or soure Ferment conceived becomes hostile and is presently curdled But if indeed the sharpness be dispersed by the infected Archeus into the Arterial Vein or Venal Artery which are the vessels of the Lungs a necessitated Inflamation or Impostume of the Lungs doth happen Let the Schools therefore see and discern whether blood-letting can cure the containing cause and root or whether indeed their whole endeavour doth only extend it self that with a procured loss of strength they may prevent an increase of the Pleurisie when much For thus the manner of making diseases ought to be explained by their motive and vital causes if it be needful to have young beginners rightly instructed and for Physitians to be so consulted with that afterwards every one may rightly perform his office and that the sick neighbour may thereby crop his desired Fruit. For the Thorn being pulled out the rest doth easily cease unless perhaps long delay hath made the Apostem it self Thorny For an Apostem or Ulcer being once formed although they have neither privily gotten root in the body nor are nourished from elswhere yet they do afterwards stand by themselves and subsist without any other Patronage of them We must therefore employ our selves about the plucking out of the Thorn and there is a stubbornness of a consumptive Ulcer because the Ulcer hath not now a Thorn but hath become Thorny The Pleurisie therefore is bred in us of its own accord when a guest of the first digestion being a stranger flees into anothers Harvest or otherwise a Poysonous Endemick being breathed in and then a Pleurisie is frequent among the people For in much heat a sudden and much abundant drinking of cold water or drink doth contract the Pleura no otherwise than as any other sharp thing which rusheth on it Also the kitchin of the Pleura is not in its most thin and undividable little membrane but in the flesh between the Ribs which co-toucheth with it For it s too much slenderness doth not suffer a kitchin to be hid within it self Therefore the blood of the Pleura it self is most swiftly mortified by a violent external thing rushing on it whether it shall be sharp or a sudden cold Because in that outward kitchin nourishment is not digested and prepared for it The blood therefore being vitiated wnile it is in making for the nourishment of the Pleura it straightway waxeth sharp and becomes a true Pleurisie But they do feel the Pleurisie not indeed to come but to have come and to be present while it is generated by an external thing rushing on it For natural generations are made as it were in an instant And therefore the degeneration of the bloud in the aforesaid and outward kitchin of the Pleura is as it were in an instant But the Pleurisie happening from sharp venal bloud defiled from els-where hath for the most part other fore-shewing diseases But it is also proper to the Pleurisie that it presently repenteth nature of her offence And so from the horror of the admitted error she willingly correcteth the offence of her own digestion And therefore for cure there is only required that the Thorn product of the confused Digestion be taken away in the blood it self encompassing yea and in the Apostem it self But the Pleurisie which is restored by blood-letting doth oft-times after a years space return and doth more often leave a Consumption behind it Because the business of the remaining Thorn is left to be overcome by the shoulders of nature alone without a help restoring the Character which there stayeth behind The Antients indeed have perceived that where Pain and Heat are thither venal blood
the dayes of Galen wherein surely I am amazed at the great sluggishness of wits as to a diligent search they assenting unto false principles lest the right of disputing against denyers should be forestalled from them I will therefore no longer speak to Galen but unto the Schooles I wish therefore that they may explain to me by what Conducter manner and passage a putrified humour may at every fit come from the shops of the humours unto the utmost parts of the veines which are terminated into the habit of the Body or into the flesh and skin For if it were putrified before it came unto the slender and utmost extremities of the veines why is one alone to wit Choler or Phlegm separated from its three fellowes that as a banished humour it may putrifie far from its own Cottages Or who is that silly Separater which plucks the harmless humour from its own composed body for so absurd ends Why therefore the same Separater remaining for Life doth not the same Fever continue for Life What School-master admonisheth this Separater of his Errour that he may seasonably repent At leastwise if the utmost parts of the veines do not corrupt that putrified humour the veines themselves shall be more putrified and so they shall labour with an unexcusable Gangreen But if the Cause which calleth the guiltless humour unto it self subsisteth in the very extremities of the veines that it may putrifie the same in its own possession Yet by a greater breviary it should execute that in the Bloud nigh to it self over which it hath a stronger Right and from whence it hath as well a liberty to separate Choler or phlegm as the same thing is otherwise proper unto a solutive Medicine Again If it listeth it to have prepared a putrified humour out of the nigh bloud it shall in vain expect an agreeable quantity of Choler for full two dayes space But if that humour shall putrifie before it could reach to the utmost parts of the veines then the Schooles contradict themselves and the seat of intermitting Fevers shall not be in the habit of the Body but in the first shops of the Humours In the next place If at one onely turn of a fit the whole putrified humour be dispersed out of the veines into the habit of the Body even for the consumption of it self why at least shall that Separater or Driver seeing nothing is moved by it self which is not vital be less generous in the Bowels than he that is placed in the utmost parts of the veins At length for what end of Doatage shall there be this passage of the putrified Humour from the Mesentery through the Liver and Heart even unto the extremities of the veines It is a matter full of danger and it is to be feared but that by its frequent passage it may soon defile the whole blood with its corruptions and deadly gore For let it either be a great lye of Galen or humane nature voluntarily meditates of its own ruine And by this meanes the necessity of Revulsion boasted of by cutting of a veine falls to the ground For truly the putrified humour is by the voluntary force of intermitting Fevers at set hours Revulsed or pulled back from the Nest of its Generation Yea it issues of its own accord unto the utmost parts of the veines unless perhaps that Revulsion be accounted dangerous which wholly ought to be made by the Heart through the hollow vein as well in intermitting Fevers as by the cutting of a vein And then either the feverish matter is at every fit wholly drawn out of the Nest of its nativity or not wholly if totally there shall be no cause of return if not totally it is exhausted Why shall a new humour which putrifies at every future fit no more move an Aguish fit by its putrefaction than by its expulsion For truly there is greater labour and pain while corrupt pus is in making that when the pus is made Why in that case shall not the seat of Fevers be rather in the place of putrefaction than in places through which it passeth while it is expelled Why I say the appetite returning Thirst and Watchings being absent To wit in the resting dayes of intermitting Fevers shall Choler or phlegm putrifie in the Bowels And why doth not the putrefaction thereof disturb the Family administration of the shops of the Humours Why shall black Choler which should be made on the second day of the week putrifie in two dayes space into a ripe putrifaction and that which should be made on the followng day putrifie as much in one onely day as the former putrified in two dayes If that which was joyned of them both causeth the fit of a Quartane on the fourth day of the week Why doth not that which is made on the second day stir up its own fit on the fourth day and that which is made on the third day not likewise stir up its own Tumult on the fifth day And consequently if any be made on the fourth day of the week why doth it not frame a fit on the sixth day The shoulders of Physitians are lifted up their Browes are bent and hidden properties are accused while as they are constrained to answer unto things known by Sense by believed and supposed madnesses Why at length in the rigours or shaking fits of a Tertian will they have that which is vomited up about their Beginnings to be Gaul and say that Nature bends that same way if on the contrary the guidance of Nature doth in the same interval of time proceed from the Center unto the utmost parts of the Veines because Nature doth not at one onely instant stir up two opposite motions within and without especially from the cause of one Excrement which is accounted the Gawl Why doth not that vomiting take away as much from the sharpness of the fit as there is a plentifull expulsion of that excrement which they suppose to be the very matter of a Tertian But if in a Tertian a residing Choler remaineth in its own shops after the fit why doth it rather putrifie new Choler than the humours radically annexed to it self After what manner do bitter Vomiting Thirst and so great Tokens of hurts molest the stomach while as most of the Balast of the malady shall passe over unto the extream parts of the veines that it may provoke Rigours But those who carry the marks of a Cautery do see that two dayes after Fevers a spare quantity of or no excrements are wiped off the which surely should be many if so many feverish filths should at every fit slide unto the utmost parts of the veines and habit of the Body The Schooles triumph in the Causes of Rigour they being as prettily feigned as blockishly believed But why doth Galen give more heed unto the quantity of an humour than to the ready obedience of the same Should not Choler although lesse in quantity by reason of its heat and
good to be done as neither should every thing desire to be and be preserved In Science Mathematical indeed it is determined as impossible to proceed from extream to extream without a mean and that Medium wholly denyes all interruption the which if we shall grant in natural things with a certain latitude we shall as yet be accounted to have done it out of hand and that in the best manner And so that neither is it lawful to wrest that of Science Máthematical unto curings I confess indeed that it is not lawful to draw out a dropfie abundantly by an incision of the Navil at one only turn as neither to allure forth all the corrupt pus out of a great Aposteme nor to bring one that is frozen by reason of cold immediately to the Chimney nor abundantly to nourish him that is almost dead with hunger Yet surely a slow and necessary progress of Mediocrity as such or a proceeding from one extream unto another doth not conclude that thing as if nature were averse unto a speedy help Since this betokening is natural nearly allyed pithy and intimately proper unto her self But those things are forbidden because a faintness of the strength depending thereupon would not bear those speedy motions The Schools therefore by a faulty argument of the cause as not of the cause drive the sick from a sudden aid which they have not that they may vail their ignorance among the vulgar with a certain Maxim being badly directed For as often as a Cure can be had without the loss of strength for the faculties do always obtain a chiefdome in indications by how much the more speedily that is done it is also snatched with the greater Jubily or joy of nature Even as also in Fevers I have with a profitable admiration observed it to be done with much delight Therefore in the terms proposed if a Fever be a meer heat besides nature and all curing ought to be perfected by contrary subduers Therefore it requires a cooling besides nature to wit that contraries may stand under the same general kind That is every Fever should of necessity be cured by much cold of the encompassing air especially because the cold of the encompassing air collects the faculties but doth not disperse them But the consequence is false Therefore also the Antecedent Therefore the Schools do not intend by cutting of a vein the cooling or heat but chiefly a taking away of the blood it self and a mitigation of accidents which follows the weakened powers or they primarily intend a diminishment of the strength and blood It being that which with a large false paint they call a more free breathing of the Arteries But I do alwayes greatly esteem of an indication which concerns a preserving of the strength and which is opposite unto any emptying of the veins whatsoever because the strength or powers being diminished and prostrated the Disease cannot neither be put to flight neither doth any thing remain to be done by the Physitian Therefore Hippocrates decreeth That Natures themselves are the Physitianesses of Diseases because the indication or betokening sign which is drawn from a preserving of the faculties governs the whole scope of curing As therefore Reason perswades that the strength is to be preserved so also the blood because this containeth that Hippocrates indeed in a Plethora of great Wrestlers or Champions hath commanded blood to be presently and heapingly let out and that saying the Schools do every were thunder out in the behalf of the cutting of a vein But that is ridiculously alledged for the curing of Diseases and Fevers For he bad not that thing to be done for fear of a Plethora however their veins may sufficiently abound with blood but only lest the vessels being filled they should burst and cleave asunder in the exercises of strength otherwise what interposeth as common between healthy Champions and the curing of Fevers For there is no fear of a Plethora in him that hath a Fever neither that a vein should be broken through exercises and moreover we must note that the emptyings of the blood are on this wise That the exhausting of the strength or faculties which is made by carnal lust is unrepairable because it takes away from the in-bred spirit of the heart But the exhausting which is made by the cuttings of a vein is nigh to this because it readily filcheth away the inflowing Archeus and that abundantly But a Disease although it also directly oppose the strength yet because it doth not effect that thing abundantly but by degrees therefore it rather shakes and wears out the strength than that it truly exhausteth it Therefore the restoring of the faculties which are worn or battered by a Disease is more easie than that of those which are exhausted by cutting of a vein For they who in Diseases are weakened by the cutting of a vein are for the most part destitute of a Crisis and if they do revive from the disease they recover by little and little and being subject to be sick with many anguishes in a long course of dayes and not without the fear of Relapses But they who lay by it with a Disease without cutting of a vein are easily restored and recovering they soon attain unto their former state But if they being destitute of remedies shall also sometimes come unto an extremity yet Nature attempts a Crisis and refresheth them because their strength although it was sore shaken by the Disease yet it perished not as not being abundantly exhausted by the lettings out of blood Wherefore a Physitian is out of conscience and in charity bound to heal not by a sudden lavishment of the faculties as neither by dangers following from thence nor also by a necessary abbreviation of life according to the Psalm My spirit shall be lessened therefore my days shall be shortened And seeing that according to the Holy Scriptures the life glistens in the blood however plentifully thou shalt dismiss this thou shalt not let it forth but with the prejudice of life For the perpetual intent of nature in curing of Fevers is by sweats And therefore the fits are for the most part ended by sweats But the cutting of a vein is Diametrically opposed unto this intention For truly this pulls the blood inwards for to replenish the vessels that were emptied of blood hut the motion of nature that is requisite for the curing of Fevers proceeds from the Center to without from the noble parts and bowels unto the skin But that the cutting of a vein doth of necessity weaken although the more strong and plethorick persons may seem to experience and witness that thing to be otherwise If the sacred Text which admonisheth us That the life inhabiteth in the blood hath not sufficient weight in it at leastwise that shall be made manifest if thou shalt offend in a more liberal emission of blood For the strength and sick person do presently faint ot go to ruine Therefore in Science
Mathematical if six do notably hurt three cannot but hurt although not so sensibly But it is not permitted him to hurt nature who ought to heal and restore the same if nature her self ought to be the Physitianesse to her self and by so much the more prosperous by how much the more strong For it is sufficient for a Physitian that the sick doth otherwise decay through the disease with hungers lack of appetites disquietnesses pains anguishes watchings sweats and with an unexcusable weakness Neither therefore ought a faithful helper to add weakness unto weakness It is a deceitful succour which the cutting of a vein brings and the remedy thereof is so uncertain that no Physitian hath hitherto dared to promise a future cure from thence Every Artificer doth what he promiseth For a Statuary undoubtedly prepares an Image and a Shoomaker shooes But the Physitian alone dares to promise nothing from his Art because he is supported with uncertain foundations being only by accident now and then and painfully profitable Because however thou shalt interpret the matter that is full of ignorance which would cure by procured weakness For by a sudden emptying out of the blood made by heaps nature for the most part neglects the expulsion of her enemy which expulsion notwithstanding I have demonstrated to contain the whole Tragedy of Fevers and Nature Besides it is confessed That the matter of a Fever doth not consist in a vein above the heart and by consequence that neither doth the cutting of a vein any way exhaust the occasional matter or effectively cure by a direct intention of healing Again If blood be to be let forth for a more easie transpiration of the Arteries That al leastwise shall be in vain in the beginnings and increases of Fevers whenas the heat is not yet vigorous And seeing that blood is not to be let out in the state as neither in the declining thereof Therefore never But that not in their state or height it is proved because a Crisis or judicial sign is hindered seeing Nature as they write being very greatly letted or cumbred strives with the disease and being for the most part the Conqueresse doth then least of all endure the loss of strength and a calling away from the Duel But if nature be conquered in the state of the Fever what other thing shall the cutting of a vein then be besides meer Murder If therefore it is not convenient to open a vein in the height of Fevers while as there is the greatest heat perplexity and a most especial breathing of the arteries is required Surely much less shall it be convenient in their beginnings and increases especially because presently after the first days the fear of a Plethora or too much fulness departs and so there is a sufficiently easie Transpiration of the Arteries But that diseases in their declining do neither require nor endure the cutting of a vein it is so cleer and testified by the voice of all That none ever attemps the cutting of a vein at the declining of a Disease Let us consider further That in Fevers the blood in the veins is either good or evil or neutral If it be good it shall be good to have the good detained because it addeth to the strength For as I have shewn elsewhere the fear of a Plethora if there were any hath ceased even presently after the beginning But for that they will have good blood to be let out for cooling and discussing of putrefaction Truly both of them hath already been sufficiently taken away and the imaginary good which they suppose brings a real and necessary loss of the strength or faculties But moreover the Schools teach That the cutting of a vein is not commanded in a Fever by reason of the goodness of the blood the which indeed they suppose to be evil and putrefaction But I have sufficiently taught That corrupted blood is not afforded in the veins as long as we live and by consequence that this scope of the Schools in cutting of a vein falls to the ground It behooves thererefore that they demonstrate unto me a naughtiness of the blood which may be without the corruption of the same And then that that blood is detained in a vein from the heart unto the hand if they will have the cutting of a vein to be confirmed in as much as it is such or as to revulsion Let them teach I say That bad blood is not in the first shops and that blood being drawn out through the vein of the elbow worse blood is not drawn to the heart where the vena cava or hollow vein makes the right bosome of the heart Let them likewise instruct me that the upper veines being emptyed there is not a greater liberty and impunity whereby the hurtfull and feverish matter may reach unto the heart than before So that instead of a discussing of the putrefaction which in the truth of the matter I have proved to be none a free passage of putrified ayr unto the heart is not rather occasioned whither indeed the vacuity of the emptied veines attracteth the bloud from beneath Let them shew I say by what reason an afflux of bloud and diminishment of the strength through the Elbow may hinder putrefaction or may import a Correction and renewing of that which is putrified Let them also explain themselves what they will have meant that cutting of a vein should be made whereby the Arteries may the more freely breath since putrefaction if there were any possible to be in the veines doth not affect the arterial bloud the Buttery of whole Nature And moreover Let them prove that the good bloud being diminished and the strength proportionally that there is a greater power in the impure bloud that is left and which is defiled by corruption as they suppose of preserving it self from putrefaction hanging over its head Let them likewise teach contrary to the sacred Text That the Life and Soul are rather and more willingly in the remaining defiled bloud than in the more pure bloud which was taken away by the cutting of a vein Otherwise regularly the drawing out of good bloud includes an increased proportion and unbridled liberty of the bad bloud remaining What if at length in a Fever and in the veines there be bad bloud and they say it is good as a sign or effect which in the letting out of bloud flowes forth as evil and they think that so much bad bloud at least is taken away First let them prove the bloud which they account hurtfull to be truly hurtfull even as I have already before proved it to be harmlesse And then let them teach that by such an hasty and full emission of bad bloud nothing that is of prejudice is taken from the strength and that the remaining bloud being defiled and the Faculties being now diminished the emptying out of bloud that is made shall be for a cause why a putrifying of the remaining bloud is the less
being suited to the Element of fire and at another time to the Whey of the Milk And far more shamefully do they undistinctly liken both of these to the Gaul Therefore four Humours shall equally be made of any meat under one act and the same shop of sanguification because they are immediatly principally and simply and always intended by the Liver or they are made in unlike places and moments Not indeed in unlike ones because so there should not be constitutive parts of one and the same blood But if in like places and moments Why while urine and choler are made at once is not one individually mixed with the other even as also gaul with the urine Why in the next place is the urine never bitter if gaul be always comixed with it whereby it is tinged as they say Why when the gaul is broken in a fish can none however the more exact washing take away that bitternesse And after another manner one onely smal drop of gaul should defile a whole bucker of urine with bitternesse Who in the next place is that so exact Seperater which was able to seperate the watery Choler from the urine but could not materially seperate all the urine from the blood Wherefore at length is not that Choler or gaul of the blood snatcht together with the urine to the kidneys which a total absence of its bitternesse proveth if Choler be believed to be throwly mixed with the blood above the Liver Let us therefore consider how choler being made by the Liver in the Liver shall come down unto the little bag of the gaul In what place sanguification is wrought Whether about the port-Port-vein and hollow of the Liver Or indeed in the very body of the Liver Or lastly in the very hollow vein above the Liver But in whichsoever of these places that choler is made at leastwise there is not from thence a vein of return for choler unto the little blader of the Gaul For it ought to proceed from the Liver unto the Gaul by a retrograde motion and uncertaine passages of conveighance Why at least wise have both those choler 's remayning in the masse of the blood their own excrements and seperated Innes But phlegme and the blood want excrments For if both of them are made beneath the Liver what seperater therefore seperates them And which why Since they being generated at once in the same place are perfectly mixed with the urine But if the Gawl and also black choler be made together with the act of sanguification in a most swift passage thorow the smal and slender little branches of the veines extended into the Liver I pray let young beginners be mindfull of the flendernesse of those little branches or veines which is scarce sufficient for the transmitting of the vrine and so that they should require a momentary transmutation of the urine blood and the other three humours to be made by the Creame This matter I have elsewhere profesly explained in a full treatise concerning a sixfold digestion And in the 16. brief head in particular That Choler is not made of meates And in the 17. That the Gawl is a bowel in forme of a liquour and the necessary balsame of life but in no wise an excrement In the 25. The curious opinion of the Schooles concerning the Gaul is unfolded In the 26. That nature had been more carefull for the Gaul than for phlegme In the 27. That the seperation of the urine and of the wheyinesse of blood differs in the whole essence from the seperation of the wheyinesse out of Milâ— In the 30. How much Gaul imports beyond every disposition of an excrement In the 31. Why birds might want urine and a kidney but not a Gaul In the 35. That the excrements of the kidneys and belly have indeed the colour of Gaul but not that they are therefore tinged with the Gaul and much lesse with choler In the 36. After what manner the dung excludes a comixture of the Gaul In the 37. That excrements may seem Gauly which are no way Gauly and therefore that these things have been rashly passed by by the Schooles Also that a leeky liquour is not of the Gaul the history of a Cock proveth and some following experiments in the Chap. of the Pylorus Sec. 24. The which that I may not here with a tediousnesse repeate the curious Reader shall enquire and he shall finde them in the places cited For if the Liver generateth both Cholers and Phlegm together with the blood why doth it despise and lay aside a great part of them for an excrement but reserve the rest in the blood when as otherwise of simple and homogeneal blood there either ought to be no duality of any of its particular parts or there should be the same necessary duality no less of Phlegm and Blood than of both the cholers Neither doth reason otherwise suffer that the same singular Cream of the meats should be daily and alwayes and equally divided into six parts to wit into blood both Choler 's retained in the blood and again into both the excrementitious Cholers and those shut up within their own entertaining places at length into phlegm especially when as the gaul differs from the liquor swimming on the blood let out of the veins in its whole property Unto which six humours if thou shalt add the Urine now seven humours shall ordinarily be framed of one only Cream and the supposed device of a quaternary of Elements and the necessity of that fiction perisheth Therefore if these are made by one only act of one liver in a direct and ordinary course of Ordination at once why doth it generate those things as necessary out of the homogeneal liquor of the Cream whereof there is no way a need for a Being as neither for a Well-Being But if they are for nourishing why doth it rather sequester both Cholers into their own sheaths and the chief Mansions of Constitution than Phlegm to wit the which they blush not to confess to be a defectuous liquor cold and so a partaker of death errour and a vital want But they will have Phlegm to be laid up in the vein and to be re-cocted into blood Therefore it is not as yet This Something being as yet crude undigested and uncocted not yet a true particular Humour and not yet a constitutive one of the bloud seeing it is as yet deficient no otherwise then as the juyce of unripe Grapes cannot be called Wine For if Phlegm answer to water even as they also liken the blood unto air one ought to be as perfect in it self as the other and as equally necessary if there are four Elementary Humours equally necessary for the composition and successive Alteration of us Surely that thing contains a Mockery that a Humour failing of its appointment should be ordinarily changed into another Humour As if the Water had not its own Perfection Ordination Order and Constitution but were naturally brought into
Humours of us In which recieved opinion of the Schools that a destructive decieving of mortals is conteined I thus prove For first it is manifest that that which is conteined in the chest of the Gaul is not an excrement of man bred from the errour of the Liver and ordained instead of a spur for the pricking of the bowels but that it is a Noble bowel resembling the condition of a balsame and so exceeding necessary that it is not lawfull so much as for fishes to live without a Gaul although living sparingly of meer water when as notwithstanding birds which drink do live happily without kidneys bladder and the emunctories of urine The which I have elsewhere profesly in the treatise concerning digessions and likewise concerning the commands of the Spleen and Gaul sufficiently and unto the full satisfaction of opposers demonstrated whither let the Reader have recourse In the next place that that which the stomach re-gorgeth by vomit is not Gaul shall be elsewhere profesly demonstrated Be it sufficient here that the stomach is an Inne unaccustomed to and impossible for the sequestration of the Gaul since the Gaul is not recalled unto the stomach from the Liver and much lesse from its own chest Which thing indeed fights with the Schools who will that the Gaul doth by a direct and appointed motion and pipe dismisse its own exorbitancy through the Bowels and that from thence the liquid dung of the same is tinged And then there is not a passage whereby the Gaul may by a retrograde motion be drawn from the Liver into the stomach If it being made by the Liver be naturally brought unto the Chest of the Gaul it be now separated and rejected as unprofitable and from thence at length be driven foreward through the intestines to be mixt with the dungs For the stomach draws not unto it self the excrement from the intestines Therefore if that bitter and yellow matter which vomiting casts up through the stomach should be Gaul after that I suppose according to the traditions of the Schools it had been generated in the Liver and dismissed unto the little bag of the Gaul and from thence become banished into the Bowel it should be again attracted upwards unto the Stomach And the Stomach should erre from its natural due and wonted end Which thing profesly more at large elsewhere Now I will sift another equal impertinency The Schools will have the Gaul to be ordinarily as it were an unprofitable excrement and because it is not co-mixed with the blood as an entire part that it is by the Liver not presently indeed but for some houres after that the Gaul is mixed into its own little bag and also admixed with the dung in the Bowels drawn upwards through the veins of the Mesentery that it may be mixed with the urine For saith Galen I behold the body of my urine late in the morning to be plainly watery and not tinged wherefore I sleep upon it and I see my urine to be then tinged Therefore either the urine is of its own accord tinged only by a continued luke-warmth or even as the Schools reach the tinging Gaul is at length co-mixed with it after some hours Therefore from hence it is manifest that they will have the Gaul to be presently again laid aside by its own little bag through the Bowels about the end of digestions and that comming down about the utmost part of Ileon it is attracted into the veins of the Mesentery is sucked through the port-vein of the Liver is sent inwards within the Liver and hollow vein and that it slides through the sucking veins into the kidneys with the urine which circle of the Gaul from the Liver into the Liver is so full of infamous ignorance that nothing is alike infamous For truly 1. It is manifest That the yellownesse of the urine is not from the Gaul nor bitter 2. That if Gaul should be made in the Liver and not in the very Bowel of its own little bag it might more readily depart from the Liver into the kidneys than that contrary to all comelinesse of nature that should be fetcht back from dungs which had been once rejected and banished For there was never Gaul or Choler in the nature of things or in the Inne of the kidneys And that which is made by an erring stomach and rejected bitter was never Gaul or Choler but the meer superfluity or excrement thereof And therefore the bitterness of Choler is in no wise rightly inferred from the bitternesse of forreign filths 3. The bitternesse of Choler in the urine is not sufficiently proved not the least thing whereof was ever true None of the Physitians of so many ages hath hitherto found the urine to be bitter in tast or durst to assert it unlesse in subscribing to paganish fictions neither hath any of them ever dared to tast down any drop of the liquour swimming on the blood let out the of veins but they had all of them rather universally to subscribe unto paganish fables Neither have they in the least doubted but that that super-swimming liquor was meer Gauly yellow and bitter Choler Neither have they attempted to know whether there were any bitternesse of Gaul or feigned Choler in the urine no not so much as in the vrine of those that have the Iaundise The which notwithstanding should be most true and unexcusable if but even one only drop of Gaul should be mixed with three pints of urine But if any one hath ever by chance or willingly tasted down urine or the aforesaid liquour swimming on the blood and hath not repented him of the mixture of Choler and necessity of Gaul Now he hath given a testimony of his own obstinacy and ignorance For every Gauly Humour is always naturally bitter but neither is that super-swimming liquour as neither the urine bitter Therefore they are not Gauly Humours Therefore from the carelesseness of tryall they have been rather willing to subscribe to fables and to believe falshoods for truths and stifly to defend them than to forsake that accustomed opinion But all posterity lamenteth the effects proceeding from thence and the whole Christian world with me bewayleth them even to this day Therefore let one at least make tryal of what things I have spoken and the which he shall presently be able to experience without discommodity or danger and every good or honest man will grieve at the so great ignorance and sluggishnesse of so many ages and the cruel passive decieving of the people of Christ That therefore which the Schools call yellow Choler as well in the urine as in the composition of the blood is neither Choler nor bitter nor Gaul nor therefore one of the four feigned Humours nor answering to the Element of fire seeing that fire is no way an Element And it hath not hitherto been known what tast one of those four supposed Humours might have Yea as oft as they accuse Cholerick Humours the bloody flux
use of the Pulses and another of breathing and â—â—â—ther for heat only For in the most sharp and hot diseases to wit as oft as there is the greatest breathing drawn and that like a sigh the Pulse is small and swift also the strength remaining Therefore the use of breathing and the Pulse do not answer especially because we are more refreshed by a great draught of cold water abundantly drunk than if the same quantity be drunk at many times I say we are more refreshed by one only sigh than by many small and more frequent breathings Even so as a pair of Bellows doth perform more by a great and continual blast than by those that are lesse exact although many whence it may be sufficiently manifested to a well considerate and judicious man that there is another use of the Pulses of greater moment to wit That which respecteth the ferment of digestions Whence I repeat a handicraft operation to wit That at length under the last digestion all our Arterial bloud doth perish and exhale neither that it leaves any dreg behind it Yet whatsoever doth exhale by heat alone all that as well in living as in inanimate things doth leave a dreg behind it the skilfull do call this The dead Head which dreg being at length thus roasted doth resemble a Coale For the action of heat is of it self every where Simple Univocal and Homogeneal differing in the effect by reason of the Matter Therefore if the vitall bloud ought to be wholly so disposed in us that it be at length wholly blown away without a dead head it was altogether necessary that that should happen by some other Mean than that of heat But the aire was alwayes and from the beginning every where the seperater of the waters from the waters This hath not been known in the Schools to wit that the whole Venal bloud that it may depart into a Gas it hath need of two wings to fly the aire and a ferment Wherefore observe thou That as oft as any thing of bloud becomes unfit or is not by degrees disposed of and undergoes its degrees in the outward part of the body that it may wholly throughout the whole be made volatile and capable to flye away or thorow the poâ—es at the same moment now Scirthus's Nodes or Knots and Apostems are conceived but if that thing happen in the more inward part thereof for the most part Fevers Apoplexies Falling evills Asthma's likewise pains and deaths do soon follow Let us see therefore what the aire or what a ferment may conduce hereunto First of all Every muscilage of the earth which else is easily turned into worms likewise Starch Fleshes Fishes c. being once frozen at that very moment do lose their muckinesse and return into water As the aire was once very well combined to the Ice as I have sometimes spoken concerning the weight of Ice and so it is the first degree whereby the aire doth resolve a tough body into water And then under the greatest colds and purest aire we are more hungry yet we sweat and less is discussed out of us with a small and more hard siege or excrement Therefore one that saileth in the Sea eats more by double if not by treble unlesse he be sick and le ts go less excrement than himself doth living at Land whence is the Proverb The water causeth a promoting of digestion As if indeed he that saileth should not float in the aire but in the water but floating doth renew the aire in us and from hence there is a stronger digestion Therefore if we do eat more strongly and do cast forth less excrements it necessarily follows that the more is discussed or doth vanish out of the Body which is to say That the more pure Northern and Sea-aire doth conduce to a transpiration or evaporation of the body or doth dispose the bloud unto an insensible perspiration or breathing out of it self Surely for that cause is breathing made not indeed that the air may depart into nourishment for the vitall spirit but that it may be connexed with it being sucked to it thorow the Arterial Vein and Venal Artery of the Lungs and that the air being for this cause transported into the heart it may receive a ferment which accompanying it they both may dispose the venal blood into a totall transpiration of it self After another manner many things are made fixt and do resist a breathing forth if they are provoked by heat otherwise they were in themselves volatile Wherefore an Alcali is not generated in ashes by the fire essentially although effectively it proceed from thence For the office of the fire is indeed to kindle consume and seperate yet not to produce any thing Seeing the fire is not rich in a seed it is the very destroyer of seeds But from seeds all Generation proceedeth When therefore an Alcali is fixed out of a Salt that was before volatile it is not a new production of a thing but only the Alteration of a thing For the Alcali was indeed materially in the composed body before burning and did flow together with its Mercury and Sulphur Notwithstanding while the fire takes away the Mercury and Sulphur the Salt indeed as being a principle more subsisting in the melting of the combustion doth snatch to it self the neighbouring part of the Sulphur or Fat and when it is not able sufficiently to defend it from the torture of the fire it partly also flyes away under the mask of a Gas and attains the odour of corrupted matter and is partly incorporated in the laid-hold-of co-melted Sulphur and is made a true Coal Wherefore the Sulphur being now fixed by the wedlock of the Salt it doth not speedily incline from a Coal into a smoaky vapour But by degrees and not unlesse in an open Vessel and so with the former Sulphur for from hence the Sulphur of a thing being for the most part sharp doth retain the savour of a volatile Salt and at length with the Coalie Sulphur the just weight of its volatile Salt flies away Which thing surely is no where more manifest than in the Coal of Honey For if this be urged or forced by a shut vessel it remains not changed in a bright burning fire but the vessel being open both do so depart that moreover no remainder of ashes doth ever survive Therefore the Alcali Salt doth fore-exist materially in the composed body before combustion Because all the Salt was formally volatile in the composed body and not in the form of a more fixed Alcali which thing is now especially manifest in the bloud which being wholly volatile exhaleth unsensibly through the Pores without any residence But if it be combusted or burnt it leaveth very much fixed Salt in its own ashes In the next place The wood of the Pine-Tree which affordeth little ashes and less Salt in the preparation of ashes barrelled is by calcining wholly turned into an Alcali For barrelled ashes are brought
to us out of Scandia called Weedaschen combusted for the most part out of the Pine and some out of the Oak which do infect the Hogs-head wherein they are carried with a more moist aire to wit with a melted Salt Therefore the woods of the Hogs-heads being thus salted when they are burnt they melt like Horn and do almost wholly degenerate into Salt for part of the ashes also is made a Salt by reason of the contained Salt which afterwards they name Potaschen For else the ashes of the same wood the Salt being taken away do remain ashes and are not made Salt Whence indeed it is manifest that the Salt of the ashes doth afterwards make a Salt like to it self by co-melting and that indeed a fixed one And therefore there doth arise a fixedness in the composed body by reason of the Salt and co-melting which otherwise doth not exist So when Tartar of Wine is burnt sixteen Ounces of it doth scarce yield two Ounces and a halfe of Alcali Salt therefore thirteen volatile Ounces and a half have perished in the calcining Yet if these are distilled and are at length imbibed in their own remaining Coal they will as yet yield four Ounces and the third part of an Ounce of Salt by co-hobating Therefore what thou seest to be done thy self being Judge concerning the four Ounces and a third part judge thou the same touching the two Ounces and halfe of the former Alcali Hitherto doth that belong which I have elsewhere spoken of Aqua vitae being fixed in the Alcali of Tartar and the same thing happens in distilled Vinegar Hence therefore it appeareth that the volatile Salt of a thing is fixed in its own fixed Alcali or Salt Yea likewise that the whole ashes was before volatile and fixed under the first co-melting of combustion But that the volatile Salts which were nigher to their Essences departed together with their Essences in the first torture of the fire Yet note that although an Alcali be made of the spirit of Wine in the fixed Salt of the Tartar nevertheless as the Salt of the Aqua vitae was changed by the Wedlock of Essence yet one is to be separated and distinguished from the other in the univocal or single fixedness of them both As the Alcali of the Spirit of Wine being powred on Aqua fortis becomes red but the Alcali of Tartar doth not change its colour Wherefore also there is among Alcalies their own Common-wealth and the Adulteraters of money do labour very much about Salt of Tartar he Alcali of Salt-peter being contemned Also an Alcali Salt being prepared as is here said of the Spirit of Wine doth by the joyning of it self change the Savour of the Lixivium or Lie of Tartar So as that it becomes the astringent Balsam Samech of Paracelsus the which before it had the Savour of a Lixivium was an expert Balsam and did resemble a Caustick on At length hitherto that suits that rotten and putrified Woods do scarce leave a Salt in their ashes Because the volatile Salt departed with the Sulphur through a Ferment of putrefaction And so there was at least as much volatile Salt in the thing or composed Body as is found to fail in the ashes that is the whole whence it followes that the volatile Salt fetched as well from the Sulphur as from the Mercurie is materially the same with the Alcalized or fixed Salt And therefore a volatile Salt is fixed and likewise a fixed Salt is made volatile the formal property of the composed Body remaining Again it followes That the Sulphur of a composed Body being distilled and the Sulphur of a Coal are of the same particular kinde although this be imprisoned but that is free Truly Handicraft-operation taught me these things after that I knew how to seperate the three things from ordinary composed Bodies without a corruption of matter I learned that every combustible Body hath in it a volatile Salt which by the snatching of its own sulphur unto it is fixed into an Alcali In the mean time that part for the most part aboundeth which escapeth the embraces of the co-melting volatile sulphur In which co-melting the action springs into the Sulphur of the thing Which understand thou by an example of distilled Vinegar This I say seeing it is water impregnated or got with childe of a sharp volatile salt if it shall through the action of its sharpness touch any thing by biting it is straightway co-agulated which afterwards by combustion is found to be a fixed Alcali Yea if the sharp and volatile Spirit of Vitriol shall corrode a Mercurie alike volatile the sharpness of the Vitriol is fixed into a true Alume Which Handicraft-operations I do moreover shew in drawing them to the scope of a totall consuming in the Venal Bloud If the Air let him who can comprehend the secret doth in the first place volatize the Sulphur of the composed Body with the every way seperation of its Salt this Salt which else in the Coal should be fixed into an Alcali by the fire is made wholly volatile and climbs upwards sometimes in a liquid shape and oft-times in the form of a Sublimate and hath the whole constitutive temperature of the composed Body This Salt is demonstrated by Handicraft-operation but its demonstration is known to few although it listeth us to make it plain At least it from thence appeareth that the true use of the Air in the Pulse and breathing was not made known to the Antients by reason of the ignorance of the Art of Alchymie Likewise from thence it is manifest that from a continual necessity the Air is drawn inward for a peculiar end that it may cause the bloud of the veins else through our heat not to be discussed but rather to be condensed to be plainly volatile without the remembrance of a remaining dead Head But in Fishes as the venall bloud is not stirred by heat but onely by the vitall Ferments of the parts So neither was there need of breathing For truly those living Creatures might freely want breathing whose venall bloud wants the fear of heat Because it is a thing unseparable from heat that the more watery part of the venal bloud being exhaled the remainder doth wax clotty and at length doth degenerate into a dry lump unless by the uncessant attraction and Wedlock of the Air in the Bride-bed of the Lungs and Breast the Air it self should be co-mingled with the sulphur of the bloud it being as it were the seperater of the waters and should bring forth the sulphur changed in its last essence and breathed thorow the pores together with a watery vapour by an unperceiveable Gas That was not a naked office of cooling refreshment although it be in the Schooles so thought who are wont to measure all things by heat and cold but the vitall Ferment of the Arteries being adjoyned for this cause perhaps and that especially the Arteries do accompany veins thorowout the whole Body
Chymistry to be the Chamber-maid and emulating Ape and now and then the Mistriss of nature do subject the whole of nature unto Chymical speculation Therefore the second degree in nature may be heat as is that of water not yet frozen The third is where it is remisly cold even as Well water Otherwise absolute heat is deceived at our touching which is luke-warm and it is thought to be cold whatsoever doth heat lesse than it self And seeing the touching is more or lesse hot it makes and unconstant token or signification of heat At length a fourth degree is that of a gentle luke-warmth The fifth is now luke-warm The sixth is ours The seaventh is now Feverish The eighth is of a May Sun The ninth is distillatory and that which now overcomes the touching A tenth distilleth with boyling up The eleventh sublimes Sulphur and dry spirits A twelfth doth melt and sublime the fire-stone The thirteenth is in a somewhat brown fierynesse The fourteenth is a bright burning fierynesse The fifteenth Lastly is the ultimate vigour of the Bellows and Reverbery Lastly Although heat and cold are real qualities and do undergo degrees yet moisture and drinesse are not to be considered but in their own Concrete or composed body and therefore neither do they constitute qualitative degrees but only quantitative ones Because moisture in one only drop is as deeply moist in dry white earth as in its own Element because moist and dry do co-mingle themselves in their root neither do they mutually enter and pierce each other And therefore neither do they mutually dispose of and affect each other formally For those kind of appropriations do agree to seeds but not to Elements Therefore moisture and driness do not admit of degrees neither therefore do they change as neither do they alter each other Because properly they are not qualities in the abstract but qualified bodies themselves But heat and cold do mutually pierce each other throughout their least parts and do break and graduate each other And therefore it is no wonder that the Schools have remained so dumb in the degrees of moisture and drinesse For to the air that there is a moisture heightned unto eight degrees but to the water that the same is remiss or temperate to wit to the fourth degree Lastly That driness is heightned in the earth to eight but remiss in the fire unto four degrees But these trifles of Complexions as well in Elements as in Bodies which they have hitherto believed to be mixt of the Elements have fell to dung being on every side already sore shaken by a manifold necessity of going to ruine CHAP. XXVIII The threefold Digestion of the Schools 1. The generall scope of this Book 2. The first digestion in the stomack 3. The first Region of the Body 4. Two things are to be admired in this work 5. Another digestion and second region 6. The third digestion 7. The last Region of the Body 8. The forgetfulnesse of the Schools 9. The state of Growth IT is not enough to have shewn that there are not four Elements in nature as neither the material mixtures of them and Complexions and Strifes resulting from thence Lastly Not their Congresses or Combates embraces of humors feigned from thence and the madness of these But that contrarieties sprung from thence and the abounding of humors in the Body are the meer dreams of the Gentiles brought into Medicine and even till now adored by the Schools Neither is it enough that I have shewn elsewhere that the three-first things are to be banished from the rank of diseases and cures Likewise to have refuted the causality of the Stars in healing also to have hissed out Winds to have rejected the Consumptions of radical moisture as vain terrours Last of all to have expulsed Catarrhs and the hard and new invention of Tartarous humors and so to have shewn that a disease as well in the general as in the particular hath hitherto lain hid from the Schools and consequently that mortall men do languish under a conjectural Art as yet fundamentally unknown unless I shall even discover the proper causes of Diseases And seeing the causes of the most inward enemies are for the most part intimate or most inward I will before all things propose a history of the functions or offices but after that done I will demonstrate some principles of nature necessary to be known hitherto unheard of The Schools affirm That the meat and drink are by the force of heat transchanged in the stomack into a liquor the which by reason of its likeness to Barley Cream they have called Chyle But they say That afterward this Chyle is by the veins inserted in and accompanying the stomack and whole guidance of the Bowels therefore being annexed by the mediating Mesentery which in the room of a third Coat doth cloath encompasse and involve the Bowels by little and little sucked forward and drawn inward But that the more grosse remaning part is left in the Bowels as it were unprofitable dross to be expelled thorow the Fundament Indeed this first coction they have called the first of the three digestions And so that the first Region of the Body begins from the mouth but to be terminated in one part in the fundament but in the other part in the hollow of the Liver Two things sufficiently admirable do concur herein To wit that in a few houres hard meat is resolved into juyce and that the veins are terminated into the bowels by their utmost mouths that by these I say they suck thorow as much Liquor every day as is cast in and made But that they do not suck to them any thing of a blast more subtile than that Cream yet the bowels are not found porous or holie in life more than in death Nevertheless the whole Chyle passeth thorow the veins of the Mesentery into the Liver Wherein they say the whey of the venal bloud is again seperated for Urine which passeth thorow to the Reins but they will have the more corpulent Cream to be changed in the Liver into venal bloud For in the first digestion that which is more hard and thick is excluded But in the other the thick is retained the transparent part being secluded Therefore the second Region and Shop of the Body begins from the very Body of the Liver and is terminated in the ultimate branches of the hollow vein And then in the third place the bloud falling down out of the veins and being snatched into the nourishment of the solid parts is by degrees perfected and transchanged into a humour which they call secondary And that they divide into four degrees of affinity before it being truly informed be admitted into the solidity of the sound parts Therefore in this alimentary humour is bestowed the labour of the third and highest digestion And therefore they call this last shop of the Body the habit of the Body and do forget the Bowels The which indeed do also
not onely not coagulated but neither indeed is it as yet coagulable as long as it is conversant in that stomack As is manifest in the bloody flux Therefore there is made a seperation of the wheyie excrement from the venal bloud in the Meseraick veins themselves and indeed from a far other acting ferment and bowel than that which is employed about Sanguification or making of bloud For it is a certain act which condemns a part of the Cream into an excrement But it preserveth the venal bloud and leaveth it untouched therefore a production and seperation of the excrement goes before Sanguification And so the womb of the Urine beginneth before the Meseraick veins Yet the womb of the stone is not as yet in the same place because the ferment of the Rein or Kidney changeth the spirit of the Urine in the Liver and round about it Therefore whatsoever was soure in the Cream is changed by the ferment of the Gaul into the salt of the Urine But the stomack of the Gaul is the Duodenum and the following Reed of the neighbour Bowels and it ends in the beginnings of the Veins of the Mesentery But because this use of the parts and ferments is hitherto unheard of in the Schools it is therefore to be dilated by a large discourse First of all The Doctrine of the Schools standing That the venal bloud is made in the Liver and that together with the venal bloud the Gaul is also made Therefore of necessity also the seperation of the Gaul shall in motion and nature be after Sanguification Wherefore the Chest of the Gaul ought to be above the Liver and not beneath it nigh the port vein For by way of supposition I now grant the fictions of four humors at least it had far more commodiously purged the matter bloud from superfluous Choler than the Chest of the Gaul seeing indeed the Choler should as yet be mingled immediately with the Urine and especially because they teach That the Urine ought to be tinged by the Gaul and therefore in vain For why should the Gaul be so precisely separated from the Urine if it ought again straight-way to be added unto it I conjecture the Liver to be loaded for every event with a vain and importunate baggage by the little bag of the Gaul hanging on it by the little bag I say onely of cast-out dung dedicated to the provoking of Urines And being by so much more unhappy than the bladder because seeing it is that which is a membrane of the first and Spermatick constitution yet that it ought to be nourished by the Gaul alone Seeing it wants a vein propagated by running through its little bladder For since we are nourished by the same things whereof we consist where shall that little bag find a spermatical nourishment from the Gaul which in it self should be nothing but an excrement But if the Gaul be said to be collected into the Chest under the Liver for the wiping away the dregs of the paunch at least the Agent which procreateth in the Urine a Salt of not Salts had more commodiously left a part of its own Urine for the washing and cleansing of the Entrails and disturbing the superfluities of these as it had freed the Liver of the stinking and â—edious burden and consociation of the Gaul Neverthelesse it is of Faith that our body is so workman-like framed by God that nothing therein is in vain and nothing therein diminished Because that it is far more artificially and commodiously made than our understanding can comprehend Therefore if the ends of the Gaul granted by the Schools should be true verily the Reins had far more commodiously satisfied those ends as I have said than that the workman of things had therefore loaded the Liver with that unprofitable weight But the consequence convinceth its antecedent of falsehood Therefore the whole doctrineis false If Birds do want Reins a Bladder and Urine whereby they may the more fitly fly but the Gaule should serve onely for the wiping or cleansing of the blood at least the bloud had more willingly wanted the refining of the Gaul than the refining of the Urine that is if nature be able to seperate drink in a Bird without Urine and therefore likewise to want Reins and Bladder would it not bemuch more easie for it to have severed some small quantity of the Gaule with the Urine and superfluities of the paunch than to have loaded a noble bowel with a Chest and so by the unprofitable baggage of an excrement to have troubled Sanguification even in Birds Certainly nature at least reckoned to be more indulgent to Choler than to Phlegme because she hath framed for it a peculiar little Bladder or Bag For it is a foolish or unsavoury thing that nature had placed the Gaul in the lap of the Liver for the dregs of the paunch and bladder when as otherwise she had dissembled Choler to be abundantly thorow mixed with the venal bloud Wherefore I more fully looking into the matter have observed that the Chest of the Gaul is as it were the Kernel of the Liver curiously kept in its hollow part from injuries but the Liver to be as the rhine or bark of the Gaul And then that the Gaul is so much the nearer tied to the Duodenum because its digestion and ferment should go before the digestion of the Liver or Sanguification Indeed the wheyie superfluous part ought to be seperated from the lively Cream which seperation therefore is not to be compared to whey and milk which are not severed from each other but with the corruption of the milk For truly in the Cream a separation of the whey happeneth together with the rectifying and preserving of the venal bloud That is the ferment of the Gaul is the perfective one of the Cream the preservative one of the bloud and the corâ—uptive one of the whey which three things do together concur in one point whereby the Gaul doth convert the sharp salt of the stomack except that which is hurtful corruptive in the stomack into a salt Salt Moreover although I have said that Sanguification is the latter in respect of the seperation of the Urine and transmutation of the sour into salt Yet both ferments as well indeed of the Gaul as of the Liver do begin at once because neither of them keeps Holy-day or is idle For as the ferment of the Liver is of a greater work and perfection So it doth more slowly perform its charge than the Ferment of the Gaul For the aforesaid transmutation of the Cream ought to proceed that the Liver being somewhat eased of an unprofitable burden might the more commodiously employ it self in Sanguification Therefore the second digestion or that of the Gaul is distinct from the first and third in the ferment bowel
womb taste effect and end All which the Schools are hitherto ignorant of because erring in the use of the Gaul For in the first digestion the stomack is the receptacle but the Spleen doth inspire from it self a sour ferment into the meats and a sour Cream is thereby made But in the other the slender entrails are the stomack but the ferment is inspired from the gaul for the corruption and seperation of the watery part and a sharp volatile salt is changed into a Salt volatile one But that this might be done by a speedy touch I shall at sometime shew by some Handicraft operations To wit that the Oyl of Vitriol is by the only touching of Mercury converted into a meer Alum Vinegar and Salt c. Also straightway after drink there is oft-times a watery pissing made yet Salt and the mark of the first digestion is scarce conceived but that a notable part of the drink slides forth under an errour of the Pylorus and by consequence there was not made a seperation of the Urine from the bloud in the Liver Because the venal bloud is not as yet made in the Liver if the Chyle it self be as yet made or concocted out of meats in the stomack To wit when drinkers do very often make water after meat Therefore also Urine is made of watery drink yea out of drink from whence venal bloud was not made and so the generating of Urine doth there go before Sanguification At length the very veins of the Mesentery are the stomack of the third digestion which way the Liver inspires a bloudy ferment and a very red or ruddy salt venal bloud is the effect thereof For the wounds of the Gaul are presently mortal but those of the Liver not so If the eâ—ore the Gaul were likewise Choler death would of necessity follow every effusion of the Gaul Nevertheless the yellow Jaundise is not mortal although the Gaul as the same Schooles do teach is not onely diffused over the entrails but throughout the whole Body equally longly largely deeply and throughout its least part Therefore either a wound of the Gaul doth import more than the effusion of Choler or the Jaundise is not effused Choler or both is necessary Wounds of the Bladder also being inflicted above the share as successful Wurtz is witness in my judgement the Standard-defender of the more modern Chyrurgioâ—s are cured although the Urine together with its Gaul as they will have it cannot but be powred forth at that very time or moment Therefore the Chest of the Gaul hath a necessity and Integrity fast tied to the life by reason of sudden death Neither is it the effusion of that gawly superfluity which doth necessitate that speedy death Again Birds do live prosperously without Kidneys or a Bladdâ—r yet not without a Gaul wherefore there is a more conjoyned necessity of the Gaul than of Kidneys Because that the Kidneys being rockie and putrified the life is safe And then Fishes according to the Doctrine of the Schools do abound with very much phlegme and are destitute of actual heat they are onely nourished with cold bloud and watery food At length their excrements easily glistering they had no need of a spur the Gaul Wherefore seeing the ends matter and efficient cause of the Gaul attributed by the Schools should fail in a Fish surely we shall believe that the Liver is vainly deceitfully and by the errour of nature yea and of the Creator wearied unless we had rather acknowledge perpetual errours in the Schools and to contemplate some greater moment of a necessary bowel to be in the Gaul From hence therefore I determine the Gaul to be a vital Bowel and its very Body to be a bitter Liquor prepared of the best venal bloud containing the Balsam of the Liver and Arterial bloud But whatsoever it by chance casts back of it self into the bowel Duodenum is the excrement of it self and a Liquor now despised of the Gaul But that these things have themselves after this manner I have at sometime shewen under the impostures of Choler by the example of a Calf whoâ—e motherly and sweet milk waxeth sour and is coagulated in the stomach and therefore affords Runnet for Cheeses For milk is made a watery Cream but little of coagulated milk But that Cream contains Urine and venal bloud but another coagulated Body which of pale begins to wax yellow is made dung But that baggage straightway falling into the Duodenum doth proceed unto the Ileos being coagulated and waxeth of a Citron colour the more by how much it hath departed farther from the stomach and at length it waxeth green yet there is not bitterness in the yellow but a nitrous taste But in the green the smell of Dung doth now plainly appear But the wheyie Cream is presently drawn and supped up with greediness by the meseraick veins for the use of sanguification Likewise Milk is stirred in Infants whence also those that are the more young ones do cackie all yellow not from the plenty of Choler neither by reason of the domination of the Chest of the Gaul but surely because the ferment of their Dung is feeble Therefore the ferment of the Gaul doth not change the sourness of the stomach into bitter but into Salt for the reasons explained concerning the Spirit of life Spare me ye more tender eares because I ought to treat of Dungs I will therefore shew that the savour of Dung excludes the Gaul that it befools the use of the Gaul invented by the Schools and convinceth Choler of a fiction A Boy of four years old had fowled in Bed but being much afraid of whipping he ate his own Dung yet â—e could not blot the sign out of the sheets wherefore being asked by threatnings he at length tells the chance But being asked of its savour he said it was of a stinking and somewhat sweet one For among other things he had eat Pease-pottage but he complained that the undigested husks or brans of the Pease were notably soure for there is not an equal vigilancy of the ferment of the Gaul over thick and undigested Dungs as there is over transparent things and those things which are to be prepared into the dignity of venal bloud I came by chance unlooked for the same day and I diligently enquired a price being also added whether those things which he had eaten were bitter He answered negatively and the same as before Likewise Nuns did Board noble Maids sufficiently sober at their Table but they continually preached that they who did eat dainty fare should have their parts with the rich Glutton but that they onely should be saved who by the every way denyal of mortification did eat any the most vile things Therefore a noble little Virgin being very desirous of her Salvation and much moved by the aforesaid perswasion eats her own Dung and was weak or sick But she was called home again by her Parents and at length told
an enemy to the veins but that these do draw no hostile thing unto them from whence it followes that the veins of the stomach do not allure any thing of the Cream under them and that all bloud before it be attracted by the veins of the Mesentery hath boren the hand of the ferment of the Gaul in its own stomach of the bowels yea although the Arteries being dispersed throughout the stomach do suck the Spirit of Wine yet they draw no juyce For which way should the Arteries draw juyce seeing they can never do any good thereby seeing sanguification doth not belong to the heart but to the Liver Seeing the juyce being attracted in the Artery should of necessity be a hinderance and ought to be corrupted If therefore the Arteries have a natural endowment of avoyding things hurtful and likewise of drawing vital things unto them and things appointed for them by the Lord of things shall that discretion be denied to the veins in the stomach For nature should have dealt ill with Horses who being content with one onely draught in the morning are fed all the day after with Straw Hay Chaffe Oats or Barley For truly dry or unjucie things should straightway contract thirst in the stomach if the veins of the stomach should draw drink unto them Horses should be thirsty all the day Therefore the drink ought of necessity to remain in the stomach so long as that it may expect there an end of future digestion least the sour Liquor be drawn into the veins which is plainly hostile or least the Cream being half cocted be supped up by the veins before the appointed time Therefore there is another use of the veins of the stomach than that which is of the meseraick veins And therefore the Argument objected falls to the ground because the meseraick veins are the stomach of the Liver and there is not another besides those the veins of the stomach are not likewise that which are onely dedicated to the nourishing of the stomach Again whensoever the Pylorus is not exactly shut it happens as in long drinkings that the stomach doth almost with a continual thred as it were make water downwards by dropping into the bowel but in those that have Fevers whose Pylorus doth erre through too much straightness the drink doth sometimes remain a full three dayes space and at length more is cast back by one onely vomit than was taken in two dayes which thing surely doth oppose that that the veins of the stomach do attract juyce It hath oft-times befallen me lying in a Coach with my face upwards that I should hear through the jogging of the wayes my stomach to contain a Chyle floating in me like to a Bottle half full but that I have often gone to bed after that without a Supper or drink yea that I felt my stomach in the morning as I did the day before Wherefore I being somewhat curious have provoked my self to vomit and I vomited up Cream somewhat sour plenteous transparent so that my teeth were astonished by reason of the sourness and although I felt no burden before vomiting yet after vomiting I perceived an easement or lightning whence I observed First of all that if the veins of the stomach had now sucked the Chyle 20 hours I had not been as yet able to have cast back so much from a moderate yesterdayes dinner 2. That the sour Cream is not allured by the veins 3. That that sourish Cream was not as yet dismissed from the stomach not indeed through the vice of digestion but through the errour of the Pylorus 4. That digestion differs from the expulsive faculty if one be perfected the other being absent or failing 5. That now and then the digestion beares the unguilty fault of the expulsive saculty and this of it 6. That as I did offend by too much shutting of the Pylorus so drinkers do offend-by a too much negligent bolting of the Pylorus 7. Moreover at the beginnings of Diseases things are often cast back which were taken three dayes before 8. That it belongs not to the veins of the stomach to attract the Cream 9. That nevertheless the Doctrine remaineth which hath made it a foolish thing for a Clyster to be injected by the fundament for nourishing of the sick 10. That the upper orifice of the stomach in Fevers offends by too much opening and thirst but that the Pylorus errs through a strict closure of himself 11. That in Fevers both digestion and also expulsion do offend 12. That the Key of the Orifice or upper mouth of the stomach is in the Spleen and that of the Pylorus in the Gaul by reason of the divers seats of a twofold ferment 13. That the reason of Scituation for the Spleen and Gaul is from the reason of their office For indeed the Schools do extend the first Region of the Body from one extream from the mouth even into the fundament and from the other extream even into the hollow of the Liver But I do describe the Regions by digestions seeing otherwise without these a Region it self is a Being of Reason For what doth it belong to a digestion that there is the utterance of an excrement what doth it pertain to the stomach that its drosse departs thorow the fundament For the Dung of the intestine is no more the excrement of the stomach than sweat is therefore if the fundament belongs to the first Region by reason of the excrement of the stomach therefore also the Skin shall belong to the first Region by Reason of sweat and the Bladder by reason of Urine Therefore not an excrement Lastly not the departure hereof but digestion alone doth prescribe a limit unto a Region and therefore there are as many Regions as digestions In the next place the shop of sanguification is not the Liver it self in its own substance because even the Liver of Fishes should also make their venal bloud but yet seeing every thing generates the like to it self it should of necessity be that either the Liver of Fishes should be red or their bloud to be white both whereof are false whence we learn that sanguification it self is made in the Liver it s own stomach which is the manifold vessel it self of the Mesentery Otherwise the Liver hath too few and slender veins for the due perfecting of the juyce of so great a heap For out of them the last perfection of sanguification is inspired into the hollow vein on the venal bloud by the ferment of the Liver And the Schools do think that sanguification is made by an actual nourishing warmth of the Liver and Cream because they are ignorant of any other actions than those which happen through a daily touching or comprehending And therefore also that every Agent ought necessarily to suffer by reason of a resistance are-acting of the Patient and that is the unexcusable containing cause of our death because the radical heat For they hold it a firm thing that
wholly into a Chick and the bloud wholly into the last nourishment From whence I conjecture it to be a falshood that there is no nourishment without an excrement For the Schools have meditated of dungs and have not minded that Homogeneal things do onely concur to generation Therefore although before the transmutation of the food there are made the seperations of dregs Yet that afterwards dregs are no more made in transchanging to wit after the obtaining of Homogeneity or parts of the same kind For a seperation of dregs from that which is Homogeneal is impossible wherein one thing doth not any thing differ from another But in meats or under the first ferment there is a diversity of kind by reason of the difference of the meats and parts of the same the unequality of chewing and an unlike application of the received ferment For the sood doth partly hearken the more easily to the ferment and being partly rebellious doth resist whence also a disagreeable capacity of the ferment doth arise That also of the Schools is false That the stomack doth primarily coct for it self secondarily only for the whole body and so that it self is truly nourished by a sourish Chyle And so that if it should not be nourished by its own Chyle neither would it begin or attain a Cocture Because that from the self-love of nature every thing doth act intentionally for it selfe 1. If that thing may have place in a totall Agent yet surely not in the direction of all particular parts 2. Because no part doth act any thing in the body from a proper pleasure of self-love and much lesse do the shops dedicated to the service of the whole so act But nature doth on every side obey the appointments of the Creator which were measured out by use and necessity in the power of the Lord of things 3. We are nourished by the same things whereof we consist but we in no wise consist of the Cream 4. The stomack is nourished with no other matter than the other rank of membranes which is destitute of the Cream 5. The Cream doth not receive life but by the Degrees of venal bloud but the stomack cannot be nourished by a nourishment not yet vitall 6. The Cream is a melted food having as yet the Archeus and Properties of the food but spermatick and similar members of the first constitution cannot be nourished by a liquor not yet limited unto a humane species 7. The veins are not dispersed into the stomack that they may suck venal bloud but that they may diffuse nourishment But they do not contain the Cream Therefore the family-administration of the Members being unknown faulty arguments from not the cause as for the cause do every where sprout forth in the Schools and do bring forth capital errours and deaf experiences to be purged in another Tent. Francis Alvares an eye-witness writeth That the Abyssine or Aethiopian Nobles are delighted in their feasts with raw Oxe flesh with a seasoning or sawce of its own Gaul yet they are not any thing weaker than the strongest Europeans If therefore the Gaul be an excrement as it hath pleased the Schools and of so great cruelty as they think that the Gaul being detained in the stomack doth produce a fainting of the Spirit yea that within few dayes Choler through a disease doth kill us How shall a raw and cadaverous Gaul make men sound and the more strong Perhaps they will object If the Gaul be so necessary a Bowel Pigeons or Doves could not want that But they know not that the scituation of the Members and heart in a Pigeon is turned upside down For if an Emmet hath his Choler in him Pigeons have also their Gaul although it be not bitter nor distinguished by a little bag as neither in Emmets For it is sufficient that the Blas of the second digestion is established in another part For the heart of a Pigeon sits in the four Lobbets of the hollow of his Liver they being overwhelmed above and its bunch hangs forth downwards The Pigeon being a great fighter even unto bloud doth want a little bag of Gaul But the Lamb hath a large Gaul even as also every the least and mildest of fishes They gave me Gaul to eat and in my thirst they gave me Vinegar to drink That was wine of Myrrhe mixed with Gaul which they offered to the Saviour of the world now fainting with the pains of an unwonted passion and wearied out with the weight of his own Crosse Not indeed that he might presently swoon even as otherwise they are threatned with fainting who undergo bitter vomitings which the Schools falsely call Gaulie ones The Jews therefore did acknowledge the Gaul for a Balsam preserving life and it fat differeth from that yellow poyson rejected by Vomiters Therefore the Sacrilegious did offer Gaul whereby they might the longer torment the Lord Jesus under pains before death Therefore the Gaul if it be a Bowel and its action be altogether vital it can scarce be restored and at least is by no means delighted with material Remedies as neither with solutive ones but with an equivalent ferment of the nature of a Blas for there is a certain immediate and mutual traduction or passing over and easie operation of powers into powers Because there is a touching of each other and that mutual in a co-resemblance and therefore also a piercing one For I remember that I saw the diffected dead carkass of a certain Comptroler to a King of another a School-master who were dead of the yellow Jaundise yet the emunctory of neither Gaul was brought close to the Duodenum but in some of the Meseraick Veins were pellets which I judged to be liquid dung there detained molesting the action of the ferment of the Gaul also sorrow hath oft-times given a Beginning to the Jaundise and doth nourish it being begun If therefore sorrow doth inhabit in the Spleen the seat of Melancholy according to the Schools why therefore should the Gaul be stopped from sorrow and not the Spleen Therefore 1. Sorrow doth not only hinder the digestion of the Stomack but also of the Gaul By the errour whereof the liquid Dung which is especially carried through the Fundament doth immoderately and unseasonably arise into the veins 2. Therefore the Gaul is a noble and vital Bowel At length The Cream sliding out of the Pylorus or neather mouth of the Stomack into the Duodenum being straight-way snatched within the Sphear of activity by the in-breathing of the Gaul doth exchange its sourness into Salt and its more watery part is made severable from its more pure or un-mixt part which is drawn by the Reins Whence the Urine is sufficiently salt but the venall bloud a little But that Paracelsus will have the Urine to be brought into the bladder not by the Reins and Urine vessels but by the habit of the flesh that is indulged by his own Idiotisme or Property of speech Even as
also that That Oyls and Emplasters are the true food of wounds so that a wound is truly nourished by them and that the corrupt matter is the excrement of that nourishment Therefore the sour salt of the Cream seeing it is destitute of an object and the which seeing it wandreth through the action of a dissolver into a fixed salt as I have taught before concerning volatile spirits it is suitably exchanged into the volatile salt of Urine And that not by the action or re-action of sournesse on a certain object but by a true fermental transforming for the Spirit of life it self is of the nature of a volatile salt and of that which is salt And so even from hence alone the vital action of the Gaul is proved For Sea salt being oft eaten doth remain almost whole in the excrements Which thing the Boylers of Salt-peter do experience against their wills For they are constrained to seperate salt out of the dung of Jakeses being sometimes eaten up by the Salt-peter through a repeated boyling and coagulation of cooling For the Sea salt being coagulated doth stick fast to the spondils or chinks of the vessels being nothing changed from it self long ago eaten And that before the Salt-peter hath obtained a sufficient drying up of its own coagulation And therefore from hence it is known that Sea-salt is more readily coagulated than Salt-peter Therefore humane excrements are lesse fit for Salt-peter than otherwise those of Goats Sheep and Herds Yet as much of that Sea-salt as is subdued by the ferment of the stomack so much also is sour and volatile Consequently also although any one do use no salt his Urine should not therefore want salt because it is that which is a new creature and a new product out of the sour of the Cream The Salt of the Urine therefore hath not its like in the whole Systeme of nature For not that of the Sea Fountain Rock Gemme not Nitre not that of Salt-peter Alume or Borace Lastly not of any of natural things as neither the Salt of the Urine of flocks or herd with which although it may agree in the manner of making yet the salt of mans Urine disagreeth from them throughout the general and particular kinds no lesse than dungs do vary throughout the species of Bruits although bruits are fed with common fodder to wit by reason of the diversities of an Archeus and Ferment Therefore of meats and drinks not sour or salt is made a salt sour and at length a salt Salt and it is easier for a thing of a sour salt to be made Salt than of not Salt to be made sour salt I remember that I have seen a Chymist who every yeer did fill a Hogs-head of Vinegar to two third parts with water of the River Rhoan he exposed it to the heats of the Sun and so he transchanged the water in it self without savour into true Vinegar a ferment being conceived out of the Hogs-head This I say he was thus wont to do by reason of the singular property of that Vinegar For truly out of the Vinegar of Wine the weaker part doth alwayes drop or still first but the more pure part a little before the end riseth up with the dregs but this Vinegar made of meer water as it wants dregs so it alwayes doth minister an equall distillation from the Beginning even to the end Wherefore as the ferment of a vessel doth by its odour alone change Water into Vinegar So indeed by the fermental odour of the Spleen breathed into the stomack meats are made a sour Cream which afterwards is turned into a urinous salt yea and into a vital one Because the Schools never dreamed of these things neither had their followers read them in the labours or night watches of their Predecessors therefore they have been ignorant of the use of parts and ferments and the celebrations or solemnities of transmutations but they have introduced both the Cholers into the masse of the bloud Lastly They have not known the Contents and be-tokenings of the Urine Therefore the third Digestion is made by the President-ferment of the Liver which is by the blind odour of a Gas doth begin Sanguification in its own stomack of the Mesentery and at length perfecteth it in the hollow Vein Furthermore The fourth Digestion is compleated in the Heart and Artery thereof in which elaboration the red and more gross blood of the the hollow Vein is elaborated made yellower and plainly volatile For the heart is said to be eared on both sides and hath at its left bosom one onely beating Artery inserted in a great Trunk fit for it that by a double rowing it may the more strongly draw the fenced venal bloud which is between both bosoms in the middle of the heart Refer thou hither what I have above noted concerning the porosity of the hedge or partition which distinguisheth the bosoms of the heart and why the Arterial bloud doth not return from the left bosome into the right but only the spirit of life as it were through a thin sive Therefore the venal bloud of the Liver differs from the arterial bloud by the fourth digestion manifested by the colour and consistence of the matter digested But the fifth Digestion doth transchange the Arterial blood into the vital spirit of an Archeus of which I have discoursed under the Blas of man as also under The Spirit of Life I could not satisfie my self that in the venal bloud of the Liver there was any spirit although it hath gotten a degree of its perfection after that it hath overcome or exceeded the Mesentery But that venal blood alwayes seemed to me as it were a certain Masse of Mummie and the matter Ex qua or whereof But not as yet to be accounted for perfect vital blood For if the blood of the hollow vein had begged a spirit from the Liver the right ear of the heart had been in vain which works uncessantly for no other end than that some spirit may be drawn from the left bosom thorow the fence of the heart that the blood in the hollow vein nigh the heart may begin to be quickned by the participation of that spirit But seeing from the left sides there is an ear and especially the notable Trunk of an Artery hence also the â—â—cking is stronger from the left bosom And from hence by consequence also little of the vital Spirit is communicated to the venal blood For truly the blood of the Liver is alwayes throughout its whole moist with too much liquor whereof it ought to be deprived before that it be made a fruitful and worthy support of spirit neither finally hath the Liver had a fit hollowness in it self for the framing of spirit Wherefore as I have intellectually seen throughout the whole Scene of Generation one onely Framer and Ruler of the spirits of life in the seed So also I admit of one onely spirit of the vital family-government For the venal
blood slides indeed within the stems or threds of the Muscles and is made flesh but it doth not easily transcend unto the Bowels that are to be nourished and to the threds or fibers of the flesh For an infirm man being extenuated by a long disease a recovering even after youth doth easily retake the former state of his flesh but he which is waxen lean by the vice of a certain Bowel doth not therefore likewise rise gaain unto his former state And this is the difficulty of healing the Consumption and of healing the Ulcers of the Bowels whereas in the mean time external Ulcers being far worse are healed by Medicines taken in by way of the mouth although they are at a farther distance from the mouth than internal Ulcers Because the Bowels and inward Membranes are nourished by Arterial blood more than by Venal blood But life hath received its bound from God Therefore also whatsoever things are nourished by vital bloud they stop their increase at a certain number of dayes Whereas the while the flesh of the Muscles which is nourished onely with venal bloud and the fibers of the Mufcles which are nourished with Arterial blood doth uncessantly increase as oft as it faileth and groweth up to a hugeness to the destruction of some So also broken bones are made sound by a bonie callous matter at any age But seeing the Bowels do cease to increase all the spermatick fibers also and those of the first constitution do cease from growing For which of you shall adde a Cubit unto his stature For I have observed that women with child being long afficted with notable grief have brought forth the less Young First of all therefore I do not admit of a Livery spirit to be in the venal bloud And then neither do I distinguish the Animal spirit from the vital For truly in one onely ship one only Pilot stands at the Stern neither do more suffer themselves to be together without confusion Neither do I admit of a new Digestion for animal spirits in the bosom of the brain Like as also that the spirit doth not differ in the species from it self in all the particular Organs of the Senses and Executers of Motions Although the senses dirfer among themselves in the Species as also from motion So I think it to be a confused argument that deviseth many Archeüsses to be in a man For although the Gas shall draw a singular disposition from the instrument yet this doth not prove a specifical diversity Therefore in the Fourth and fifth Digestions there are no excrements nor unlike things or parts nor do they proceed from them And therefore it is false That in every nourishment there is an excrement For the arterial bloud and spirit do agree in a simple and vitall unity But if any superfluities of the former Digestions do rush into or are ingendred into the Arteries let that be a diseasie turbulent and confused government I now speak of the ordinary Digestions At length the sixth and last Digestion is perfected in all the particular Kitchins of the Members And there are as many stomacks as there are members nourishable Indeed in this Digestion the in-bred spirit in every place doth Cook its own nourishment for it selfe under which Digestion as there are divers dispositions incident so also divers errors of those dispositions do happen And so the diseases which the Schools do attribute unto their four feigned humours should rather be owing unto things tranchanged But I call things transchanged dispositions which afterwards do in the Arterial blood consequently succeed into the true nourishment of the solid parts The Schools divide these transchanged things into four successive coursary dispositions and as if in these no errour could offer it self they have forgotten the diseases which from hence ought to be attributed to a rank or order Indeed they say the first is because the venal bloud doth within the extremities of the veins obtain the Muscilaginous substance of a raw seed Presently in manner of a dew it is diffused or falls out into the empty spaces of the flesh Thirdly When it is now applyed to the solid parts And lastly When it is assimilated or made like to the thing nourished and is truly informed hereby it assumeth the nature of a solid part which to be the dross of the Schools surely they do not diligently mind For in the first place Neither the Arterial or Venal bloud do wax white in the extremities of the Veins seeing the extream or utmost parts are not potent with any other power of ashop or office which its whole more former Channel of the Vein hath not And so the Vein although it be the vessel of the prepared nourishment for the Kitchins of the solid parts yet the Vein is not the Kitchin of the solid parts Indeed all particular solid parts do nourish their own and proper Kitchin within Therefore the venal and arterial blood are not altered unless they be applyed to the solid parts Because they are diverted by the property of the solid parts into a raw seed but not of their own free accord in the utmost part of the veins Secondly The spermatick Muscilage is not be-dewed by the veins in a solid Member For a Muscillage is badly consonant to a dew But the thin and fluid arterial and venal bloud slideth along within the Kitchins of every part which are only transchanged by the ferment of the place Thirdly Neither are there empty places of flesh which are devised to be greedy of a dew Fourthly Neither is nourishment applyed to the sound or solid parts in manner of a dew which but a little before was a Muscilage Fifthly Neither at length is this dew united and assimilated to the solid parts but what soever happens to be assimilated unto them this is within the yeers of growth but afterwards as the venal and arterial blood have throughly crept into the solid members by a continued sucking of nature so they are there digested and suited and at length expulsed by transpiration Therefore these four Dispositions feigned by the Schools and badly harmonized I meditate to be digested into a Quaternary number for peradventure a hundred Dispositions do interpose before of an Egge of a Chick a solid part I say be constituted of Arterial blood with the blemish of the blindness or giddiness of the Schools wherein nothing is right or true but they do behold the very history of the matter bespotted and to them it is a truth because they have no nourishment of truth without the excrement of Fables Therefore also the veins themselves as they are nourished only with the Arterial blood of the first constitution even so also in this respect perhaps an Artery doth every where accompany a vein For from hence it comes to passe that through the more cruel issuings of bloud at last not venal blood but a whiteness flowes forth or the immediate nourishment of the veins by reason of the
the bread without which the food should not be turned into nourishment and this Idea or Image he calls an uttered Anatomy and he boasts that it is visible by art I think that in the same bread there might be thus together the Idea of a Sparrow a Carp a Swine an Oxe a Dog an Horse an Ape c which Idea's should pierce the humane one in the same morsel of bread so that Paracelsus did not shew always an humane Idea but now and then he offered a swiny one unlesse a spiritual separater were present who might remove the other Idea's as oft as he will from the humane one to wit who makes himself appear visible in an humane Idea to whom he will Away for shame with serious trifles in healing Furthermore a Bean being set or sowed the bean presently comes forth to light neither hath it lost its heterogeneal parts to be propagated into a root stalk branch and leaves But a thing separated being granted which should be made in the seeds of things according to the varieties of parts to be constituted therefore how much more curiously hath the Archeus watched over Tartars to be separated from the meat or food Nevertheless if any Tartar be granted in the food surely that is never sent into the veins but when it shall be converted into a true Chyle that is after that it shall cease to be Tartar And therefore coagulation being taken away it is no more a Tartarous matter otherwise the whole Universe should be nothing but Tartar For a certain young man loosing with us from Cales sailed eighteen whole dayes even unto Bilbo and he did eat daily not lesse than as much as he had eaten in six dayes on land but he went once aside on the ninth day and again on the eighteenth day to unload his belly but his excrement scarce exceeded the bignesse of two eggs Whence I infer that so great an heap of foods was changed and consumed into juice straightway to be blown away in nourishing If therefore his meats did contain Tartar and that young man should not expel this by excrement he had of necessity been sick seeing indeed Tartar is not digested or turned into good arterial blood but according to the lawes of Tartar it being snatched into the veins ought to have been coagulated yet he lived in health above four years after Therefore the Tartarous trifles do fall to the ground Again a man being made not a little lean by a more durable disease recovered but he could not abstain from much meat because he was exceeding hungry neither yet cast he forth thorow his bowels the sixtieth part of the food taken so that whatsoever he is wont lately to deject by excrements did then repair his flesh For so a more strong stomach doth easily coct even the harder meats without hurt or remembrance of Tartar which meats notwithstanding the Archeus separates abroad as a true excrement being lately become more sloathful than himself to wit he sometimes is luxurious within while with threatnings to himself he corrupts with a superfluous delight those things which otherwise are unhurtful unto him and banisheth whatsoever lesse pleaseth him although it be full of juice For whatsoever he will not overcome that he is not intent upon doth not attempt but repelleth from him and condemneth But as much as he doth not resolve in the shape of a transparent liquor but leaveth troubled or besmeared with colour all that he leaveth as unprofitable to run down in hast But that which is fully resolved being fit for himself he chooseth retaineth and suits with a conformity draws it inwards and entertains it within his own possession being then stript of the inclination of every cream and it borrows that inclination from the Archeus of the members that are to be nourished But so much as the Archeus hath once despised it is either a superfluity in it self or it presently becomes such for a repulse but whatsoever he hath once repelled that he hopes will never be assumed again afterwards Therefore it is manifest that if meats are not changed into good venal blood that happens through the vice of digestion but not for the sake of any Tartar for a more slow and delicate digestion doth loath all things as it were with much huckstery and reserveth but little to it self from much meat though full of juyce but it despiseth the rest being affrighted through the abundance no otherwise than as being enraged by its own unaptnesse or drowsinesse For I remember that a cock being filled with wheaten bran expelled the brans whole by excrement without the floure of the meal but that he being by and by pressed with hunger again ate up the ejected brans and in his second dung that all the bran returned into a liquid excrement Whence I have learned that if any thing among the excrements doth appear lesse bruised or changed that is not from the vice of Tartar but from the errour of the digestive faculty VVherefore also I have conjectured that manly age is lesse subject to wormes than old age or childhood is For one onely bread in this is almost wholly reduced into blood which in the other departs into an excrement Likewise the venal blood is made a bone flesh liver gristle c. And it undergoes various hardenings not for the sake of Tartar but of the transchangeative virtue of the Archeus Therefore finally we are constrained or cannot admit of any Tartar in meats for that hath deceived Paracelsus because he sawâ— yellowish stone to grow to the teeth which although it neither had its like elsewhere in the body nor abroad in the world yet because it after some sort answered to the Stone in the bladder in hardnesse he rashly affirmed this stone of the teeth to be the Tartar of meats moreover to be the harder by how much the neerer it should be to the meats and mouth Lastly he thinking that nothing of a meaty Tartar did belong to the bladder said that the stones of the reins and bladder are onely the Tartars of drinks not of meats and to be fitly of that property that it was the harder by how much the farther it proceeded or went from the mouth Surely an elegant devise which he also imposed so much the harder on it by how much the longer he persevered in it For he plainly shewed therein that he neither knew the original and matter of Tartar nor of Stones in the kidneys or bladder yea nor of the stone of the teeth And therefore he also hath rashly brought Tartar for to be the Father of any Diseases which things surely are here more largely to be explained First of all therefore I will suppose ale or beer of the best and wholsomest water to wit rain-water and refined from all suspition of Tartar and heavy to be made strong and to be drunk by one inclined into the disease of the Stone verily notwithstanding this man shall not therefore be
snivel being as it were recalled from the remote windings of diversity of kinde and being collected at length into its Cup-board nigh the Nostrils should be expelled For they which touching at the uses of parts have so greatly provoked themselves to the Gummy Itch of a well-pleasing laughter have not indeed once touched at what should be the cause of so great an abuse in this digestion Because if an excrement be a superfluous part of digestion should an old man consume more Arterial bloud in his brain because he cleanseth out more excrement than while he was young Is therefore the Arterial bloud being now half cocted and vital then at length corrupted into a similar substance of Sperme And being thereby on every side recalled from the remote or far scattered places of the brain is it also collected by the least Atoms of Reliques Are these things thus daily performed in healthy persons and is an estranged corruption of the Arterial bloud together with the enjoyment of health wherefore hath not the same thing happened to the rest of the bowels which hath happened to the head what if three ounces of snivel be daily expunged hath there happily remained a tenfold quantity of good bloud to wit forty ounces for the brain and as many at least for the other parts that it may there be co-sprinkled in manner of a dew For by what priviledge or by what necessity doth the lawless brain rejoyce being a bowel so noble that it should endure a daily slaughter or ruine of its own Family-Government without hurt The confusion of corruption and alienation After what sort in the middle way of transchanged venal bloud shall the brain wander unto a spermatick and vital Muscilage by so ordinary an exorbitancy and should be corrupted by the errour of digestion abounding For was not the use of another thing even thereby made manifest and the necessity of that which is not yet known which might not return backwards from on every side out of its hidden and least cells to wit in the likeness of the Identity of the substance of the brain it self and of a digestion capable of equality throughout the whole corrupting by an ordained motion it s own proper nourishment with the same force whereby it had entred that it now departing into an excrement it might be ad-united within the Cup-board For if that thing do happen in the middle of digestion or for fear of labour now that cannot but bewray an unexcusable corruption native to the brain or if that doth happen in the end of digestion for besides the diverse kinde and as well the same and ordinary rule of so alienated a digestion and now also the course and tract of the venal bloud into the remotest and similar parts of the brain and the re-course of the excrement from the remainder being left of arterial bloud the pains of the brain should be altogether vain its digestion cruel its errour intolerable and its daily labour foolish For if any of these things be true I suppose the brain to be the most miserable Cottage of the whole Body to wit to want a greater nourishment the troubles and labours of the brain to be more intensly increased whereby the force efficacy and digestion of the Head is the lesse slower and sluggisher for what had compelled the Brain thitherto which while the more vile parts do rightly digest their nourishment and do well disperse the whole into Air that the onely and miserable brain through so plentiful a deluge of snivel had alienated its own and lively nourishment I as yet pass by the trifles of Catarrhes or Rheums raining down with so large and continued a shower into the breast and the whole habit of the body For after what sort shall the chief powers remain safe which they will have to abide in the case of the Brain while there is so great a rumour confusion and so abundant a diversion of digestion to wit a tumult of muscilage returning and arterial blood going expresly to the corrupting of it self But it hath not been once thought even hitherto whence so great plenty of Snivel should proceed but the Schools have slept Epimenides dream or sleep being as it were fed with Lotus or a feigned tree so that they may treasure up a little advantage from their credited Catarrhe for neither is ordinary Snivel from venal blood And that thing the Schools might have easily taken notice of if they had not been accustomed in subscribing to trifles For truly from great thirst a large quantity of drink doth presently bring forth a pooly muckinesse in the throat instead of spittle And so the diseasâ—e affects of the throat do presently thicken all spittle And therefore the Faculties which from the use of their necessity I call the Keepers it s no wonder if from the whole race of our Reeds or Pipes they do naturally allure unto themselves another liquor besides venal blood which I therefore first do call the Latex and will describe in a particular Tract and adopt it into their own borders to wit no more unprosperously than the Kidneys do separate the Urine from the venal blood and draw it unto themselves For I do here thrust in the Urine because it is not an excrement of the Reins as if it should be the remainder of the nourishment of a Kidney or a committed errour of its digestion Therefore I give the same judgment concerning Snivel Therefore in the pose as long as the evil doth mostly rage and the North wind is more fierce by so much also is the Snivel the more watery yet under an equal digestion of the Brain and the health of the senses as well internal as external Therefore the thicker tougher more sparing and more yellow snivel is praised about the end of digestion as they say Then next I consider that from our small brain so great a quantity of excrement cannot daily be severed by reason of the unaptnesse of nourishable venal blood Especially because the Liver doth bring forth no excrement from it self or from its owne nourishment Yet is it nourished and the like fortune of digestions and equal weight of excrements ought to grow on all the Bowels proportionable At length I remember that the nourishment of the solid parts are made with the transmutation of the whole venal blood into nourishment without a separation of the pure from the impure because it is that which should be too troublesome for the Bones Sinews Bowels c. Neither do the solid members therefore yield another excrement in their nourishing unlesse after that the nourishing liquor hath satisfied the hunger of the parts the whole is equally consumed into a very transpiring vapour that is There is not made an excrement of all the solid members while nourishing is in making but onely in its being made Indeed then the whole doth exhale according to the consent of the Schools Therefore because the Brain is held by the lawes of
the Latex had been also needful for greater Observances Thirst therefore is a preacher of the Latex fayling but not of the want of venal bloud as otherwise the Schools do command also the Thirst of those that have a Fever which continues after drink taken doth denounce the Latex to be made unfit for its offices by a forreign contagion For truly as oft as bitterness saltness or a burnt Savour doth infect the Spittle the Stomach is wearied with an unconcoction and the Tongue otherwise towardly and having no evil in it is cleft through dryness it is signified that the Latex doth not pass unto the Veins as being instructed by a due Convoy or passage because in the Inn of the stomack and its neighbouring part it hath become unapt for its office Therefore the dryness of the Tongue and the crusted filth thereof in Fevers is not an effect or token of an Exhalation derived upwards out of the stomach also not cocting the drink but it is a defect of the Latex defiled or penurious through want It is not sufficient to have spoken of the Latex and some of its uses and offices by a distribution of its necessities it helpeth also to discover its journeys and to have rehearsed its Exorbitances For the Law and necessity of uses have also brought in as many offences if not also double ones on every side For seeing the Humor Latex is not of the substance of the venal bloud but a foolish harmless liquor a co-running Companion in the wayes Therefore also it is carried together with the bloud thorow the Veins yet it is not the Whey of the venal bloud nor Choler nor Urine but after a separation of the Urine the Latex receiveth its own Limitation as soon as it is taken within the Cottages of the Veins And after some sort it is enrouled without the Catalogue of an Excrement While as it so easily obeyeth the calling or commanding Archeus For the Humor Latex wants salt a tincture of the Urine and the feigned bitterness of yellow Choler For the Kidneys do such out a salt Urine which already even in the Mesentery hath adjoyned a salt to it self otherwise if any one do drink fasting thin Ale and that by tarrying out all night as is the manner of the English it is a wonder how suddenly often and abundantly he maketh water That is it flyes thorow his stomach Mesentery and Liver The fleshy Skin or membrane hath also a property of attracting the Latex that it may rince it self and the houshold-stuffe subjected within it therefore much Sweat doth presently increase thirst And hence also wounds do oftentimes power forth an incredible plenty of Sunovie or Gleary or Glewy water as if the liquor Latex would fit it self to wash off the hurt conceived in the payning and ill cured wound Indeed the outmost cloathing of the Body doth of its own property and free accord allure the Sweat and Latex that seeing it ought to be like to a washing or Lather it may receive the Spur of its calling from the Skin By the leachery of which drawing the Skin it self is easily filled with a Grease Seeing therefore the Latex is appointed for many uses and offices it follows also that the same being exorbitant doth become the occasional cause of as many and moreover of more Diseases to wit it receiveth a saltness sharpness and co-mixtures of that which putrified being infected by the filths of the inward parts and therefore it under goes many diversities of Ulcers and Imposthumes Even as also in the Skin it stirs up its own and divers Itchings Ttherefore the Schools do erre which through an erroneous ignorance of the Latex do refer these defects unto the guiltless Liver and blame the distemper thereof and do hurt the innocent Liver by their purging Medicines of blockishness Neither do they take notice that one only sheep doth infect a whole flock with the Seab without any blemish of their Liver and that to have wiped ones hand with a Towel which a scabbed person hath used doth propagate the Scab without any contagion or defect of the Liver wherefore through that ignorance of the Schools they disturb the venal bloud and Liver as guilty of Heat yea and therefore also do they poure forth the harmless venal bloud prodigally and repeatedly with the curtailing of lifâ— but with a frustrated event But if the Latex doth find any brackish thing within infected with a sharpish brine of saltness or be pledged with the hidden contagion of a poysonous Ferment now divers malignant or ill accustomed Ulcers do spring up and he falsely invents Couteries to divert Catarrhs But the Sunovia or Glewy water doth oftimes raine down with so large a Showr that if the venal bloud or nourishable Humor or seedy dew should cause the same certainly a man that is penurious in venal bloud should of necessity dye in few hours And so the amazement of that abundance being neglected because they have been ignorant of the Humor Latex they have transported their Trifles and false helps unto another thing Therefore Galen knew not the thin corrupt Matter or liquor of an Ulcer whether he might refer it unto Phlegm or unto Choler But it is no wonder that the Latex being transplanted into a strange off-spring of rule doth stir up divers Troops of Ulcers when as the venal bloud being provoked by divers stroaks of Serpents and transplantings of Diseases doth exorbitate or excessively arise into so numerous a variety But I leave unto Paracelsus his own saltish Microcosmical Fountains and I willingly indulge his liberty although together with the Schools he be ignorant of the Humor Latex The Latex therefore doth easily drink up into it a strange quality Hence in the Dropsie there is much thirst also after frequent drinking for thirst is not made through the penury of liquor but through a composure of saltness Let Sweats also therefore be evil if particular ones For in that the members do one by one call the Latex to their aid it is from an evil Two things therefore especially are here further beheld that the liquor Latex is not carried so much of its own accord as being called by the Superficies of the Body for whose help it was otherwise ordained then also that the Sweats of those parts do witness a defect of the same wherefore Bed-cloaths being cast on a man do provoke Sweat because it is called by an endeavour outwardly administred and therefore things which provoke Sweat are oft-times given to drink and coverings are multiplyed in vain because the faculty drawing the Latex abroad doth languish But if the Latex doth abound heither is allured by the Skin because it is defiled with a strange blemish it falls down to the parts and stirs up unpainful Tumours if it be not also troubled with a quality in which cases as well Baths as Cauteries have now and then afforded help not so much because they do diminish the effective cause as the
my foundation to wit that there is no dismissing or voluntary defluxion of a rheum which negative subsisting vain becomes the foundation of Cauteries For the Schools teach that by issues evil yea destructive humors are allured forth which else should either be sent to some other place or of their own accord flow down A fine thing surely that nature doth with a loose bridle expect the Will of the Physitian and opening of the skin that it should there throw off its fardle which else it would divert on a more noble member As if sending nature should threaten unless ye shall maintain a fleshy membrane open to me by a wound where ye shall see meet that by revulsion or drawing back ye shall appease me from fury and do divert me from the conceipt of dismissing Wo unto you for that which else I would purge forth under the Skin I will draw back unto a noble member in revenge But I pray in what center or in what spring-head is that evil humor prepared Is it in the Liver the shop of the four humors as they will have it But surely there is a difficult long and rough way as that evil humor is derived from the liver thorow the hollow vein and so thorow the heart unto the outmost skin of the arm thigh or neck without defiling the venal blood but the evil humor it self to be sincere Surely that is a cruel emunctory which brings an evil humor thorow the fountain of life And so the Physitian is cruel and the Schools more cruel which command a hurtful humor to be brought thorow the heart But if further that evil humor unknown to this day hath the brain for its fountain where I pray you on in what sink of the head is that evil humor bred Is it in its bosomes Or in its basin not indeed in the first place in the vessels of the brain shall there be made a daily collection and nest of that malignant humor without a present or sudden fear of death But if in the basin that be made evil which before was good now it shall of its own wonted accord flow down thorow the nostrils and palate neither shall it want a Cautery Or what is that corrupter which in some part of the head may vitiate by his endeavour a humor that was before good that it may be brought down malignant from thence unto some part between the skin which the Physitian hath commanded to be stricken For how obedient is that which being an evil humor indeed now a dead excrement shall suffer is self to be wrested back and sent to another place which otherwise being no more solicitous of the family-government of life doth obey the law of scituation by its weight only But that the evil humor to be wiped away by a Cautery is a vapour translated and collected from the stomack into the head thorow the brain coats and scull and from thence dismissed between the outward Muscles and skin that was before peremptorily hissed out concerning Catarrhs In the next place those things being granted it should want the essence and Etymologie of a humor by consequence also of an evil humour to wit of Phlegm one of the four For whatsoever had once been lifted up in manner of a vapour and had grown together into drops is neither thick nor tough nor any more of one of the four humors made in the Liver but it should be a Post-hume distillatory liquor Wherefore if any evil humour the finall cause of a cautery be not bred in the Liver Brain or Stomack which at length shall be the shop of evil humors for Catarrhs Or which is the sending and lofty part from whence they may be the more steeply brought unto a Cautery For in so great a strait of trifles the Schools are constrained to confesse that not any evil humor is dismissed unto the hole of a Cautery but that the venal Bloud degenerates in the wound it self and in its Lips being evilly disposed For this also is proper to all wounds which want Balsame Truly if the Schools do examine that Aphorisme while corrupt Pus or snotty matter is making the pain labour and Fever is greater then when it is made they would certainly know that corrupt pus is materially produced out of the Blood by the labour of the faculties and consequently that in an issue corrupt Pus is wished for for the same ends The which standing the position falls to the ground which supposeth that evil humors are derived by Cauteries 2. That the bringing forth of corrupt Pus in a wound is not from the Center of the Body 3. That it is not the excrement of Rheum flowing down 4. That Cauteries do not purge bad humours which do prepare good venal Blood into an excrement with the labour of the digestive faculty 5. That Cauteries do not any thing conduce to the preventing of a malignant humor which is locally made in the Lips of the wound it self 6. That corrupt pus and Sanies cannot go back-wards from the hole of an Ulcer and slide into a noble part and much lesse the good Blood from whence the corrupt Pus is made 7. If the venal Blood be an evil humor before it come down to the issue then nature ordaineth some bad humor from the masse of the Blood for the wounded part only that it may nourish it or this is ordinary within all particular parts now then nature wholly laboureth with the vice of folly 8. That it is a foolish thing that to have made much thick corrupt matter is for the Cautery to have well purged Seeing that corrupt Pus sheweth the corrupting of good Blood And so while a man is not in good health the issue instead of snotty matter weepes forth liquor 9. If therefore a Cautery should make for the evacuation of ill humours a man should needs be better in health while liquor flows than while snotty matter is made Which in the position is false From hence therefore it is rightly inferred that no select ill humor or pernicious excrement which otherwise should fall down elsewhere is evacuated by an issue but that that whole matter whether it be corrupt pus or a thin poyson is nothing else but meer Blood designed for the nourishing of the Cauterized part and there corrupted by the vice of the part and so that the corruption of it self doth measure the goodness and malignity of digestion in the place of the issue And therefore while the whole Archeus doth in any sort labour there is also a greater weakness of digestion in the issue and the Pus is the nearer to putrefaction and in this regard the issue by reason of a more powerfull hurting of digestion than was wont to be weepeth liquor Therefore it is the wish of the Schools that of harmless bloud there may very much and white Snotty matter be made And that they call a good purging if very much Blood be corrupted in the last
that they do in a Pleurisie decree not any remedy for a Phlegmatish Catareh as also they are forgetful of the Pleura already torn because they do provide for expectoratings only by sugared lickings or Ecligmaes Indeed they sufficiently see that the Pleurisie is a sudden Disease for which the saltness of the Phlegm could not far of have produced a corroding in the place or have made a hollowness which the blood falling down thither doth fill up and further extend Therefore they will have that defluxing Phlegm only by its weight to rent the Pleura from the Ribs As if it should not flow down by drops and the weight of Phlegm that flows down from above now falling down perpendicularly on the place should make the force of some pounds at once But they have not yet declared the hollowness in which that height of heaped-up Phlegm should reside For although the sick should be as empty in his brain as is the present foolish assertion of the Schools yet so great Phlegm in the Scull could not tear the Pleura from the Ribs 2. They have not yet taught the wayes whereby the continuance of the Rheum in its passage from the brain should be unto the membrane between the Ribs and much less which by its weight aloof of should perform that 3. Neither also have they as yet denominated that renter and so mighty tearer which may pluck away the Pleura grown to the Ribs on every side by a stiff and much fiber or which may stretch water into a dropsical belly like the tympany Neither lastly do they shew why that Catarrh doth rain down unto an appointed and small place which was made or detained in the brain in common For doth not the subsequent subscribing to each other from so many and so great rashnesses of the Schools deserve to be of suspected credit For it is a work of greater violence than that of Phlegm falling down to have pul'd away the Pleura from the Ribs For as many as have commented on the ninth Chapter of Almanzor longly and largly concerning the vein Azugos or stock arising from the right side of the trunk of the upper part of the hollow vein whether it be distributed between the Ribs without a peer or fellow do scratch themselves and so forget their defluxing rheum even as also the weight of the same being turned only unto the emptying of venal blood For herein they rather consider the one only remedy which they have and that alike known to Country People to wit by the only repeated cutting of a vein than the very nature of the Disease or the Schools their supposed causes of a Rheum And moreover all have altogether declined from that absurdity because the consideration of a Rheum being rejected in time of curing they think to have brought the cause from that part first from which the blood slid as it were by accident out of the unlike vein between the Pleura For they have alwayes so greatly fallen under sluggishness that they for the most part overshadow the causes by meditating on the effects Neither have they ever heeded that the blood is not brought down by the veins of their own accord as neither that it slides into the place by its own proper fall For to tear the Pleura from the Ribs to send venal blood thither and the like are the offices of life but not the faults of a sliding liquor But what will the Schools do which are accustomed to subscribe so much to Pagans whose doctrine is wont to imitate not nature but science Mathematical it self in artificial things For they see the vein Azugos to be extended and derived thorow both Ribs therefore from hence also they beg all the cause No otherwise than as a Traveller sleeping about a river and a dead carcass is found slain in the next wood by Thievs therefore that sleeping man loosing his head as guilty ought to shed all the blood Therefore they appoint blood-letting and try to draw forthblood by revulsion out of the vein Azugos made guilty as the most neer immediate and containing cause But where now remains your Catarrh of Phlegm or Choler flowing down from the head and the which only by its weight doth tear the Pleura from the Ribs They at least intend to pull back blood from the unlike or non-peered vein not only flowing but also in possibility to flow And it is for that cause called revulsion even as also some more near vein being pierced as it were the mediatress of the evil is called derivation Alas how circumspect are the Schools in discursive and artificial things Which in nature are nothing but mockeries Because although a vein of the elbow may empty out all its blood even into the hollow vein and this consequently may draw the blood out of the vein Azugos yet the Schools ought to know that presently after the whole venal blood is equally restored again into the veins So that although the vein of the elbow might be wholly evacuated which is never yet that the whole blood should be presently again equalized throughout the whole co-weaving of the veins whence it is manifest that the trifles of revulsion and derivation are vain because they are such things which being granted yet would be serviceable to the intention but for a small time of delay I pray therefore let Physitians consider that blood-letting is not of use in the Pleurisie for revulsion and derivation but for a meer exhausting of the blood and strength and the lessening thereof To wit that nature being sore afraid of that evacuation may desist and cease from sending an increase of venal blood about the Pleura Let them well mark I say whether this be not with so notable and sudden a loss of strength in a disease wherein the faculties themselves alone do bear the whole burthen to cure from the latter or effect by a forecaution and prevention of its increase Is that I say to go unto the co-knit and nourishing cause while as they do not convert their whole endeavour unto the thing doing or causing but unto the thing to be done They are altogether foolish services which are drawn from artificial things For a Brook flowing to a certain bound is diminished and stayed if its bank be opened at the side and it slide with a more near and ready journey to a steep place But what shall that profit if the blood can be only emptyed unto some ounces alone and indeed with a notable loss of strength Shall not the blood when the vein is stopped up flow again unto the place appointed as long as the beginning of motion doth remain Shall it not be more convenient to have stayed the beginning of the Flux Seeing that from a vein being cut no other good can be expected in the Plenrisie than that which may be hoped for by the weakning of the strength To wit because nature being greedy of strength needy and wanting of venal blood
ceaseth from a sumptomatical motion toward the Pleura as long as shee remains enfeebled And therefore the Pleurisie not increasing for a while nature as it were repenting of the rumor and storm thinks of a ripening of the corrupt Pus that is to be framed of the out-hunted blood All which things would more successfully follow the blood being retained wherein the life that is the strength dwells because the life is nature which is the alone Physitianess of Diseases and she failing the Physitian takes away his shoulders Therefore the Schools have not hitherto taken heed unto the impulsive cause which pours forth the blood out of the veins into undue places beyond bound and measure and which furiously plucks away the Pleura from the Ribs and prepares a wound and hollowness Which causes being co-knit together are iddeed before the effect yet do they so persevere in the same effect that they are materially and efficiently the very effects themselves Unto which effect indeed slow and impotent is the race of false and salt Phlegm out of the head and the dreamed rheumy defluxions through channels or continuations of passages not existing But Paracilsus meditating of this pulling away of the Pleura and being willing to square a cause thereunto hath brought in other follies that he may defend his own mad laws of a little world in us For he feigneth anew and Ogertine salt else never named by him however variously he itcheth in himself concerning salts in Ulcers and Apostemes even to the fetching off of the skin And first of all he teacheth that this Ogertine salt is of the property of Arsenical Sulphurs in the mean time he is silent concerning its mines veins property history etymology and reason of its etymology because it was dreamed by him But at leastwise he had acted nothing more cleerly herein seeing he dawbs no less with the same elay than that wherewith the Schools are defiled For truly none hath hitherto declared why the Pleura departs from the Ribs whereunto it is adjoyned by a continued thred of fibers to wit whether it be pulled away of its own free accord or indeed by another tearer they are content as satisfied in the doubt if they shall say it is rent from the Ribs by the weight of a down-rouling Catarrh in the resolving nevertheless of which doubt as of the root the whole cure and prevention of a Pleurisie doth consist For the root of every Disease is worthy of the dumb silence of the Schools to wit I shall shew in a peculiar treatise that the very essence of any kind of Diseases whatsoever hath been hitherto unknown in the Schools it hath seemed to suffice them if they have applyed their doctrine unto without unto artificials unto the latter sumptoms unto the consequent fruits or products as though the stage of causes and essential roots were ridiculous and in vain Paracelsus also if he reckoned to confirm any solid thing toward a Disease of so great moment and to add his doctrine thereto if he determined not to derive his Ogertine salt it self from a power unto act out of the blood at leastwise that unwonted unnamed and unknown salt ought to have brought a necessity of its invention and of its generation that at least some place might be afforded for prevention For this the pretended title of the Monarch of secrets doth require But all things have remained neglected because the chiefdome of healing hath stood founded upon empty stubble I promise therefore that whatsoever hath been built thereon shall fall to the ground For whether a fire the searcher out of truth be built or next whether the voluntary corruption of dayes shall consume the stubble at leastwise I know that at length that building will fall to the ground But I in a Pleurisie consider the first inward moover or spur and afterwards the tearer of the Pleura And both those being one and the same efficient cause of it I call the Pleurisie it self But the venal blood flowing thither and that which is poured out thither and the aposteme sprung from thence I consider as the product to which end I will bring common experience for an example Let a Thorn be thrust into any part of the Body the which pain instantly succeedeth from the pain there is presently a Pulse from the Pulse an afflux of vendl blood whence ariseth a swelling a fever an Aposteme c. the Thorn therefore mooves the other things after it Therefore the Metaphorical Thorn of the Pleurisie and by speaking properly the Pleurisie it self is a forreign sharpness conceived in the Archeus the which if it chaseth or layes aside into the blood of the hollow vein surely that is expelled unto the vein Azugos yea or into the very flesh near the Ribs from whence ariseth an Aposteme as the product of the Pleurisie In the next place as an Aposteme which is bred from a Thorn fastened in the finger a not but rashly cured by cutting of a vein but it promiseth a cure by reason of the plucking out of the Thorn only so it happens in the Pleurisie For as sharpness in the stomack is an acceptable and ordinary savour so out of the stomack all sharpness is besides nature and hostile which hath been hitherto unknown in the Schools For so from a sharpness are wringings of the bowels there is a strangury in the Urine a corroding in Ulcers in the skin a scab in the joynts the Gowt c. And the which if thou wilt experience to thy hand mingle some drops at least of sharpish Wine with the Urine that hath been newly pissed out without pain and cast it in with a Syringe Thou shalt experience against thy will that I teach the Truth In the humor Latex also of which afterwards in its own place it raiseth up a bastard Pleurisie the which they altogether through the same carelessness of narrowly searching as in other Diseases do call a windy one but if the Archeus hath laid up a gentle sharpness into the lap of the venal blood unhappily applied to it it as despised is presently hunted out and cast out of the veins and brings forth an Aposteme in whatsoever place that shall happen but if that doth happen to be the deeper or lavisher in the veins a certain pestilent affect ariseth The which I prove for the venal bloud or flesh do never wax soure or sharp without an actual obtaining of putrefaction the which I have els-where on purpose proved by the fleshes of Beasts which do most swiftly Putrifie under the Dogstar therefore yielding soure Broath for the bloud waxing soure is contrary to the nature of the Veins and to the disposition of the whole flesh as long as it liveth presently coagulated For the venal bloud in a dead-Carcasse is preserved by the Vein a good while from coagulating out of which if it shall fall it waxeth presently clotty which is more largely declared els-where Hence it follows that of an
Anatomical knowledge of the Throat than that it is narrow shut beneath being co-pressed by the Pylorus or lower Orifice of the Stomack and in mans Neck by very many Vessels 7. The Throat draws not as neither doth it contain Aire For it falls down through the proper motion of a moist membrane and a penury of the thing contained 8. The Oesand is not opened throughout its length unless it shall send nourishments thorow it The which if they are the dryer they stick in the passage neither do they easily descend unlesse drink be over-added which could not be done if it should contain air under the Gobbet or morsel but that Belching would follow But the Oesand layeth open about the Wind-pipe in the beginning of its self 9. The Oesand or Throat is shut beneath by a strange or anothers right and therefore neither is it opened unless by an external guest entring in or breaking forth or in time of hunger it is also opened by anothers will 10. No Aire and much lesse a Vapour breaketh forth upwards out of the Stomack without the sound of Belching 11. If Heat which is necessary for the Stomack causeth a Vapour yet it doth not thereupon violently thrust forth the same upwards so that it is able to stretch out and open the locked mouth of the Stomack and Throat Seeing any contradictory thing being placed there should be a continual Belching unto every one 12. In the Stomack no otherwise than as in the other Vessels which are of a lukewarmth every watery Vapour doth by the least pressing together sooner grow together again into drops then that it doth elevate or stretch out the co-pressed Membrane through its length And therefore neither do they make vapoury Belchings but Aire and a wild Spirit or Gas onely 13. That a Livery Spirit of the venal Blood being supposed all the Veines should by their heat bring forth Catarrhes either about the parts of the Liver or in their outmost branches which are neglected by the Schooles The first Conclusion From these Positions for the most part granted and clear by Anatomy it followes 1. First of all That no Vapour is carried out of the Stomack into the Head and that the supposed matter for Catarrhes or Rheumes faileth 2. If so great blindness hath circumvented the world in things manifest what is not to be suspected of things more hidden 3. That the Doctrine of the Schooles standing a healthy and hot stomack should generate much greater and more Rheumes than a sick one and otherwise a colder stomack which is already contrary to the Schooles 4. That they should rather employ themselves in cooling than in heating the Stomack 5. That all mortals should of necessity be Rheumatick and alwawes infirme 6. Because the same Oesand Brain and Stomack being actually hot all do equally consist of moisture and of the same figure or shape 7. That every man like Swine should almost at every pace naturally belch because an uncessant heat and moisture should of necessity send upwards a continual Vapour 8. That although a Vapour raised up from the Stomack should stretch out the Oesand yea should ascend without Belching yet it should wholly bee alwayes blown away through the mouth and nostrills before it should proceed unto the Brain through the strait and closed passage of the membrane Because that Vapour ascending from the meats out of the Stomack should of necessity also smell in every man of the meates and the transmutations of these and should be offensive to himself and the standers by so that if the Belchings are now and then smelling or of a stinking savour all the breath of all should also continually stink through an admixed flatus or blast of the meats 9. That seeing Belching is a wild Gas and a far more subtile thing than a Vapour and yet doth not strike the brain unlesse the mouth being shut it be dashed forth through the Nostrils surely much less shall Vapours be conveyed to the Brain 10. That Belchings are never carried from the Throat unto the Brain by a right or strait passage but only by the instrument of smelling and therefore that they do not yeeld a smel unlesse the mouth being shut and much less shall a Vapour of its own accord be carried out of the Stomack unto the Head 11. That that a vapour the matter of a Catarrhe might as yet by some means ascend unto the head or the instrument of smelling this ought not to be able to be done but by shutting of the mouth And so that there would not be a possible matter for a Catarrhe to him that gapes and therefore this is an easie Remedy for a Catarrhe 12. That seeing two bodies cannot naturally pierce each other in the same place and seeing the passage from the jawes unto the brain is narrow filled up for there is not a Vacuum granted in those Organs shut above nor passable for the breath although it be pressed together doth not breath forth upwards to the Head therefore a vapour cannot reach out of the stomack unto the bottom of the brain For example A Cane if it be stopped above although it be held over hot vapours yet this doth not admit them to ascend by reason of the presence of Air wherewith it is filled 13. It being granted that a vapour could climb upwards yet it shall not find any plain or hollow thing upon which it should grow together into drops And much less such a one which may represent the cover of an Alembick or earthen Pot but in the bottom of the brain whither the vapour is freely granted to ascend there is a narrow part the basin or bottom of the funnel which hath two tables toward the nostrils and as many toward the neck which two latter little mouths the ascending vapour should only find And they are almost continually filled with snivel are moist and do drop as the proper emunctories of the brain appointed for the casting forth of its muck or filth And therefore a vapour of its own accord ascending being granted yet there should not be a place for the growing together of a Catarrhe 14. A vapour if any one possibly being made from the stomack had also ascended even thitherto yea and had grown together into drops in so slender a space and if it should fall down together with the muck or snivel it should bring less damage than the muck it self which is the ordinary excrement of the Brain All which things the Schools have seen by Anatomy and shall by Science Mathematical if they do weigh them know to be unevitable yet they go on they have eyes and see not have ears and it is to be feared that they will not hear 15. That although belching be the Gas of meats and it bears their smell before it yet any kind of vapour of meats whatsoever doth give an un-savoury and unhurtful water For example let the snivel or spittle be distilled with a slow luke-warmth such as is
that the Liver being cooled doth afterwards generate the more cold Blood for all Blood being deprived of vital spirit naturally waxeth cold because it is a dead carcase But that a more cold Liver doth melt fleshes into a Dropsical water that can be founded upon no reason 18. The Schooles cannot deny but that a Dropsie is sometimes solved by the Kidneys But there is no reason why the Reines do stubornly close themselves even untill Death because the Liver was more cold than was meet Let these arguments onely as yet suffice the Humourists which are distempered with cold that the Liver may be from a mortal offence Now I will over-add somethings concerning the occasional Cause I will therefore resume the fact of our Treasurer who shewed nothing memorable in this dissection beside Blood out-hunted and hardned in his Kidney to be the occasional Cause of his Dropsie and Death yet while the Stone plentifully stopping the Kidney doth not produce a Dropsie yea although the whole Kidney shall wax brawnie or hard with little Stones and shall reserve nothing of its substance besides skin Therefore the obstruction of the Kidney as such is not the occasional cause of Dropsie But the out-chased venal Blood For so the Woman of Sixty years old having dashed her self against a corner of the Table contracted a Dropsie So those that are wounded in their Abdomen and badly Cured do become Hydropical So out-chased venal Blood lighting and laying on the Menynx or Coate of the Brain doth presently render the countenance swollen with a Dropsie So at length great gripings of the Guts do pour forth Blood out of the Veins into the space bordering on the hollow bending Bowel So those that have the Bloodie-flux And so Drinkers do enter into a Dropsie as something of blood is co-heaped in the hollow Bought of the Bowel But this thing I learned in a Fracture of the Scull and in a Dropsie of the Lungs For there the Blood making oftimes a stop blows up the whole Head and Face as it were with a Dropsie But here I have observed the Blood to have consisted or remained about the conduit of the arterial Vein for neither doth the venal blood degenerate in the form of corrupt Pus unless it be cocted in the hollowness of the Flesh but without the Flesh in a free place the Blood presently waxeth clottie and straight way after it being made more dry is hardened and presently conceives a Poysonous ferment Whence the Archeus stirs up a Dropsie Indeed our Treasurer hath taught me that the blood being hunted out and become clotty causeth a Dropsie of the Belly and besides that the Kidney is an Adequate or suitabl Aertificer Causer Executer and Judge or Arbitratour of a true Dropsie That thing hath confirmed it to me because at the time of a Dropsie the Kidney scarce makes Urine and on the other hand because the Kidney being excited to restore the Urine himself doth empty the whole Dropsie out of the Belly Wherefore also that the water is brought back into the Abdomen by the arbitration of the Kidney Vain therefore is the devise of Paracelsus that the Star Zedo is the one only and singular Architector of the Dropsie For the cause is in our innermost parts and in the very Beginnings of Life but not to be so far fetched and Cured For the Dropsie is not the workmanship of the Stars neither is there such an ordination of the Stars neither is that of concernment although Mercurie being seperated dead from its Vein doth truly and perfectly cure the threefold Dropsie For Mercurie is an Analogical and feigned Name neither doth it denote a Star but a running Mettal For what doth a Name that is Metaphorically feigned belong unto the feigned Star of Zedo For metallick Mercury is neither a Star nor kills a Star nor hinders its operation nor dis-joynes the conjunction of a Star with us if there were any For the Stars are the occasions of Meteors but of Diseases occasions onely by accident For primarily they are the Causes of times or seasons and of the Blas of a Meteor but secondarily and by accident they disturbe our Bodies proyoke Diseases or ripen the occasional matter But Causes by accident do not respect Cures but fore-cautions especially where Causes per se or by themselves do operate with or in us by a proper motion and appointment of their own seeds For indeed the left Kidney of the Treasurer is stuffed or condensed with the more dry Blood the left part of his Abdomen is extended and presently waxeth hard the right part being safe His Leg also presently swels and afterwards his Thigh on his left side and therefore the extension of his Belly is extended not by reason of the quantity of water onely but his Membranes are extended from the Disease it self no otherwise than as the Artery under a hard pulse But the Membranes are extended and contracted also before a plenty of water by the same workman which begets the Dropsie Indeed it contracts all the pores of the Membrane that they cannot transmit or send the Wind or Liquor thorow them when as otherwise in those that are alive that is healthy the whole Body is perspirable and conspirable or inspirable The Treasurer therefore first of all makes a little water the Dropsie straightway invades him by degrees and begins on his left Side And therefore presently after its Beginning his left Leg is besieged by an Oedema and afterwards his whole Body becomes swollen But why doth not his right Kidney draw the Urine nor transmit it the which otherwise happens when but one Kidney is besieged by the Disease of the Stone For therefore there is a double Kidney by Nature and a single Spleen or Milt that one may relieve another in their troubles and banishments of an Excrement Yea and from hence it is sufficiently manifest that the Spleen is not a sink nor emunctory Therefore in the Blood being chased out of the Veins deteined and condensed there is an exciting ferment such as is wanting to the Stone I will therefore declare the whole order of the matter so far as my Observation hath taught me For the Liquor Latex unknown to the Schooles as long as it is carried with the Blood in the Veins or to the Glandules it enjoyes a common life neither doth it obey the rules of water-drawing Organs But it knowes not upwards and downwards because it hath it not But it being once rejected out of the fellowship of Life now it undergoes the nature of an Excrement and hastens downwards as being burthened with its own weight Therefore the Latex is of a vile esteem And therefore as oft as every Bowel is ill affected it presently neglects the Latex and excludes it from the company of its Venal Blood and findes business enough for it self at home for its own defence The Latex therefore being once divorced elsewhere and spoiled of the society of Life doth presently receive
destruction of the whole Bodo and his own I will therefore open the matter so far as my Industry hath permitted me to conceive For in Nature there is twofold Action to wit One whereby a Body is enclosed in a Body as Wine in a Bottle and the Water of the Dropsie between the Peritoneum and Abdomen Yea the pores of these Membranes are Diseasly closed For the Body is per-spirable in health and the sweat doth wholly diminish the Latex so that the watery drink in Summer doth presently by sweat flow through the skin But sweat is for the most part unprofitable in the Dropsie so that although the Belly sweats yet it doth not diminish the Dropsie however many have vainly tryed many things about these trifles There is also another Action which is regular and of a different kind in Nature Whereby I have elsewhere shewed by many Examples in us a certain solid Body to wit a knife beard of corn needle arrow or dart head bones shells of fishes and the like are transmitted thorow the Stomack Paunch Veins without the hurting or wounding of these And so that there is a wonted and necessary penetration of Bodies in Nature For the first of those Actions as it is every where known is made so far as a Body doth altogether obey its own bolts of superficies hardness weight channels c. And one Body in respect of the other is as it were dead But the other Action is wholly vital and of the Spirit of Life which is not cloathed with the Garment of a thicker Body But it s own self is the veriest Garment of that Body And the which it doth therefore derive through another vital body subjected unto it For so Chyrurgions have noted Apostems or Ulcers to be made through the very bones themselves And so Authors who are worthy of credit whom in the Chapter of injected things I have alleadged do admit of a penetrating of corporeal dimensions as oft as a knife passeth through the Stomach and with a corrupt mattery Aposteme is returned through the Ribs without a wound of the Stomach In the Dropsie therefore the aforesaid double action is conversant about the same Latex For this Latex as long as it being cloathed with a clear vital spirit doth after some sort enjoy a venal life is led through the solid places it slighteth passages seeing there is none unpassable by it But it deriveth it self unto the Prison of the Dropsie and there as well through a constriction of the Pores of the Membranes as singularly and especially by reason of a deserting of the same cloathing spirit it lays up it self as it were an excrement now dead And the which neither doth therefore find deliverance from thence unless the vital spirit doth again cloath and encompass it This is indeed that spiritual force which is more powerful than any Bellows The which we bear in our inward parts the power whereof we dayly admire have never known and being compelled by demonstrations to admit of do scarce beleive In the Dropsie therefore I have found a fury of the Reins and their erring powers which furie shutteth and is scarce that which may open and the which doth open and lay up neither is it that which maketh to re-gorge Seeing therefore those actions of fury conspiring toward their own destruction are plainly spiritual for as a Physitian I every where contemplate of the spirit as a vital air raised out of the arterial Blood but I touch not at the immortal mind neither do such spirits act unless they are constrained by likenesses or Images framed by them Therefore indeed I call it the furies of the Archeus while the Kidney ceaseth and is almost forgetful of its own Office and appointment in separating the Latex from the venal blood therefore it shuts it self and being as it were wroth and exorbitant it lays up the Latex elsewhere But that I may analogically or resemblingly conceive of and express this tenour of fury as I ought I first of all consider the out-chased venal blood to be detained in the Kidney or to lurk upon the hollow boughtiness of the intestine c. Wich blood when it hath put on a fermental malignity presently the Kidney the governour of the Latex being full of wroth receives the sleepie or stupifying poyson of that blood But the ordination of the Latex is to wash off filths if there are any detained in any place of the Body and seeing the Kidney cannot by the Latex wash off that out-hunted blood because the Latex cannot descend thither this co-heaped in the veins for disdains sake and the Kidney is thereby so affected with disdain and weariness or grief that it cannot performe the office enjoyned it And therefore it presently shuts the passage of the Urine that that which it cannot do by a regular plenty of the Latex it may perfect by an abundance thereof As if it considered Thou Latex goest not whither I would send thee to wash off the out-chased blood I will not let thee pass through thy accustomed Ureters Such therefore is the fury of the enraged Archeus of the Reins the which at length arising to a degree cloaths the Latex and derives it whither it will But besides not only the event in making doth confirm this fury of the Archeus but also in drying especially while a Dropsie is sometimes cured of its own free accord For truly that comes to pass as if the Archeus did repent him and were sorry for his deeds I knew the Countess of Falax who while being a young Maid did swell with a Dropsie by the perswasion of a certain Physitian for she was held desperate by all abstained almost for the space of a full year from drink being content with the more solid food and broaths And she became healthy and is now alive being seventy years of age In the first place thirst whether it be taken from a sense of moisture failing or for the defect it self of moisture At leastwise in neither manner doth it dry up a Dropsical water For although no drink be Drunk at leastwise broaths which do afford a sufficient quantity of venal blood do also yeild a small quantity of Urine and Latex so much as is sufficient for the subsistance of a Dropsie In the next place neither doth thirst nor the defect of drinks it self take away the occasional Cause of a Dropsie which for the most part is venal blood expelled but rather they do the more dry up and the more stubbornly reserve for it that it may resist a resolving through the abstinence of the counterfeited thirst But that continual thirst together with a hope and perswasion of health did pacifie the errour or indignation in the Archeus of the Reins from whence I have learned that thirst doth regularly arise from the Kidney but not from the Liver and much less from the lesser branches of the veins sucking the greater until a defect of moisture be brought unto the Orifice
Why sleep was sent in before Sin 10. The Seat of all Diseases 11. An unquenchable Consideration of Hunger and Thirst 12. That the most powerful Idea's of Diseases are framed in the Duumvirate 13. The largeness of the Power of Idea's is rehearsed 14. That Remedies for the most part do not dilate themselves without the cottages of the Stomack 15. The Schooles not heeding these things have erred in the application of a Remedy 16. A choice of Medicines 17. Remarkable things of the Stone for broken Bones BUt that the Roots of Life may more clearly be laid open I will compose some Beginnings or Essayes founded by me elsewhere and borrowed from thence into Positions 1. The Immortal mind the immediate Image of the Divinity after that it delegated the Government of Life unto the sensitive mortal and frail Soul although it delivered its Power unto this mortal Light yet it hath remained connexed to the same being co-bound unto it by the Symbole or Resembling mark of Life as it were the band of the nearest Knowledge Which sensitive Light of Life because it sits entertained in the Stomack as the Root of a Mortal Life therefore also the mind it self hath chosen its Bride-bed and Throne in the same place The which I have elsewhere more strongly profesly confirmed concerning the Soul 2. The Soul hath sowed its Faculties necessary for Life throughout the Organs of the Body Wherefore neither doth the Ankle See nor the Ear Walk as neither doth the Liver transchange Meats received into Chyle 3. The vital Faculty of the Organs in health sends forth healthy or sound Actions and the same as often as it is vitiated utters vitiated Actions 4. But the vital Faculty is not vitiated but by a Disease 5. Which Disease therefore is nothing but a real and actual Vice of the Faculty a positive Being I say and for that Cause consisting of Matter and an Efficient Cause after the manner of other natural Beings 6. But seeing the vital Faculty it self doth essentially include in it a Disease it self Hence it followes That a Disease it self is in the formallity of its Efficient Cause a Faculty not indeed vitiated but vitious To wit the which doth vitiate or hurt the vital Faculty And so a Disease is a Power very much like to the vital Faculties and that so intimate with them that also in some Cases it is united as well to mortal and hereditary ones as those that are centrally rooted 7. But a vitiated or hurt Faculty is either a particular one proper to some one Organ as Blindness Deafness the Palsie c. Or it is every way dispersed in the common vehicle of the inflowing Archeus by way of property of Passion of a secondary Passion or by way of Sympathy And indeed however and after what manner soever a Faculty is hurt at least-wise it is discerned and clearly seen every where to undergo a vital Vice and that every Disease doth immediately inhabite in the Principle of Life that is in the Archeus himself 8. For all Diseases in general do sit in the universal beginning of Life whether in the mean time the Archeus be particularly molested by some Organ or whether he be stirred up and enraged by the Fountain of Life and a quickned or enlivened Root For although that may vary the Species of a Disease yet such a variety doth not take away the maker of a Disease 9. The Sensitive Soul is chief over all its vital Faculties whether they are fomented by distributed Organs or next by the common Archeus At least from thence it dependeth that the Cure almost of all Diseases consisteth and is perfected in the radicall Inne of Life that is in the Seat of the Soul and Center of Life Unless sometimes perhaps a certain Organical part shall drink up a Disease proper unto it self and the vital Faculty its guest shall marry its self unto the same 10. Whence it becomes evident that almost all Curing of Diseases Wounds and likewise those that are Chyrurgical ones I except not is to be solicited in the Stomack and in its Duumvirate and so neither there to be incongruously sought after or solicited For so also oft-times the more outward defects are taken away by an internal Remedy of the Stomack being else vainly attempted by external Medicines It is no wonder therefore that Remedies do scarce exceed the command order of the Stomack or are materially farther dispersed Which things being thus premised by the way I will subscribe some Priviledges of the Stomack 1. And First of all That is a right proper and peculiar to the Stomack that it doth primarily Cook for it self but for the whole Body onely by accident indirectly and by an extraordinary right before the other Members Because Divine Ordination hath so suffered it to be that it may prepare a nourishment of the rude matter of the meats for all the others But the Stomack it self is immediately nourished by the Chyle confected by it self no otherwise than as the Root of Vegetables is nourished by Leffas the Juyce of the Earth But not that the Stomack doth allure Blood from the Liver for its nourishment as neither doth the Root of Vegetables fetch back again the Juice once dismissed from it self and dispersed upwards from the Bark that it may thereby be nourished Wherefore the Stomack enjoys a few Veines for the Office of so great an heap and a Vessel of so great capacity To wit because it is not nourished by venal Blood according to the accustomed manner of other Members but it is fed onely with the Chyle the which it afterward suits into a Spermatick Liquor agreeable to it self 2. But the Veines of the Stomack do not therefore diffuse Blood out of themselves neither doth the Stomack being hurt by a Wound weep forth Blood And the same right the rest of the Membranes have borrowed from the Stomack unto themselves 3. The Stomack-Veines do not transmit any thing of the concocted Chyle of Mcats or suck is unto them that they may derive the same unto the Port Vein according as otherwise the Meseraick Veins are wont to do And that thing I have else where more strongly confirmed concerning the Digestions 4. In the next place neither do the Veins of the Stomack imploy themselves in the nourishment of the Stomack 5. And therefore the Stomack-Veins being full of pure Blood have a free vital undisturbed faculty appointed for the sucking of the Chyle or dispersing of the Blood Either of which two notwithstanding is domestical to all the other Veines 6. Yet the Veins and Arteries being knit unto the Orifice of the Stomack are not in vain extended but the Soul being entertained in the slenderness of the Membrane of the Stomack as if it were not there yea being scarce tied to the place breathes forth the breath of its Life into the Organs to wit the Heart Spleen Liver Brain Kidneys Stones c. after an unsensible manner and through an
in the Womb. For even as there is a ferment of a be-madding fury in the Spittle of a mad Dog an Idea I say which a little after doth make him that is bitten Mad So in some Simples there is a sealifying faculty of Madness and sealed in some Excrements being detained or bred in the raging Womb a madness of fury there is in them which doth either propagate the madness conceived on the off-springs or perseveres with barrenness unto the finishing of their radical Fury Surely it listeth me to contemplate of a Power in the Womb like unto the imaginative one of the first motions As it were of a most powerful Blas of the Stars turning and overturning all things upwards and downwards For the Womb hath had its own Government hitherto and hath kept it entire over the whole Body yea alwayes hath cruelly exercised it unto the sore troubling of the Sex which is to be pitied But for the instruction or orderly preparing of every Monarchy a certain governing Faculty such as in malice and affects of the Womb doth clearly appear to be monstrous is alwayes primarily required and another angryable Faculty which is unfolded under a womanish Life by the diverse animosities of affections The disturbances of which Faculties and the overflowing exorbitances sprung from thence certainly do presuppose nothing less than the fury of the Womb For what can be more madly done than that the Womb should strain the Neck of a Woman and miserably destroy its own subject should contract the Pores of the Lungs should violently powr forth the whole Blood For truly at the killing of its Woman the proper death of the Womb doth of necessity follow therefore this very thing is by consequence to cause its own destruction by a deliberated force From whence the argument of a twofold Monarchy in a Woman is at least-wise seen To wit from a duality of the Womb with the Body of the Woman the Enemy of of Unity and Fuel of discord But although such a choaking doth for the most part take its beginnings from the disturbances of the mind and Idea's stirred up from thence and the which being deadly doth obliterate the birth or original comeliness and life of the whole Body like unto Hornets that are stirred up Yet the Womb in a Woman surviveth so that she that travaileth being dead the Womb hath expelled its Young sometimes many hours after Therefore there is in the Womb a certain Animosity and Fury from Idea's conceived exercising the Vicarship of the mind from a certain Being and it is in the Womb by reason of its singular Life Every Disease therefore of the Womb is potestative being directed by the government of the Womb either on it self or on the Body of the Woman From whence entire Idea's may be not unfitly discerned from corrupted ones For seeing the Womb governs it self and lives in its own Orbe from a strange venal Blood therefore it is scarce ill at ease unless it be weakened by a Being of things conceived yea it is alwayes after some sort mad as oft as it is ill at ease For whether the monthly Issues shall stop or immoderately flow are discoloured waterish black clotty offend in the smallness of quantity Gonorrhea's or the Whites do issue forth or the Womb it self being moved from its place being eccentrical doth hugely deface or destroy or in the next place being unmoved doth bring forth an alterative Blas or produce effects nigh akin unto an enchantment or lastly doth stir up the Being of an Apoplexie Epilepsie Palsey giddiness of the Head Megrim pain of the Stomack Jaundise Dropsie Wounding Asthma Convulsion Heart-passion c. it is all one because its Fury varieth not but by its Tragedies wherein it abuseth its Power and the Womb sporteth by a Monarchal liberty over the whole entire Body For truly without material Vapours it bears the Keys wherewith it open the Veins stirs up incredible fluxes of Blood and without any motion of it it shuts the Pores of the Lungs according to its desire yea and takes away the transpiration of the whole Body at its own pleasure For it is president or bears sway over the Moon in the Body it despiseth Age Nature Maturity and untimely Ripeness And likewise it causeth Abortions and takes away fruitfulness and in the mean time compleats its voluptious Fury by a Lord-like tyranny It perfects the sore shakings of the Joynts deprivings of Speech dis-joyntings of the Knuckles for the Luxury of its Fury And although a Woman be not mad under so great Evils yet the Womb is mad in all the aforesaid exorbitances She is miserable therefore who layes under such a command She is subject I say unto so many Diseases as a Man and doth again obey the same from the Being of her Womb For she also at this day paies a double punishment as in Eve she is guilty of a double offence Yet the Womb is not a part of the Man as she is a man It is indeed in man and lives by his venal Blood no otherwise than as Glew by a Tree and that sexual part commands the whole Body much more powerfully than the Stones do in a Cock or a Bull who in their gelded ones do expresse notable varieties For truly not only every part doth hearken unto the Womb but the violent commands of the mad Womb do punish the Body of the Woman together with her Life Indeed the passions of the Soul do only stir up the Womb as it were a sleeping Dog and the Womb doth thereby assume a cruelty and presently compels the innocent Woman to repent of its madness And moreover also it oftentimes reflects its fury on the very Powers of the mind by which it had been long since provoked that it may boast of its absolute command over all things For the Idea's of the passions of the Soul as oft as they are importunate on the Womb if they are introduced into the angryable Faculty of the Womb and do pierce it they as forreign and hateful ones do straightway disturb it from whence the impatient Womb doth stir up it self into diverse furies Which thing also even from thence was not hid to Plato while he named the Womb a furious living Creature In the next place although from the fury of the Womb as well the proper Cook-room thereof doth labour as of other parts laid hold of by it and from thence diverse excrements are stirred up being made remarkable by the seminal Idea's of furies yet those same excrements are only products That is although madnesses arisen from conceptions do bring forth their foolish Idea's and do decypher them in the strange tables of excrements by the inordinacy of a part of them even as the madness of Dogs doth pass over into the Spittle yet by a removal of the occasional product although Diseases may be allayed or eased the fury of the Womb is not Cured Because that product being taken away was a latter
ferment of the Stomack for many do not desire do not bear do not concoct very many things however good it shall be in it self it degenerates into Reliques and brings forth oftentimes no mean troubles of it self and sealeth them in the parts and they are the faults of some things as when Minium or Red-lead is cast into the Body being too hard stinking or rebellious But those are rebellious things whose middle Life cannot be subdued and taken away by the Ferment of the Stomack which things every one doth against his will experience and acknowledge And then I have said that there is a twofold Ferment in the Stomack One indeed for the first Digestion which flows unto it out of the Spleen But the other is proper for the sixth Digestion which is natural or homebred unto it from the implanted Spirit and proper to its own Cook-room But both of them are diminished altered and estranged through Diseases Griefs Age c. For the ferment infused by the Spleen is peculiarly silent and altered in Fevers for instead of a sharpness a burntishness is substituted whereby Eggs Fleshes Fishes and Broaths become averse and do sooner putrifie within than they are truly concocted into Chyle And these Hippocrates calls Impure-Bodies the which by how stronger a refreshment or nourishment thou shalt endeavour to refresh them by so much the more thou shalt hurt them For heat doth then more strongly burn in the Stomack but the Ferment is withdrawn from the Stomack Therefore things cast into the Stomack are not digested but putrified So under a dog-like hunger the Ferment of the Spleen is doubled In the next place if not the Ferment it self but a strange sharpness doth increase there are sharp pains in the Stomack co-pressings of the Breast irregular Appetites Head-aches Diseases called Cholers c. In like manner the Ferment of the Gaul being exorbitant failing or otherwise vitiated by a forreign Poysonsomness Products agreeable unto those Roots do soon bewray themselves For from hence are Giddinesses of the Head Swoonings Apoplexies Fluxes Cholers and likewise bitter or bloody Vomitings Atrophia's c. I again admonish that although I leave the antient names of Diseases yet I understand the Idea's the causers of these by abstracted names Therefore in the first second third or sixth Digestion I understand vitious transmutations to be made by diseasie Idea's there bred and transchanged But those kinde of Reliques or things transchanged are voided out by a washing of being made by Sweat or Urin or are voided by the Paunch and an unsensible transpiration Indeed the Reliques of the first Digestion are expelled through the accustomed Emunctories or exspunging Places But those of the second and third are regularly driven out with the Urin. But because inordinacies do happen in most Digestions therefore there is place for things transchanged and transmitted But things transchanged are the produced Excrements of primary Diseases or the Fruits of things assumed The which because they were once domestical therefore they are bred by the vice of the transchanging Archeus But indeed the Retents of the second Digestion are made either by reason of a weakness of the Ferment or a riotous exorbitancy of the same Hence a sharpness of the first Digestion remaining and not sufficiently corrected proceeds unto the Bowels for Wringings or Gripes Moreover it passing thorow into the Veins doth stir up diverse Fevers a contracture of the Abdomen Dropsies Obstructions of the Meseraick Veins likewise Palseys of the Joynts and Stranguries or Pissings by Drops But if the Ferment of the second Digestion shall too much increase or be joyned with a vitiated quality From hence are Jaundises bitter Vomitings Faintings Giddinesses of the Head c. But if that of the third Digestion which is digested be too much delayed under the third Digestion for although the venal Blood shall in it self nothing offend yet a doubled Ferment of the Shop increaseth and in this respect it is estranged through inordinacy For truly nothing keeps Holiday within all things do proceed unto the scopes appointed for them no otherwise than as the water of a defluxing Brook The venal Blood therefore although it be the treasure of mans life being detained beyond its just term degenerates into Menstrues Hemorrhoids c. And whatsoever things the Schools do generally attribute unto black Choler they are nothing but the Retents of the third Digestion retained in the third Digestion But seeing the Members are not nourished but under a certain proportion unknown to Mortals to wit of the Blood of the Veins unto the Arterial Blood it must needs be that in the sixth Digestion an inordinacy doth spring up which the Schools attribute to the heat of the Liver and do falsly bend themselves to cure by cooling things For the Liver in it self is a dead Carcass and cold unless it be nourished by the Spirit of life And therefore all heat being a stranger to the Liver is forreign For it hath it self just even as a finger which is rightly tempered in it self whereinto if a thorn be infixed although it be in act and power cold yet the finger presently swells beats waxeth hot and is enflamed c. So also the Liver is never hot unless it shall conceive a troublesome thorn within it Wherefore also we must diligently employ our selves in plucking out of the thorn but not in cooling Therefore the Liver hath a double thorn to wit one from a hurtfull Retent but the other from a troublesome Retent to wit the Blood burdening it For so the Liver hath oftentimes from a hurtful Retent darted forth Impostumes and Vices of the Skin the which by reason of that which is transmitted do manifoldly degenerate in the way and do so co-defile the Skin that whatsoever at length of Blood is distributed unto it for nourishment is corrupted in the same through a Title of contagion Of which sort are Ulcers the which if they are healed up they sorely threaten a greater dammage within Therefore in Retents of the third Digestion Cauteries have oft-times performed help unknown in the Schooles from a foundation who endeavour with the uncertain conjecture and hope of Events For they are rare Defects which are from a plurality of good Blood not vitiated even as in the Book of Fevers and the scantiness of abstinence of two dayes doth easily reduce the venal Blood suspected of abounding into a due proportion Therefore the Blood offends if it hath a thorn its Companion and then if it stay within beyond its due time as I have said And thirdly if the venal Blood be disproportioned with the Arterial Blood Gluttony is for the most part the Mother of these three Whence it is wont to be said The Throat smites more than the Sword Also for the most part a plurality of venal Blood is bred not because more venal Blood is begotten than is meet but because less is consumed than is meet by reason of want of exercise an idle
and double Fevers Neither doth it also forbid a primary Disease to be con-folded with its own or with a secundary one bred from else where In such a manner as is a primary Fever which brings forth a Product from whence there is a resolving of the Blood into the putrifying Disease of a malignant Flux matched with a feverish Ferment At length neither is there a necessary passage of the three first Digestions unto the sixth by the fourth and fifth Because the greatest part of the venal Blood never comes unto the Heart and much less is it snatched into its left Bosom Because all particular parts are nourished no less with Venal than Arterial Blood From hence indeed it happens that the Vices of the three first Digestions do oftentimes immediately pass over into the sixth And therefore the transchanged Retents of the three first Digestions if they shall reach unto the sixth they offend not by transmission of a proper name but only by transmutation because a transmission from the third into the sixth Digestion is regular lawful and ordinary I will add concerning the Spleen If from the first Digestion a sharpness of the Chyle be immediately brought unto the Spleen A Quartane Ague is soon present to wit from a curdled Retent being there a stranger But if the sixth Digestion in the Spleen be troubled seeing it is the Couch of the first Conceptions The Excrements or things transchanged which are made of its proper nourishment are for the most part endowed with an imaginative Power such as occurs in many Simples and which is most plainly to be seen in the Spittle of a mad Dog and the which therefore I call inebriating or be-drunkening dreamifying or befooling Simples For therefore of one Wine there is a many-form condition of drunken Men That is one only Wine doth stir up diverse Madnesses For a mad Poyson halts with the similitude of Wine For a mad Poyson by reason of its excelling Power doth not follow the conditions of the Man but the very Conditions of the Man are constrained to obey the Poyson As is clearly seen in the Poyson of him that is bitten by a Mid-dog Poysons therefore which of a degenerate nourishment are bred in the sixth Digestion do follow their own Nature For by how much the nearer they shall be unto assimilating by so much the more powerfully do they infatuate For by how much the nearer the Ferment of the Bowel and an in-beaming of the implanted Spirit shall be present with it by so much also the nearer it calls unto it the Idea of a certain imaginative Power which at length it transplanteth into a venemous Poyson not indeed so destructive unto the Life as unto the Power of that Bowel But from what hath been before declared any one shall be hereafter able to erect unto himself the Stages of Diseases But it hath been sufficient for me to have shewn that every primary Disease doth objectively and subjectively fall into the Archeus and so into the Life it self whereof to wit it is immediately formed But that a secondary Disease fals objectively indeed into the Archeus but subjectively into a Matter either the solid one of the part containing or the fluide one of that contained And thus indeed to have shewn Diseases to be distributed in Nature by their Causes Roots and Essence according to their Inns I repose my Pen. Barrenness also seeing it is among Defects beside Nature hath hither extended its Treatise Wherefore Coldness Heat or moistness is not in either of the Sexes the cause of Barrenness however lowdly others may sound out this thing For truly first of all there is no dryness possible in living Creatures or the vitious moisture of the Womb is not of the complexion but a meer superfluity of Digestion or Transmission So in the next place Heat and Cold are signs of Defects in Nature but not Causes Because these Qualities do want a Seed vital Properties and potestative Conditions Therefore indeed Barrenness and Fruitfulness is in every Climate of the World Yet an Aethiopian Woman is far hotter than the most hot Woman of Muscovia But the excrementitious and superfluous Moistness of the Womb is an Effect of Diseases Yea if it shall be a companion of Barrenness yet not the containing Cause thereof For an internal Cause differs not from the Being it self So neither is the Defect of the Menstrues the cause of Barrenness if that Defect contains a denial or proceeds as an Effect of a nearer Indisposition Women of unripe Age have oft-times conceived even also before their Menstrues and those of more ripe years their Menstrues being silent Also oft-times Women affected in their Womb being trampled on by many Perplexities do succesfully conceive and accordingly bring forth In the mean time some Barren Women are in good health Also many conceive while their Menstrues is urgently present As also the Menstrues being afterwards silent hath deceived many of Conception Some Women do take notice of their Menstrues all the time of their bearing but many for some months only For indeed although Barrenness may after some sort bespeak a privative respect yet it is meerly a positive and diseasie Being for it ariseth from singular positive Defects Because by it self and in self it is a Malady of Nature Even as fruitfulness bespeaks an entire Cause For in a Man which is not Gelded not an Eunuch not hindred or disturbed not mischieved Barrenness hath scarce place For from hence an Old-man doth as yet generate Whence it follows that there is not so much perfection to be attributed as neither to be required in the Male as in the Mother But I call those hindered Males who do labour with a Gonorrhea or who have from thence retained a Vice And likewise who do labour with the notable Vice of some Bowel In a Woman the Menstrues abounding being Deficient Irregular Watery Yellow looking Blackish Slimy Stinking a Pain in her Loyns Belly Hips and movings of the Womb upwards downwards to the Sides are indeed Witnesses and Signs of the Sicknesses or Feeblenesses of the Womb and therefore also they fore-slow overflow Conception move Abortions and gushings forth of the Courses yet they do not altogether take away the hope of Conception nor are they the Disease which is called Barrenness For indeed old Women are Barren without all those For I find the one only suitable and co-equal Cause in Time and Age to be described in the holy Scriptures for a positive Being which is called Barrenness in these Words God opened the Womb of Sarah For it is the Gift of God derived into Nature whereby the Parchment or Membrane of the Womb being most exactly shut in its Foldings is opened and enlarged at the co-agreeing moment of Conjunction There is I say an attractive drawing Blas whereby for fear of a Vacuum or Emptiness an attraction of the Seeds and a suitable filling up of the opened Wrinckles follows that opening To wit the
not subject unto the respects of the Superiority or Inferiority of Places nor in the next place obeying the Laws of drawing Water For because they are lively they keep their vital Property no less than the Center it self unhurt Yet assoon as they run down from thence they presently die no otherwise than as out-hunted Blood or a Hand that is cut off for then they are at first constrained to obey the Laws of the more weighty Bodies the importunate Positions of Places and Scituations To wit that they may not cease thenceforth to rush through steep Places into the Sea requiring as it were the Inn of their Antient rest In the fourth place it is to be noted That even as this Soyle being exposed in the Air in the superficies of the Earth doth express its natural Properties no less than that which lays hid some hundred of Ells from thence beneath the Horizon of the Earth So also thou shalt remember that the same Sand doth ascend unto the greatest heigth of Mountains and now and then unto their very top through the Seams and broad intervening Passages of rockie Stones and from thence do thrust forth daylie Fountains not any thing diminished by summer Heats For in Man as long as the Blood doth flloat in the Veins there is a like respect of Scituations as well in the Forehead as in the Feet and it is ignorant as well of Above as Beneath But beeing chased out of the Veins it puts on the Condition of weighty Bodies So also in the Macrocosm or great World as long as the Water doth enjoy a common Life in the former Inn it hastens upwards and downwards without labour because it knows it not But being once shaken from its vital Inn it ceaseth not to hasten until in its Iliad or Night it recovereth its blessed Retirances or Receptacles of rest Therefore the Spirit nourisheth the Waters within also the swelling of the vast Sea as the mind being diffused through the Joynts doth stir the whole Lump But from hence the Sea hath not yet sufficiently been made known which watereth the Fountains and vomiteth out Rivers and whither the Scriptures saith the same do at length unweariedly hasten For that which the Scripture calleth the Sea is a Collection of all Waters into their Antient and continual Cup-board Of which Collection this beholdable and external navigable Sea is nothing but the Fruit disposed into its Sconce Wherefore the Receptacle congregating Root and Collection altogether of all Waters containeth that boyling Sand which verily being a thousand times more wealthy and bigger doth also therefore contain as much more Water by a thousand times as the Ocean Because it is that which fills up almost the whole Diameter of the Earth for whose outmost Lip only the External Sea doth fill up the depth of one or two Leagues at most For the Arch-type or first Framer separated the Waters from the Waters Not indeed the Sea from the Rivers or the Sea should not be the Collection of all Waters or both these from the Clouds but the true and Internal Sea from this External Navigable Sea he disjoyned on the first dayes This Internal I say Invisible hitherto an Abyss and great Sea are those waters whereby the Prophet Sang the The Foundations of the World were supported and the which although they have hitherto stood neglected are called in Genesis The Sea by the Creator of Things From thence indeed also Ecclesiastes hath likewise fetched Fountains and Rivers which were to return thither They run down therefore out of this Soyle and for fear of a Vacuum the External Sea doth again pierce the same Sand as it were by straining and presently almost in its first Paces sequesters or layes aside its Saltness But because Fountains and Rivers have by a leasurely Decursion or Race dispensed the seeds and matter of all Minerals which before they kept in their Bosom and the commerces whereof the Life of Man can scarce want therefore they swiftly hasten unto the External Sea whereby they may again require fruitful Entertainments at the internal Sea the Night of Orpheus the Darkness of Pluto according to Hippocrates the Oromasis of the Persians the Iliad of Paracelsus where Reasons and Gifts the Seeds of Minerals I say being not as yet joyned unto Bodies do lay for the Water which is again to be gotten with Child by the Seeds Therefore there is not an idle sliding down of Waters into the Ocean For they are governed by Intelligence and as if they were strong in understanding cease not to utter their Offices the Testimonies of an infinite goodness and providence Surely as many as shall behold the Cabalastical Science shall admire at this in the fore-front yet most true Because those that are ignorant of most things must needs admire at most things But the Ocean doth dayly hand forth some convenient thing to our sight by a double ebbing and flowing To wit the Navil or Boss of the Water ascending contrary to the Art of drawing Water and the Waves swelling according to the Conjunction of the Moon For the Sea liveth almost by a certain right of its own to wit the Wind being silent it stirring up voluntary Ragings curiously observing a proportionable Scituation of the Moon and being swollen with Waves it going to meet the same lastly with a various successive change of Seasons Light and Motions and a continued heap of Waters lifting up its overflowings on high sometimes here sometimes elsewhere at set Intervals Therefore whosoever thou art although thou seest dayly Wonders of Nature in the Ocean the vital and fountainous Disturbances of the more inward true and lively Sea and of the far more straight or narrow Abysse which are dedicated unto humane uses cease thou to wonder CHAP. XCV Another Paradox 1. No Fountaines are from Air thickened 2. Elements are not changed or perish 3. Whatsoever is generated is generated by a Seed and whatsoever is made in Nature is made from the necessity of a Seed 4. There are onely two primitive Elements and two secondary ones 5. A Paradoxal Explication 6. A proof by handicraft operation 7. The Heaven and the Earth shall perish not the Water and the Air. 8. The Art of Distilling unfolds Natural Phylosophy 9. What a Vapour is 10. A proof against Aristotle 11. A second Mechanical Proof 12. What and of what sort the Magnal or Sheath of the Air is 13. Why small drops do not fall down in a Vapour and Snows and when they do fall 14. A proof against Aristotle 15. A proof 16 17. A handicraft operation VVE have treated concerning the Spring concerning the immediate original and nativity of Fountaines more briefly than a Paradox and more tediously I confess than the Doctrine of those of the Spaw did require for it is a most difficult thing to have kept a mean in all things to wit as the Waters do proceed from a most rich Inn of Waters unto their appointments Although in
of Long Life For first of all the Moon doth not heap up or expel this venal Blood although the purgation of the Womb be co-incident with the course of the Moon For that coincident is unto both terms or limits by accident for otherwise if that purgation of the Woman should be from the Moon it self verily all Women should be Menstruous on the same day and at least-wise those which should dwell in the same Climate Or at least-wise all young Virgins should likewise suffer the same with the new of the Moon which is false For if some Ships do follow one Pretorian or chief leading Ship which in a dark night hath a Lanthorn in stead of a Flag The Lanthorn indeed affords onely a Sign of their following but the Wind Stern and Governours of the Stern shall be the immediate efficient Cause of their following So the Moon like a Torch finisheth the task of her circle in four weeks and six hours So also a Woman for Reasons straightway to be added For the Woman ought to encrease and nourish her conceived generation from her own blood unto a just stature of the Young and to feed the Infant being brought forth with her own blood being turned into milk Therefore she had need of a greater plenty of venal Blood and therefore while it should not be supt up for those ends it should also become superfluous and by consequence be voided or expelled Yea although a Woman eats and drinks much less then a Man yet she abounds with more blood That is the shop of the venal Blood makes more arterial Blood in the Woman than in Men even out of a more sparing meat and Drink From whence it of necessity in the next place follows That in the Woman more is turned into a profitable nourishment and in the Man that more is changed into excrements But how it is manifest what or of what sort that superfluous blood may be let all know that the venal Blood of Man ought to be renewed in a space of daies wherein the Moon measures all her particular courses through the Zodiack For that is the space wherein the venal Blood is kept in its Balsam it being longer reserved it is corrupted For truly he that aboundeth with Blood it must needs be that by nourishing he spends the same on the family of Life or that he transchangeth it into fatness phlegms of the Latex or other drosses as Sweat or diseasie Excrements For the Woman hath small pores the fleshy Membrane under her upper skin doth enrich her with much fat neither therefore can she consume so much Blood superabounding in her as she daily makes or concocts The bound therefore of the course of the blood being finished that which is barren becomes all superfluous the which therefore Nature is busied in casting forth and sequesters it unto the veins of the Womb as unto its appointed emunctories For the blood departs unto those proper places nor those likewise strange ones because for the ends already declared the Menstrues is the superfluity of the Blood of the Woman alone And it becomes burdersome by the very title whereby it is superfluous And as yet by so much the more because then it puts off the vital Spirit no othewise than as some Wines after the Years end become strengthless For these ends therefore and by these means the venal Blood is made an Excrement afterwards a poyson and attaines worse faculties in going But at length it assumes the horrid properties of a new dead carcase For therefore the Menstrues of the first dayes is more infected than that which flows forth in the following dayes For although the expulsion of the Menstrues be the proper office of the Veins Yet the collection of the same even as also its renewing and sequestring do belong unto the Monarchal Archeus of the Womb. Therefore indeed that which is most hateful is the more speedily cast out of doors whereby it first separated it self from the good blood and for this cause it being the longer detained about the Veins of the Womb for that cause also it is the more poyson some In the next place although this Poyson masks it self with the shew of venal Blood yet the favour of the vital Balsam being by degrees laid aside it ascending unto the malignity of a cadaverous or stinking Liquor assumeth the disposition of a poyson and hath degenerated from the former nature and properties of Blood The which handy-craft operation proveth For truly a Towel that is dipped in the Menstrues if it be plunged into boyling water it contracts an un-obliterable spot for the future and the which at least-wise in the third washing falls out of the Towel it being made full of holes no otherwise than if it should be corroded by the sharp Spirit of Sulphur That which after another manner is a forreigner to the bloud of a Man whether it shall flow forth through the Nostrils Wounds Hemerhoides or Bloody-flux or next if it shall fall out from Ulcers like a more wan clot From whence also it is manifest that the Menstrues hath an aluminous tinging property any besides a cadaverous sharp poyson fit for gnawing or erosion But as it once enjoyed the Seal of the Archeus of Life whereof it being afterwards deprived it obtains a fermental faculty full of a powerful contagion as also hostile sharpnesses For that Blood through its divers degrees of malignity stirs up diverse passions within on the miserable Woman For when as it being once sequestred from the other blood unto the Inns of the Veins of the Womb hath received the aforesaid sharpness of malignity and from thence is supped back again into the branches of the hollow vein by a retrograde motion of revulsion which is made through large cuttings of a vein or symptomatical wrothfulnesses which are the stirrers up of Fluxes of the Womb it causeth Swoonings Heart-beatings Convulsions and oft-times horrible stranglings But if the Menstruous Blood being not yet derived unto the Veins of the Womb or plainly severed from the rest and so neither hath as yet had its utmost mischief or corruption It is detained with a certain inordinacy and stirs up divers conspicuous Symptomes in many places From what hath been said before therefore it is manifest That Women great with young Nurses weak or sick Persons blood-less Women those that are become Lean those that are not of a ripe age and swift or circular movers do want Menstrues because also Superfluities It is also false that all Menstruous Blood without distinction is poysonsom or hurtful And likewise that we are nourished and grow big in the Womb by the Menstrues For truly the venal Blood of the Woman hath not the condition of Menstrues before that untill it being unfit for nourishment is enfeebled or deprived of Life and brought bound unto the sink For neither doth he who drinks Wine drink Vinegar although this be made of that As neither is he fed with Excrements who eateth
the most part only of one side and a defect invades as it were with the one only stroak of a dart But the swistness of the unexpected chance produceth a terrour in the brain and marrows that is in the spirit the inhabitant of these and the Author of that act of feeling Therefore by reason of its Terrour the weaker side of the marrow is contracted but surely the Palsey is the Product of the Contracture And in all one side is always weaker than the other Therefore women who as they are for the most part of a timorous mind they by terrour do frequently rush also into a Palsey without an Apoplexie For Terrour or Affrightment hath that Property that it straightway closeth the pores if it shall be sudden And the hairs hath stood an end and the voice hath cleaved to the Jawes Because it is natural for the gate to be shut against an approaching enemy For in a stroak of the Scul the side placed under it is resolved and the opposite side is contracted To wit the Supposite one is resolved because it is more terrified and the Opposite one is drawn together because provoked And indeed the Vulgar are wont to sore-divine an Apoplexie from the shortness of the neck For the shortness of the neck doth not argue the fewer turning joynts to be but a less depth of every one of them But what hath that Common with Phlegm or with a sometimes future stoppage of the fourth bosome of the Brain To wit that one ought to be casualy presaged by the other For the shortness of the neck containeth not a naked sign or prediction of Physiognomy But besides a certain ocasional cause For oft-times after yesterdayes gluttony or drunkenness a giddiness of the head a dizzie dimness of sight vomiting astonishment of the fingers c. do happen the which threaten and presage an Apoplexy not indeed through occasion of a fit Organ as concerning the shortness of the neck but because they have their beginning from an Apopoplexy differing only in degree and intensness If therefore that giddinesse and astonishment after â—urfeiting be from the Midriffes as the occasional matter is as yet nourished by the Archeus in an inferiour degree Therefore wheresoever that Anodynous or stupifying poyson is carried up into a degree it causeth an Apoplexy natively arising from the same seats where through an errour of the sixth digestion that Anodynous poyson is made of the nourishment from whence at length there also is occasionally a Palsey The shortness therefore of the neck affordeth a brevity and readiness of passage from the Midriffes into the head requisite for an Apoplexy that is a more ready aptness of the Organ And also the Schools affirm that in little and threatned Apoplexies instituted rubbings of the utmost parts have sometimes profited and they from thence conjecturing a revulsion of Phlegm and Vapours of out the head do command frictions or rubbings even unto a cruel pilling off of the skin and sharp Clysters To wit they excoriate the skin that Sense or Feelâ—ng may not fail in the same place They being in the mean time forgetful of their own rule that Sense depends wholly on the Brain and that it is in vain to pill the legs that they may revulse Phlegm out of the fourth bosome of the Brain For they know not whither they may pull it back whether they ought to allure it out of the bosome of the Cerebellum into the fundament by Clysters or indeed whether they may by rubbing require the same out of the bosome of the Cerebellum through the skin All being ridiculous because themselves also are ridiculous In the mean time let those that stand by me testifie whether they can detract rather the skin than vapours Yet I certainly know that though any one be wholly flead the Apoplexy or true Palsey is notwithstanding never in anywise to be removed Neither do I see after what manner they can defend their own Theoreme To wit that Phlegm in the fourth bosome of the brain is the containing and adquate cause of both these evils For I confidently deliver that frictions have little profited where that stupefactive and deadly poyson was only in the habit of the body but what will those cruel frictions do if that Anodynous poyson be primarily seated in the Midriffs and after what manner do they prove that by rubbings Phlegm is drawn out of the bosome of the Cerebellum I know therefore that frictions as they were instituted without the discerning and knowledge of causes and distinguishing of places so also that they have been and will be alwayes in vain For it is a ridiculous and cruel thing to have rubbed the skin unto a fleaing thereof and to have assigned the cause to be a stoppage in the middle of the thorny marrow Because how much rubbing soever there shal be if there were any Phlegm in the world and that slidden into the aforesaid bosome of the little Brain it shall never take that phlegm away in one only grain But rather those superstitions being granted it should continually increase the same Because Revulsion if there be any truth in it shall draw the matter rather downwards and dash it into the pipe of the thorny marrow in what part it is alwayes made narrower than it self and so much the rather because there is ordinarly a dispensing of the greater vessels into the inferiour and lesser branches of them Then also because that Phlegm being sequestred from the rest of the blood should be a meer excrement nor therefore discussable without a dead head or residence far harder And therefore rubbing if it do draw and revulse after any kind of manner it shall feel also that ordinary endeavour of nature that that stopping Phlegm should be drawn not from the hinder and lower bosome upwards to the brain by a retrograde motion but unto the more straight and lower trunks of the Nucha or marrow of the back Especially while as in the Palsey the sensitive spirits flow down sparingly or plainly nothing at all the which might otherwise be able to drive that Phlegm forth Rubbing therefore as it exhausts it shall rather encrease a want of the sensitive spirits But the Anodynous poyson of an Apoplexy is generated after the manner of other natural ones to wit a certain excrement occasionally growes in the proper Conduit of the matter But the Archeus perceiving that excrement and abhorting it flees from it and conceiving the deadly Idea of the Excrement impertinently imprints it on himself From whence an Apoplexy is forthwith stirred up as it were with the stroke of a dart But some previous dispositions do for the most part go before the nativity of this stupifying poyson The which therefore if it should happen in the Brain the place should cease from complaint to wit because the Apoplexy is made in an instant wherefore we call it Den Schlag or a stroak indeed because it suddenly comes as at unawares after the
occasional ones of diseases are bitter sharp salt brackish c. But that the spirit is he that maketh all assaults Galen Juniour unto Hippocrates by five hundred years afterwards easily stained much paper and by his prate allured followers unto himself But posterity having admired this prattle followed the same it hath always had that in the greatest esteem which was of the least worth And then the world every where grew aged in frivolous judgments always esteeming that to be of great weight which was most like unto its own unconstancy CHAP. II. The Schools Nodding or Doubting have introduced Putrefaction 1. The Schools have been constrained to devise another thing in Fevers beside heat 2. Another defect in the definition of a Fever 3. The Schools contradict the principles laid down by themselves 4. That the essence of Fevers is not from heat 5. They by degrees are forgetful of their own positions 6. The spiciness of Roses is most hot 7. Whether a Feverish heat be rightly judged by the Schools to arise from Putrefaction 8. A malignant Fever wherein it differs from other Fevers 9. A Crisis of Fevers by sweat is most wholesome 10. Why the Schools have fled back unto Putrefaction 11. A blockish comparison of heat in horse-dung 12. Why horse-dung is hot 13. A degree of the heat of a putrifying matter is not sufficient for heating the whole man in a Fever 14. Putrefaction is no where the cause of heat 15. Dung waxeth not hot from Putrefaction 16. Why they have not drawn a feverish heat from hot Baths 17. The ignorance of the Roots hath wrested the Schools aside unto the considerations and remedies of effects 18. Dung looseth its heat while it begins to putrefie 19. The great blindness of the Schools 20. Galen convicted of error 21. That the blood doth never putrefie in the veins and so whatsoever they trifle concerning a Sunochus or putrefied Fever is erroneous 22. The foregoing particulars are proved 23. The natural endowments of the veins 24. Either Nature goes to ruine or the Doctrine of the Schools 25. An example from the variety of blood 26. A ridiculous table of blood let out of the veins 27. An argument from the Plague against the Vse of the Schools 28. Again from the Pleurifie 29. The heats and turbulencies of the blood do not testifie the vices thereof 30. A wan deceit of the Schools 31. To suppose putrefied humours in Fevers is ridiculous 32. Against the definition of Fevers of the foregoing Chapter some absurdities are alledged 33. A frivolous excuse by a Diary 34. The foregoing definition of Fevers is again resisted 35. The unconstancy of the Schools 36. That the blood doth not putrefie in the veins 37. Corruption from whence it is 38. That the blood of the Hemeroides is not putrefied 39. A wonderful remedy against the Hemeroides or Piles by a ring And likewise for other Diseases THE Schools meditated that an heat did oft-times spring up through exercises not unlike to the heat of feverish persons the which notwithstanding seeing it was not a feverish one they indeed judged heat to be of necessity in Fevers not any one in differently but that which should be stirred up by putrefaction Now they are no longer careful concerning heat as neither concerning the degrees or distemperature thereof but rather concerning the containing cause thereof For neither hath a heat graduated besides nature seemed to be sufficient for a Fever unless that heat also spring up from putrefaction which particle surely hath been dully omitted in the aforesaid definition of Fevers Therefore the essence of a Fever is now no longer a naked heat neither shall this heat distinguish Fevers from the diversity of heat although a Species doth result from thence whence the essence is but from the varieties of the putrefied or at leastwise from the putrefying humours It was finely indeed begun thus to wander from the terms proposed that when as they before respected nothing but heat which should exceed the accustomed temper of nature they afterwards require heat and a subject of putrefaction which heat they will have to be kindled in an offensive putrified matter but not any longer first in the heart But seeing that of heat there is not but only Species in degree but very many moments or extensions of the same and there are very many particular kinds of Fevers neither that the specifical multitude of Fevers can proceed from one only Species of heat besides nature Therefore in the Essence or Being of heat another thing is beheld besides the degree of the same Heat therefore shall not constitute the Essence of a Fever but that other thing by reason whereof the diversity of Fevers breaks forth If therefore putrefying of divers matters be the efficient cause of the diversity of Fevers heat shall be thing as well caused from putrefaction as the Fever it self and so seeing the action of causality of the putrisied matter involveth some other thing in it besides heat it self a Fever shall not be heat Now the Schools do confusedly adjoyn very many things on both sides that if one thing do not help at leastwise another may help them So that although they toughly maintain the aforesaid definition and adore it yet they by degrees decline from the naked distemper of heat unto the putrefaction of Humours Neither do they stay in these trifles but moreover they flee back unto hot remedies as having forgotten their own Positions And that whether they attempt Purgations or next whether they shall convert themselves unto the proper specifical Rdmedies of Fevers For what is now more solemn in healing than to have given Apozemes of Hop Asparagus c. and to have seasoned the same with Sugar For what is more hot than the spiceness included in Roses whether thou respectest its savour or application without which notwithstanding the Rose it self is a meer dead carcase what doth every where more frequently offer it self than to have mingled the corrosive liquor of Sulphur or Vitriol being through the perswasion of gain manifoldly adulterated with Juleps for Fevers In the next place to have drawn forth those which they feign to be guilty humours by Rhubarb and Scammoneated Medicines Therefore before all we must profesly examine whether the heat of a Fever owes its Original to Putrefaction Wherefore first of all I have plainly taught That a feverish heat doth in no wise causally depend on the peecant matter And then I have learned that a malignant Fever alone differs from other Fevers in this that its own offensive matter hath a beginning-putrefaction adjoyned unto it The which if it shall afterwards creep unto its height until the putrefaction be actually made and shall remain within it straightway brings death of necessity But if it be driven forth in the making of the Putrefaction as in the Measills an Erisipelas c. it is for the most part cured Because health for the most part accompanies a motion to without
From hence it is that Fevers do about their end provoke voluntary sweats And a Crisis or judicial sign which is terminated by sweats is most exceeding wholesome and by consequence also sudoriferous Remedies But they fled together unto Putrefaction that they might find the cause from whence they might confirm first cold and presently afterwards heat They therefore assume that Horse-dung which is actually cold doth voluntarily wax hot by reason of putrefaction But how blockishly do they on both sides deceive the credulous world For Cowes-dung of the same nourishments hath better putrified and been digested than Horse-dung yet it waxeth not hot Also the dung of an Horse which is fed with grass or Fetches waxeth not hot even as while he is fed with grain yet that hath putrefied no less than this They have not known therefore that heat follows the eaten grain but not the nature of Putrefaction Therefore they foolishly transfer a feverish heat unto humours putrified in a Fever from the heat of the dung not yet putrefying The Schools thefore have not known that by how much the nearer Horse-dung is unto a beginning-putrefaction by so much the more it is deprived of all heat And neither therefore shall the same dung ever putrifie if it be spread broad But only while as be ing moist it is contracted into an heap no otherwise than as Hay or Flowers if they are pressed together being moist are inflamed before putrefaction They have been ignorant I say that dung waxeth hot by its own spirits of salt being pressed together Again although dung do wax hot in the making of Putrefaction yet all heat ceaseth before the Putrefaction begun is in its being made And so the heat of the dung squares not with a feverish matter if the putrefied matter as they say layes hid long before in Receptacles and indeed in a Quartane always and very long Yea neither is the degree of the heat of dung suitable that it may be dispersed from its putrefied center even unto the soals of the feet but that it should first burn up the center of the body where that putrefied humour should overflow Therefore the example of dung is plainly impertinent to Fevers and so much the rather because they do not teach that Cold is before Heat in time And moreover in nature Putrefaction no where causeth heat and much less in vital things For in a putrefying body Cold must needs be if it be spoyled of life which life in us is the fountain of heat For in the interposing dayes of intermitting Fevers we complain not of heat or Cold molests us when as notwithstanding they suppose the humours to be putrefied Therefore if Heat and Cold do causally succeed in that which is putrefied and Cold be always before Heat in the comming of Fevers Cold is more native to a putrefied matter than Heat For therefore we measure the long continuance of the Disease by the duration of cold in an Ague or Fever but not by heat At length I have shewn that all feverish heat is wholly from the Archeus and therefore that it ceaseth before death when as notwithstanding Cold and Putrefaction do the more prevail It implies also that the heat of a Fever should be from a putrefied matter and that it should be first kindled in the heart it self from whence the Putrefaction is banished In the next place Heat is not kindled in dung from the Putrefaction it self For if it be daily be-sprinkled with the new urine of a horse it will not so much as wax hot in a years time But it is certain that urine doth not preserve from putrefaction but more truly that it should increase it For they should more truly have drawn heats out of Baths or Lime But they were rather ignorant of the Causes of these Heats Wherefore they have judged it a more easie matter to have accused the putrefaction of one horse-dung Neither was there any reason why they should horrow the essence of a Fever rather from heat than from cold and other symptomes Seeing they are the alike and fellow accidents of Fevers Therefore they have alwayes endeavoured to beat down the accidents of the Product because they have been ignorant of the roots But since it is now manifest that material things are the matter it self after what manner will they cure who convert the whole hinge of healing only unto heats At leastwise the similitude of horse-dung and of a feverish heat ascribed unto putrefaction hath fallen For dung when it begins never so little to putrifie it puts off heat And as long as it can be hot Artificers extract Salt-peter from thence But if it shall wax cold they leave it to Countrey Folks as unprofitable for themselves But the Schools accuse the Putrefaction or Corruption of Humours and indeed of one and the same Humour as well for Cold as for Heat and both in a heightned degree And by consequence that one and the same thing should immediately effect two Opposites out of it self Therefore it must needs be that either of these two is by it self but the other by accident If therefore Cold be the Off-spring of Putrefaction by it self it cannot in any wise essentially include heat but only by accident But if Heat be the son of Putrefaction by it self verily neither then should a Fever begin from Cold. Nevertheless it is clear enough from the aforesaid particulars that the Schools do suppose Putrefaction to be the essence of Fevers But Heat and Cold to be accidents accompanying the Putrefaction Wherefore Galen saith When blood putrifies Choler is made which Text if they shall admit of that Choler shall be putrified in its own birth or not If putrified it should cause a Tertian but not a Sunochus or putrified burning Fever Let the Schools therefore know that the blood is never putrified in the veins but that the vein it self also putrifies as in a Gangrene and in Mortifications And so they beg the principle who let forth the blood lest it should putrifie in the veins Like-wise they who affirm a Sunochus to arise from the blood of the veins being putrified And also they who say that the blood while it purrifies is turned into Choler The which particulars I thus prove The veins retain their blood fluid even in a dead carcase by the consent of all Anatomy but the blood being chased out of the veins straightway grows together into a clot But the coagulation of the blood is only a beginning of Corruption and way of separation of the whole Therefore if a vein preserves its blood from corruption in a dead carcase much more doth it do that in live bodies It being an argument from the less to the greater Forreign excrements indeed putrifie in the veins to wit they being the Retents as well of their own as of another digestion as concerning digestions elsewhere but the blood never Because it is that which according to the Scriptures is the seat and
treasure of life If therefore the life it self cannot preserve its own seat and treasure from corruption as long as it is in the veins when shall it preserve it and how shall it ever be free from corruption And likewise if the life doth not preserve the blood from corruption wherein it glistens after what manner shall the bones be preserved The veins therefore are ordained by the Creator that they may preserve the blood from corruption because the life is co-fermented with the blood of the veins Therefore under this Question the ornament and appointment of nature goes to ruine or the whole order of healing hitherto adored by Physicians falls to the ground But be it so by what sign do Physicians judge of putrified blood Is it not from the more white black yellow somewhat green or duskish colour Is it not from a slimy gross watery thin matter And lastly Is it not from a consistence not threddy or fibrous scarce cleaving together c. But I declare under the penalty of a convicted lye if any one will make tryal that I have examined the bloods of two hundred wanton countrey and healthy people in one only day and many of them were exceeding unlike in their aspect colour matter and consistence many whereof I distilled and found them to be alike profitable in healing For our Countrey Boores are wont at every Whitsontide to let out their blood whereby they might drink the more largely For although many of them seemed to be putrefied others cankery or black chole-ry yet especially the Countrymen from whence they had issued were very healthy Therefore they confirmed by the cause the tokens of corruption not withstanding them that their bloods were not any thing estranged from the nature of a Balsame Wherefore I have laughed at the Table of judgements from the beholding of blood let out of the veins and so I confirmed it with my self that the venal blood is commanded by Physicians to be kept that at least in his regard they may reckon one visit to the sick For if the corruption of the blood hath any where place and betokeneth the letting forth of it self from that Title surely that must be in the Plague But in the Plague the cutting of a vein is destructive Therefore there is no where putrefaction in the blood of the veins and a fear lest the putrefaction of that blood should prevail and by consequence the scope of letting out the blood is in this respect erroneous I suppose also thirty men to be oppressed with an equal Pleurisie but ten of them to pour forth blood out of a vein apparently vitiated for the blood of those that have the Pleurisie is like red wine whereunto clots of Milk have a Conflux but the remaining twenty I will cure without shedding of their blood It is certain in the mean time that those twenty have their blood no otherwise affected than the ten whose vein was cut And again That if in those twenty that were cured a vein be opened their blood shall be found rectified restored into its former state and far estranged from a pleuritical errour Therefore the blood of him that hath a Pleurisie is not corrupted although it may seem to be such The which I prove Because from that which is corrupted or deprived of life there is not granted a return unto life health or an habit Therefore black blew or wan green c. blood do not testifie of its corruption but they afford signes of its fermental angry heat or turbulency alone For first of all if the more waterish and yellow blood should betoken a vice the arterial blood should be far worse than the blood of the veins which thing is erroneous For the blood of the veins is no otherwise distinguished by the aforesaid signs than as wine is troubled while the Vine floureth for it is not therefore corrupted because the tempest being withdrawn it voluntarily cleers up again So likewise a Fever doth variformly disturb the blood and discolour it with strange faces But these masks cease the Fever being taken away Truly I am wont to compare the Lookers into the blood unto those who give their judgement concerning Spanish Wine and who give their thoughts in beholding of the urine But they will say If putrefaction be not in the blood why then doth purely red blood leap out of a vein at the third and not at the first turn or at the first and not at the third turn But that argument at least convinceth that one part of the blood is more and sooner disturbed than another not the whole or all at once For it is certain that nature tends by degrees in a lineal path unto the perfection appointed for her Therefore that the blood nigh the heart is more pure than that which is about the first shop thereof Therefore they say and err therein That a Tertian as well as that which is Continual as that which is renewed by Intervals consisteth of yellow Choler a Quartan of black Choler as also a Quotidian of phlegm but putrified ones For why was it of necessity to suppose these Humours the which I have elsewhere demonstrated to be feigned ones to be putrefied seeing they confess a non-putrefied Sunochus to be continual and more cruel than the three aforesaid Fevers Which particulars surely if they are compared with the definition of Fevers proposed now of necessity the blood in every Sunochus or continual Fever and the vital spirit in a diary Fever shall putrifie the life remaining to wit they shall attain the bound of putrefaction And then seeing the Schools confess that such putrified humours do not consist in the sheath of the heart and that therefore they are not primarily inflamed in a Fever and so by consequence that putrefaction is in vain required for a feverish heat to be kindled in the heart If therefore putrefied Humours do enflame the spirit in the heart from far that thing shall by every law of nature be made nigh before afar off and they shall the rather or more fully enflame all the blood that lyes between the heart and themselves with the heat of Putrefaction and so all Fevers shall of necessity afford a putrefied continual Fever Wherefore neither shall a Quartan Ague stop its course and repeat its return if the same putrefied matter thereof waiteth safe in the Spleen for a years space Gangrens certainly teach me that nothing of a putrefied matter for every putrefied matter is dead can long persist without a further Conragion of it self Neither do I apprehend how the Archeus of life it self shall putrefie that it may give satisfaction to Galen for a diary Fever But if they understand a diary Fever to be the daughter of that Putrefaction which at length is implanted in the spirit of life But thus all Fevers in the Schools should be Diaries Again If a diary or one dayes Fever be the daughter of Putrefaction therefore Putrefaction is presupposed to be
having Remedies besides the Diminishers of the body and strength all which I will peculiarly touch at For indeed according to the consent of Galen in every Fever a Hectick one excepted cutting of a vein is required Therefore for the Schooles and custome of this destructive Age I state this Syllogisme Phlebotomy or Bloud-letting is unprofitable wherefoever it is not shewn to be necessary or where a proper Indication is wanting unto it But in Fevers it is not signified to be necessary Therefore Bloud letting in Fevers is unprofitable The Major proposition is proved because the end is the chief Directress of Causes and the Disposer of the meanes unto it Wheresoever therefore the end sheweth not a necessity of the meanes things not requisite are in vain provided for that end especially where from a contrary betokening it is manifest that the bloud is not let out without a losse of the strength such meanes therefore are rashly instituted which the end shews to be vain unprofitable and to be done with a diminishment of the strength But the Minor proposition Horatius Augenius de monte Sancto profesly proveth in three Books Teaching with the consent of the Vniversities That a Plethora or a too much fullnesse of the veines alone that is the too much abounding of Bloud is the betokener of Phlebotomy nor that indeed directly for the curing of Fevers but for the Evacuation of a fullnesse But a Plethora never subsisteth in Fevers therefore Bloud-letting is never betokened in Fevers and by consequence this is altogether unprofitable The Conclusion is indeed new and Paradoxal yet true Which thing therefore for that cause shall be therefore to be proved by many Arguments Galen himself proves the Subsumption Teaching That at every fit of Fevers more Choler is pufft away than is generated in two dayes In the mean time the other members do not cease to be nourished with accustomed bloud That is besides the consuming Caused by the Fever they also consume their own allotted quantity of wonted Bloud The which in the foregoing Chapter from the humour cast up by vomit I have reduced into a Computation But now that very thing is to be pressed with a greater connivance Wherefore if in him that is in good health eight ounces of bloud are daily made it must needs be that as many also are daily spent for nourishment or otherwise that a man should soon swell up into an huge heap What if therefore eight ounces of bloud do daily depart from him that is in good health certainly the Fever shall consume no less Therefore seeing there is none or but a little appetite and digestion of meats and sanguification of necessity also too much abundance of blood if there were any at the beginning shall fail presently after two dayes and the betokening thereof shall cease for the letting forth of bloud in him that hath a Fever But that presently in Fevers there is no longer a Plethora as many do see this as do undergo ulcers by a Cautery To wit the which presently after Fevers are dryed up nor do they afford their wonted pus But first of all we must take notice that the Strength or Faculties can never offend through abundance not so much as in Mathuselah so neither doth good bloud offend through a too much abounding because the vital Faculties and Bloud are Correlatives Because according to the Scripture the Soul or vital Spirit is in the blood By Consequence therefore there can never be a Plethora in good blood But on the other extream I have demonstrated in a foregoing Chapter That corrupt blood is never conteined in the veines therefore if there be ever any possible plethora of the veines that ought to consist in a middle state of the bloud between a corrupted and very healthy one whether we consider the same state of decay and neutrality or next as it is mixed of both at leastwise the Galenists may remember that good proceeds from an entire cause but evil from every defect And so that this state of the blood is not called a Plethorical or abounding one but a Cacochymical one or state of a bad juyce Nor that it desires the cutting of a vein but rather a Purgation which may selectively draw forth the bad but leave the good And so that by their Positions it is not yet proved That the cutting of a vein is in any wise betokened For according to the truth of the matter I have already shewn before That a state of ill juyce doth not consist in the veins the which indeed is onely a disturbing of the Bloud for the easing whereof an exhausting of the troubled bloud is not so much signified as a taking away of the affect of the Disturber Especially because it is the more pure bloud which passing through the Center of the heart hath obtained its own refinement and therefore that which is drawn out of the Elbow and is first brought forth shall be the more pure but the more impure bloud shal be left within Furthermore since it is now manifest that a Plethora is wanting in Fevers which may a require a letting out of blood and that thing the Schools have after some sort smelt out they have instead of an indication or betokening sign substituted some co-indications or mutual betokenings as if they were of an equal weight with a sutable indication in nature and out-weighing a contrary indication the which after another manner surely seeing it is drawn from a conserving of the strength ought wholly to obtain the Chief-dome altogether by that Title that every Fever is quickly safely and perfectly curable without cutting of a vein For indeed for all so divers putrefactions of retaining Humours and Fevers issuing from thence they presently make use of the one only succour of cutting of a vein because it abundantly as they say succours and is stopped at pleasure By which distinction at least they after some sort defame their own laxative medicines For they say although the cutting of a vein by a natural and one only indication of it self seems to be required by reason of a Plethora yea nor that it doth properly take away putrified humours yet it cooleth it unloads the Fardle of the veins reneweth or refresheth the strength takes away part of the bad Humour together with the good and by derivation and revulsion stops pacifies and calls away the flux of humours made unto the nest of putrefaction wherefore nature feeling refreshment is the more prosperously and easily busied about the rest They are good words saith the Sow while she eats up the penitential Psalms but they do not profit a hunger-starved swine Such indeed are co-indications whereby they perswade the destruction of Mortals to be continued and whereunto I will give satisfaction in order But before all I will have it to be fore-admonished that although in a more strong and full body there is not a notable hurt by letting out the blood yea although the sick may
oft-times seem presently to be eased and also to be cured yet cutting of a vein cannot but be disallowed seeing that Feverish persons are more successfully cured without the same For however at the first or repeated cuttings of a vein the cruelty of Fevers shall oft-times slacken Surely that doth no otherwise happen than because the Archeus much abhorreth a sudden emptying of the strength and an undue cooling and so neglects to expell the Feverish matter and to perform his office But they who seem to be cured by blood-letting surely they suffer a relapse at least they obtain a more lingering and less firm health which Assertion the Turks do prove and a great part of the world who with me are ignotant of the opening of a vein because it is that which God is no where read to have instituted or approved of yea not so much as to have made mention thereof But as to what belongs unto the first scope of a co-betokeming sign which is called Cooling Truly the letting out of the blood cooleth by no other title than as it filcheth from the vital heat But not that it obtains a coolifying and positive power In which respect at least such a cooling ought to be hurtful Why I pray in a Hectick Fever do they not open a vein Doth not that Fever want cooling or doth it cease to be a Fever But blood is wanting in Hecttick Fevers wherefore through defect of blood and strength there is an easie Judgement of hurt brought by Phlebotomy which otherwise the more strong faculties do cover In the year 1641. Novemb. 8. the body of Prince Ferdinand brother to the King of Spain and Cardinal of â—oledo was dissected who being molested with a Tertian ague for 89 dayes dyed at 32. years of age For his heart liver and lungs being lifted up and so the veins and arteries being dissected scarce a spoonful of blood flowed into the hollow of his breast Indeed he shewed a liver plainly bloodless but a heart flaggy like a purse For but two dayes before his death he had eaten more if it had been granted unto him He was indeed by the cuttings of a vein purges and leeches so exhausted as I have said yet the Tertian ceased not to observe the order of its intention and remission What therefore hath so great an evacuation of blood profited or what hath that cooling plainly done unless that those evacuaters were vain which could not take away so much as a point of the Fevers Is that the method of healing which makes a Physitian whom the Almighty hath created and commanded to be honoured by reason of the necessity of him If that method knows not how to cure a Tertian ague in a young man to what end shall it conduce Is that the art whereof the infirm and unhealthy person stands in need I wish and wish again that that good Prince had not made use of it who when the returning from Cortracum was saluted by the Senate of Bruxells recovering from the agony of death by reason of the diminishments of his blood and strength then walked in good health about his Chamber Physitians therefore abhor to expose their feverish persons to the encountring of cold things to wit whereby they might presently and abundantly experience the vertue of cooling things by a manifest token because they put not much trust in their own rules of Heats and Coolers For since it is already manifest that the whole heat in a Fever is that of the very vital spirit it self it follows also that the cooling which is made by cutting of a vein is meerly that of the vital spirit and together also an exhausting of the blood and an impoverishment thereof For if a Fever be to be cured as a distemper by cutting of a vein as a cooling remedy Alas the contrary is manifest by the exhausting of all the blood out of the Prince the Infanto of Spain In whom as yet but the day before his death the Tertian Ague kept its fits â—o great cooling not hindering it and if others intens a curing even in a Quotidian only by cold which they writ to be kindled of putrified Phlegm at leastwise that cooling should be far more easily obtained by exposing the sick half naked unto the blowing of the North or West wind or by hanging him up in water or a deep well until he should testifie that he were sufficiently cooled For so they should prefently and abundantly perfect a cure if their conscious ignorance did not within condemn their own feverish essence of heat Therefore a Fever is not a naked Tempest of heat but an occasional vitiated matter is present for the expelling whereof the Archeus being as it were wroth doth by accident inflame himself The which as long as it shall be neglected in the Schools the curings of Fevers will be rash destructive and conjâ—ctural therefore none shall owe any thing worthy of giving thanks unto Physitians seeing they are cured by the voluntary goodness of nature and I wish they were not put back by Physitians But unto the argument of curing by sudden cold the Schools will answer that there is a perilous departure from one extream unto another By which excuse of their ignorance they stop the mouth of the people as if they spake something worthy of credit not taking notice that they therein contradict themselves while as they praise and prefer the cutting of a vein before laxative medicines chiefly for that end because it presently and abundantly succours by cooling and therefore they have given it the surname of a speedy and universal succour For they constrain their own impotency founded in ignorance unto the will of a Maxim badly understood and worse applied For truly it is not be doubted but that it is lawful presently to cut the halter of him that is hanged that he who was deprived of air may enjoy it as soon as may be Likewise that it is lawful presently to place him that is drowned in a steep scituation that he may cast back the water out of his lungs That it is lawful I say to draw any one presently to the bank and that it is lawful presently to free a wound from its indisposition and to close it with a scar For so very many wounds are closed in one only day because a solution of that which held together wants nothing besides a re-uniting of it self That it is lawful presently to repose a broken or diplaced bone Likewise that it is lawful in the Falling Sickness Swooning Fainting Cramp to recall the weak as soon as one can presently to loosen the detainments of excrements and presently to stop the excessive flux of womens issues For neither must we think that nature rejoyceth in her own destruction and that from an healthy state she indeed le ts in sudden death but refuseth a remedy which may suddenly repell a disease otherwise she should not do that which in things possible is most exceeding
be drawn from a more ignoble part unto a more noble one For the more crude and dreggish bloud is in the Meseraick veins but the more refined bloud is that which hath the more nearly approached unto the Court of the Heart For otherwise Nature as undiscreet had placed the chief Weapons of Parricide nigh the Fountain of Life Seeing therefore the matter of a Fever floats not in the veins nor sits nigh the Heart Fat be it to believe that that is fetch'd out or moved from its place by the cuttings of a vein however divers coloured blood be sometimes wiped out by the repeated emissions of bloud It is therefore a cruel Remedy if unto the place of the bloud let forth other bloud shall come from remote parts For so the contagion of one place should be dispersed into the whole body and unto the more noble parts and otherwise there is an easie co-defilement in things or parts that have a co-resemblance Lastly if the Errours of the Heathens being once renounced Modern Physitians would have respect unto the Life of their Neighbour verily they should know that the devices of Revulsion are vain that it is a pernicious wasting of the Treasure of bloud and strength that no hurt doth insult from the bloud within the veins but onely from hostile and forreign excrements that God also hath made sufficient Emunctories or avoyding places of any filths whatsoever neither that there is need of a renting of the veins for a victory over Fevers CHAP. V. Purging is Examined 1. The first confession of the Schooles concerning their purging Medicines 2. The deceits of Corrections 3. Another confession 4. A third 5. Shamefull excuses 6. A fourth confession 7. A frequent History 8. Deceit in the name 9. It is explained what it is for a laxative medicine to be given while the humours do swell or are disturbed and how full of deceit it is 10. A History of the repentance of the Author 11. A conclusion drawn from thence 12. Nine remarkable things for the destruction of the Schools 13. A History of a certain chief man 14. A fifth confession 15. An examination of the aforesaid particulars 16. A sixth confession 17. Vain and foul privy shifts 18. Weapons retorted from a seventh confession 19. An argument of poyson from stink 20. A mechanical proof 21. The same out of Galen 22. A proof from the effect 23. The Schooles oppose their own Theoremes 24. The suppositions of the Schooles being granted none could dye of a Fever and it should be false that purging things are not to be given in the beginning of Fevers 25. That this Aphorisme includes a deceit and an unadvisednesse of Hippocrates 26. Coction in Diseases is the abuse of a Name THE Schooles acknowledge that their Purgers even unto Agarick have need of Correction because they enforce Nature And I wish those Corrections were not sluggish nor blockish and that they did rather serve for obtaining the innocency of a Medicine than for a gelding thereof For truly a gelding of the Faculties in a Medicine includes a deceit To wit least the sick should understand that a poyson subsisteth therein For the Tamed Remedies of the shops are like an Houshold Wolf who when an occasion is given him while he is trusted in returns unto the wonted cruelty of his own Nature For from hence neither dare they to call their corrected purging Medicines by their proper Etymologie To wit They vail Scammony with the name of Diagridium as also they mask Coloquintida with the name of Alhandal In the next place Laxative Compounds in Dispensatories war under the dissembled Title of a Captain or Leader In the mean time They cannot deny but that in every solutive Scammony and Coloquintida are the two pillars whereby the whole Edifice of Purging is supported and the which being dashed in pieces all of whatsoever was superstructed thereon falls to the ground Next The more mild Solutives as Manna Cassia Senna Rhubarb c. have given up their names unto those two Standard-defending Leaders The Schooles confess I say That a laxative Medicine being administred it is no longer in the power of the Physitian and so they hereby defame their Laxatives and therefore put them behind Phlebotomy For if a laxative Medicine shall commit any the more cruel thing They accuse either the Dose or the Correction or the fluid nature of the sick or the Apothecary or his Wife least otherwise the name should perish from a Solutive Medicine Yet in the mean time will they nill they they confess that all Solutives do enclose in them a consuming poyson and they in the Proverb call Aloes alone harmlesse But the others are to be administred with an additament Correction and Circumspection as neither rashly nor force-timely For of late a judicious man of the privy Councel of Brabant that he might preserve his health had taken a usual Pill of washed Aloes To wit gelded or Corrected wherof while he found not the effect he declares it to a Physitian passing by who blames the sluggishnesse of the Aloes and so turns picron or bitter into pigrum or slow I will prescribe saith he corrected pils of greater vertue The which being taken he miserably perished because it was in vain endeavoured by him for a whole week that he might restrain the unbridled effect of the Laxative Remedy For he that he might free himself from a future Disease perished by the deceit of the Physitian and left eleven Children From whence it is first manifest That it is as well free for a loosening Medicine to Tyrannize on him that is in good health as otherwise on a sick person To wit it is lawfull under the name of a Physitian and deceit of a purging Medicine to prey even upon the life of Princes without punishment Because the earth covers the cruel ignorance of Physitians A Purgation or purifying is indeed a Specious Title but full of deceit And I wish that the purgatory of the Physitian were able to expiace Diseases I wish in as much as this is not done that the sick would not expect a purgatory Medicine from the Hand of Physitians Surely it is a thing most worthy of lamentation what they say That a Laxative Medicine being administred before the Coction of a Disease the same humours indeed are drawn forth for they will have loosening things to draw out one humour and not another by Selection or Choyce which otherwise after the aforesaid Concoction of the Disease is notwithstanding unprofitable yea and hurtfull Neither yet do they from thence hitherto learn That the humours brought forth by Laxative things are not Humours nor offensive ones for otherwise at both stations of the Disease and from the things supposed by one onely Laxative they ought of necessity equally to profit if they detract from the same offensive matter but a meer putrefaction and a meer Liquor corruptively dissolved through the poyson of the Laxatives And by so much the more
stomack Because in very deed the whole body as long as we live is transpirable and exspirable according to Hippocrates For I have elsewhere demonstrated that the Lungs and Diaphragma or Middriffe are on every side passable with pores in live bodies The which while Endemicks pass thorow and smite the Bought of the stomack they oft-times infect the last nourishment of the stomack I have said that a Diary Fever together with a Hectick Fever do sit in the stomack But the Plague differs from other malignant Fevers in this that since it doth not sit in feverish filths as neither in the blood of the veins it affects only the vital spirit it self with its odour for that cause also it of necessity enters in and goes out with the air through the pores of the Diaphragma and so that it tends thus primarily unto the stomack not being able to proceed further by a local motion it there makes its own impression to stick in the nourishment of the stomack From whence there are presently Vomiting Head-ach Drowsinesses Doatages Swoonings and those things which obtain a Dominion over the mouth of the stomack being vitiated CHAP. XI The Occasional Causes of Fevers 1. The occasional cause of Fevers is not the true containing cause thereof 2. Why an occasional cause is divers in its self 3. A two-fold occasional cause 4. The venal blood is a composed and simple natural thing and therefore not made up of unlike parts 5. The first occasional and material cause of Fevers 6. A second matter 7. The ignorance of the Schools concerning the tincture of the urine 8. Why the urine is the more slowly tinged 9. The false Judgements of the Schools concerning Vrines 10. A Fable of the Schools concerning the gauly tincture of the Vrine 11. An Argument of the Schools from the ignorance of Galen 12. VVhat should more rightly be collected from thence 13. The Archer of a doating delusion where he inhabites 14. VVhy in a doatage a remedy is not to be applied to the head 15. From whence all Apostemes are bred 16. The injury of the Schools 17. VVhence the cloud that swimmeth in the Vrine is 18. A good Physitian why he neglects a Crisis 19. VVhat coction in Fevers may be THE Schools shew forth a foul and miserable yea and mournful spectacle every-where easie to be seen That since a Fever openly talks with us yet they have known it nothing the more for so many Ages as neither do they know radically to expel it Because Fevers are now not any thing more successfully cured after two thousand years experiments and dissections than in times past from the first For indeed whatsoever is the cause of the cause that very thing also is the cause of the thing caused Wherefore the occasional cause being uncessantly present and entertained within which others call the conteining one is the cause of the internal cause of Fevers which I will by and by declare of the Fever it self and of accidents sprung from thence For if the occasional cause were the true containing cause and matter of the Fever it self truly there would never be any intermitting Fever For the essential causes being supposed which are requisite to a Fever the Fever also is of necessity present But the occasional cause is present from the beginning even to the end the which if it were the containing cause and did effectively contain the essence of a Fever in its own bosome the Fever also should be present as long as that containing cause is But the Consequence is false therefore also is the Antecedent That is that cause is not the containing one and of the intimate Essence of Fevers but external unto it and therefore occasional And seeing in the variety of the occasional cause a reason consisteth whereby it is either continual or intermitting Also why it is more or less troublesome swifter or slower according to its expulsion It must needs be that not one only seminal occasion of one corruption is to be granted Since therefore the definition of things is most fitly setched from their constituting and essential causes even as elsewhere concerning logical matters I have therefore appointed a two fold matter of the occasionall cause both indeed new and hitherto unheard of Unheard of I say because I am he who do not acknowledge both the Cholers phlegm and venal blood as the constitutives of the blood neither do I admit of them in nature Even as I have demonstrated by many arguments in a peculiar treatise concerning humours neither especially do I grant the blood to be made up of many unlike parts As neither if it were constituted from thence that it could ever immediately returne back into its own constitutive parts neither that it could shew those in the blood let out of the veines and give an occasion of errour to the Schooles Since there is not granted an immediate return from a privation unto the former habite Wherefore it is a frivolous thing to argue that there are four humours in the blood that sometimes three and sometimes four are seperated from thence by the corruption of it self which question as I have elsewhere described as sufficiently sifted it is sufficient here to have touched at by the way For truly I have judged that no aide is to be fetched from those humours in this place But in the last digestion of the nourishment while the solide parts endeavour to assimilate nourishment to themselves out of the blood it happens that degenerate alterations and as it were wrong or rash abortions are very often made This degenerate nourishment therefore undergoing various abusive marks of its changing doth also beget diverse Fevers And those first and supposed humours prepared out of the Chyle and Chyme or cream do far differ from the true nourishment of the solide parts degenerating through the transchanging of the blood Therefore Fevers arise not from both the cholers phlegme venal blood and spirit being putrified but from secondary juices not indeed putrifying but degenerated in time of assimilation But they degenerate through the admixture of a forreign matter or from a forreign impression or next through the errour of the Archeus being wrothfull or called aside Moreover another occasional cause of Fevers I derive from elsewhere To wit that because we undoutedly believe by Anatomy that the Meseraick veines being dispersed through the whole conduite of the intestines do suck whatsoever liquid thing the Archeus also hath known would be familiar unto him The aforesaid veines therefore draw a certain juyce out of the utmost parts of the gut Ileon and the more grosse bowells nigh adjoyning to these But when there is no longer any nourishment in the same place but rather a certaine dung they suck unto them a Being hitherto unnamed wherefore I ought to give it a new name Therefore I call it Drosse or liquide dung being profitable in nature for its own ends Because it resisting the discommodities of the urine therefore also
are desirous to learn I will willingly reach forth my hand For Paracelsus as the first so laughed at humours after an Helvetian manner that he mocked the Galenical also the Arabian Physitians with the surname of Humourists Notwithstanding he himself being oftimes unconstant slides unto humours and complexions as not being as yet sufficiently grounded in his own positions In the mean time the Galenical Schools would now and then have the four granted qualities of Elements to be opposed as solitary distempers and for the most part again they have feigned distempers to be banished with the abundance of the like humours And whenas they gloried that they held the Hare by the ears they being deluded with the easiness of the fiction first became a laughing stock because they defiled the faculty of healing with absurdities Being first of all unmindfull of their own discipline that there is not granted an immediate return from the privation of a Forme unto an habite yet have they through a rash perswasion affirmed that flesh is constituted of four humours and that this flesh is again to be resolved into the same four For they decree that the Chyle is framed of the meats being indeed homogeneal or simple in kind in the stomach the which notwithstanding the excrements of the belly being seperated should alwayes be made four humours besides the urine by the one only action of sanguification but never one only two three five or more And that thing they have thus determined of as being rashly misled by a quaternary of Elements From whence at least wise it followes that this fourfould re-dividing of one Chyle doth not derive it self from the diverse varieties of meats but that it altogether essentially dependeth on the very proper perfect act of sanguification Which thing wants not its own absurdity To wit that of one natural act there should be a fourfold scope essentially differing But the Quaternion of Elements being already elsewhere cast out with the combating concourse of the same that fourfoldnesse of Humours hath indeed been supposed and subscribed unto but not yet proved hitherto For for the furnishing of so great and so pernicious fables the Schools have been snatcht away by two swelling arguments the which if thou shalt but a little presse they will pour forth a stinking vapour but not the juice of truth The first whereof is fetcht from four Elements that they may constraine the blood against its will under a quaternary or fourfold number of Humours unto the obedience of three only Elements existing although the blood it self be materially made of one of them only As if every one of them which they believe to arise from the wedlock of the Elements ought therefore of necessity to have four Heterogeneal or different kind of parts agreeable to as many their own Elements Surely I have elsewhere every way shewn that some bodies have nothing of a diversity not so much as in salt Sulphur and Mercury but that others do at length produce only two diversities of kinds for neither is there a stronger reason why a flint may be reduced into one only and at at least a similar salt than the blood can of necessity be seperated into four Humours For from hence it is made manifest that the reason of a feigned Quaternary of Elements is from a former cause in respect of a Quaternery of Humours in the blood and no where else But the second and chief argument of the Schools for a Quaternary of Humours is not a certain formall reasoning but a naked and miserable inference established by a similitude or like thing For they say In Milk there is found Whey Cheese and Butter That is three distinct things Therefore of necessity in the blood there shall be alwayes and constitutively four because they observe four diverse things or parts in the venal blood of some persons the which indeed the soul the Chambermaide of the desires hath by much labour and the helpes of fiction divided into four diversities For they oft-times take notice of the water swimming upon the blood and because it is yellow and somewhat pale they therefore name it yellow choler or gaul although it be not bitter and wanteth the essential property of the gaul But the sediment thereof about the bottom being sometimes the more weighty and black they cal black choler but in the midle space they note red blood wherein while they observe white fibers or threds the Mothers of a gellyie coagulation they have called those Phlegm For the vein of the ham of maides being cut those fibers appear in lukewarm water like unto spiders webs which they have called Phlegm But first it had behoved them to have discerned that the unfit similitude of Milk and blood doth teach or urge nothing Because the water swimming one the blood is not the fatnesse of Cream swimming on the Milk wherefore either the agent or matter is unlike or both And therefore in so great an unlikeness of both that a necessity of Humours in the blood is not rightly founded For the carelesse Schools do not take notice that a diversity of kind is bred in the blood after that it hath disposed it self unto corruption that is soon to come thereunto Therefore that Hetrogeneity accuseth indeed an unlikenesse of contents made in death but in no wise therefore a necessary connexion of lively Humours For what will they say of that blood which wholly wants all whey Or the which being uniformly coagulated throughout its whole is red Which is a frequent thing after many sweats and abstinence from drink Shall therefore the Whey swimming upon the blood the urine and sweat left in the blood be Sunonymals with choler and gaule And something that is one with the very essence of the blood I indeed have hitherto seen in herbs on only clarified juice as likewise I acknowledge one onely blood the constitutive Humour of us To wit I professe a simple sanguification and one only action of one Liver and a single Chyme or concocted juice to be made of an undistinct Creame or Chyle and by one onely ferment of the stomach which sanguification or making of blood I know to be a meer formal transchanging of nourishments but in no wise only an applying together of Heterogeneal parts alone For neither although part of the chyle be turned into urine is an unlikenesse of the agent the Liver to be blamed but only the uncapacity of the receiver For neither therefore have they dared to embrace the urine for a fifth Humour For although a part of the urine materially remaineth in the blood yet it is not of the nature of the blood even as Whey in Milk is after another manner an essential part of the Milk The water therefore swimming above which they confesse to be sweat Whey and a remainder of the urine and so believe it to be wholly excrementous they shamefully compare sometimes to the Buttery part and that which swims on the Milk
in separating And so seeing both Cholers accuse of a necessary access in a just temperament as they call it these could never be made fit for nourishment Since moreover we are daily nourished by the same things whereof we consist to wit of a temperate and lively seed refusing both Cholers And there shall be the like reason for both Cholers which there is of Phlegm That if this be perfected into the blood within the veins Choler shall no less be made blood in the Arteries For if Phlegm be changed into blood out of a natural proper and requisite shop much more shall yellow Choller be fit that in the heart it may degenerate into the more yellow blood of the Artery and into the spirit of life and the heart shall be the restorative shop of a gawly excrement But alas how miserable an Argument is it while as the blood let out of the veins disposeth it self to corruption sometimes two three or more liquors are seen therefore there are as many constitutive Humours of us For blood is wholly changed into milk and then after its corruption it hath only three subordinate parts to wit Whey Cheese and Butter nor ever more For sometimes it is totally coagulated in the Dug into a hard swelling in the form of Cheese now and then it wholly passeth over into a white yellow somewhat green c. corrupt Pus Sometimes into a pricking gnawing watery liquor as in the Disease called Choler Ulcers c. Elsewhere also it totally departs into a salt Wheyish liquor as in the Dropsie and many Hydragogal or water-extracting Medicines Oft-times also it waxeth wholly black like pitch as in blood that is chased out of the veins in a Gangreen c. but frequently into an ashie and stinking clay of slime as in Fluxes At another time also it wholly passing over into a yellow poyson shews or spreads forth the Jaundise in which manner also it boasts it self in those that are bitten with a Serpent Elsewhere also the blood is without the separation of an Heterogeneal matter wholly changed into sores issuing forth matter like honey called Melicerides into swellings of the Neck or Arm-holes conteining a matter in them like Pulse c. And in the Pâ—ssing-Evil the blood is totally changed into a milky liquor Even as under a Tabes or Consumption of the Lungs it wholly passeth into a yellowish spittle Are therefore perhaps as many Humours to be constituted in the blood as there are beheld degenerations thereof And shall there be as many Liquors in Rain-water as there are things growing out of the Earth For the blood is in us like unto water neither had it need of divers seeds in the Liver that it may be one only equally nourishable Humour But in the last Kitchins it attaineth its own requisite diversities whereby it performeth the office of nourishing And so it should in its beginning in vain exceed in divers seeds and diversities of kind the which at length ought totally to be Homogeneally reduced into one only glewie white and transparent nourishable Sperm or Seed for the support of the similar parts or to remain red for the flesh of the Muscles and substance of the bowels Wherefore I stedfastly deny That the blood as long as it liveth or is detained in the veins although after the death of a man is coagulated and by consequence that it bath integral unlike parts with any Heterogeniety of it self But that all diversity in the blood is made only by the death or destruction of the same Therefore the diversity of Humours is the daughter only of death but not of life Neither is that of concernment that Excrements do now and then occur in the body which dissemble the countenance of blood To wit from whence they are made by degeneration For Urine is no longer wine even as neither are corrupt Pus or Snivel or spittles as yet parts of the blood Because Excrements are no longer that which they were before their corruption Because every thing assumes its Essence and name from the bound of transmutation For what doth it prove if blood by Phlebotomy separates water or other soils in time of its corruption if the same water be thereupon neither Gaul nor Choler nor bitter and wants the properties of Gaul Or what a rash belief is that Water swims on dead blood Therefore it it is gauly Choler which under a false taste dissembles the bitterness of Choler For that Water swimming on the blood is not an entire part thereof nor of its Essence or Contents or more near akin to the Blood than a Chariot in respect of a man sitting therein It is therefore to be grieved at that for so many ages none hath ever tasted down that water but that they all have engraven their names on the trifles of their Ancestors that I say under a shew of healing the Schools have delivered the destructions of the sick under false Principles For truly Humours are destructive Ignorances sluggishnesses and shamefulnesses introduced by the Father of lies and celebrated by the loose credulity of his followers For although the bottom of the blood doth sometimes look the less red it shall not therefore be black Choler Even as neither is the sediment of the Urine Phlegm But while the life of the blood departed it s no wonder if all particular things which were kept in the unity of life do re-take the material conditions whereto they are obliged For the variety of soils in liquid bodies depends on a preheminency of weights Because they have a latitude in weight which after death become Heterogeneal or of a different hind and by degrees do hasten into a disorder of confusion For will a man that is of a sound judgement believe that Wine Ale and the juyces of herbs do lay aside their own black Choler at the bottom together with their sediment For what hath black Choler common with the heterogeneal substance of a sediment But as to the Colour every Aethiopian hath his Blood almost black but for the most part without whey yet none of them is Melancholy but all wrathful For the blood which by the encompassing air is presently cooled in the Basin waxeth more red than that which being sunk unto the bottom hath the longer continued lukewarm For this also is ordinary that any blood being chased out of the veins presently waxeth black in the body For whatsoever things do readily putrifie do easily admit of the companions of putrefaction and that part of blood doth sooner putrifie which hath the longer continued warm after its death Therefore neither is it a wonder that the part of the lower ground thereof becomes more intensly black But that black blood is not a separation of weight in the Blood and much less black Choler I have separated nine ounces of fresh Blood and that as yet liquide into Porâ—ingers One whereof I exposed to swim in cold water but the other part being equal to the former
I longer detained in a gentle lukewarmth And this shewed very much of black blood but the other not any thing A diversity of kind therefore in a dead liquour presently putrifying and putrifiable is a suitable sign of corruption And the which therefore neither hath a vital or seminal Beginning a sign as neither an Argument of its primitive composition For we are Originally composed of a vital seed and are resolued into a putrified and cadaverous watery Liquor The which also oft-times happens in part in living bodies What if the Blood of pale becomes red shall that therefore be ascribed to Phlegm Shall red Apples be more sanguine than pale ones Blackish plumms be more melancholy than whitish ones For Colours do not denote feigned Humours or Elements But they imitate the properties of the middle life and appointments of the seeds Thus is it Colours and Thicknesses in the matter are works of the seminal Archeus But not the confused testimonies of Humours being put or applyed together Have thou recourse unto the Book of the Vnheard-of Doctrine of Fevers That I have lookt into the Bloods of two-hundred Countrey healthy persons in one only morning which were remarkable in the aspect of colours and diversities of grounds For some of them resembled a blackish and constrained jelly being oft-times also throughly mixed with a greenish liquor and sometimes only lightly besprinkled therewith Also another Blood was watery throughout its whole Another was snivelly another was red in the bottom another rather in the top-part thereof a water swimmed upon another being cleer pale somewhat yellow the which elsewhere lay hid as shut up in the middle of the Blood Another Blood was poyntingly speckled and another of red became pale throughout its whole another was inclinable into a Pomegranate and another into a black Colour Even as lastly another was somewhat green throughout it pavements I take pity on the deceiveable inspection of Blood issuing out of the body and the accustomed Judgements from blood let out of the veins the fictions of Humours and the readie credulities of the sick For a divining beholder of the blood is presently busie to fore-tell from the conjecture of an Humour the name and properties of the peccant and super-abounding Humour and also the manners complexion inclination of the man the particular kind greatness and event of the lurking disease and moreover the kind of death yea and the dependency of fortunes But whichsoever of the Humours shall offend in the Table of the inspection of Blood flowing forth that is presently banished with a diminishment of the head and unless it shall forthwith after obey it is to be put to flight by an an infamous stool Because the Physitian hath the peculiar Guardians of their own Humours ready at hand which may bring them forth all severally bound and putrified For thus they mock the ignorant and in the mean time thus also the frequency of Visits is confirmed Because they have known from a fore-judging of what sort the white of an egg will be which by receiving of their solutive Medicine shall return putrified For even the most phlegmatick person amongst them if he hath used Rhubarb will void a yellow excrement and less tinged if he shall take Scammoneated Medicines but not a slimie or snivelly liquor such as is voided from the receiving of the Magistrals of Coloquintida for all the compositions of the shops are supported with Scammony or Coloquintida or both as it were with two Pillars Oft-times also whom this man judgeth to be Cholery another calls Sanguine but if they shall see one whom they esteem to be Phlegmatick to be once angry others also will presently contend that he is in a raging heat through Choler And Scammony being drunk one derides another if they be called apart because he hath drawn Choler so plentifully from a sanguine man and he secretly insinuates by that very thing that the greater reward is due unto him as being skilful in his art For in the truth of the matter fraud fruit connexed with deceit do flourish as oft as vain complexions and Humours being neglected and the betokening and aspect of the blood let out being disregarded it is fore-known from the poysonous property of the solutive Medicine received what kind of dreg every one is to cast forth Indeed a solutive Medicine with them is an asistant to the function of the Liver Because it frames the Humours which they will have it to do and shews them in a bravery brought forth at pleasure and that according to the fore-knowledge of an Imposture And they boast as it were from a three-legged stool that they have fore-told to the sick the colours and properties of the offending Humours to be brought forth and that those sick having gone to stool have answered in the divination unto their foreknown Sooth-saings Surely a wretched Doctrine it is and ignorance to be expiated by punishment because that person is most miserable who having taken a consumptive medicine hath suffered his blood to be exhausted under the mask of putrefaction But at leastwise it is a wonder that the Schools have passed by the excrementitious filths of the Ears For they are those which being yellow and bitter might afford a fresher remembrance and firmer belief of yellow and bitter Choler than the water which swimmes on the venal Blood There is now therefore in the Brain a little bag of Choler But these filths appear not for the nourishment of the brain but when the blood is consumed but the Gaul cannot remain in its former Being or Essence when the Blood is spent whereof it had been an entire part An aid therefore for Choler was fetcht from an excrement formally transchanged especially because it alone exhales through the ears in the shape of a smoaky vapour For by how much the deeper an Ear-picker is sent into the ear the less of those filths is shaved of They are therefore ridiculous and weak arguments as many as beget an hope for Humours The colours also of an excrement cast forth are the effects of a purgative medicine being drunk but not testimonies of the abounding or conformity of an elected and rejected humour These things are described at large concerning the Doctrine of Fevers in the Chapter of Solutives Sufficient for me is the testimony from the mouth of the Schools that among all loosening medicines Aloes is only unhurtful They are not innocent therefore who profess this and in the mean time cease not daily to make use of other hurtful Medicines not because they find those things which they teach to be hurtful to be healthful to the sick but because they find them to be profitable to themselves What do we and shall we do will some say for unless we now and then open a vein and provoke the Belly we stay at home and are made the scorn of the vulgar and the Fable of Stages For a little Book is fore-read in the Schools concerning
presently by the boyling up of the water that the salt doth again appear They have therefore supposed the same thing to happen in their own feigned Humours As if Choler being essentially unchanged should be changed sometimes into blood and at length into flesh and at the pleasure of the Physitian should by his solutive medicines return safe from thence But let us come to the hand Let the supposed yellow Choler be taken that swims on the blood let out of the veines let it be boyled in whatsoever degree of warmth or heat thou wilt yet there shall never be burnt cankered or leeky Choler made from thence and much lesse that sharp black Choler which they say doth Ferment earth The which if it be made in the Spleen therefore it is not a part of sanguification or of the blood But if it be made in the Liver with the other three of the same similar matter of the Chyle yet by diverse agents for seeing that there are in the Liver slender and most thin smal branches of veines buisied in a continual transmission of urine neither that the veines of the Liver have respect directly on the spleen I see not how black Choler being seperated from the Liver can be brought to the Spleen Especially where great plenty of urine and abundance of blood is carried upwards But both the Cholers ought with an opposite confusion to be carried downwards unto their own Colledges apart in so slender veines of the shop of sanguification The Black Choler therefore which they call excrementitious cannot be brought from the Liver but rather the spleen is nourished by splenetick veines and arteries according to the accustomed manner of other members Neither doth the Spleen live by a banished excrement neither is it a sink of the body and of the worst Humour For if the Spleen ought to draw black Choler from the Liver why is it not near to the Liver Why shall the Spleen alone among bowells be nourished with an horride excrement And whither at length shall it drive this superfluous pernicious superfluity Shall now the sink of the last excrement be thorow the stomach and the orifice thereof which is so noble and sensible Shall this malignant liquour thus suggest an appetite to the stomach For to what end shall a drosse be re-cocted having been already rejected in its whole kinde by banishment and its properties The stomach is granted to imitate the office of the heart was it therefore convenient that the stomach and the enclosed food thereof and thereby the whole family-administration of the whole body should be daily defiled with the contagion of a malignant excrement For were not that to have accused nature and the Creatour of unexcusable rashnesse from the beginning of the Creation Had not some little bag been fitter for seperating of those dregs if there were any Black Choler than that the Noble Bowel of the Spleen bearing so many arteries and the Noble Bowel of the stomach should be made the refuges of the worst excrement But with what weapon do the Schools defend so great doatages Truly they say That sometimes a black sharp juice is seen to be cast forth by vomite the which falling on the earth would lift up the same in manner of a ferment or leaven Whence they have consequently gathered many absurdities 1. That that sharp or four excrement ought from its Colour to be called Melancholy or Black Choler 2. That it is sometimes made from its own proper matter yet oftentimes from Yellow Choler being re-cocted 3. But it is not as yet known of whether matter as neither the cook-rome of that dish Since otherwise Yellow Choler could not without confusion be derived unto the strange Inn of the spleen 4. That Choler which they will have to be the hottest of humours and fiery they say is by cocture reduced into an earthy cold and dry Humour 5. From a Watery and Yellow Humour into a black one 6. From most bitter Gaul into a sharp and fermenting one 7. Why therefore is Yellow Choler Gaul I say never recocted into black Choler in its own little bag Why doth it beg another port for this coction Was there daily need of the re-cocting of Yellow Choler if by re-cocting it hastens into a worse state Why doth not nature which alwayes of possible things makes that which is best expel that Choler with the excrementitious filths of the Belly which it changeth into worse by recoction But if the Spleen be the shop of Black Choler it hath not daily so great heat which may be sufficient for the roasting of Choler or if it be hot how of Yellow Choler which is hot shall a cold humour be made Especially since Galen will have hony hearkening unto diverse distempers to be changed into diverse Humours agreeable to those distempers As though a liquid decoction should loose the virtues of sugar and should put on opposite ones because it is thickned into a syrupe or Lohoch Wherefore hath Gaul hitherto by what artifice soever it hath been recocted never assumed a sharpnesse For by wat way or by what conducter or enforcer shall Yellow Choler being exactly mixt with the blood and Homogeneally co-arisen with it in the shop of the Liver be brought unto the forreign vessel of the Spleen that by roasting it may be made Black Choler in the same place if it be proper to the Spleen to lay up a Black and thick cold Earthy liquour For is the spleen for this end rich in so many Arteries that it hath not a Bowel like unto itself in so great a livelinesse of pulses to wit that it may coct Yellow Choler into Black by defiling in How shall Black Choler differ from Yellow if be made this something by one poynt of heat Is not that to commit the whole buisinesse of nature unto cocting heat the formal properties being excluded Shall there be room in the Spleen for forreign Choler sliding to it if it hath elsewhere supplied its own necessities from the veines and arteries Where therefore shall the Choler comming unto it be waited for in the entry and doores of the Spleen if a gratefull guest hath already beset the house Shall the Spleen bid farewell to the inbred blood of the veines and arteries that it may receive Choler comming unto it into it self to excoct it into a Black filth What if Choler be said to be roasted in the veines themselves seeing the heat of all the veines is only a moderate lukewarmth shall there not of the fiery liquour of Choler another cold one be made Neither is there any reason why the veines shall theeve away the services of fanguification from the Liver Nor also why it being first decocted Black in the veines it should afterwards be brought unto the Spleen as seeking for it self a new place of entertainment Neither at length can the veines for this cause be concluded to be the Cocters of Yellow Choler into black Lastly what is that fewel
the intestine or inward hope and rules of death diseases as also of health Which things notwithstanding have not stood believed God the Creatour so permitting it as the ordained principles of nature but by the inbred hatred and suggestion of the Divel and through a continued sluggishnesse of the schooles in subscribing Against all which one only argument ought to suffice to wit that I have removed the fire out of the number of Elements yea and the account of substances and have demonstred a co-mixture of Elements requisite for the constitution of bodies which are believed to be mixt to be impossible So as that none of a sound mind can or ought henceforward to admit of a necessitated equality of Humours with the Elements For the fallacy of Humours as well as of Elements hath been the more hidden or obscure and lesse passable in the people but that it hath been consented to by Learned and judicious men is to be had in compassion due to ones neighbour the which as it blowes away the credulities of the people so it accuseth the dulnesse of the Schools and their constant sluggishnesse or carelessnesse of diligently searching But because the mad toy of a Catarrhe hath likewise wondrously afflicted the world and I having often searched with my self into the occasions to wit from what fountain so great an hereditary blindnesse of the Schools and so inveterate an obstinacy in affirming might proceed at length I knew that the Ignorance of both the erring or wandring Ceepers had given an occasion of sliding into the miserabled and subscribed a confession of Humours falling down For truly any one being oft-times by the more cold aire suddenly stricken in his throat neck teeth or shoulders he also as credulous supposeth according to the assertions of Physitians that believed Humours do flow down unto the places smitten with cold When as otherwise cold as in its own nature it is repercussive should rather divert the fall of Humours from it self which are thought to be subservient to a Catarrh or rheum But much blood-letting and frequency of a solutive medicine at this day as they diminish the strength of the parts and dismisse it being diminished on posterity so it s no wonder indeed that the parts being smitten by the indrawing of an unjust aire or otherwise with an excelling injury of cold and being before weakened do easily suffer in the proper functions of their offices and digestions to wit that they do make manifest degenerate products as the cause of the malady bred in the same place but not defluxing thither from elswhere Although in the mean time those strange products have nothing common with the four supposed Humours and much lesse do they convince of a future flowing down of these The falshood whereof notwithstanding is of so great moment that the position of the asserted Humours cannot but include a dullnesse and unconsiderateness of the Schools in their own principles of healing with a most destructive abuse unto mortals of necessity Because that from thence the art of healing adisease health the necessity of life and at length of death do follow The which therefore I in this place for the benefit of my decieved neighbours will the second time more cleely explain But at first I will retake the position of the Schools wherein they feign the blood to be composed of four diverse and con-nexed Humours For we see after the contusion or bruising of a member first a swelling followes which presently for the most part looks red and afterward is changed of an Azure colour straightway after it looks black and blew afterwards it is black and last of all it waxeth yellow and is largly dispersed into Circles Therefore according to the Humourists that blood first passeth over into black Choler and this at length into yellow Choler And so the more liquid Humour should the more stubbornly resist and black Choler should be of a far more easie dispersing than yellow Choler And so black Choler should not be made of Yellow but plainly a after retrograde manner this should be changed into yellow Choler which is against the will of Galen who never knew black Choler to be returned into yellow But rather he writeth that all the blood doth by its alienations immediately and naturally contend into yellow Choler Hitherto hath the unheard of doctrine of Fevers in the Chap. of solutive medicines regard To wit where I have shewn that the blood of the veins is through its corruption diversly transchanged according to the poyson of the solutive medicines For truly that thing happeneth in bruises and blood being chased out of the veins and by degrees made destitute of the fellowship of life doth by little and little also hearken as well to the affects of the parts as to the various corruptions of the blood But not that the variety of dead excrements or unlikenesse of corruption can or ought to testifie a composition of the blood Yea truly the Schools suppose for the institutions of medicine that yellow Choler is one of the four constitutive Humours of the blood to wit a gawly and bitter one and therefore that that Yellow and bitterish Humour which is sometimes rejected by vomit is Choler it selfe yea Gaul it self and essentially co-incident in identity or samelinesse with the aforesaid Choler and original Gaul both which they contend to be daily framed out of the meats at the constitution of the blood To wit Choler for the composition of the blood but Gawl to be banished as an excrement under the Liver into its own sheath that it may from thence go forth through the filths of the paunch But that which is rejected by vomit is yellow bitter sometimes Leeky and of a cankered colour From hence indeed they prove that that very original Choler which swims on the blood that is let out of the veins ought will they nill they to be naturally bitter and Gauly and again on the other hand with a scantinesse of truth that the constitutive Choler of the blood ought of necessity to be bitter And moreover although that bitter excrement and which is rejected by vomit doth altogether differ from the Choler left in the blood after its separation from thence by reason as they say of its abundance excesse and meernesse attained in seperating yet in the essential and actual truth of the thing they will have it to be the same to wit as well that which is rejected by vomit and that which is as yet left for the composition and requisite integrity of the blood as that third which redounding from the daily food is brought unto the little bag of the Gaul and from thence they say to be carried forth for the tinging of the excrements as well of the belly as bladder The which to wit they seriously affirm to be one and the same Choler and meer single yellow Choler and Choler I say to be one only Humour in its root of the four constitutive
by the same agent of lukewarmth that both Cholers may answer to one earth Especially seeing now it is manifest that fire can no more be than it is of the number of Elements But if indeed three Humours are sufficient for three only Elements why have they invented four For that is to have been willing to compel nature according to the imagined errours of dreams and through rashnesse already accustomed to have confirmed heathenish follies without the gift of the light of healing But how will four square to three The which if they do not square let not likewise the Schools proceed henceforward stubbornly to defend the paganisme of the Antients For truly to be willing to cure by such lyes of pagans is to have introduced a destructive and erroneous practise unto ones own damnation and the calamities of ones neighbour If therefore black Choler appeareth not in the Liver to be remarkable by its properties nor in the spleen from yellow Choler being recocted or from roasted Gaul yea nor from a proper intention of nature nor likewise is a secondary nourishable Humour certainly there is no yellow as neither any black Choler Yea if both Cholers be a daily Humour and the constitutive parts of the blood and likewise if both Cholers are a daily superfluity designed unto their own sinkes Therefore also the dung shall by a like priviledge be an excrement not indeed of the meats but of the blood because it is tinged by yellow Choler But truly the offices of either Choler appointed by the Schools are too stupid To wit that nature shall of necessity be alwaies diligently carefull for the generating of yellow Choler for the tincture and bitternesse of the dung and urine although this tast be wanting to them both as also for a spur of the avoyding or expulsive faculty Again to what end ought the stomack to have been spurred up by yesterdays black Choler being first defiled with sharpness For truly the stomach is endowed nolesse with a proper expulsive faculty than with an attractive or retentive one Why likewise doth black Choler which from its own buttery is not only feigned to be bitter and sharp but to be also perniciously soure degenerate into soure that it may inject a spur into the stomach Since that which is soure according to the Schools rather bindes or restraines Let it therefore shame judicious men to tell of yellow Choler and Gauly and that it is required to be bitter for the tincture of the urine seeing that in urine there is never any bitternesse found And let it shame them in a matter of so great moment as is the Temple of the Holy spirit to maintain these Cholers for the composing parts of the blood And so to have directed the government and doctrine of non-beings unto ends impossible to be true For if as well the Gaul as the Spleen are receptacles defigned only for excrementitious filths let them blush while as they behold the Spleen alone to have more arteries than all the Bowels together And let them consider why there was need of so many Arteries for the sink of a most disgracefull superfluity And whether that be not to have accused the most glorious Authour of life of errour who had given more of internal life unto one sink of filths than to all the palaces of life being put together And who hath commanded the heart continually and without ceasing to labour that it may transmit sufficient spirits of life unto the Spleen by perhaps four hundred Arteries Had not otherwise the Arbitrator of nature better placed the life for more worthy uses And therefore he had commanded a little of black Choler to be bred and made while as according to Galen concerning hony these or those Humours do become few or many not from the complexion and goodnesse of the meats but from the endeavour of the Liver alone and had endowed pernicious filths with a far more ample passage and that far remote from a Noble bowel For the Creator seemes to be accused by the Schools as forgetfull of his ends That as the Bowels do together and at once empty out their whole yesterdays fardle so also that the Spleen might at one only turn empty out its stuff and preserve our body free from so great an enemy For if black Choler be an excrement truly by how much the sooner and cleaner it is evacuated by so much also the better Even as the bladder is not delighted with reteined urine as neither is the long gut delighted with excrementitious filths reteined in it for a treasure But they rejoyce to be freed from their fardle at one only turn and that with speed Therefore the Schools by consequence do wickedly accuse the Creatour to be guilty as that he was either ignorant of the aforesaid ends or as passing them by that he was unmindfull of them Because he was he who would have an hurtfull excrement daily to increase in abundance to be plentifully brought from far through the slender veins by a retrograde motion unto the opposite Spleen and by a strict channel to be unloaded into the stomach and least happily the sink thereof should be hurt by its guest he had appointed so many Arteries as chief over it that the whole Spleen might shew forth nothing besides a folding together of Arteries Fie let so great rashnesse of men depart And indeed they alike equally doate concerning the Gaul While they know not that the very liquor of the Gaul is a vital bowel no lesse than the membrane of the stomach the very sustance of the heart or the marrowy substance of the brain are And that thing at least they ought to have learned out of Tobiah as having long since perfectly taught it For Raphael which name of a spirit sounds the medicine of God commanded the Gaul to be transported but not the fish which otherwise had readily putrified But not the balsamical Gaul The Gaul therefore supplyed the room of a balsam beyond the condition of the blood flesh carcase bones of an ordinary bowel Because it holds the stern of life in us Even as elsewhere concerning digestions and the use of the Gaul Lastly they affirme a childish thing That since a sufficient quantity yea too much of Gaul for its own uses is generated neverthelesse they bid that the very little bag of the Gaul do remain the treasural buttery of that excrement to be always filled with that banished dreg Whereas otherwise if that should have the appearance of truth the Gaul ought daily and speedily to be unloaded after the manner of the bladder because it should rejoyce in its expulsion but not always to swel by deteining it unlesse it were a bowel Which due hastening of expulsion and unburdening since otherwise it is not seen in the Gaul as neither in the Spleen it is for an undoubted sign that the Gentiles have exposed their own fictions to sale unto the credulous and that they were not illuminated by
obtained a sprout Because there will be those who knowing no better shall see themselves as it were excluded from medicine and through indignation will shut the doores against truth knocking Others who have grown old in sluggishnesse being unapt to learn better things will despise others before themselves I will go against them For indeed when Physitians had seen the blood of the veins to be thickned into clots they considered that there was a certain red liquour and running and also another which in the beginning indeed flowed with the red liquour but that it soon setled and clotted into a jelly of its own accord For such was the primitive inspection and Anatomy of the blood It hath also been believed hitherto that the blood is at least that red and fluid liquour And it hath been unknown that although in the Meseraick veins fibers and the beginnings and rudiments of sperm or seedinesse were not yet obtained yet that true obtained not yet fibrous was in the same place because they might see the blood in the veins under the Liver not to differ by way of colour from the blood of the hollow vein above the Liver As soon therefore as the ham of a virgin being let down into water they let blood from her they with joy observed that the blood immediately tinged the water and moreover certain threddy fibers resembling as it were the liknesse of a cobweb whence the Schools without delay pronounced that phlegm was now manifestly to be seen And also our doctrine might be judged a brawling about a name if a fiber did not appear after the death of the blood onely For in a dead carcase also long after the colds of death the blood notwithstanding remaines un-coagulated in the veins and therefore so long is alive For milk hath not this phlegm because in the seperation of its heterogeneal parts it hath Cheese and clots wherewith it is constrained For I speak of milk and blood even as they are Beings existing entire in act they being not seperated through corruption But the Schools behold the blood while it is now a dead carcase being coagulated neither properly while it is that any longer the Etymology whereof it hath as long as it floweth No more then a dead man is a man with an estranging particular They also presently added a third Humour to the blood which should be the Gaul nor that as yet different from the Wheyie urine and sweat and the Water accidentally swimming on the blood neither have they heeded whether it were bitter and whether from a deserved title it possessed the properties of the Gaul or not It hath been sufficient and pleasing to them that it should be a watery liquour or barely of a clayie colour For the law of founding the Gaul was in the pleasure of the Prince of Physitians but not any longer of nature He fell into the meditation of four Elements yet a fourth Humour was wanting wherefore that their number might answer to the Elements which were thought to be four and to flow together well nigh unto every constitution of a body a fourth Humour was seasonably devised being therefore like unto earth and black the which while they long in vain enquired into they at length by a proper and rash boldnesse commanded it to proceed from a re-cocted fiery and Gauly liquour so as that Choler the name being retained was commanded to degenerate from yellow into black and from an invented fiery liquour an earthy one proceeded And its bitternesse for in live bodies they have commanded it to be presently scorched roasted and fried at pleasure with an equal importunity being roasted into an adust Gaul they have willed to assume a sharpness under the Lukewarmth of life and so of a fiery matter a cold and earthy product to be immediatly made by an act of the fire and lukewarmth The modern Schools in the mean time kick against it at unawares while as they accuse any distilled things of an heat borrowed from corruption of matter For as the former feigned black Choler which might fill up the number of Elements they at length prosecuted it with all conjectures although ridiculous ones For so they introduced yellow Choler by the jaundise and bitter vomitings for a foundation of nature and art Truly the liquour swimming on the blood let out of the veins since it shewed forth no bitternesse at all young beginners might even from thence have doubted of the nature of Gaul if they had but once only lightly tasted a finger dipped therein Wherefore when the Schools observed that by vomit yellow and also bitter excrements were frequently cast out yea that now and then they dissembled the juice of a Leek of disolved Verdigrease or the infusion of an Azure stone they determined of Choler more certainly than certainty it self Neither was it any longer to be disputed concerning it as neither against him that denied such principles but of the Choler of the Urine I will by and by speak under the inspection of urine and afterwards they boldly also affirmed that Choler to be in the urine in any dungs whatsoever and also in the filths of the ears and eyes But the jaundise hath more fully confirmed this doctrine because it is that which overspreads the mouth and spittle with bitternesse and stirs up the itching of a Citron-coloured skin Therefore it hath easily been believed that all these same effects are borrowed from the Gaul Yea they have affirmed that all such diseases of the skin are from adust Gaul and offending as wel in quantity as in quality and from the vice of the Liver in bringing forth more Gaul than is meet To wit by which circumstances they have supposed that they have sufficiently and over proved the existence and necessary association of Choler From hence afterwards arose a dream which conjoyned those four Humours together they remayning in their essence and that from a co-heaping thereof one only blood did from thence proceed and that every humour did again rebound from the connexion and composure of the blood as oft as it should please an Elementary strife to wit a distemper or at the pleasures of Laxative medicines I will now willingly declare openly mine own and those daily observations For first of all if the more plentifull hard and scarce sufficiently chewed meat be taken at supper on the morning following yellow vomiting and bitter in the shew of yolk of eggs or otherwise like Oyl pressed out of the seed of Rape roots frequently succeedeth From thence therefore first I conjectured that that was through an errour of the digestion of the Stomach but not from a vice of the Liver from a defect of Sanguification or the making of an abundance of Choler For truly oftimes meats badly digested and chewed being partly turned into an yellow balast are beheld to be cast up together with the same vomit And then I conjectured that the rules of Sanguification standing those yellow and bitter excrements were
or is joyned to water perisheth and is reduced into nothing For if the Schools had brought the vital spirit or sky-le air instead of fire they might have seemed worthy of pardon But they had rather become foolish in the dream of Epimenides than not to have found an Humour like unto fire that according to lying conceptions a quaternary of Humours might arise For for air they have feigned a priviledged Humour which should not be excrementitious after the manner of its two companions And therefore they now and then call these nourishing ones yet for the most part superfluous ones if not also liquid dungs But profitable ones especially in that respect not indeed as if they do nourish the spermatick parts besides the Cases of the Gaul-chest and Spleen but at least they are most miserable members which are constrained to be fed only with excrements and to yield to the priviledge of the kidneys But they note a ridiculous profit of yellow Choler that it spurs up the fundament and urine when as in the mean time pale urines are more incontinent than tinged ones Yea the belly of those that have the jaundise which they say is deprived of Choler by reason of a thy excrements is ordinarily loose enough But seeing the three Humours which are feigned to be in the blood differ not from themselves being rejected but only in the infamy of supersluity the radical moisture it self could not but be nourished by excrements if both the Cholers and phlegm were for nourishing But that a plenty of Choler which they say is daily may after some sort be supposed There is at least every other day in a Tertian ague a large quantity cast up by vomit also besides its daily consuming which they say is necessary for nourishing Yea the plenty of this feigned Choler more cleerly appears in the jaundise which they define only from a stoppage of the Chest of the Gaul So that then th◠urine is nothing but meer Gaul and the whole habit of the body and also the internal parts the most inward and the most outward to be Gauly The which since they are accounted nothing besides Gaul it being no longer ejected through the paunch Hence it is discerned that threefold more of Choler at least is daily generated than of blood being connexed of the three other Humours together They being badly mindful that sixfold more of tincture departs through a jaundisie urine alone than otherwise in an healthy person the belly and urine do utter together whence at least it followes that the jaundise is not the obstruction of the Gaul alone as they think For the orifice of the Gaul being shut presently the Gaul say they exceeds the whole blood in quantity For neither is a leeky and cankery tincture such as frequently proceedeth out of the stomach very frequent in the jaundise Moreover they say that phlegm is carried with the blood thorow the veins and at length changed into blood So that they constitute the proper shop of the blood and its promiscuous efficient as well in the veins as in the Liver But at leastwise a quaternary of Humours fagleth if yellow Choler differs out from black that only in the thickning of re-coction and if phlegm differs not from blood but but 〈◊〉 in a lukewarmth and cherishing For roasted flesh is not wont to be distinguished from raw in kind wherefore neither should phlegm dissagree from blood but only in its maturity as unripe Apples do from ripe ones But they could never shew phlegm in the veins except fibers which seperate themselves in warm water by cutting of a vein and so neither do they begin to be or to be seen before the death of the blood For as long as the blood is profitable for nourishing of the parts the more solid part thereof was undistinct from the rest of its body Because it was a true and entire composure For that thing is one every side obvious in the frame of nature For since nature acteth for ends known unto her Authour one-part always more readily receiveth the impressions of the Archeus than another For the end of the venal blood was a nourishing of the solid members And therefore it by little and little breaths after and attaines the degrees of solidity The blood therefore as soon as it is perfected in the Liver it assumeth in its more mature and more spermatick part white fibers or threds and the beginnings of a desired homogeneal curd which at first it had not in the veins of the mesentery as is manifest in those have the bloody flux Indeed it is therefore the best and most-perfect part of the blood which the Schools call phlegm and the which I know to be akin to a more solid and spermatick constitution The Schools I say name phlegm the daughter of crudity old age and defects even in a child a youth and a man For I dissent also in this from the Schools because for the proving of phlegm they offer nothing but snivel meer filths and liquid dungs to be beheld such as is oftentimes cast forth by vomit the kitchin of the belly being defective For oft-times that which is shaved of by a cruel draught as also the snivel of the nostrils and that which is spit out by reaching from any vice of the lungs whatsoever are the meer phlegm of the Schools which filths indeed are prepared by diseasifying causes through the errours of the last digestion And so great is the dulness of the Schools that with their own Galen they condemn the food of sinewes membranes tendons c. Because they think them to be the mothers of phlegm Neither do they heed that the similar parts and those of the first constitution are of a spermatick or seedy nature and those altogether by an undistinct confusion they call phlegmatick ones As being ignorant or at leastwise unmindfull that we are most nearly or immediately nourished by the same things whereof we consist And so if the homogeneral similar parts and those of the first constitution are condemned by the Humourists as phlegmy Surely one of these two must needs be true Either that the Schools know not now to distinguish phlegm from a secondary and spermatick Humour or plainly that there is no phlegm at all in the blood And that that which they have supposed to be phlegm in the blood is the beginning and foundation of the secondary and immediate nourishment of the solid members Now I must speak of yellow Choler which is supposed to be in urines with the admiration and grosse ignorance of fore-past ages CHAP. IV. The signification of the urine according to the Antients 1. The division of Urines 2. No unfit observation of Paracelsus 3. The Authours aime 4. It hath been erred hitherto in judgment concerning the circle of the urine 5. From whence the circle in the urine is 6. A childish opinion of Galen 7. It is proved that Gaul is not in the urine 8. The unconsiderateness
the poyson of the jaundise to be in vain seeing they thought that Choler to be that which did abound only in quantity and otherwise to be a natural co-partner of the venal blood Ah I wish they had first examined that yellow Choler such as they shew to swim on the blood let out oâ— the veins cannot more deeply tinge the urine which otherwise is watery from the nature of its own Whey than Choler it self is tinged and as yet far lesse And that an ordinary urine of a mean and temperate yellownesse is notwithstanding more deeply tinged than the aforesaid supper-swimming Choler it self is That in the jaundise its colour is fourtytimes more full and ringed than that it can be hoped to be dyed by the aforesaid Choler And that by how much the more diseasie and nearer to death the jaundise is by so much the urine also is more filled with a deep or yellow yellownesse Neither yet is there a reason why more of Choler should be daily generated while as there is a lesse necessity thereof and the natural heat in the Liver lesse Why there should I say be more of Elementary fire by how much death is nearer and why that fire if there should be any should be nearer to its own choaking And that while they rashly say hony to be wholly turned into Choler or gaul in a Cholerick strong fiery manly and valiant constitution which otherwise in a sanguine person is made totally blood And so also that they being constrained by their own and unvoluntary confession do not see that the generation of their feigned Choler proceedeth on both sides from some poysonous indisposition of the body and the which being at length increased produceth much more plenty of those excrementitious filths than of blood yea than it is wont to do a little before Since as in the mean time there is no necessity of such Choler but very much necessity of blood in the jaundise May they not seem from thence to conclude 1. That nature in its greatest health alwayes erred in its own ends 2. And so also that the Creatour thereof had erred 3. And that she should not cease to make a most plentifull quantity of gaul while as she most greatly abhorreth that and should have the least need thereof That the making of Choler in the Schools is from a diseasifying cause but not from the integrity of nature That whatsoever they call Choler is neither Choler nor gaul nor one of the four feigned constitutive Humours of us but the gaul being excepted that Choler is alwayes a meer dungy excrement if not also together therewith defectuous and poysonsom Therefore Choler never existed in nature But the gaul is a prevalent bowel in the nature of an original or first-born liquor greatly vital and most exceeding necessary Choler therefore is wanting in whole nature therefore also for the jaundise But the disease called Choler whatsoever it toucheth with its poysonous ferment it deâ—â—es it and transchangeth it into a poyson without ceasing The whole invention therefore of Choler is frivolous false and pernicious But the nest or shop of the jaundise is from the Pylorus even unto the end of the Duodenum For I remember that a Pike-fish being at sometime opened alive in the back from the head to the tail and bound a-crosse upon the region of the stomach within a few hours his putrified carcase stank and all his flesh which before was most white became yellow The comon sort of Physitions supposed that he had drawn Choler from the jaundous person But I suppose that the live fish had putrified with the heat of him that had the jaundise and that he had borrowed his yellownesse from corruption That the excrement tinged on the skin in the jaundous person was a mortified poyson no other wise than as the flesh of the fish was For the fish was so stinking that it was despised by a Cat I therefore healed the man by some calcined Alcali salts Let it be sufficient to have spoken these things concerning the falshood of Humours and the miserable snare of the Humourists But other things which concerning the falling down of Humour having regard hither might offer themselves I will elsewhere perfectly explain in a particular treatise concerning the toyes of a Catarrhe But last of all that for black Choler they are wont to accuse the Hemerhoides or piles in the next place the Menstrues and Cancer of the Dugs Surely that I despise under silence as unworthy of an answer and as unprofitable trifles in a great compassion of the rash belief of my neighbours and also of the blindnesse of the Schools For truly herein they retire from the terms proposed by themselves as well in making of blood and sliding down to the spleen as in passing from yellow Choler into black Because the fundament veins and veins of the womb not always daily or in any place but only about the utmost passages of those veins blood being otherwise good is made malignant and defiled in those places and not before but not that it was already before degenerated in the Spleen and sent into the utmost end of the Fundament Even so as also whatsoever the Schools devise for the establishment of phlegm concerning the Pose Cough Asthma Shortnesse of Breath Pleurisie Toothach c. All that I will demonstrate in its own place in the treatise of the toyes of a catarrhe for ridiculous dreames of Paganisme But now it hath seemed sufficient unme to have shewn that no phlegm is conteined in the fellowship of four humours and that which is dashed forth from diseasie causes which is snivelly and the which they have hitherto perswaded themselves to be ejected like phlegm it is sufficient now to have shewn that that very thing hath undergone the title of an excrement nor that it is in any wise to be ascribed unto the family of a vital Humour Let the Lord Jesus be between me and the interpreters of these things FOR AN ARGUMENT Of the book a Poet hath thus sung against the Humourists thirsting after Christian blood MOst famous Captain why in many Doctours doth thou trust It 's much thou can'st confide in one the other rout unjust Do hurt dost thou not see the veins throughout the body empted This cut 's that burn's and so by Art the maladie's incensed Who ere of daubing Galen doth in ought the counsel take They all against one body fight and B' Art a slaughter make A rout of Medicine professors slew an Emperour Dost thou believe that Physick Doctours have a healing pow'r He was a Belgian Prince by blood but Phisick't by that rable After the Spanish mode to th' Dutch that mode's unprofitable I 'le adde a little to his Tomb here lays a Captain best O're whom Mars could not ought prevail while blood was in his breast What bloody war could not perform Physitians could by lance Thus less than Hippocrat's himself Mavors is made by chance TUMULUS
suffice together for transchanging But mark well every work of imagination which of necessity produceth in us a new generation or transmutation of one thing into another requireth the concurrence of a certain faith co-bound in the same point of the Subject the phantasie it self For truly an affrightment from a hurtful Animal doth not produce in us that hurtful Animal nor even the poyson thereof Even so also as my attentive imagination meditating of the wonderful poyson of the Plague doth not therefore generate the Plague in me The reason therefore why a terrour from the Plague doth rather cause the Plague than a terrour from living Creatures causeth the poyson of the same consisteth in this that the poyson of the Pest is made not only from an apprehension and conceipt of terrible effects but because there concurreth together with those a certain unseperable belief whereby any one being affrighted and fore affraid in fearing doth imagine and slenderly believe that he hath now contracted something of the pestilential poyson From whence but not before the Image of the Plague being conceived by this kind of terrour becomes operative and fruitful For that terrour with a credulous suspition applyeth the Soul thus affrighted unto the Archeus that it may cloath this Archeus with the Image of the conceived Terrour Through want also of which Belief although Animals should conceive great terrour yet they never snatch to them the humane Pestilence although they sometimes draw in their own consumption as also natural poyson from whence also they dye For it is a fermental poyson the which how speedily soever it may dispatch them yet it is not the true Psague But whosoever shall see a mad Dog leaping on him and how much soever affrighted he shall be from thence yea though he conceive a Fever and dye yet no man doth ever even slenderly believe that he drew the poyson of the mad Dog without biting Wherefore also all his sore fear is onely least he should be bitten which rather includes a prevention of a poyson to come than a belief of a poyson bred The terrour therefore the occasion of the plague carries a certain belief and fear in the Imagination that he hath actually drawn something of contagion vnder-such an uncertainty and Agony Because the poyson of the Plague is onely visible but not the biting of a mad Dog which particle of faith together with the disturbance of Terrour perfecteth an actual Image in the Archeus the seed of the Plague that is to be generated Because that which is imagined apprehended with perturbation and believed doth stand actually in the same point of the phantasie which brings forth an Image on the Archeus as it were a seminal Being Otherwise also neither is any faith sufficient for this thing because there is none who doth not firmly believe the Plague can-kill infect happen unto one c. But such a belief as that is feeble and as it were dead neither therefore is it operative that is not hurtful unlesse that in the same point of Identity it be essentially connexed unto terrour apprehended with disturbance from a drawing in of the actual poyson Eor Camps and Castles do very often snatch to them a panick fear and deadly terrour assoon as with the fear of perturbations they believe that the Enemy hath treacherously or privily crept in or obtained an unexpected aid c. All which things do rather prevail under a dark night wherein all things are made invisible and more horrid and fearful Pollutions in Dreams although they have a strong Imagination without the motion or enticements of fornications which is sufficient for expulsion yet for want of that belief they cast forth onely barren seed For although the Imagination operates in sleeping yet a Faith or Belief doth not operate in Dreaming because it is that which is not the Daughter of the Imagination but of the will alone For indeed sleep peculiarly conduceth to this that the liquor of nourishment being transchanged by the application and information of the mind may be altogether assimilated wherefore in youthfull yeares people sleep more and more soundly than in those succeeding And since vital matters have their own natural Imaginations even those which are not intellectual Imaginations Surely the Imagination of the blood it self shall most powerfully operate under sleep But Faith or Belief seeing it is a seperated power fast tyed to the Soul and Will it is of necessity also stupifyed in time of sleep There is therefore well nigh an unshaken and uncessant act of the Imagination of the Spleen But the Soul once believing some one thing afterwards ceaseth and is at rest from the consideration of believing oâ— confiding untill that an Object be again rub'd on it anew Neither do I speak in this place concerning Christian faith and a supernatural Gift of God but I behold a confidence to wit as well aa delusion in believing as the supposing of a true thing For a certain young Bitch and not yet lascivious having gotten a whelp of fifteen dayes old licks it loves it and puts it to her dugs and then being befooled believed that it was her own Young who was a yet uncorrupted her dugs presently swell and I saw them to have poâ—red forth plenty of milk Also if thou desirest Chicken in the midst of Winter make the Eggs lukewarm with a hot Towel and in the mean time unfeather the breast of a Capon put him upon the Eggs that he may cherish them and there shut him up who in rising up feeling the lukewarmth of the Eggs and the unwonted coldnesse of his breast begins to cherish the Eggs But in sitting on them he conceiveth a false belief and believes that he is the mother of the Eggs he brings forth all the Chickens even unto the last and cals them together by Clucking like a cherishing Hen and fighting for the Chickens chaseth the Cock and at length being forsaken by the Chicken is very sorrowful If therefore a false belief operates so much what shall not any the more grounded one do that is conjoyned with the terrour of the Plague There is therefore a certain native Imagination in the blood in the parts of an Animal yea and in the diseasie excrements so that magnetical or attractive Remedies have already begun with benefit to be applyed unto the blood let out of the veines Let us consider also the excrementitious muscilage of the sixth digestion to stick fast within the Reeds or Pipes I thus by one onely Etymology call the Veines Atteries Bowels and any kind of Channels to be at first in its owne quality guiltlesse but violating the right of its â—nne as it is undirectly a stranger And therefore by it self laying in wait for the part Presently after a desire of expelling that excrementitious muscilage is conceived by the Archeus implanted in the part the Idea of which conception is imprinted on the hated muscilage The which seeing it is seminal it obtains
say Plethora or the abounding of humours alone is called the shewer or betokener of bloud-letting which as it hurts for the future so hunger and the withdrawing of meat in the beginning of a sharp Disease do together with a destructive Disease easily empty out all abounding humours in the first dayes Neither that the vain device of revulsion and derivation hath greatly profited at sometimes by their own position I have demonstrated in the Treatise of Feavers But laxative Medicines since they do at leastwise wipe away very new bloud out of the Meseraiok or sucking veins and change it through the disposition of their poyson by divers waves corrupting it truly they have given hitherto none but a weak hope of healing by the event full of confusion sorrowes and uncertainty Therefore we are blinde unless with a stout heart we being at length moved with compassion do go to meet so great a slaughter of mortal men and the sighs of sick persons or phanes and of Widowes and of the dead For besides that the helps of the Schooles for the sick are so uncertain and of so little credit I intreat you let us mutually commiserate mans condition which hath committed his life and fortunes to an art filled with conjectures and uncertainty also that it hath admitted of all sorts of knaves and Harlots whereby it may without punishment exercise cruelty on our Kinsfolks When I exactly consider with my self the so great sluggishness and blindeness of Schooles and Ages I give praise to the thrice glorious God that he hath made manifest to the little ones in himself much truth which he hath hidden from Noble Persons and those in chief Seats and therefore I admiring the depth of the judgements of God do religiously adore him But Galen snatching the glory of his Predecessors into himself extended his own Art contained in a few Rules into huge Volumes It pleased him indeed that all Bodies should be framed of four Elements and from thence to snatch their wholethingliness or Essence and so that to the square of these elements he confirmed or framed four qualities and as many simple Complexions straight-way so many couples of Compound qualities and from thence also foure constitutive humours of us before dreamed of by others And then from their strife and discord joyned as well with a simple as with his own feigned humours he determined to derive almost all Diseases and the scopes or indications of healing even as health from their fit proportion also that every Disease is a meer disposition in quality wherefore that of contraries there are onely contrary Remedies With which necessity he being at length constrained distinguishing the vertues of simples word for word out of Diascorides and the Elementary Degrees he copied out their Seminal and specifical power neglecting on both sides because not knowing either By what facility of Art indeed he allured the chiefdom of healing to himself he obtained it and Posterity being allured with so great a compendium a drowsie sleep crept into the Schooles thorow the Doores of sloath for the awakening whereof I would God might take his honour and mortaâ—â— the experienced fruit which I wish by my labours Many I know well enough will prate grieving that themselves and their â—iresome readings will be diminished if I shall resign the sound truth of Medicinal Science unto the gift of the glorious God alone but shall have very little hope in the sharpness of wits But however they may gun man is a plained and naked Table and ought to get his Learning else-where and from one onely Master of whom it is said that the Scholar shall never excel that Master because there is onely one Father and one onely Master who dwelleth in the Heavens from whom is every good thing all light and clearness of understanding Truly we Christians do profess the Lord Jesus to be the onely wisdom oâ— the Father the beginning and the ending of all Essence Truth and Knowledge â— and so sâ—eing every good gift not onely of vertues but also of knowledges doth descend from the Father of Lights who could learn perfectly the skill of the Science of Medicine from the Schooles of the Heathens for the Lord not Schooles hath created a Physitian The Heathenish Schooles indeed may have an Historical knowledge the observer of things contingent or accidental of things regular and necessary which is a memâ—rative knowledge of the thing done they may also get Learning by demonstration which is the knowledge of applying things unto measure And lastly they may promise rational knowledge which is derived from either of these by the fitting of discourse and I wish they had soundly and sincerely performed what they might have done by those meanes They may I say historically have known the reflux or going back of the Starrs and Sea that the water bends to a levelled roundness and downward draw divers Sequels from thence and stablish them into maxims They have known I say the craft of composing and how to fit the necessity of Causes in some measure conjoyned by discourse But to understand and savour these things from the spring or first cause is granted to none without the special favour of Christ the Lord. Therefore the Science of healing is the last of all Sciences and chiefly hidden so that it is no wonder that its first beginnings are even at this day desired from types or figures The more diligent Heathens have as yet promised the World to continue by its own Law and things to have their Roots in the whole and in the particular kindes or Species whereby by its own proper force it was to be preserved for ever and so an independency or Deity to be in things Alas thereby from the true Phylosophy and truth of Medicine even as drunken men about wan Deities and blindnesses they have stumbled in the dark and therefore they have of necessity been ignorant of created things and the Seeds Roots and knowledge of these Therefore the knowledge of nature hath indeed been attempted by the Heathens through childish conjectures and very little ever obtained Therefore I have grieved with pity that hitherto the beginnings of natural things have not been fetched forth elsewhere the which as I have determined to discover by this my labour So I humbly intreat that God may grant that he hath not yielded me his Talent for a recompence of punishment although in this Work I could not do so much as I would For the whole faculty of natural Phylosophy is committed to man and therefore this ought to respect both his life immediately and all his defects Therefore all natural Phylosophy is limited for the use of life the finding out of causes the Disease and Remedies in which last point I finde that hitherto little pains hath been taken no hing known but much promised and very much neglected long expectations and every where errours For the knowledge of Diseases containeth the knowledge of the Causes the dependance
the foundation of nature by which all waters are strained thorow that all of them may keep a Communion among each other from the beginning of the Creation unto the end and from the Superficies or upper part of the Earth even to its Center And moreover the water detained in this Soil of Sand is perhaps actually greater by a thousand fold than the whole heap of Seas and Rivers floating on the Superficies of the Earth And that is easily verified by supposing the whole superficies of the Earth also to be covered with waters to the depth of 600 paces Therefore it followes respect being had to the Diameter of the Earth that there is easily a thousand times more water under than upon the Earth For truly dry Sand drinks up at least about a fourfold quantity of water in the same extension of place yet I will not have it that although the Quellem be the last ground or Soil to the Digger that all subjected grounds are every where to be found by order For the aforesaid Sand which sometimes overwhelms it self perhaps to a thousand paces beneath the Horizon elsewhere boils up with speed under the open Air yea and oft-times in the top of Mountains Of which thing the Schooles with their Aristotle being ignorant do toughly hold that all true springs do owe the cause of their continuance from the Air co-thickned into water when as notwithstanding they cannot maintain that thing because in the tops of the highest Mountains springs do oft-times leap forth where another Mountain of the like height is not neer nor a water-Channel extended on either side to this Therefore they hold their peace with a lofty look and are silent at the unwonted miracle of the thing Surely as long as waters do wander in the living and vitall Soil of the Earth and are detained in the Sand Quellem so long I say they are not constrained to bring forth by the water drawing lawes of Scituations No otherwise than as the bloud while it is nourished with life in the veins so long also it knowes not above and beneath and it is as well in the fore-head as in the feet But at the very moment wherein it once falls out of the veins or the waters do disgorge themselves out of the Quellem they cease not to flow down by obeying the lawes of Scituations Therefore the Sea in its own ground doth sup up the received waters in the sieve of the Virgin-Sand For so according to the wise man however all waters do flow into the Sea yet it never re-gorgeth them again Because by one onely thread there is a continuall passage out of the Virgin-Sand into Springs Streams Rivers and the Sea to moysten the Earth and appointed to enrich it with Mineralls Whither again the waters being driven they are supt up partly by the Quellem and partly do snatch the Air. So indeed doth the Universe distribute its waters and lay them aside for divers fruits And therefore I have meditated with admiration that the Almighty hath set before him the necessities of ungrateful immortal men as the aims of things I return to the Earth I have found for certain that the original Earth doth no where of its own accord concur to the mixtures of fruits slide thereto by chance nor that it is assumed by nature nor is found to have assumed the works of nature or art And therefore the reason of mixtures waxeth lean the number of Elements Qualities and Temperaments ceaseth and so they are lying fopperies which have been hitherto stifly and ignorantly garnished out by the Schooles For of a man Wood c. be it dust or ashes that is left by the fire yet Earth is never drawn out for else our burying places would soon swell Therefore the Earth is at least the remaining wombe but not the Mother Which if it should sometimes have a conflux unto fruits or mixt bodies it would either abide in the same and so by the solution of art or nature would sometimes be found or should return from thence which is false or plainly should be taken to the mixt Body and in it should cease to be Earth being already changed into another thing and so should be elsewhere diminished which I will straightway shew to be alike false or by the death or dissolution of the thing should return again into earth and there should be a daily and repeated returning of one and the same Element from a privation to a habit Or if this should not return into earth it should remain changed into fruits and so the whole Earth had long since gone into fruits and nature had lost her constancy and had mocked the first aims of the Creator or the earth had returned from the dissolved mixt body into another Element the impertinency whereof ceaseth For truly it is not natural to water or air to turn another Element into its own substance From hence I will straightway demonstrate that never one drop of water is turned into air or likewise air changed into water Which changes notwithstanding do appear lesse labour some than of the earth into water or into air And therefore if nature hath not as yet attempted the more easie transmutations after what sort shall it presume on the more difficult ones For otherwise the earth should be â—upt up and brought to nothing by Elements that are so much more large co-touching with it and more active But the Father of the Universe being a lover of Concord hateth discord and brawlings and chiefly in the Elements which that they might be the stable props of nature he hath not created the same fighting ones For he hath also directed the Elements to their appointed ends and lawes of continuance to wit that he may bring forth and nourish his own fruits for his own honour and the use of man Notwithstanding neither the honour of God nor mans necessity did any where or any way require the battels devourings strifes of the Elements their trampling on each other as neither the exchanging or nourishing of one by the other Nor lastly that at the end of an Element to increase it self by covetousness hunger luxury or necessity with the destruction of anomer For neither are they guilty of the fault of coverousness or hatred as neither do they desire to be nourished Last of all neither have the Elements obtained an Archeus a kitchin or properties for that transchanging Therefore the whole Doctrine of the Schooles concerning the elementary War is an old Wives fable Therefore the earth is never taken or of its own accord doth materially run out of it self into the constitution of bodies And there is by right made no mixture in nature which can firmly grow together under the unity of the natural composed form unless it be between juyces and spirits On the contrary no pulverous or powder all co-mixture doth tend to generation but there is onely an apposition or applying presently of its own accord and again
At length the one onely Fountain and Spring of waters which thou hadst placed in the heart and top of the Earth is afterwards spread abroad into a thousand veins which did almost every where pierce thorow the Globe of the earth to far better uses And moreover thou hast also dashed the Sea almost into every Creek of the earth that there might be the greater fellowship of Mortalls thereby Therefore if thy punishment be blessed and happy what shall the free gifts of thy blessings be Oh Lord keep us for the exceeding greatness of thy goodness within that number who shall praise thy great and mighty deeds for ever in the sanctifying of thy name But although that one onely Fountain now ceased neither Lands being now rent asunder one alone was not enough yet perhaps the same entrance of waters remained Because in the sweet Sea between Roest and Loefelt according to the Table of Gothland a Gulf of waters is described by Olaus whereinto Ships Marriners being not aware and their endeavours being in vain are supt up For indeed it is the mouth into which the waters of that Ocean do fall and by one onely passage were before the Floud carried thence unto the aforesaid Fountain But afterwards that passage like the hollow vein was diversly distributed and hedged in by a Rock by some thousands of veins ending upon the face of the Quellem from which afterwards the waters being drunk up do hasten from far unto their appointed offices Moreover that Whirle-poole or Gulf if it ought to be any where and Olaus be a true Writer or if not at leastwise it is fitly in the Sea as well for the sweetness of the Sea as for the long and round figure of the World by me straightway to be proved In the next place if one onely Fountain were for the moystening of the Earth the aforesaid Whirle-poole shall be sufficient especially because the bottom of the Sea hath the Sand Quellem longly and largely laying open which would be sufficient for the drinking up the water And the rather because the Sea doth sometimes wash upon and rince the earth on every side and thorow many middle spaces Therefore the Sea being supt up in the said Whirle-poole it is by little and little brought thorow stony Channels and hence by lesser pipes thorow a great part of the earth Notwithstanding they are scarce over whelmed beneath the Soil Keyberch but as often as the veins of the Whirle-poole do cut or touch at the Quellem rising up thorow middle places and rushing forth into a Fountain indeed the sweet veins do perish and veins of Sea-Salt are produced Otherwise the briny Liquor if there be also any in the Gothick Sea doth through the lively Archeus of the Earth lose by degrees the nature of Salts or if the Ferments of Salts in places do any where exist those very waters do put on the seeds as well of divers Salts as of Stones and Mettalls and are changed into the same fruits For so neat gemme nitre aluminous vitriolated Sea Salts do grow of the water they as it were promising the first birth of the water to themselves And then from hence they do decline or decay into Bur or the first off-spring of Mineralls and degenerate by the guidance of the seeds So some fruits of the water do stop up the passages of their own Fountain and by their last ripeness do attain the perfection of that Minerall whose appointments the seeds did bear before them which were entertained in the Ferments of places Moreover as that Northern Whirlepoole or Gulf doth also sup up Fishes within it so it sups up the same exceeding small ones the greater being detained within the Channels Where oft-times they are either made Rockie or wax filthy through putrifying or also are seasoned with the Balsam of the soils as also that Fishes are oft-times found digged up which the Husband-man and others being amazed at do think they were born in undue places and without a seed Furthermore whether the Conduits have received the water or at length have drunk up that Quellem the waters are at least there endowed with a lively and seminall property For no otherwise than as a vein even in a dead Carease preserveth the bloud contained in it from coagulating or curdling which is a corruption of the first degree truly by a stronger Reason that right agrees to the veins of the earth which is not yet dead Therefore the water is supt and drawn within the lively soil of the Earth whence it having gotten a common life Come let us worship the King by whom all things live it knoweth not the Scituations of places it easily ascendeth unto the tops of Mountains without trouble together with the Quellem that it may from thence send forth fountains without ceasing VVhich things surely being unknown to the Schooles they have left that place of the wise man Coheleth or the Preacher scanty or barren where he saith all Rivers hasten towards the Sea the which notwithstanding doth not therefore re-gorgethem again For truly Rivers do return to the place from whence they came forth that they may flowagain Which words have been corrupted heretofore with divers modellings or qualifications Because springs in the tops of Mountains were not seen to proceed from the Sea whither they at length do rush Therefore Springs have been hitherto falsely judged by the Schooles to take their Beginnings and Causes from Air condensed or co-thickned by the force of cold between the hollow places of Mountains ready to fall upon each other The which I in a little Book concerning the Fountains of the Spaw printed in the year 1624 at Leidon have shewne that they have themselves after the manner now delivered in this place Therefore the true originall of true Springs being manifested it hitherto remains unknown to the Schooles The Scripture-Text entire and cleared But seeing the same Law course and re-course of waters from the Quellem into Fountains and at length from Fountains into the Sea was kept no lesse in dayes wherein it hath not rained for three years and more than when the whole year doth almost wax barren with a continual showre we must know that it is sumcient for the Earth that it doth not send forth such bountiful Springs through its Water-pipes and steep-running Brooks as by the common besprinkling of Dew and Rain Moreover before I shall come to the unchangeable substance of the water wherein the Schooles do promise that Air is easily changed into water and this likewise into it I will first clear up another Paradox To wit that the Globe being composed of Earth and Water is indeed round from the East thorow the West into the East yet not from the North into the South but long and round or of the figure of an Egge Which thing in the first place hath much deceived Saylors Because the Waters do slide with a more swift course from North to South than otherwise
there is not a certain product like unto love wherewith a man being stricken or anointed may by so much profit by how much he is deadlily smitten by another product Whence it is manifest that that poyson however it be produced by anger and be mortall unto a man yet that doth not happen through any contrariety seeing that a direct contrary is wanting unto it which doth equivalently or equally help and promote the life even as this poyson hurts it And so if these kindes of poysons do act by reason of contrariety now the Maxim is false That so many wayes one contrary is said to be by how many wany wayes another is so said Therefore it hath now beensufficiently shewen that poysons indeed are made from the anger of Beasts but it doth not therefore follow that the poysonof a Plant if it act as was shewen above by reason of its own naturall endowment implantedin it by God and not by reason of any contrariety that the poyson of bruit Beasts is more capable of contrariety than that of other Simples Otherwise the same thing is wholly to be judged concerning the poysons of those that have the art of poysoning Sorceresses c. For although they are compounded and given to the drinker to hurt the minde yet those do operate either naturally and so without an intention of contrariety or fight or they operate by the power of the Devil which is either solitary or singly alone and so is truly a hostile effect because from the evill Spirit an enemy or naturall And then not by the force of contrariety or fight but onely by the unfolding of its naturall endowment The which I have already shewen above to be void of contentious contrariety Furthermore through occasion of these things the efficacy of poyson prepared by animosity is to be explained it is known to the common people That the bloud of a Bull doth strangle him that drinks it but not the bloud of an Oxe or Cow And that thing I have elsewhere referred to the fury of the Bull with the desire of a dying revenge after the manner of Serpents But a Hog although he perish with anger perhaps therefore God forbad the bloud of living Creatures under pain of indignation yet that is done with a fear of death But the Bull is struck with so great a fury that he suffers no apprehension of death And so although his bloud be poysonsom yet not his flesh Because his fury approaching nigh unto death hath not space enough to defile his flesh But a mad Dog because he was a good while mad before death doth also infect his flesh Therefore fearfull Animalls as the Mouse Toad c. do centrally besprinkle their fleshes and bones with a certain fear Even as I have demonstrated elsewhere in the Plague-grave But hitherto hath that Maxim regard Morta la bestia morto il veleno The Beast being dead his poyson is kill'd which surely hath place in a poysonsom living Creature because between while he burns with a fury of revenge In brief if the vertues and endowments of Simples be adverse to us that proceedeth from Divine Ordination but net from the Idea or Image of revenge or hostile contrariety For these do far differ from each other to be contrary to any thing and to have hurtfull endowments in nature For truly this proves Gods order and variety of powers appointed in nature But that declareth Hostility an enemy to God and nature therefore they differ in their end That is in the institution and direction of God in nature which is in the order intention ordination and so in the whole scope of the minde of God according to which I consider contrarieties in Bruits and in Man and not in other Simples and least of all in the Elements And therefore to conclude the question is not here about a name if I shall overthrow the contrarieties of Elements and their fights and successive courses of Complexions in things falsly believed to be mixt even as also whatsoever hath from these Suppositions been hitherto pratled in the behalf of life a Disease Death and Remedies CHAP. XXIV The Blas of Man 1. The errour of the Schooles about the first Moover 2. Aristotle contradicteth himself 3. Blasphemy in a Christian 4. An errour hath slown from Science Mathematicall badly appropriated 5. The Blas of man doth imitate the flowing of the Stars 6. When our Blas doth go before and when it followes the Blas of the Stars 7. Why the Blas of Bruits goes before that of the Stars 8. A voluntary Blas is not annexed to the Stars 9. A twofold Blas in us 10. Whence unsensitive things are moved 11. Galen resisteth Aristotle in the Pulses 12. He sought into the measurings of pulses but not into the efficient cause 13. The use of the pulses with Galen 14. A third use unknown to Galen 15. The consideration of the Authour 16. That a cooling refreshment is not the end of pulses 17. Some suppositions 18. None hath treated concerning life 19. Contradictories concerning the fire of the heart 20. Whether a pulse be for the procuring of Colds sake 21. Why the pores in the inclosure of the heart are triangular 22. Wherein the venall bloud and the arteriall bloud do differ 23. The sensitive soul is the framer of pulses 24. To what end the motion of the heart is 25. The absurdities of the Schooles concerning radicall heat 26. The motion of the heart cannot be judged to be for cooling refreshment sake 27. Why a Feverish pulse is swiftly moved 28. A Thorn in the finger teacheth that from the swiftness of the pulse heat is increased but not cold 29. Five chief ends of the pulses 30. How the kindling and enlightning property of fieryness do differ 31. That the Spirit of the bloud is not from the Liver 32. It is a rotten Doctrine which confoundeth the ends of pulses with breathing 33. The necessities of pulses have been hitherto unknown 34. The use of the pulses hath respect unto the digestive Ferment 35. The sluggishness of the Schooles about these things 36. Why healthy Sailers are more hungry than themselves not sailing 37. The Air cannot nourish the spirit of life 38. An Alcali is formed by burning up 39. The wonderfull Coal of Honey and divers speculations of Chymistry are cleared up 40. The Common-wealth of Alcalies 41. The fabrick of the Balsam Samech of Paracelsus 42. An Alcali is made volatile and so interchangeably under the same formall property of a composed Body 43. Of the labour of wisdom 44. An Handicraft Operation of distilled Vinegar 45. Some Handricraft Operations of Chymistry are re-taken for the finishing of the venall bloud without a dreg 46. A new and unheard of use of the pulses 47. There is an unwonted pulse from the part grieving through a Thorn 48. Pus or corrupt matter being made why Sumptomes wax milde 49. Whence the hardness of an Artery may straightway be made 50. What a hard
by devouring and consuming of the radical moisture whence it would follow That the heart is the Torch of a consuming fire But notwithstanding seeing the substance of the Heart and Pericardium or case of the Heart and also of the Bloud is not fit for fire They have been forced to confesse that fire not to be fire and that heat not to be fiery yet devouring but they have said It is sufficient for them to have described the Fewelor Torch or Beginning of heat Metaphorically As if nature should admit of Metaphors For first of all I remember that some swooning Virgins were beref't of Pulse and breathing so far as was conjectured by humane judgement and so for some hours were bewayled among the dead yet that they revived and being married afterwards to have lived without sicknesse and to have brought forth five or six times For they were cold as Ice assoon as their Pulse had failed from whence I began to be doubtful whether the Pulse were not made rather for the effecting of Heats sake than through the occasion of fetching in cold whence I began to account the final causes of Pulses to be frivolous and so also I suspected the presaging part of healing to be weakened And that I thus prove For there is Hedge or Partition between both bosomes of the Heart in it self as long as life remains So Porie That by the attraction of the ears of the Heart for on both sides it is reckoned to be eared by way of proportionable Resemblance because it hath as it were Bellows the Veinie Bloud doth passe from the hollow Vein forming the right bosom of the Heart by its passage and wanders into the left bosom not likewise from hence to the right bosome Because the pores in the hedge or partition it self are triangular whose Cone or sharp point ending in the left bosom is the more easily encompassed or pressed together but the Base of that Triangle in the right bosom never but by death But the bloud of the left bosom is now arteriall and is the bloud of a true name being diverse from the bloud it self as being yet in the hollow vein in colour and subtility or fineness Wherefore I must needs not without cause have found out a new or fourth digestion in the left stomach of the heart For no otherwise than as the bloud of the veins differs from the cream and chyle so also doth the bloud of the Arteries differ from the thick bloud of the veins although by a neerer kinne and cloathing of the Heavens they have after a sort returned into one Family Yet in that is the specificall difference of both that the arterial bloud is informed by the immortall Soul in the left bosom but the venall bloud not and that it is illustrated onely by the light of the sensitive form participatively but not informatively For the other digestions do require rest But the fourth is perfected by an uncessant continuation of motion Not indeed that the very motion of the heart is the formall transchangeative cause but onely that it concurs dispositively Indeed in the left bosom of the heart as it were in a stomach doth a singular most vitall and lightsom Ferment dwell which is a sufficient cause of the venall bloud its being transchanged into arterial bloud even as it is chief in the transmutation of arteriall bloud into vitall Spirit Because all venal bloud doth naturally tend into its own end which is nourishment yet at last it is dispersed and vanisheth away into a vapour or into a Gas unless it be stayed by the Coagulum or co-thickning of growth But the arterial bloud hath for its aim not indeed that it may incline into a smoakiness or excrement For if that thing come to passe it happeneth to it from a Disease and by accident After another manner the proper object of the arterial bloud is to be brought over into vitall Spirit which if afterwards it doth also vanish let this be unto it besides its intent Seeing that every Being doth naturally desire to remain For the vitall Spirit is a light originally dwelling in the Ferment of the left bosom which enlightneth new Spirits bred by the arterial bloud to wit for which continuation of light the Arterie is lifted up For thus the Spirits are made the partakers of life and the executers thereof even as also the Vulcans of continued heat Therefore the life of man is a formall light and almost also the lightsom or clear sensitive Soul it self and so death doth forthwith follow the blowing out of this Because the immortall minde is involved in the sensitive Soul which after death slies away this other perishing But far be it that that vitall light be called fiery burning and destroying the radicall moysture and that by the continuall plenty of the smoakie vapours hereof it should defile the heart and Arteries But it is a formall light even as I have said before concerning Forms for neither shall he ever otherwise describe the in-most essence of life who had seen the formall lives of things even in an Extasie Because words are wanting and names whereby these may be shewen or called as it were by an Etymologie from a former cause And although God had shewen to any one the essence of life in a composed Body yet he will never give his own honour of teaching it unto any Creature Seeing life in the abstract is the incomprehensible God himself For so by little and little the meat and drink ascends into the Chyle or juyce of the stomach into the juyce of the mesentery or Crow into venal bloud and at length by arteriall bloud unto a most thin Skie or Air the vitall Spirit and the prop of the Soul which exchanging doth presuppose a motion of the heart For neither is it sufficient that the Ferment be effective efficiently that the arterial bloud be quickened and turned into Spirit and it to dwell in the left bosom of the heart unless a pulsative motion doth concur which is likened to the motion whereby sowrish milk or cream by a true transmutation is changed into Butter For by the motion is made an extenuating not indeed of the soure but of the salt arterial bloud neither therefore is it turned into a fat or butter but into vitall Spirit of the nature of a Salt and so of a Balsam For so the arteriall bloud is by motion heat and the Ferment changed into an Aiery or Skyie off-spring the immediate Inne of a vitall light Wherefore the Bloud VVater and Spirit are one and the same For if that light be in the Spirit but this be carried thorow the Arteries into the whole Body also that light ought to be on every side continuall to it self seeing it is the property of light else to be extinguished Therefore the Arteries ought to remain open so indeed that they do never remain long pressed together wherefore it was also meet that the pulse should dilate the same nor
rage Furthermore the transmutation of the Arterial bloud into Spirit which is begun in the heart is ripened in the current of the Arteries or stomach of the heart Neither therefore is it a wonder that in the Spleen abounding with so many Arteries a Ferment and the first motions of the heart are established instead of a stomach the mentall and sensitive Souls being indeed Saturns Kingdoms For the digestion of the heart is with a full transmutation of the arteriall Bloud into Spirit without a dreg and smoakiness Because it is that which neither containeth filths nor admits of diversities of kinde neither doth the Spirit the Son of heat degenerate by reason of heat Indeed it is the immediate operation of the sensitive Soul alwayes univocall or single like to it self and to life for the life that is uttered by vitall motions Therefore the chief aims of the Pulses are 1. A bringing of the venall bloud from the bosom of the hollow vein unto the left womb of the heart 2. An increase of heat 3. A framing of arterial bloud 4. And again a producing of vitall Spirit 5. And then there hath been another ultimate aim of Pulses to wit that the original life residing in the implanted Spirit of the heart may be participated of Therefore I will repeat what I have said elsewhere To wit that some Forms do glister as in Stones and Mineralls but some moreover do shine by an increased light as in Plants but others are also lightsome or full of light as in things soulified And so a vitall lightsomness is granted to the vitall Spirit by a kindling not indeed of fieriness but of enlightning and specificall or differing by its particular kindes So indeed Fishes do not live more unhappily are more straightly and lively and longer moved than hot bruit Beasts The Schooles in the room of those things which I have already demonstrated do suppose the bloud in the Liver to receive the nature of a Spirit which perhaps they therefore call naturall To wit such an Air as is wholly in all juyces of Herbs and from hence at length they will have the vitall Spirit to be immediately bred and made But I do from elsewhere derive the Spirit and from a far more noble race But whether the Schooles or I do more rightly phylosophize let the Reader judge who now drinks down both Doctrines together he being at least mindefull of that which I am straightway to say to wit that sometimes the whole arterial bloud and the nourishable Liquor created from thence or the nearest nourishment of the solid parts are at length dispersed by the transpirative evaporation of the Body without any dregs or remainder of a dead head And therefore that the Reader may from thence think that the arterial bloud is of it self inclined that it may sometimes be made Spirit which is not equally presumed of the vapour of the venall bloud For therefore they have been ignorant that the whole bloud of the Arteries is often turned into a spiritual vapour or vitall Spirit But the venall bloud if it be changed in our Glasses by a gentle luke-warmth into a vapour it leaves a thick substance and at length a Coal in the bottom Therefore the Doctrine of the Schooles is far remote from the knowledge of the Spirits who think the vitall Spirits to be framed of a vapour or watery exhalation for they have neglected in this vapour of the venal bloud how of bread and water and venal bloud prepared thence not indeed a watery exhalation as they think but a Salt and enlightned Spirit is stirred up and its heat not onely made hot but also making hot For no Authour hath hitherto diligently searched into that vitall light whereby the Spirit is enlightned and is after a sort made hot So that the Life Light Form and sensitive Soul are as it were made one thing Again the rotten Doctrine of the Schooles confoundeth the ends of Pulses and breathing To wit that Breathing is made for the nourishment of the vital spirit the life of the fire which they will have to be nourished with aire the cooling refreshment of the heart and expelling of smoaky vapours For they intend or incline to nourish the vitall heat and coolingly to refresh or to diminish it which things how they can agree together let others shew I am willingly ignorant thereof at least in the greatest want of vital spirit and while the increase thereof is chiefly desired then indeed there is the least and slowest elevation of the Arterie And on the other hand while the Spirit aboundeth there is the greatest elevation of the Artery I confesse indeed that breathing is drawn by the bridles of the Will or by the instruments of voluntary motion but the Pulse not so But seeing that a sound breast may satisfie by its breathings the ends of the Pulses the Pulse should not therefore be necessary as long as any one is cold and his breathing doth sufficiently inspire But seeing notwithstanding in the mean time the Pulse doth not therefore pause surely there must needs be one cause or necessity of the Pulses and another cause or necessity of breathing For we percieve the necessities of breathing we also do measure our breathing at our pleasure and some can wholly press it together or suppress it in themselves But why do we not feel the more vitall and no less urgent necessities of the Pulses Chiefly seeing it is the life that is the Original of sensibility which alone indeed doth feel all its own necessity and doth alone exclude us from every act of feeling Wherefore hence I conjecture that there are other necessities unknown to the antients I know indeed that from the Arterial bloud and from the vital spirit there are no dregs filths or superfluities expelled as I shall shew in its place but that smoaky vapours are wanting where there is no adultion but that the venal bloud in the wasting of it self by the voluntary guidance of heat doth produce a Gas as water doth a vapour or exhalation And that that Gas which the Schools do signifie to be the spirit of the Liver or natural spirit of the venal bloud is subsequently of necessity expelled it remains without controversie For otherwise a man being almost killed with cold should the sooner wax hot again if he should for some hours hold his breath understand it if the breath should be drawn for cooling refreshment notwithstanding neither indeed in that state doth he notably stop his breath upon pain of death Also a fish wants Lungs and breathing for the bubbles which do sometimes belch forth are blasts of ventosities of digestion but not breathings But Frogs and Sea-monsters that utter a voice have little Bellows which perform the office of Lungs yet Fishes are not colder than Frogs yea Frogs and Horse-leeches are preserved under the mud all the Winter from corruption and do live without breaching yet not without a Pulse Therefore there is one
not for the food of the spirits as neither for the Bellowes of smoakie vapours For otherwise the looseness of the Artery is uncapable to breath-in sufficient air But the future and prepared swear seeing it is already in it self volatise and presently flowes forth in manner of a Latex or Liquor it doth not require very much labour nor hardening of the Artery for the strength decaying the Pulse is watery before it be creeping Because nature being weakned doth not any longer meditate of great labour but an Apoplectical Pulse is the chief and most hard of the Pulses by far and especially a little before death The Schools will have that to come to pass because there should be the same and an individual necessity and end of the Pulse and breathing As they say the heart will recompence the defect of breathing But the swooning of Virgins in the affects of the womb whose breath is stopt and their strength strong for from thence they do for the most part rise again have their Pulses very small for a reproof of the foregoing Doctrine So likewise the Pulse of those that are diseased in the Lungs is watery and feeble for whom notwithstanding nature ought to be diligent in supplying the penury of breathing But why in an Apoplexy the Pulse is hard and great we must search it from the nature of a disease which I will at sometime profesly touch at in a Book and that of the disease of the Stone Now for the neernesse of the matter I will explain two Aphorisms The first whereof is While Pus or corrupt matter is made the labour and pain is greater than when the Pus is made Every Aposteme ending into corrupt matter doth necessarily contain a sharpnesse which forceth the Venal blood into a clotty Lump And therefore it is afterwards uncapable of transpiration Wherefore nature moveth every stone and stirs up the Arteries and breathing that the Ferments by aire may hinder such an effect And at length she profiting nothing ceaseth from that endeavour For the venal bloud is troublesome to nature not only as it waxeth clotty but as it containeth some forreign thing for else an Aposteme should not be made for it is the property of sharpness to coagulate or curdle every immediate nourishable thing from hence corrupt pus ariseth Therefore Hippocrates spake more rightly than Galen Diseases are not hot or cold c. but soure sharp bitter and brackish For a wound as soon as it feeleth corruption its lips do swell and corrupt Pus is made unless a more violent force do compel a worse thing or the thin matter sanies to wax duggy or curdy But the corrupt pus is called by Idiots A good digestion of a wound that is more rightly to be reckoned a less evil but if the wound be new and fenced by Ballam from corruption corrupt pus happens not thereto But when a sharpnesse the token of putrefaction doth contract or draw the Bottom or Lips of the wound together corrupt matter is made For worms are oft-times plainly to be seen in wounds by reason of corruption In Kitchins if fleshes do begin to corrupt their broaths do wax foure Wherfore every vulnerary or wound potion ought to contain in it a hidden Alcali and indeed a volatile one if it ought to resist the accidents that sprang from the corruption of tartness In as much as every Alcali doth slay all sharpnesse which it toucheth For so indeed the stone of Crabs is a provoker of Urine and vulnerary which is manifest enough For it being steeped in Wine doth after a dayes time savour of a Lixivium The other Aphorisme saith Bellies are by nature hotter in Winter than in Summer Truly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sounds or imports hollownesses not bellies It is a suppositive Aphorisme not agreeable to its neighbour ones nor agreeable to the Genius of the old man In the first place It is false Again for in Winter I eat hot things likewise I do not drink cold things yet after food I am cold within none whereof I feel in Summer For in tangible things I take the touching to be Judge The Schools excuse themselves and say That the outward cold drives our heat inward whence there is a more plentifull digestion First of all I have sufficiently taught elsewhere that digestion is not from heat And then after meat cold is more felt within in Winter than in Summer I confess indeed That all heat is from the vital spirit of the Arterial blood If therefore by cold the spirit be driven inward with the Arterial bloud there shall be perill of choaking and the Pulse should give a token if smoakinesses that are to be expelled do import the use of the Pulse Likewise the Pulse should be greater and swifter in Winter than in Summer If the supposition of the Schools be true But the consequent is false therefore also the supposition But if they will have heat to fly inward alone without the Spirit Now they shall against their wills admit that the same accident doth wander through subjects At length which way should heat go inward unto its own fountain And indeed should that be done generally in all at Winter For whether a sound heart which by reason of the abundance of heat and fear of smoakie vapours should beat from a continual necessity shall not be able by reason of Winter to provide it self of a sufficiency of heat or why doth it not rather cease in beating than that it should by reason of an ordinary want repeat or renew the heat dismissed from it The Schools after their manner leap over these things with a light foot for they say That a greater quantity of nourishment is consumed in Winter than in Summer by reason of the abundance of heat And again they divine a more plentiful heat to be in Winter from a want of the more nourishment For the same thing and that in the same respect should be the cause and effect of the same thing The father and the son before and after in respect of themselves But I blame the air which as oft as it is colder is also nearer to its own natural quality and a more potent seperater of the waters And so by how much the air is colder it doth the more volatilize the venal bloud into a Gas No otherwise than was said concerning Sailers Otherwise the dreams of the Schools do vanish as to the heat of hollow places and Wells by an instrument meting out the qualities of the encompassing air And likewise as concerning the belly of man if it live in a somewhat luke-warm Stew But the instruments of sense cannot exactly distinguish the moments of heat where there is a six-months interval because they themselves remain subject to the alterations of seasons Therefore also the application of sensible objects to the instrument of sense is at a different station deceitful Also stomacks seem more hot in Winter because we want the more nourishment
Neither is it a wonder because we therefore drink more liberally in Summer but we are more speedily nourished with drink than with meats Therefore the use of the Pulses are 1. That the venal bloud may through the Partition be transported into the least bosom 2. That therein and in its dependent Arteries the spirit of life may be made of the Arterial bloud 3. That of venal blood may be made a yellow arterial blood 4. That it may be informed by the mind of man Indeed the Arteries are the stomack of the heart as the sucking veins are the Kitchin of the Liver 5. That there may be a continuation of the vital Light throughout the whole body 6. The Blas of the Pulses is for the framing of heat but not of cold 7. That the venal bloud being dispersed into the habit of the body for nourishment may be made wholly capable to be breathed thorow the pores without a Post-hume or Future remembrance of a dreg 8. But breathing hath for its aim only this last use of the Pulse At length I also adde this That there is not an Animal spirit in nature Because the change which the vital spirit receives in the Brain is not unto a formal transmutation but is a perfective degree to the appointment of it self Indeed the in-bred spirit doth intend of a vital influx to generate its own like to it self and that in all the particular shops of the senses and giveth to it the seal of its own instrument For so the Optick or Seeing spirit doth not taste yet they do not therefore both differ in the particular kind although in their own offices For in the vitality or liveliness of the heart it is at once quickned by the mind and is made the universal instrument of that life CHAP. XXV Endemicks or things proper to the People of the Countrey where they live 1. The Schools have stated whence it was to be begun 2. That the encompassing air is not breathed into the Arteries 3. It implyeth that the air doth inspire at every turn and that smoakie vapours are expelled 4. The mutual unsufferableness is demonstrated 5. It would thence follow that the artery is not lifted up but that it may fall down 6. The end manner and possibility of air attracted by the pulses should cease 7. That Endemical things are drawn by breathing 8. That vapours are not drawn inward by Ointments 9. It s own generative vertue is wanting to the vital spirit 10. The humane Load-stone of Paracelsus is a fiction 11. That no smoakiness is to be granted in the heart and Arteries 12. That the whole knowledge of the Schools by signs or tokens is polluted 13. The progress of Endemical things IT is not sufficient to say That the Mines of Veins do belch forth the wild Gas of a hurtful Arsenick and a metallick malignity Fens a stinking vapour breachy Rivers and Shores a diseasie mist and a contagion of the soil putrifying by continuance But by coming nearer the suitings of causes do every where give understanding to those that search diligently but neglect to the ignorant or unskilful For without doubt man was to dwell in the air to be thorowly washed round about with the air yea and to be fed and to be subjected to the violent tyranny of its impressions and to the interchangeable courses of its successive changes whereby the air is the continual seperater of the waters Therefore the air is promiscuously drawn thorow the mouth and nostrils into the Lungs in its chiefest part But whether the air and by consequence also an Endemical Being be drawn inward by the encompassing aire through the Arteries the Schools affirm it But I as the first being supported with the much authority of reasons and the great authority of truth have doubted of it By consequence also That Oyntments applyed to the places of Pulses that they may be drawn inward are made vold First of all These Propositions do resist themselves The aire is drawn through the skin into the Arteries And the depression of the Pulses is to drive away smoaky vapours successively raised up by the heart Because if continual smoakinesses are stirred up by continual heat and the heart doth uncessantly labour with the Arteries for the expelling of those Surely there shall be no room nor space of motion for the attraction of the air from without to within For if there be a successive continual and uncessant expulsion of the Pulses from the center of the heart by the Arteries of necessity also the whole Channel of the Arteries shall by a continual thred from the heart even unto the skin be filled with a smoaky vapour of the expulsing of which smoakiness seeing there should be a greater necessity than of attracting air for fire is most speedily extinguished by smoaks but doth not so soon consume the whole through extream want of cooling or refreshment there is no leisure for the attraction of the air And moreover the Pulse being stirred the attracted air and that in the least space of delay should be besmeared being involved in smoakiness so also the aire in the smallest branches of the Arteries that it should rather increase the use of expulsion than satisfie the cooling refreshment of the heart Therefore the supposition of smoaky vapours standing the air is in no wise drawn by the Arteries from without to within and so the Schools do unadvisedly dictate their own and yet do subscribe to each other And moreover it follows from the same supposition that the Artery is not lifted up by it self and primarily but that it is only principally elevated that it may fall down next that by that endeavour it may shake of the fardle and drive away the fear of choaking seeing that should be the chief end of the Pulses but the other which is that of cooling refreshment is in respect of the former a secondary end Again If the Arteries should suck the air inwards to what end I pray should that be done seeing the sucking of the more crude endemical air should rather hurt than profit For not for the cooling refreshment of the heart seeing all the Pulses should scarce allure the smallest thing from the air by the least and utmost mouths of the Arteries which being the more swift in drawing should not straightway afterwards be expulsed by the depression of the Artery yea it should so most speedily in that very moment be co-united with the smoaky vapour and made hot by the Arterial bloud that the heart should not feel in it self any cooling or refreshment thereby Especially seeing the air should not by one only attraction proceed that way from the skin to the heart but by a manifold depression of the Artery coming between it should wax so hot in the way that it should deceive all hope of cooling refreshment Wherefore if the Arteries should allure the air from without the elevation of the Artery should of necessity alwayes far exceed its depression
in swiftness greatness which is abusive As also that the air should keep the quality of a cooling refreshment undefiled being introduced by little and little through so many windings of the Arteries In the next place neither should the Artery draw the air that the vital spirit may take increase thereby Because with the consent of the Schools the vital spirit is not made of air but of the vapour of the venal bloud elaborated in the heart to the utmost and ennobled with a vital faculty And it is a dull affirmation which supposeth the vital spirit to be nourished by a simple Element Seeing we are nourished by the same things whereof we are generated Wherefore seeing the in-drawn aire is an elementary body it hath not the nature of a sanguine spirit as neither seeing the air can ever be made individual by a humane determination it shall not be able to nourish a composed body as I have taught in its place Moreover It alwayes keeps the properties of a universal Element but doth not attain the condition of an Archeus For the aire is neither akin to us nor is it capable of a vital light And therefore the Artery shall abhor a Forreigner neither doth it admit the air into its family before it be elaborated in due shops neither doth nature attempt any thing in vain as neither to prepare the aire that it may be made that toward which it plainly hath not a possible inclination otherwise the vital spirit should be made in vain through so many preparations of digestions long-windings and shops of the Bowels if by so light a breviary and without usury it may be ripened from without For this hath deceived the Schools that it hath hitherto been believed that fire is necessarily nourished by air Therefore also that vital spirit as the Authour of all our heat doth want for its food the Element of air But I have already cleered it up above that the fire is neither a substance nor that it is nourished by air Yea neither by a combustible matter unlesse that in hastening to the ends of its appointments it doth require an inflamable matter for its object but not for its nourishment Also for want of an object it perisheth in an instant when it hath attained the end of its appointments Because seeing it is neither a substance nor an accident it also perisheth for want of an object for that its own object is also its subject And so also that is a thing most singular to it and hitherto unknown Therefore the supposition of smoakie vapours standing the end ceaseth for which the outward Air should be drawn through the Skin into the Arteries the manner ceaseth and the possibility ceaseth Again if the Arterie sucks the Air by the Pulse it should indifferently suck and such an attraction should be promiscuously endemicall and so hurtfull which I have observed to be false by often experience Especially because that as oft as a forreign or strange Plague is contracted from without by the breathing the suiting or setling thereof is not made but nigh the stomach which thing is made manifest by the sense of the place anguishes vomiting sighs head-aches and doatages And so that part in us which feeleth and formeth the first motions of apprehensions doth also feel the first onsets of the Plague I grant indeed that the Plague is contracted by the contraction of a defiled matter and that forthwith the pain as it were of a pricking needle is felt But this doth not prove that therefore the sucking of the Air is made by the Arteries when as the poyson it self is apt to infect the skin and forthwith to burn it into an Eschar Surely it is a far different thing for the Pest to be drawn inwards by the Arteries or to be allured by sucking and another thing by force of its own contagion to creep inwards by touching as it were by the stroak of a Serpent for emplaisters Baths and Oils do alter the skin and consequently they do either proceed to alter or do draw from the Center to the skin but not because vapours fetched from thence are drawn materially inward Then at length the Pulse is not after the manner of breathing which by one sigh doth blow out whatsoever is of Air in the Breast but the motion of the Pulses is interrupted by an opposite and therefore the expiring motion is most frequent no lesse than the inspiring and those successive motions do so much hasten that if they had attracted any Air that should enter for a frustrate end seeing it would be knocked out in an instant For truly that which is nearer to the mouthes that should also first be blown out And so the Air should not have hope ever to be more thorowly admitted or that it should satisfie the cooling refreshment of the heart Lastly a generative faculty is wanting to the vital Spirit whereby it should bring the Air into Spirit by a formall transmutation Seeing that power belongs to the Ferment and Shops without which venal bloud is not made For neither can venal bloud generate venal bloud and the chyle of the stomach being granted to be in a Vein or Arterie venal bloud should not therefore ever be made thereby or arterial bloud Therefore the Air although it should be a fit Body yet it could not be made the nourishment of the vital Spirit unless it had first been elabourated in the heart being quickned and enlightned therein individually according to a humane Species all whereof do resist an Element Therefore the frivolous device is made void and the cooling refreshment of the heart by the attraction of Air inwards by the Arteries is feigned And the Load-stone of Man celebrated by Paracelsus is feigned Seeing the Arteries do not suck inwards and the Air so introduced should be for a greater load to the Arteries than the feigned smoakie vapour of the Schooles If therefore the Arteries do not draw Air certainly much lesse should flesh do that being an enemy wanting the hollowness of the Air For indeed that the Air is drawn from without unto the heart by the Arteries as well for its cooling refreshment as its nourishment and increase of the Spirit of the Archeus is nothing but a meer device So is the invention of the Schooles alike frivolous that the necessity alone of expulsing the smoakie vapour bred in the heart should depress the Arteries For truly in the foregoing Chapter I have already shewen at large that there are other aims of the Pulses For whatsoever is made in the heart is either a pure Being and a meer refined thing and vital For there is no adustion corrupt matter dryth nor efficient cause of smoakinesses For it is an unsavoury or foolish thing thus to have compared the Fabrick or frame of life to destroying fire that it must be feigned the arterial bloud there to be burnt to and to send forth smoakie Fumes For if any forreign vapours do sometimes besides
of all things as well in generation as in the transmutations of meats throughout the course of life which office doth properly respect the inbred or implanted spirit But now how and whence the spirit floating in the Arteries may be constituted by occasion of the Blas of man already described consequently I have undertaken to explain in this path their Office and Properties The Schools teach That nourishments are first changed into Chyle and then into digested juice and venal bloud and so that a certain naturall spirit is made in the Liver which afterward by a repeated digestion of the heart is changed into vital and at length is in the Brain made animal or sensitive so as that the natural spirit is ordained for nourishing of the parts but the vital for the preserving of the same and the animal for the functions of sense motion and the soul But I think it hath been far otherwise Phylosophized and farther proceeded For they had known out of Hippocrates That a certain spirit is that thing which causeth violence or maketh the assaults But it was not sufficient to know that there is a certain Spirit to have told by what instruments it should be made or what it might act unlesse they should explain also the disposition substance and properties of the same together with the manner of its making I have elsewhere delivered That of any plant and fruit a ferment being applyed Aqua vitae or a water of life may be made which thing seeing it is commonly known while out of Grains Hydromel or Water and Honey and juices it frameth a water of life The Proposition needs no demonstration But Aqua vitae is a volatile Liquor Oylie as it is wholly enflamed and wholly Salt as being sharp biting as being detained the longer in the mouth it burns the upper skin of the gums and lips and is one and the same simple thing and so it containeth two only and not the three Chymical Beginnings So indeed That according to the will of the Artificer the whole Aqua vitae may be made Salt or Oyl that is That those Beginnings are not Beginnings not constant things but changeable at the will of man But the Wine as to its Winie part contains a spirit answering to Aqua vitae For this is searched through the Arteries of the stomack unto the head without the maturities of other shops So that if more wine be in the stomack than is meet drunkennesse follows as the spirit of the wine doth flow more largely into the head than that by a fit space or interval it can be changed by an individuating humane limitation For from hence the changing and likewise the operation of the ferment is manifest Notwithstanding in Wine that spirit is milder than Aqua vitae which is drawn forth by distillation which thing appears from the like in Oyl of Olives For the Oyl which they call Oyl of Tiles or Bricks or Olem Phylosophorum being distilled doth far differ from the Oylinesse which is drawn out of simple Oyl by digestion only with the circulated Salt of Paracelsus for that circulated Salt is seperated the same in vertue and weight after it hath divided the oyl of Olives into its diversities of parts For a sweet and twofold Oyl is seperated out of oyl of Olives even as a most sweet spirit out of wine being far severed from the tartnesse of Aqua vitae Whence I have learned by consequence That whatsoever is distilled only by fire doth far recede from the vertues of the composed body But in us although meat doth putrifie after its own manner to wit if that putrefaction be a mean of transchanging a thing into a thing yet in our digestions by that putrefaction I speak of the action of the ferment of the stomack Aqua vitae is not extracted out of Potherbs Graines Apples or Pulses For truly the intention of nature is not then to procreate an Aqua vitae and there is one ferment in us whereby things are resolved into Chyle and another whereby things do send forth an Aqua vitae or a water of Life out of themselves For while herbs do putrifie in water through a ferment the stalk stumps or stocks and leaves do remain whole in their antient figure and hardness for the extraction of Aqua vitae which being eaten by us are turned into Chyle and loose their first face Wherefore I have comprehended as many varieties of putrefactions and as many dungs of one bread different in the particular kind as there are particular kinds of living creatures nourished by bread Yea further far more ferments of bread because bread doth putrifie as yet by more means as well of its own accord as from an appointment But what is spoken of bread as much is said of other meats The Schools indeed knew That nothing doth profit us which should not contain a Beginning or Essay of life in its root and so therefore they do admit of the air for the increase of spirit being deceiued by the Lessons of Poets who call them Vitall airs to wit they would have in the venal bloud a spirit of the Liver naturally actually to be and to glister like air For they thought it to be a vapour being ignorant that a vapour is never made an uncoagulable Gas an air sky or wild exhalation but that it alwayes remains water Therefore they thought a vapour exhaling from the venal bloud hunted outwards even as out of a certain luke-warm Liquor should be that spirit of the venal bloud whence vital spirit should be materially framed But surely the venal bloud as long as it flowes in the vessels of the Mesenterie and Port vein is void of spirit Wherefore it being also called out by laaxtive Medicines it is voided forth stinking without any notable token of weaknesse which comes not so to passe if it hath once well touched at the hollow vein Because then the venal bloud is Homogeneally or after one and the same kind sealed in its entrance that it may be made the bloud of the Artery and spirit and therefore it is in the Holy Scriptures indifferently with the Arterial blood called a Red spirit in which the Soul inhabits Although that be properly understood of the Arterial bloud Because the Scripture is there speaking of men stabbed or slain whose venal bloud is poured out together with their arterial bloud I shall at sometime teach concerning digestions that whatsoever is made or composed in the stomack that doth wax soure there by a ferment also Sugar it self not indeed with a sournesse or sharpness of Vinegar Oyl of unripe Olives Citron or Vitriol but by its own like ferment and with a specifical sowrenesse although it symbolizeth or coagreeth with other sowre things in that which is sowre Yet the sharpnesse is diverse from them all by an internall power And that sowreness of meats is perfectly volatile Neither doth that hinder that the Chyle in Youths doth assume the
fixednesse of a bone as also in the fractures of bones For the Chyle of the stomack is the same after growth as it was in a Youth But all that is at length discussed without any remainder of it self it again retakes the nature of a bone in a callous concretion in the solidness of fractures And therefore for that very cause all Chyle is volatile and thus far it sometimes doth assume the disposition of spirit in the venal bloud Not indeed because there is a natural spirit in it and diverse from the venal bloud but rather because the whole venal bloud hath obtained a spiritual Character in the promise John 5. The water the bloud and the spirit are one But I will teach concerning digestions after what sort that sowreness in the Chyle may be transchanged into a volatile Salt whose excrementitious part is banished with Urine and Sweats But the very Masse of venal bloud through the fermental virtue of the heart and assistance of the Pulses doth passe over into Arterial bloud of yellow looking reddish whence it is made vital spirit And so is not the air or vapour of the venal bloud but the venal bloud it self is brought into arterial bloud and from thence at length into vital spirit For the Office of the Liver is univocal and is called Sanguification but not the creation of spirit which do differ far from each other For neither do so many and so diverse Offices belong to one bowel especially because the rude heap of venal bloud is not yet a fit seminary for the spirits For it is sufficient for the Liver being enriched with so few Arteries and a communion of life that it performeth a true transmutation of the Chyle into venal bloud and a true generation of a new Being But in the heart as it were the fountain of life it is first of all meditated concerning vital Beginnings For the Venal bloud is there extenuated into Arterial bloud and vital air which two are wholly perfected by one only action according to the more ready and slow obedience of the venal bloud For the venal bloud is made with the in-thickning of the Chyle or Cream therefore by the separation of the liquid excrement or urine But the spirit is made with the attenuating or making thin of that which is in-thickned Both which actions so opposite do not therefore agree with one Liver But if the Schools will have a natural spirit to have fore-existed in meats but to have received a perfection in the Liver But yet it easily expires in things boyled cocted and roasted And if any doth by chance remain that spirit is not the hepatical or Liverie one of our Family Goverment I confesse indeed that the Spirit of wine is the spirit of Vegetables and is easily snatched into the Arteries as it were a simple Resembler previously disposed that it may easily passe over into vital spirit But from thence the Schools do frame nothing for their spirit of the Liver For the Spirit of wine is immediately snatched into the Arteries out of the stomack without digestion Neither is it taken as a vital companion by the degree of venal bloud it is also easily from thence gathered that the vital spirit doth not presuppose a natural one And what I have said is manifest For truly they which suffer fainting or trembling of the heart do presently and immediately feel the spirit of wine to be admitted into the fellowship of life for neither then also are they made drunk by much wine abundantly drunken Otherwise Wine being as yet corporally existing within the stomack drunkenness doth not from elsewhere proceed than because the winie spirit is abundantly snatched into the heart and head and there breeds a confusion of the fore-existing spirits it self being a stranger not yet polished in the shop of the heart Therefore the venal blood it selfe let it be the spirit of the Liver corporal coagulated into a matter and subjected to a vital Goverment with me it may be so so that we understand it Rhetorically to wit the venal bloud it self to be an object capable and a matter that it may thereby be made Spirit And in speaking Phylosophically or properly there is no spirit in the venal bloud made for it self by the Liver because the labour of Sanguification seperation of the Liquor Latex Urine and Sweat doth employ the Liver to wit while those do most swiftly pass thorow the slender Flood-gates of small veins For the venal bloud although it received an entrance of it self in the Meseraick veins yet the true generation of the same is made also the endowments of small threds and coagulation under the most swift passage together with its Whey through the small Trunks of a hairy slendernesse But if also the generation of spirit doth moreover employ the Liver Truly besides the vain generation of the same the Liver is to prostrate it self like an Asse with too much fardle and plurality of offices And it is sufficient for the venal bloud that being made a Citizen of the veins it doth partake of life and be illustrated with a vital light Therefore even as by the ferment and labour of the heart the venal bloud is made arterial bloud and volatile spirit So a ferment the Vicar of the heart being drawn from the arteries they are also made so volatile that after their consumings they leave no remaining lees that do go forth with a totall transpiration of themselves Therefore the heart doth frame out of the venal bloud arterial bloud which it fitteth and extenuateth by the same endeavour and makes so much vital Spirit in the arterial bloud as the groseness of the venal bloud and the resisting substance of the same doth permit in so little a space wherein it is agitated and shaken together within the bosoms of the heart yea indeed neither is it enough to have known the venal bloud to be Spirit also to be brought over into arterial bloud and to grant a vital Spirit by whose favour it may be informed by the minde and be made animate and from hence at length to be translated into the bosoms or stomachs of the Brain there to receive the various limitation of Characters So that it is made motive in the thorny marrow or Spina Medullae as we have seen in the Shops optical or of the sight which if they are through some errour brought to the tongue they are plainly unprofitable for tasting Wherefore it comes to passe that oft-times the fingers are benummed some moveable part looseth its sense being left either feeling or motion for that the parts are bedewed with a strange and wandring Spirit For the Authours of touchings are unfit for motion and those of this likewise for them But moreover it behoveth to have known the disposition of the vital Spirit For truly it will sometime sufficiently appear that of soure Chyle partly venal bloud and partly salt Urine and the excrements are made But that that excrementitious
saltness is a volatile and salt Spirit which being co-fermented with Earth doth at length in part assume the nature of Salt-peter The venal bloud also doth by distillation afford this salt spirit plainly volatile and not any thing distinguishable from the spirit of Urine Yet I have considered that they both do differ in this essential property that the spirit of the Salt of venal bloud doth cure the falling-evill even of those of ripe age the spirit of the salt of Urine not so Therefore it is manifest that in the Venal blood a salt and volatile spirit is contained But after what manner all the venal bloud may be transchanged by the ferment of the heart into spirit without a diversity of kind as much as may be said I have explained in the Treatise of Long Life Because otherwise Natures are not to be demonstrated from a former Cause as neither the operations of Ferments because they are essentiall causes for the transmutations of things Therefore the vital spirit is saltish and therefore Balsamical and a preserver from corruption and that not so much by reason of the salt as in respect of a light conceived in its own Salt And so neither can air be made the addition or nourishment thereof For although the Aqua vitae be easily assumed into vital spirit yet this is not oylie and combustible but the spirit of wine onely by the touching of a ferment doth easily ascend wholly into a saltish volatile nature forthwith assoon as it looseth its oylie or enflamable property Even as I have taught by Handicraft operation in the Treatise of Duelech To wit after what manner at one onely instant Aqua vitae may be truly changed into a yellow gobbet or lump not inflamable which thing doth more evidently happen to Aqua vitae by a saltish vital Ferment Therefore the Spirit of Wine is straightway snatched into the heart without delay or by a further digestion through the Arteries of the stomach and restoreth the strength because it is by small labour perfected in the heart yet we must not think that the vital Spirit is soure because the Spirit of Salt-peter is pleasingly sharp and is made at length of the Spirit of Urine Because the Spirit from whence Salt-peter is coagulated in the Earth was not soure or sharp while it was the Spirit of Urine Therefore the vitall Spirit is Salt not soure for that which is sharp out of the stomach is an enemy to the whole Body being nearer to the Spirit of Urine than to Salt-peter and it is as yet much more divers from the Spirit of Salt-peter by the adustion and co-mingling of the adjunct with the thing extracted But they do easily perceive the saltness of the vital Spirit who have had some stupid member which by degrees receiving touching doth suffer pricking and stingings which are the true tokens of saltness Indeed the saltness of the Spirit may be known but the light of the same proceeding immediately and fountainously from the Father of Lights doth drive away all further search of mortall men Furthermore that the whole venal bloud is a meer Salt it desires not more strongly to be proved than because the whole venal bloud is in Ulcers the dropsie Ascites c. homogeneally made a Liquor by an immediate degeneration For the venal bloud is intensly red but it growes yellow while it is made arterial bloud because redness waxeth yellow when it is as it were dissolved by a volatile Salt It is as yet a dead thing whatsoever I have spoken of hitherto The vital Spirit performs the offices of life But the famous top of life is not proper to a Liquor or exhalation as they are Salt things And that the life of things may live it ought of necessity to have a Light from the Father of Lights Therefore it behoveth that the Spirit or vital Skie or Air be enlightned with a Light simply vital not indeed universal but specifical and individuating Nor also with a fiery burning enfiaming light and conspicuous by concentred beames But it is a formal light of the condition of a sensitive Soul In which word the descriptions and further diligent searches of mortal men are stayed to which end imagine thou that Glow-worms have a light in their belly a little before night as also bubbles of the Sea have a night brightness and very many things which through purrifying do proceed into the last matter of Salts yet vital and that which is extinguished together with their life Suppose thou a certain a like light to be in the spirit of life which as long as it liveth shineth and when it forsaketh the eyes of one dying they appear horny and made clean And that light is now and then extinguished the material vital Spirit being as yet safe in the Plague poyson sounding c. yet thou mayst not think that the like essence of light is in us and Glow-worms that indeed lights do differ onely in the tone or tenor of degrees But in very deed there are as many particular kindes of vital lights as there are of Creatures that have life And that is an abundant token of divine bounty that there are as many particular kindes of Lights which are comprehended in us under one onely notion and word and that there are as many vital differences as there are Species of vital things because that those lights are the very lives Souls and Forms of vital things themselves yet I except the immortal minde while I treat of frail lights although it self also be a certain incomprehensible light and so by the same Lights themselves is the alone and every distinction of particular kindes Therefore the Father of Lights delighteth in the unutterable abundance of generall kindes of Lights with a far greater bounty than in fashioning almost infinite varieties in one onely humane countenance For there is with himself a certain Common-wealth of Lights and a Legion of unmemorable Citizens a certain likeness whereof he expresseth by the Forms of vital things in the sublunary World Therefore the vitall Spirit is arterial bloud resolved by the Ferment of the heart into a salt Air and enlightned by life which light is in us hot of the nature of the Sun and is cold in a Fish neither doth it ever aspire unto any power of heat wherefore our heat is not a consumer of the Original moisture even as concerning long life seeing fishes have not hitherto escaped death Neither could the first men who before the floud saw a thousand Solar years have had more radical moisture by ten fold than us unless they had had all things ten fold more extended which is an impertinent thing For truly it is probable that Adam being formed by the hand of God obtained the most exceeding perfect Stature of the Lord Jesus Christ neither to have exceeded the same Lastly Fishes should naturally be immortall under the frozen Sea seeing their radical moisture should not there evaporate by heat
heat For if a little heat causeth a small digestion and amean heat a mean one Verily at a powerful and troublesome digestion a great heat ought also to be present Which thing notwithstanding although I have divers times the more curiously searched into I have not found to be true Then at length it is to be noted That the digestion of bread in a Man Dog Horse Fish Bird differ in the whole general kind no otherwise than as a manifold venal bloud and filths sprung from thence Wherefore from one only particular kind of digesting heat those kinds of varieties of digestions cannot proceed Therefore let the Schools erect and defend so many general kinds of heats and colds before they do require for themselves to be believed I therefore do draw so great a difference of venal blood from formal properties and specifical ferments never from heat For truly I perfectly know that whatsoever things have divers essential efficients have also divers effects and attributes to wit So that products divers in the general kind do necessarily require their own efficient causes diverse in the general kind For otherwise any thing should produce any thing indifferently to wit even as one and the same thing doth arise from the same nigh causes For how frivolous a thing is it to have adjudged the vital powers and the formal and specifical parents of transmutations unto luke-warmths For if the digestion of heat were needful a more prosperous and plentiful digestion should continually follow a greater heat For by how much every cause is more powerful in nature by so much it doth also more powerfully perfect its own proper effect By consequence the stomack of one sick of a Fever in a burning Fever should more powerfully digest than that of a healthy person But surely in the stomack of him that hath a Fever nothing is rightly digested For Eggs Fishes Fleshes and Broths are presently made cadeverous or stinking within and therefore they do cause adust or burnt belchings the which if sowre belchings do soon follow after Hippocrates hath reckoned to be good as well from the sign as from the cause Yet there is in one that hath a Fever a heat also sometimes that heat is temperate to wit while it is not troublesome neither doth stir up thirst yet the digestion is void Impure bodies by how much the more powerfully thou nourishest them by so much the more thou hurtest them which in a Feverish man is manifest wherein we must presently use a most slender food easie of digestion And we must abstain from the more strongmeats to wit those consummated or accomplished in growth from meat Broths because the ferment being absent they do easily putrifie contract an adust savour and turn as it were into a dead Carcass No otherwise than as raw flesh being bound on the Wrist Breast Soals of the feet or Neck so far is it that it should be resolved into Chyle that straight-way after some hours it putrifies and stinks although it be salt The same thing is in an impure Feverish body where heat is present but a digesting ferment is wanting For if heat be the cause of digestion otherwise digestion is wanting in a Feaver but heat is present but we must more apply our selves to digestion than to cooling refreshment especially if no very troublesome heat be present Therefore we should rather study the increase of heat than cooling And so the Scope of the Physitian should be changed while it should be devised concerning the increase of heat in a Fever for digestion nourishing and increase of strength Neither also shall sharp and hungry Medicines of Sulphur Vitriol Salt Niter Citron and the like help but the heat should be stirred up and increased by sharp things He speaketh something like madness who saith That the Snow makes cold as it is white So it is a ridiculous thing to affirm That the specificall ferment of the stomack doth digest by reason of vitall heat existing in it Surely it is to be lamented that the credulity and sloath of those to whom the care of the life is committed have changed burying-places into a meer Sumen or fatting juice despairing of the searching out of natural properties whence notwithstanding they have their Sur-name Paracelsus also being deluded by a digestive heat and ignorant of the Ferment of the stomack admires that some things which are most hard are changed into Chyle in a few hours and that a bone is consumed in the luke-warmth of the stomack of a Dog who aspiring to the Monarchy of healing failed thereof after that he named this a power to be admired at was ignorant of and knew not the ferments For being unconstant to himself he wrote elsewhere That this digestive property doth agree no lesse to the mouth being shut than to the stomack and so also from hence That Anchorets have spent their long life happily without swallowed meat But surely that Idiotisme is to be left to his own boldness while in the mean time whatsoever hath perhaps remained within the hollownesses of the Teeth is straight-way made like a dead carcasse with a horrible stink but is not digested For I remember that a white and thick glasse being cast out of my Furnace was swallowed by my Hens they being deluded through the heat of Milk but the fracture of glasse is always sharp-pointed but after a few dayes some Hens being killed the glasse was found to be pointingly diminished on every side and to have lost its sharp tops and to have been made roundish or globish But the other surviving Hens and Guests had presently after a few dayes consumed the rest of the Glasse although they had also devoured the small Pellets of Glasse taken out of the Hens formerly slain Thou shalt take notice in the mean time that glasse doth resist waters which resolve any Mettals Indeed the ferment in many Birds is so powerful that unlesse they are now and then fed with Tiles or Bricks Chalk or white earth they are ill at ease through the multitude of sharpness But on the contrary that the stomack of one that hath a Fever is wholly of an adust savour he rejecteth meats of three dayes continuance being oft-times as yet distinguished by the sight or sometimes turned into a yellow or rusty liquour to wit through the straining scope of the ferment I learned the necessity of this ferment of the stomack while being a Boy I nourished Sparrows I oft-times thrust out my tongue which the Sparrow laid hold of by biting and endeavoured to swallow to himself and then I perceived a great sharpness to be in the throat of the Sparrow whence from that time I knew why they are so devouring and digesting And then I saw that the sharp distilled Liquor of Sulphur had seasoned my Glove and that it did presently resolve it into a juice in the part which it had moistned which thing confirmed to me a young Beginner that meats are transchanged
themselves by the same right concoct for themselves and are thereby nourished For truly in this humour every part lives in its own Orbe and every part hath a singular Cook-room in it self for it self But besides even till a certain age and measure inbred in the Seeds of things the nourishment departs into increase Then it stayeth and is no more mixed with its first constituters And therefore this nourishment is opposed onely for the retarding of the dryness of old age even unto the closure of life This indeed is the distribution of the digestions and Regions of the Body among the Antients and modern Schooles which hath never seemed to me to be sufficient but full of ignorance because it is that which besides rude observations hath brought no light unto the art of healing CHAP. XXVIII A six-fold digestion of humane nourishment 1. The miserable boastings of the Galenists 2. Whence the first dissolution of the meat is 3. A sharpness being obtained is presently changed into a salt Salt 4. The use of the gut Duodenum neglected in the Schools 5. Sharpness or soureness out of the stomach doth hurt us 6. The variety and incompatibility or mutual unsufferableness of the Ferments 7. An example of that ready exchanging 8. Nothing like a Ferment doth meet us elsewhere 9. The volatileness of sharpness doth remain in a salt product 10. The latitude in Ferments 11. Whence it is known that the first Ferment is a forreigner to the Stomach 12. Why Sawces do stand in sharpness 13. Sharpness is not the Ferment it self but the Instrument of the same 14. Too much sharpness of the Stomach is from its vice 15. A receding from the Schools in the examination of the Gaul 16. That Choler is not made of meats 17. That the Gaul is not an excrement but a bowel 18. The membrane of the wombe is a bowel even as also that of the Stomach 19. Why the Gaul and Liver are connexed 20. What may be the stomach of the Liver 21. VVhy it goes before the Ferment of the Gaul and is the second digestion 22. VVhy the venal bloud in the Mesentery doth as yet want threds neither therefore doth it wax clotty 23. The wombe of the Vrine and the wombe of Duelech or the Stone in man are distinct 24. The stomach of the Gaul and its Region 25. The rotten opinion of the Schools concerning the rise of the Gaul and its use 26. Nature had been more careful for the Gaul its enemy than for Phlegme its friend 27. The separation of the Vrine differs from the separation of wheyiness out of milk 28. The second and third digestions are begun at once although the third be more slowly perfected 29. What the stomach of the Gaul is 30. The Gaul doth import more than to be chief over an excrement 31. Birds want a Kidney and Vrine but not a Gaul 32. Fishes also do prove greater necessities of a Gaul than of filths or excrements 33. That the Schools are deceived in the use of the Gaul 44. The Liquor of the Gaul with its membrane being a noble bowel doth now and then banish its superfluity into the gut Duodenum 35. How excrements do obtain the heat of the Gaul yet are not therefore choler or gaul 36. The proper savour of the dung doth exclude the gaul and fiction of choler 37. Gauls seem what they are not 38. Whence the vein hath it that even after the death of a man it doth preserve the venal bloud from coagulating 39. The extream rashness of the Schooles 40. The solving of an Objection 41. It is proved by many Arguments that the veins of the stomach do not attract any thing to themselves out of the Chyle 42. The Authour is dissented from the Schools in respect of the bounds of the first Region in the Body 43. The true shop of the bloud is not properly in the passage of the Liver 44. The action of a Ferment doth act onely by inbreathing neither doth it want a corporeal touching 45. The absurd consequences upon the positions of the Schools concerning touching and continual nourishing warmth 46. The Ferments of the Gaul and Liver do perform their offices by in-breathing 47. Why Flatus's or windy blasts do not pierce an Entrail 48. The Errour of Paracelsus about the pores of the Bladder 49. The first digestion doth not yet formally transchange meats 50. Where the absolute transmutation of meats is compleated 51. It is false that nourishment is not to be granted without an excrement 52. It is false that the stomach doth first boil for it self and secondarily for the whole Body 53. The Gaul hath the nature of a Balsam 54. A miserable objection 55. The Gaul taken for a Balsam in the holy Scriptures 56. Against the Gaul of the Jaundise 57. Two Idiotisms in Paracelsus 58. How the Salt of the Sea is separated from Salt-peter 59. Out of water there is Vinegar 60. The fourth digestion and Region of the Body 61. Why the heart is eared 62. The fifth digestion 63. That the vapour in the venal bloud is not yet a Skyie Spirit 64. The nourishing of the flesh and the bowels is distinguished 65. That the Animal Spirit doth not differ in the Species from the vital 66. The fourth and fifth digestions do want excrements 67. What the sixth digestion is 68. The Diseases in the sixth digestion are neglected by the Schools because not understood 69. In the designing of the Kitchin and Shop there are some errours of the Schools 70. Why an Artery doth for the most part accompany a vein 71. Paracelsus is noted 72. The errour of Fernelius concerning Butter 73. The rashness of Paracelsus concerning Milk 74. A censure or judgement of Milk 75. The best manner of drawing forth Goats bloud 76. An undoubted curing of the Pleurisie without cutting of a vein 77. Why Asses milk is to be preferred before other Milks 78. The education of a Child for a long and healthy life 79. Some things worthy to be noted concerning the Vrine 80. Why dropsical persons are more thirsty than those that have a hectick Fever 81. The proper place of the Ferment of the Dung is even as in a Wolf 82. The proper nest of Worms and the History of the same 83. The difference of Ascarides from VVorms 84. That a Clyster is injected in vain for nourishment sake I Have observed notable abuses committed throughout the whole description of Functions or of the use of parts Although Galen doth not more gloriously triumph in any place than in the Treatise of Pulses and in the use of parts the which notwithstanding the modern Anatomists do shew that he never thorowly considered wherefore it is altogether probable that without the knowledge and searching out of the truth these Treatises described by Galen from elsewhere and prostituted for his own are as yet to this day worshipped in the Schools Wherefore I have premised the digestions which Antiquity hath hitherto known and hath confirmed
the chance She was asked thereupon of what savour it was and she answered it was of a stinking and waterishly sweet one Thirdly a Painter of Bruxels being mad between whiles about the beginning of his madness escapes into a Wood near by and was there found far from the sight of men to have lived 23 dayes by his own Dung He was straightway brought home I went to see him and the Lord healed him But he was perfectly mindeful of all things past at the time of his madness I asked him whether he remembred of what savour his Dung was He said it savours as it smells And being afterwards examined by me through the Capital tasts he answered it was not sour not bitten sharp salt but waterishly sweet Yea he said that by how much the oftner he had re-earen it by so much it had alway been the sweeter But being asked for what cause he had rather eat Dung than return home He said that he throughout his whole madness abhorred men being perswaded by his own fury that men sought to destroy him by a snare Therefore it is manifest that there is not even the least drop of Gaul in the Dung for the Gaul being once burst however a Fish may afterwards be most exactly washed yet the bitterness of the Gaul conceived by the least touching is never laid aside For if yellowness should bewray the Gaul the dung of Infants should be especially gawly which notwithstanding is licked by Dogs because it hath as yet retained some kinde of savour of the milk But whatsoever hath not been fully subdued in the stomach nor hath assumed the beauty of a transparency may not hope to be digested in the bowels by the ferment of the Gaul although it be tinged with a yellow colour Because it goes not to the second or third but thorow the absolute first Whatsoever therefore is thick and tinged with heat in the Ileos that is wholly banished into an excrement and under a certain sweetness doth attain the savour of putrefaction No otherwise than as soure fruits wax sweet by a little heat But whatsoever was before sour in the stomach that is made salt in the Duodenum and is severed from the Dung but if any thing do persevere sour which may resist the ferment of the Gaul wringings of the bowels c. do presently follow But the excrement of man doth putrifie because the ferment of the dung is chief over that place But that which slides out of the stomach undigested also is not digested in the bowels It is cast out whole but it keeps and now and then increaseth the part of sournesses which it assumed in the stomach For from hence do the brans in bread provoke the stool by reason of sharpness but other things do wax more sharp and stir up wringings of the guts Therefore from the Duodenum the Chyle doth forthwith begin to exchange its own sharp volatile Salt into an equall saltness it being resolved in the Cream But the remaining and more corporal substance of the Cream doth expect a sanguification in the veins of the mesentery from the inspired ferment of the Liver The salt Liquor in the mean time being attracted by the Reins thorow the Liver is it self committed to the Reins and Bladder for expulsion Therefore the third digestion begins in the veins of the mesentery which is terminated in the Liver For the venal bloud as long as it is in the mesentery is not yet digested not yet thredded or perfect For the venal bloud of the mesentery doth therefore not grow together in the Bloudy flux But otherwise a vein of the stomach being burst the venal bloud doth forthwith wax clotty in the stomach For the ferment of the Liver is so much inclined to sanguification for it is its univocal and one onely office that the veins do even by the right of league retain or hold that from the Liver and its proper implanted Archeus thereupon confirming it So that the bloud in the veins of a dead Carcase is not coagulated a long while after death which being elsewhere powred forth doth presently wax clotty For the Cream running down afterwards thorow the Bowels becomes the dryer and also the liquid matter thereof being sucked upwards into the veins But thereby the rest doth more and more putrifie so that when it is almost brought down to the ends of the Ileos now not a little of a more liquid Dung is generated because before it hath fully putrified it is snatched to the mesentery that it may be thorowly mingled with the Urine profitable for its ends Even as elsewhere concerning Fevers and likewise concerning the Stone Which yellow Dung the Schooles have believed to be Choler and Gaul and so out of the Dung they have founded their demonstration for one of the four humours and a Gate hath thereby layen open to miserable errours and wicked slaughters For it was of little regard for them hitherto to have built up their false significative knowledge by the unknown substance of the tincture of the Urine but to have made Choler and Gaul the constitutive humours of us the causers of all Diseases to wit to have feigned yellow Choler and that a little the more digested to be adust and like the cankering of Brasse and from thence to be dry and scorched melancholy or black Choler but the gaul it self to be the sink of superfluous Choler but the venal bloud to be nothing but an artificial Body connexed of many things or humours which being again seperated they should be the same after their death as before in their life but that a Body is not born of Mother nature by a true transmutation of the Chyle into univocal or simple venal bloud and at length to have instituted healings about the removing of accomplished causes which never will be or were in nature Surely that thing doth exceed gross ignorance and renders the Snorters of the Schooles unexcusable But perhaps they will object to me Thou sayest that the veins do suck the Cream being slidden out of the stomach into the intestines therefore the same office belongs to the veins of the stomach that they may draw that sour Cream into themselves without the interceding of the Ferment of the Gaul that is without changing of the Sour into Salt And by consequence thy ferment of the Gaul is a dreamed and invented thing yea meat broath injected by a Clyster shall be able to pierce to the Liver without the knowledge of the Gaul touching the right of a Clyster I have finished this question in the Book of Fevers I answer that it is an antient abuse of the Schooles who have equally attributed the same use to all the veins As if the veins seperated in the arms should busie themselves in drawing of the Cream First of all I have already shewen that the bloud in the veins is coagulable the bloud of the Mesentery not so And then we must know that all sour Cream is
penury of venal bloud But Paracelsus every where bringing nature over to his own desires saith That in the Digestion of the stomack a stinking or putrified Sulphur is seperated from the two other Beginnings But in the Liver that the salt is seperated from the Mercury but the venal blood to be the Mercury and the true nourishment of the whole entire part Neither is it worth ones labour by scoffing at this man to be drawn any longer on the Stage while himself doth infringe this his own Doctrine For he diligently searching into the original of Ulcers saith That the whole venal blood is nothing but the salt now he makes no mention of Mercury unlesse he confoundeth the Mercury with the Salt in name and thing although the urine of those that are ulcerated doth not contain a crum of salt less than themselves not ulcerated But surely it is a shamefull thing to reckon the three first things of the venal blood as if they were excrements whose Arterial bloud is one of the three Also he every where compareth Milk to the Arterial blood Not knowing that a thing transchanged is not any more like it self being not transchanged as neither is a Chick like to an Egge or to an Yolk Indeed he calls the Buttery part of the Milk swimming upon the Milk the Sulphur of the Milk never in the mean time not indeed Analogically doth the Buttery part swim upon the Arterial blood but the Cheese or Curds he calls the salt of the Milk therefore also the Whey of the Milk shall be also the Mercury of the Milk and by consequence its best part and the best nourishment of the Milk And the Whey of the Milk shall be the Mercury out of the Mercury of the Arterial bloud I will willingly and smilingly grant Paracelsus the Whey and will my self take the Cream Because the Butter resembles the smell of flowers where-with the Cow is fed but not the Whey But Fernelius thinketh Butter to be nothing but the froth of the stirred Cream not knowing a presupposing of a sour ferment in the Cream that it may be truly transchanged into Butter by shakings together For from hence if a little Ashes Soape Sugar or of those things which do participate of a Lye or Lixivium be immingled with the Cream there will never be Butter made thereby by reason of an Alcali which flayeth every sour Ferment For therefore in Winter the co-shaking of the Cream is more tedious before the Butter be brought forth because heat doth promote sour things and all putrefactions But Paracelsus being elsewhere unmindful of his own Doctrine doth prefer the Cream before the Whey and Cheese as well for health healing as for the goodnesse of the food But the Galenical Schools do prefer the thin and waterish Milk before the more fat Milk For this cause they determine Ewes Milk to be the vilest and then Cows Milk Thirdly Goats milk And at length they prefer Asses milk before the rest by reason of its thin substance and very much wheyinesse But I know that this one only Milk of beasts fed in dry pastures is the best as well in healing as in eating and to be least wheyie For they command a Goat let the same judgement be of Milke where the like reason appeareth whose Venal blood the Schools do prescribe in the Shops and in many places Sheeps blood is sold for Goats blood to be first nourished with things Diuretical or provoking Urine Therefore the virtues of Milk are to be measured by the soundnesse life and meats of the Beast but never by his grossnesse or fatnesse And Physitians being called to give their judgement of Milk in a Nurse do come badly instructed neither are they ready to judge otherwise than of the venal blood drawn out by Phlebotomy That is minds being blind through ignorance do not see with open eyes I have observed also that of the same Cow of the like quantity of Milk there is an unlike quantity of Cream although she rejoyce in the same pasture for that also is according to the unlike soundnesse of the Cow But I for Blood hang up a He-Goat by the horns and do bend his hinder legs to his horns I cut off his Testicles and his Venal blood being received from thence I dismisse him without bloud for the Butcher But this venal blood being dried is like unto glass and of a most difficult sifting and very far differing from the Goats blood of the Shops But it being taken in the weight of a Dram doth straight-way cause sleep and cureth the Pleurisie c. without cutting of a Vein Neither will it ever fail thee For Asses Milk doth more refresh and recreate or renew yea and thus far it nourisheth not as it is more wheyie For that is to have judged of the virtues of a Kernel never before seen by the shell But a she-Asse as she is long-lived her Milk is more excellent than that of other four-footed beasts For it must needs be that her Milk also hath an Archeus endowed with a long life And for this cause indeed her Cream doth not seperate it selfe till a long time after Because it doth more slowly hearken to corruption For that sequestration doth tend unto a duality and destruction Hence it is manifest that seeing in child-hood the nourishment is converted into our very Constitutives Asses milk doth more conferre a long life and healthier on Children than other foods Wherefore also Womens milk although it be most like unto us immediate mumial and nourishable yet it gives place to Asses-milk for long-life But the she-Asse is to be combed like unto Horses and so it may be known by the taste of the milk whether the Asse were combed that morning or not Therefore let the Schools learn a better judgement concerning Nurses concerning Milk and Diet likewise to judge of the contents of the Urine nor to acknowledge Choler or Gaul in the Urine or Dung Let them know I say to distinguish the Urine of the venal bloud from the Urine of the drink and then that the drawing of Liquor out of the veins of the Mesentery doth cause natural thirst but not from the exhausting of the lesser veins by reason of the impoverishing of the venal bloud For otherwise Physical or consumptional persons should alwayes thirst and more than those that have the Dropsie and the repeated thirst should bewray a repeated Consumption of the bloud distinguished by small intervalls We must also know that at the end of the Bowel Ileos there is a little Sack which they have called the blinde gut in which the ferment of the dung resideth the which seeing it is the work of corruption and not of nourishing its putrefaction is never to be accounted among the digestions of nourishments For the ferment of the dung doth not proceed from any Bowel or vital faculty and therefore in this terme of mutation more secure wringings do happen while the matter seasoned with a dungie
so that as many ounces of venal bloud ought to be filled up as are unfilled First of all if that be perpetual therefore let the Schools choose to wit either whether they will make the manglings in cutting of a vein to be vain or the appetite not to be stirred up from the sucking of the veins accusing the defect of venal bloud which thing first of all is not to be doubted of in time of health for if there be hunger by reason of want of venal bloud therefore Phlebotomy is badly instituted in the penury of venal bloud But if that be considered in Diseases suppose in a Fever where there is no appetite there also shall be no defect of venal bloud But if as many ounces of bloud are supplyed as are consumed of which Consumption hunger should be the token therefore in a Fever either there is not a consuming of venal bloud or hunger is not the sense of venal bloud consumed But if the venal bloud be also wasted in a Fever Phlebotomy shall be in vain Likewise for every event after two or three dayes as much bloud shall be now consumed by the Fever seeing a Fever doth consume and extenuate more than right health as a Plethora or the abounding of humours the one onely betokener of bloud-letting should command to be emptied out And by consequence the positions of hunger being supposed Phlebotomy shall every where be made vain For the Schools suppose that the bloud is dispensed into the lesser veins out of the hollow vein as if a vein were a dispenser and there were not a difference between the Vessel it self and the dispenser or the power proportionally dispensing and at length into the small little branches whereby in the last place it may be dispersed into the habit of the Body And therefore onely from the sense of hunger that the last small branches of the veins do suck the greater Trunk but that this doth afterwards suck the veins of the stomach and mesentery from whence at length that hunger and thirst are felt Which thing being supposed first of all those whose veins do swell should be pressed with no hunger or thirst and then there should not be a sucking of that sense unless the greater veins were first emptied Likewise in the third place this position doth resist the Doctrine of the Schools who teach that the stomach doth cook onely for it self in the first place but secondarily or by accident for the whole body as the stomach doth undergo a common self-love For that being granted the stomach shall neither cook nor desire and hunger for the Body but onely for it self therefore neither shall it feel that it may supply the penury of the veins But the veins shall primarily thirst and hunger the stomach onely by accident neither for it self but for the veins For the ignorance of the truth hath made the Schools every where rash They have not known I say that hunger is inspired from the Spleen into the Stomach to wit that the Spleen hath known the scope of things to be done as the chief Bowel for the governing of decoctions and therefore it is effectively the chief governour of the appetites to whom notwithstanding the Pylorus the ruler and executer is an assistant For the Pylorus for all that hath a free Blas of opening or shutting it self at pleasure which in time of health is moved by reason of its knowledge of the ends known to the stomach for which coction and appetite are created by the Spleen as if the Pylorus were conscious of the secret ends of the Spleen But in sickness the Pylorus openeth and shuts it self preposterously and with an invented order being as it were stricken with a symptomatical fury For I being about to buy a Village I did walk with a notable appetite then by chance I wrung my foot awry I slid down rigour presently came on me with a loathing vomiting and the former appetite to eat being suppressed but I straightway reposed my writhed foot and that half put out of its place and at the same instant my former appetite was restored unto me and the nauseousness of my stomach was ceased Indeed my Orifice was open as well in appetite as in nauseousness but I had my Pylorus shut in my appetite and straightway opened in my nauseousness and again shut in my vomiting For as I said vomiting is not made but by the shutting and inverting of the Pylorus upwards but in the hicket or sobbing there is made an inversion of the stomach it self upwards which therefore is far different from the inversion of the Pylorus beginning to vomit But that those things were after this manner is apparent because seeing my stomach under notable hunger had not wherewith to vomit being greedy of meat the Pylorus by his own consent presently closed himself who again even from the distortion or writhing of the ligaments of my foot being as it were mad with fury opened himself and called unto him the filths from the Duodenum For at the time of my vomiting that the Pylorus might expel the conceived ballast he shut himself and again had opened himself for a new accumulation or heaping up of filths unless by the restored small dislocation the fury of the Pylorus had been appeased Therefore if with the closure of the Pylorus my withdrawn appetite straightway returned who seeth not that the appetite afforded by the Spleen is governed by the Pylorus I have said that the Pylorus doth snatch the filths out of the Duodenum upwards into the stomach that he who before being the Porter was thought to be dedicated onely to detaining and expelling may think of attracting hurtful things which things although they do happen by a common sorce whereby all things being once banished do put on a hostile character and are thereby presently made worse yet they are in an inverted order drawn unto the stomach by a raging Blas of the Pylorus I have likewise herein discerned that the Pylorus is not onely the cause of appetite nauseousness and vomiting but also to be the one onely causer of the Disease called Choler of the Dysentery or Bloudy Flux and Flux and I have experienced that oft times a small Remedy being administred the furies of the Pylorus were appeased and the aforesaid hurts corrected Surely it is a thing to be grieved at that nothing hath hitherto been weighed by the Schools touching these things and that their whole aid is placed in a Clister neither that they have come unto the nest of the evil They have onely converted themselves unto the thorow passage of the thing produced like the Dog that bites the stone that is cast at him For I have seen a young man exceeding well in health and enjoying a notable appetite in the morning to have eaten some fresh ripe Mulberries well washed with bread buttered and straightway to have felt a sweet delight of cooling refreshment in his stomack thereby And then his
appetite being by chance half an hour after sore troubled or destroyed he fell with the pain of the Colick into a Flux and he had daily perhaps seventy stools of a Milkie colour But presently restringent Cordials were administred as well within as without To wit the juice of Quinces with Confection of Alkermes of Diarrhodon of Spodium De hyacintho and the like exhilerating things In the mean time very many Clisters of Whey steelified and the like sweepings were injected and all in vain At length also Opiates were annexed to other things and nature laughed at the learned ignorance and sporting experiments but the sick man grieved at the vain remedies And at length at the utmost danger of Life that was appointed the Lord healed him For I administred two hard yolks of Eggs tempered with Rose-Vinegar his dejected appetite and the restoring of his appetite by the yolks taken do testifie that the Flux arose from the vice of the Pylorus For he perceived a manifest ease the medicine being as yet detained within his stomack I remember also that by Horse-hoofs fryed in Buttel and the same being afterwards powdered the fury of the Pylorus hath been oft appeased that dysenteries and fluxes have stopped and felt the bounty of healing that strong smelling remedy being as yet detained within the stomack But if the hoof be the superfluity of a wanton Colt it is said To bring certain destruction on those that have the Dysentery or bloudy Flux Therefore the Pylorus being the Ruler of the closure of Digestion and appetite in the stomack it doth also through a long journey of the Intestines govern as well the contents as the exorbitances of the neighbour-Veins for the undigestions of meats and excrements their corruptions and quick passages do testifie that the indignation of the Pylorus only is to be confirmed by remedies For so yesterdayes gluttony doth stir up giddinesses of the head not so much over night as in the morning the stomack being void of meats and those do for the most part cease the break-fast being taken Because then the Pylorus doth open and is beset with filth and afterwards he closed himself at the coming of the break-fast and doth as it were forget the former discommodity A Cock of ours of two years of age eats Bran and Oats in the morning according to his custom but a little before evening he refuseth to Roost on his accustomed staffs he layes on the ground and the morning following is averse to meat Being giddy-headed he runs down side-wayes and doth oft-times fall backwards At length he shakes or smites his Comb and Fore-head harder on the ground and dyes before noon But by Dissection were found some lesser flints not indeed in the first sack or stomack but in the more inward and true stomack But a greater Flint had shut the Pylorus which being lesse than a Flint had cut of the hope of passage For neither was there any other cause found of so great giddiness and unwonted death but that the Pylorus because it was by force and against its will shut in the place of Coction it had confected or made a Leeky liquor above the greater Flint Which surely could not have come thither out of the Gaul seeing the Flint had stopt up the passage from Gaul its coming within the stomack out of the Gaul thorow the Duodenum Therefore that green and leeky liquor was bred in the stomack through the Vice of the stopped Pylorus Likewise concerning thirst I have often observed that those that are thirsty in Fevers have again vomited up the drink with a fourfold quantity Therefore thirst is not of necessity by reason of the defect of moisture nor also through the penury of bloud as that for the same cause the same veins may sometimes be the cause of hunger and sometimes of thirst and the messengers of a defect of venal bloud yea now and then of both together as well of hunger as of thirst But the Bowel inspiring a ferment on the stomack doth stir up hunger and thirst For in Fevers the cause of the Fever is an Alcali abounding hence neither doth the thirst cease although the stomack doth abound with its own drink for neither doth the drink come unto that Alcali For so salt and peppered things do prepare thirst no otherwise than as putrified Alcalies or Lixivial salts do because they exclude the sour Ferment out of the stomack As salt doth hinder the resolving and transchanging of the food that is the entrance of the digestive ferment breathed from the Spleen So a quantity of the more pure drink things peppered hard and undigestible are causers of thirst but not because they are hot and dry things in the middle waters detained in the stomack but because they do resist the aforesaid Ferment of the Spleen But sour things on the contrary as they are neer to the Ferment of the Spleen they do refresh thirst Therefore thirst in the like cases is not through defect of nutritive moisture but by reason of the Ferment of the Spleen being hindred which at length overcomming by a longer time of sleep the aforesaid difficulties therefore sleep takes away thirst Also thirst ariseth in Fevers by reason of burntish putrefactions and coagulated things but not because nutritive and cooling refreshing moisture is desired as they think but a resolver of that which huâ—ts And so it doth not so much shew and require a nourishment as a Remedy And therefore neither doth thirst cease by drink unless this hath brought a co-resembling mean for the receiving of the Ferment Seeing therefore the Pylorus is the Governour of Coction and no less the Moderator of thirst than of appetite as well meats as drinks shall be also the perceivances of the same Ruler distinguishing the bounds or ends of digestion For in the Beginnings of Tertians a plenteous vomiting of a yellow excrement together with much thirst doth molest and those two do concur with the shutting of the mad Pylorus and for this cause he doth instead of a sour Cream frame that yellow or cankered excrement or liquor which being detained in the stomack of the Cock caused his death Moreover I will adde four Histories which will confirm the efficacy of the Pylorus in the action of Government My Wives Brother was by chance ill at ease for the space of eight dayes at Mecheline from a solemn and glâ—ttonous Feast But a Physitian of the City offers him a vomitory potion whereby he vomited twice every day And so he had written the day before that he the next day would come from Mecheline to Bruxels unto us Therefore being Boored and now fitted for his journey the day following before noon he dyed after that in the foregoing night he had been ill and had vomited often as before somewhat black Liquor or venal bloud there corrupted But his dead carkass being dissected shewed no vice except that in his stomack a blackish Liquor floated on the shut Pylorus 2.
a cane through the defect of his mouth palate tongue jawes c. and therefore cheweth nothing and so touching not any nourishment with his teeth yet he daily affixeth a stone to his teeth no otherwise than he which eateth Likewise after every repast although the mouth and teeth be exactly cleansed by washing yet in the morning a new stone and stinking muscilage is conversant about the teeth which at least could not have remained of the meat and the which if it should be the Tartar of meats this should also be as often diverse as there are interchangeable courses of meats which the Carthusians have the same and alike smelling as the devourers of flesh have Likewise they who are fed with simple bread and apples have it no otherwise than those who do eat bread and likewise cheese Even those Irish who live by Trifoil or three-leaved grasse which they call Ciambrock instead of bread and water with the Norwayes who are content with raw and dried fish all do agree in the same stone except a few of a more happy disposition Therefore it was a frivolovs thing to have founded the invention of Tartar for diseases out of the Tartar of meats by reason of the tooth-stone which certainly in the first place doth not issue from a dreamed Microcosmical property because the Macrocosme shall never in chewing affix a stinking stone to its teeth If therefore the stone be not from the Tartar of meats neither surely shall it also be from the Tartar of drinks because seeing it is that which seldome toucheth at the teeth it swiftly flowes thorow and should sooner wash off the same Tartar than apply it Therefore I will shew from whence the tooth-stone may have its matter and efficient cause Because it will afterwards as yet be certainly manifest that the reasons of Tartar are vain Therefore it is an undoubted truth that the tongue is cloathed with a fimbrious or seamy coat like unto whole silk and if it shall wet any thing of the meat or drink in the mouth that this is conteined within those seams or hems until they are filled up with the same moisture Yet that is not any Tartar of the meats or drinks as if it were a coagulable body separated from that which is not coagulable but it is foundly the whole substance of the meat which perhaps became wet by the spittle and is deteined within that whole silk And moreover that filth being shaved off from the tongue yet it doth not attain the hardnesse of a tooth-stone with whatsoever lukewarmth it may at length wax dry It stinks Indeed yet not altogether by reason of the cadaverous smell of the stone of the teeth For if presently after feeding the tongue be shaved or scraped with a file or rubbed with a more course towel in the morning indeed thou shalt again scrape off lesse muscilage but not therefore lesse strongly smelling The like thou shalt find concerning the teeth Understand thou therefore that this ballast of the tongue doth spring not onely from the meats but also from the spittle and superfluity of the tongue For if the meat that is deteined in the hollow of a tooth the same excrement whereof is drunk up in the coat of the tongue hath remained there all night it breatheth forth a far more stinking vapour than the aforesaid shaved muscilage of the tongue So also between the gums and the cheek-bone how clean soever thou shalt wash thy mouth after supper every morning a certain white muscilage is co-heaped which being wiped off from thence by a towel and dried on it doth smell with a proper stink Therefore by an oblique passing thorow the matter I will give notice that this muscilage of the tongue is the special cause of the difficulties arising in the jawes consequently also those that are subject unto these evils to have freed themselves by a frequent filing or scratching to wit as after every meal or time of feeding and in the morning they do claw their tongue For truly the tender and neighbour parts abhorring this muscilage when it puttifieth do wax wroth through a horrid contagion on themselves therefore they do kindle a thin inflammation by reason of the presence of a guest that is a foreigner unto them But that tooth-stone is not the son of the spittle or meats seeing neither nor indeed both of them together can ever be coagulated into such an hardnesse and much lesse into a smell so stinking infecting ten thousand times every day the whole air of a stinking mouth and breath I have long since admired with my self that a generation or birth so frequent strongly smelling and manifest hath remained unknown for so many Ages and by so many wits of men Therefore as being afraid I sighed what therefore would the Schools act about more abstruse or hidden things I will shew what the Mistris of things hath taught me In the mouth nothing is conversant besides spittle meat and drink But the tooth-stone is of none of these but in its first rise is like a white snivelliness which on the morrow becomes of a pale-yellow colour thence at length it growes to the teeth into the hardnesse of the Stone of the Bladder from whose gums it begins to be of a clayish colour and in the teeth oft-times manifest with black spots yea and makes the tooth to be rotten and black So that the most hard and dry thing of the whole body that is the tooth doth also most speedily putrifie I have known indeed that the muscilage of meats and the spittle did grow together but never into the consistence of a Stone For which cause we must note that the tooth is nourished not onely in its bottom and root but also side-wayes from the gums themselves gums themselves that are bloody or lesse sound are witnesses which do not fitly to-here unto the teeth because they forthwith from the beginning of their indisposition do leave pits or little trenches at the tooth that is badly nourished and do tinge the tooth with the blacknesse of their out-hunted venal blood Then lastly also because the tooth is of a most acute feeling under the gum which out of it it wanteth Therefore in so great a livelinesse of sense the tooth lives and therefore also is nourished Therefore the excrement of the gums as it was of prepared venal blood for the nourishing of the tooth so also it hath received some kind of limitation or power of a tooth-like hardnesse Which excrement surely of the teeth when as it hath drunk up the muckinesse of the meats and drink it straightway also hastens to harden unto its appointed hardnesse For that which I have said in my Book of the Disease of the Stone concerning the stony seed and so of petrescency or the manner of making in stones that also not incongruously doth totally agree to the tooth for the framing of a tooth-like Stone For it once received the Seal of a Cream and Seed
of a Stone making for the tooth the which although it were already made a superfluity it as yet reteined not indeed that it might therefore be Tartar but from the determination of the Archeus whereby it had been already appointed for the making of a tooth But a spear-like gum is there a sign of the most perfect health or foundnesse and therefore it scarce createth a tooth-stone For the gum co-touching with the tooth even unto the end of it doth not admit the tooth to bring forth excrements but preserveth the tooth Even as a tooth being bared of gums doth easily ake doth putrifie and affix a Stone For the eyes do weep forth a Liquor which in the morning in the eye-lids looks like Amber and the which by the Germans is for this cause by way of similitude called Augstine or Austine But the excrement of the eares like unto a yellow Oyntment is a great comfort in the pricking of the sinews therefore it hath not been an unaccustomed thing for the teeth to produce an excrement and this a strong smelling Carcase resolved out of stinking bloud For the muckiness cast on the tongue from the meats is dried neither doth it wax stony unless it shall be admixt with an excrement which doth unsensibly break forth between the tooth and the gum For as that is the excrement of the tooth it had drawn a limitation of hardness from the beginning And so it being grown to the tooth it deceives with the shew of a stony crust I have observed also a tooth to grow even unto the fortieth year with a true growth For that which is opposed to the tooth pulled out through the penury of attrition or grinding doth exceed its own rank and enters into the opposite rank even unto the aforesaid terme therefore a tooth after it ceaseth to grow scarce wanteth nourishment or but little because it is a substance scarce capable of diflation or blowing away then therefore the gum is fruitful in more superfluity snatcheth somewhat more of nourishment becomes bloudy and being swollen is presently lessened and becomes as it were rotten For from hence is there often tooth-ach rottenness hollowness and putrifying especially in those whom a little after due season they do in youth suspend their growth therefore the teeth as they do live in a peculiar Family-administration so also they have their own ages which I thus remarkably distinguish For the tooth which after a mans eighth year doth shew forth the clearness of dark or thick Glasse which from the colour of Milk Artificors call Lattime or of a Snail-shelt is a young one It is a white Colour bright and polished And then by degrees it waxeth pale presently afterwards it becomes dully white as it were Ivory It is the youth of the Tooth Then afterwards it becomes obscurely pale as is seen in those who swoon in deceased Virgins And this is its manly Age And at length it waxeth palely yellow like a bone and looseth its former brightness Then doth the old age of a Tooth begin For so much as a gristle differs from a membrane but the Tooth-ach is frequent while the Gum decreaseth and the Tooth is of a bony Colour But last of all a rotten hollow black wormy and strong smelling Tooth is the frail or declining age of that Tooth therefore cold is an enemy to the Teeth For it hastens their old Age the greyness of hairs doth argue the old Age of the same even besides the old Age of the man and one hair waxeth grey long before another So also one Tooth waxeth old before another whence it is plain thas every Tooth doth live in his own quarter Southern people have brighter Teeth than Northern because they enjoy a more bountiful Air for the Teeth the Teeth of Children before the seventh year of Age do easily feel rottenness because they are driven out of their ditch by another growing up are deprived of nourishment and loaded with a Tooth-like excrement therefore the hurting or anointing of the Teeth is to be esteeme◠〈…〉 the annoyance of the Gums to wit from the plurality and bruitishness of 〈…〉 No otherwise than as the Brain being hurt doth heap up very much muck 〈…〉 other part being discommodated many dregs so the Teeth and the nourishing parts of these if they are hurt do thrust forth not a little of a stony and stinking superfluity But because that excrement is not so much the superfluity of meats as the excrement of man therefore all Nations have very equally a stinking Tooth-stone which doth circumvent Paraceljus and hath increased the suspition of Tartar in us Hence therefore it is manifest why of the same Urine the same stone doth first grow together a◠brickle in the Reins and afterwards in the Bladder is most exceeding hard not-indeed because there is Tartar in the Urine which by how much the farther it slides down by so much it is the harder that is a childish thing But surely every stonyfiable juyce hath its own determined and not a forreign hardness from the virtue of its own seed For this juyce being oft-times mixt with a matter not becoming a Stone waxeth greatly hard Suppose though Rie meal doth not become a Stone but being at length resolved into dung it fails in rottenness or a worm Notwithstanding if it be joyned to Lime which is conjoyned with its Saud it affords a stony and not perishing Morter So likewise the Bladder at the time of the Stone being its guest weeping out the muckiness of its own nourishment doth also co-mingle it with the stonifying juyce of its Urine affords a hard Stone to the Bladder far different from the Disease of the Stone of the Kidneys Wherefore the Reins also being vexed with a Stone of long continuance do no longer produce a reddish and sandy Stone but a whitish and hard one to wit when the Superficies of the substance of the Kidneys being wasted the fibrous parts and seedy or spermatical stuffe or threds do supply a white co-like muckiness from a spermatick alimentary juyce wherein it hath no lesse been erred hitherto than if thou shalt say that Rie meal is of it self stony which borrowes that from an adjunct which it had not from it self therefore the Muscilage in the Stone is not phlegme but a spermatick nourishment separated under the burden being not of it self stonifyable but onely by its adjunct For thus in distinguishing causes by themselves from causes by accident sufficient ones from co-assisting ones primitive causes from transplanted or derived ones we come down to the knowledge of the thing For Paracelsus doth for the most part ascribe the hardness of Bodies unto feigned Tartars but elsewhere all hardness to be from Salt or from one of the three things However both together cannot stand seeing one of the three first things doth not subsist as a Beginning nor without the fire Also if it should subsist it should differ from Tartar as it were a
phlegm of Elements and the constitutive humours of us For the phlegm which about the beginning of a pose doth rain down out of the Nostrils watery as they say and thin after some dayes is made thicker and yellow because it is thickned by a daily cocture of heat As if perhaps for full forty years without the corruption of it self the Scull being empty it had exspected a thickning as its chiefest good nor otherwise being more thin should it finde chinks enough for utterance These dreams do not deserve reproof by Argument unless by a serious credulity they had translated the method of healing into the destruction of mortalls I confess indeed that at the time of my young beginnings I believed that snivel if it arose not from one of the four Humours at leastwise that it was an excrement of the digestion of the brain But afterwards through a more liberal diligent search I declining from the Schools began to observe that in Summer I seldom cleanse my Nose but in Winter very often Notwithstanding in either station I through the Grace of God do enjoy a brain and its fruitfulnesses or operations alike strong at both seasons For I moreover considered that my Winter venal bloud is alike lively with that which I make or digest in Summer For the life according to the holy Scriptures is placed in the Arterial bloud and that the digestion as well of my brain as of my other parts is alike wholesom because compleat which things should not be on such a manner if the brain should daily draw out at least four ounces of an excrement and therefore sixteen ounces of venal bloud for the onely nourishment of it self and the abundance of so great a quantity of phlegm to wit besides that which hath remained in the nourished Body for a pledge of nourishment which ounces it should otherwise in Summer leave in the venal bloud Or if they do suppose that to be made by a more exact digestion of the brain or if they had rather to have the brain by reason of the injury of a Winter Air to be badly disposed and which way soever it be taken the snivel must needs be caused at least from some indisposition therefore not from the abundance of phlegm and so from the vice of the Liver as neither from a more exquisite separation of vvinter phlegm and the neglect of Summer phlegm Neither in the next place doth that indisposition happen through the vice of the brain as not of the venal bloud For that resisteth the position proposed Therefore that very thing doth spring from elsewhere For if those superfluities should remain in the venal bloud or brain in Summer-time which are otherwise expelled in Winter a place should be wanting for the entertainment of the phlegm which was collected in the whole Summer Hence I lay it down for a position that the snivel of the nostrils is more watery and plentiful and therefore there is a continual cleansing of the same in winter but not in Summer whence it followes that that thing is caused by reason of an untemperate Station which if it doth occasionally hurt the digestion of the brain that shall be either throughout the whole brain or in its lower plain whereby the cold strikes If it be offensive throughout the whole brain all the functions of the brain should be hurt together with it the imagination the discourse c. which is false For it should denote a superiority of the encompassing Air over the Spirit the Fountain and Ruler of all Functions And then the snivel ought to be made and to descend from all the intimate connexed and least particles of the brain and not onely from those which may immediately be shaken by the entring Air. Whence it is manifest that snivel is onely an excrement of the lower parts of the brain degenerated from the totality or wholeness of its nourishment before it could nourish But that it is not an excrement surviving from the last digestion which they affirm to be dispersed in manner of a dew by the least pieces into the solid parts For this also doth equally exhale in manner of a vapour no lesse from the brain than from the whole Body If therefore snivel be naturally stirred up by external occasional causes and hurtful seasons and hath its effective cause about the plain of the brain which way it toucheth the Air but not from cold for that would sound that the brain were conquered overcome and its powers as it were extinct therefore the matter of snivel which I shall teach in its place to be the matter of the Liquor Latex and also of nourishment is converted for a good and ordinary end which conversion of that matter seeing it is natural is extended as it were a Coat of Mail on the part stricken by cold And seeing the matter is vitiated through the injury of the Air surely it doth not adhere but doth distil a continual drop of water Therefore I call this effective power of snivel the Keeper which thing to have thus now supposed let it be sufficient Furthermore the the excrements of the Paunch and Bladder are indeed the superfluities of the whole Body and of the parts wherein they are made and do grow they being superfluous and unprofitable from within themselves But sweat and an unsensible eflux are superfluities now made in the last digestion and expelled after the utmost discharging of their ends But snivel is of a neither kinde For it is made by the Keeper onely provoked indeed but he is that which that he may defend and oversmear the part doth thus change the more crude juyce and also the venal bloud and that changing of the same is plainly natural ordained to a good end as long as it ariseth from a well appointed keeper Truly I do also greatly wonder at the drowsiness of the Schools for so many Ages That because they saw the snivel to distil thorow the Nostrils therefore they suddenly by an undoubted Statute decreed that the same was nothing else besides the excrement of the brain yea whatsoever is thrust forth by spitting and cough because the likeness of Colours deceived their eyes they dictated it to be nothing but a descending excrement of the brain For neither have they once by the way enquired If it be an excrement of the brain therefore it ought to be the remainder of the last digestion when indeed the Arterial bloud after that it is made a nourishable humour and distributed in manner of a dew throughout the equal masse of the brain should not indeed be consumed in the same place although now first being assimilated to the substance of the brain and being expelled should depart thorow the pores without any remainder of it self by an unsensible transpiration but altogether by a diverse or strange kinde of defilement after that it had put on the condition of a spermatick muckiness for we are nourished of those things whereof we consist the
it is in the Center and very middle of the Body For I have demonstrated elsewhere that the Spleen doth inspire a digestive Ferment into the stomach that is to say that the Spleen is the beginning of vegetation or growth But that the vegetative power belongs to the sensitive soul that is unto the Duumvirate For truly there is not a vegetative soul singly by it self but it is a vital power imitating the soul But the Young is grown before quickning onely by the influx of participation from its mother so long as it is at it were an entire part of her but presently after quickning it lives by a Kitchin of its own And therefore there is onely a sensitive soul in bruits the which because it is also in a man and the minde is fast tied unto it therefore the conceits of the soul are first in the seat of the soul which although perhaps they may be refined in the head yet they do not deny their fountain yea although they should be a new stamped in the brain yet they have not need of a succession of motions from the soul into the head as it were a Pilgrimage for this purpose For the commands of the will are far more grosse than those of the conceptions yet the command of motion being scarce conceived in Fidlers their finger doth most swiftly execute that command Therefore the actions of government do beam forth on their objects with an un-interrupted light And therefore the discourse being suited unto its own shops doth receive Lawes on both sides and likewise appointeth others otherwise the apparitions of the brain are loose and consused if a hurt of the Spleen doth interpose which is manifest in hanging in a feverish doatage in those that are diseased about the short Ribs in outragious or mad Apoplectical epileptical c. persons From 〈◊〉 it sufficiently manifesteth that the brain doth obey the doating Duumvirate For it is most agreeable to truth 〈…〉 the wisdom of flesh and bloud which is the sensitive soul hath its scituation in the most sanguine or bloudy bowel of all Therefore it is read in the holy Scriptures that the soul and the life are in the bloud For if thou dost mark the bowel of the Spleen and its substance thou shalt perceive its substance to be bloud newly made clotty covered with a skin and to be enriched with so manifold a co-weaving of veins Arteries that there is not another bowel in the whole Body which by about a tenfold quantity is so rich in so many Arteries But the Brain hath scarce a vein or bloud or but sparingly in its whole lump The Coats indeed or covers of the Brain have their own small veins And although there be in the bosom of the Brain an Arterial Vessel fit for the transpiring or breathing thorow of Spirits labourated in the heart yet the lump of the Brain is almost wholly void of bloud It is no wonder therefore that the Spleen doth form strange Idea's and strange conceits under a forreign guest The expulsion of which guest while the spleen doth meditate of it stirs up a strong pulse even as a Thron driven into the finger doth shew a present and hateful guest For I have observed seriously the eyes and countenance of one distempered about his short Ribs to be writhed presently as oft as he would relate to me his foolish and first conceits whom while from the beginning of the doatage I would interrupt presently also at that very moment his eyes and countenance did return into their former health I did wonder in a fellow-feeling that so swift an innovation of the whole countenance so often a repeated one and so great a one should be propagated by the action of a lower government into the tower of the brain Furthermore for neither are rude and uncomposed conceptions onely from the spleen but likewise also the understanding of the brain being laid asleep under Dreams we must not despise the light of gifts it reacheth to the minde Act. Ap. chap. 2. v. 17. And it shall be in the last dayes that I will poure out of my Spirit upon all flâ—â—â— and your Sons and your Daughters shall prophesie And your young men shall see Visions and your old men shall dream Dreams To wit significative ones Nighr unto night sheweth knowledge if the Watchmen do fore-learn to withdraw his thoughts from things or affaires place and motion I have also not undeservedly affirmed that the first conceipts of disturbances are felt in the Midriffs Seeing that if a sorrowful message be brought unto a hungry man his appetite presently perisheth therefore the Message and Appetite do light into one and the same Inn. I have also taught elsewhere that the stomach of the Liver is not some notable hollowness spreading within its own bowel but that the Mesentery veins themselves are the sheath of sanguification or bloud-making into which the Liver doth beam forth the first breathing-holes of sanguification But that the stomach of the spleen is the stomach it self which it therefore nourisheth by embracing that it may inspire into it the Vulcan of digestion yet there is another and proper stomach of the spleen admirable for the manifold winding of Arteries wherein the Milt doth cook for it self alone Under which digestion if the least errour rusheth on it the spleen ceaseth in digesting and denies the ferments due to the external stomach which thing is evident in a Fever while as instead of a sour digestion burntish or stinking belchings do come for witnesses which are emulous of a certain putrefaction The Brain also through its own unsensibleness hath relation to the Milt as also the Coats of the brain unto the stomach it self in this respect For the action of the stomach is powerful and hath in it the Vicarship of the heart and doth execute the offices thereof against the will of the Schools For neither doth the spleen by an unbroken vital and wealthy number of Arteries flourish in vain in its own conceptions but as oft as it makes its conceipts drowsie through the delights of another nourishment it grants a truce from its work that is sleep which if they shall be lesse perfect or troubled by the too much care or anguish of the stomach it also produceth confuâ—ed Dreams No Physitian hath hitherto doubted but that the Ephialtes or Mare is stirred up from the Midriffs for it comes for the most part through the taking of a larger supper of the more hard meat or the stomach otherwise labouring and therefore that happens not indeed to one laying on his right side but onely sleeping on his back with his face upward or at least on his left side Indeed when he hath almost slept enough For they feel or perceive obscurely they discourse they think they do touch with their hands and see with their eyes yet they are not able to move themselves For oppressions are perceived to be heard and felt otherwise in sleeping
thing desired if any one be angry it is even one and the same power For neither without injury of the other powers are the two aforesaid ones sequestred from the Bowels For fear love desire hatred drowsinesse or unaptnesse and joy have not divers stables Because all such powers are of the one soul but not dis-joyned houshold-servants of any kind of perturbations For truly when the soul is angry and while it rejoyceth or loveth although it be diversly affected and â—â—cyphereth as it were divers masks in Idea's yet this is not the office or work of the Orgâ—â—s but the passions of the one and only soul which because they are the works of the flesh and the interchangeable courses of the conceipts of the sensitive soul they are framed by the soul in the seat of the Duumvirate Therefore the Spleen being by intervals intent on its own reflexions delights and remedies of wearinesses filcheth away a third part of our life by sleep and as it brings forth dreams in sleeping so waking it propagates the knowledges of conception they being a little distincter and lesse drowsie Truly unlesse the Lord do nourish us with his grace we dream throughout our whole life wholly by a confused concâ—â—pt yea neither do we perceive that we do understand while the light of the Spleen being troubled and ceasing the brain receiveth the first conceipts of Idea's scarce any longer worthy ones Therefore sleep is stirred up in the Midriffs and doth notably manifest it self in the Head and so the Head doth not blush to bring forth at the consent of the Midriffs And therefore sleeps are the be-lyed parents of vapours and stoppages of cold For there is in the Sulphur of the Vitriol of Copper a stupefactive sleepifying and hot virtue and sweeter thâ—â—â—â—ey which in Opium is bitter whence it becomes easie to be seen that there is not a â—â—â—vative stopping and cooling virtue especially after feeding and drinking of wine but a created faculty that over-tops watching in the Spleen So also some poisons do alienate the mind and its own native Imaginative power whereby they do dispose of ours at their own pleasure as in the Apple of Adam in the Spittle of a mad Dog the pricking of the Tarantula in Jusquiamus or Heâ—bane c. So also stupefactive medicines do withhold the Spleen from a working exercise of serious Visions or Representations dismissed into the Brain besides the case of the memory by virtue of a soulified or quickned light of government For indeed God formed the last top of Creation not of the Skin bloud or grease of the man but of a Rib about the Spleen Also the Vessel or Kernel assistant to the stones on the left side is not derived into the stone of a man even as on the right side For truly one is taken out of the sucking vein before the Kidneys but the other out of the Trunck of the hollow vein it self Not indeed as Galen being deceived otherwise thought to beg a tickling of the seed from the Salt of the Urine but that the vessel of the Kidney might be proper or natural to the seed For who doubteth but that the salt of the Urine or of an excrement doth not take away all fruitfulness of the seed Especially if a small piece of the hair of a Horses mane or tail how small soever it be be thrust within an Egg-shell it extinguisheth the hope of a chick Galen being wholly excrementitious and ignorant who thought our Beginnings or first principles to want a tickling and begged also the last compleating of fruitfulness from excrements Therefore at the beholding of this mans ignorance I will moreover add a Paradox The Schools ascribe Venus or carnal lust and the tickling or provocation to leachery to the Reins or Kidneys and Paracelsus and all Antiquity subscribes thereunto All of whom I being silent Fishes themselves and Birds do presently convince of errour For Birds do want Kidneys and Urine and Birds are most leacherous I at least do believe that Venus is the office of the sensitive Soul and so that it is to be placed in the part wherein the first motions also while we sleep are made Because nature was in nothing more careful than in the difference of Sexes And so from the beginning of the pourtraying of the Young she is straightway busied in the Instruments of Venus And so perhaps this even the Antients would imply when as they have ascribed the Spleen the first paternity to Saturn the first of the Starry Gods Yea therefore they deciphered their Fauni or Country Gods and Satyrs a most leacherous and scurrilous kinde in the figure of Saturn For I have alwayes abhorred it as a filthy thing to have placed Venus the greatest Star next the Sun in the Kidney the sink of Urine Truly Birds in this respect should be far more noble than us Pollutions also or defilements of the seed do not happen in time of waking because sleep is the effect of the spleen and to this after delights Otherwise what common intercourse is there between the Reins and sleep do we not oftner make water waking than sleeping As according to the Schools sleep doth withhold any kinde of avoyding of excrements except that of sweat and unprofitable seed Surely otherwise voluntary pollution should be more subject to a waking than to a sleeping man But such an excrementitious expulsion issues forth with the sleep of wantonness that it may be manifest that there is the same Instrument of sleep dreams and pollution as they are the workmanship of one soul For as bloud-making begins in the veins of the mesentery as it were the stomach of the Liver so the cocting of the Sperme or Seed is made in the stones by the spleen For I remember those that have been stony in both Kidneys yet to have been much inclined to leachery But it were an absurd thing that a healthy and lascivious power should remain or be manifest under a Disease of its own radical Organ For the Liver being badly affected a good sanguification doth not arise neither is there a fit seeing to an eye beset with Sand Neither shall I ever believe that the Reins moystening with a continual Urine and being busied about the expulsion of an excrement and never keeping holiday are intent on luxury Therefore it hath seemed an excrementitious opinion that the motions of propagating the Species the Summons's of the vital faculties and Character of the minde should beforged in the Stable of forreign dregs or filths For the first motions of lust are manifestly felt about the mouth of the stomach no otherwise than as the late repentances of leachery For if death entred by the first motions it is agreeable that the frail degenerating life ought in the same place to have radically taken its beginning For the Orifice of the stomach obtains the place of a Center in the Trunck of the Body whence the beams are most fitly spread upwards as downwards But
was compelled to depart from the method and doctrine of the Schools that I may shew the foolishnesse of the Maxims whereby the world is deceived as well by the drinking of purgative things as by an estimation that diseases are made and freed by the ejection of liquors which the Schools do perswade to be the constitutive ones of us and those erring in their due quantity and quality Therefore it hath not â—ked me hitherto to refer and to repeat the same beginnings of my repentance I being a young man and about to take my leave of a certain Gentlewoman held her glove and hand for some little while which laboured with an hidden and dry Scab But I thereupon presently contracted not indeed a dry but a thin watery Scab to wit onely and that by a sober touching And then I observed many times that hand-towels have brought forth the manginesses of scabbed persons and the hairs of moathy cloths moaths as also the contagions of leprous and lecherous diseases to have been propagated by a participated ferment and that thing the Proverb related to incorrigible persons signifies to wit that one onely little bird infects a whole flock with his scabbinesse For such kind of vices being transplanted by a poisonous fuel are notwithstanding reckoned by the Schools without distinction in the guilt of the Liver and to be stirred from an unseasonable or disordered heat of the same As if the contagion of the Skin of one Sheep doth distemper the Livers of the other Sheep Truly this one onely Consideration was unto me the first beginning of light Adeptical From whence indeed the Maxims of the Schools were with me manifested to be a Scab and they forced me to another matter after that I saw the remedies of the Schools to be vain and the Maxims of the same to be frivolous Truly I called to me two of the more famous Physitians of our City almost rejoycing that I might now understand in my self whether their Studies might answer to their practise But the Physitians having seen the mattery Scab presently judged that adust or burnt choler did abound in me together with salt phlegm and so that the faculty of making blood in the liver was distempered I rejoyced presently because those things which Authors had sung unto me were confirmed by most expert Masters Because I who had learned that in Science Mathematical all Speculations were most exceeding true did believe that thing to be likewise common and unseparable to the rules or maxims of healing I thinking that they were that which they ought and did promise to be And presently according to my antient credulity I asked what that distemper of the Liver should be which at one and the same act should enflame yellow choler more unjustly than was meet and also engender more phlegm than was meet seeing an act of the same root or of the same sanguification could not be at the same time and in the same bowel a two-forked or double generation and so unlike to wit that which should abundantly send forth a fiery choler and also a cold and watery phlegm The most expert Masters doubted and being amazed with their eye-brows bent they long beheld themselves and at length the Junior of them answered that the same distemper of an inflamed Liver did not therefore afford true phlegm but an abounding salt phlegm but that the temperature of salt was hot and dry To whom I replied Should therefore the Salt of the Urin be made through the vice of the Liver and heat abounding but the broaths of fleshes that are not salt not put on salt although they should boil with heat The Senior answered These things were to be proposed by me in the Schools but not in times of practise wherein the family had appointed hours for gain But he presently asked me what Authors I had consulted with or what I had learned was to be done I said for the cooling refreshment of the Liver and blood the vein of the right arm under the Cephalical or head-vein was to be cut and then that we must proceed by cooling Apozems in regard of burnt choler yet so as that cutting and extenuating temperate things were to be mingled by reason of the saltnesse of the phlegm I shewed out of Rondoletius an Apozem or decoction which might perhaps contein 50 ingredients tending to a most plentiful hope of accomplishing both ends And seeing they knew not in their readings a daily diligent noter of all things they would that I my self should describe all things for my self Therefore after a sufficiently plentiful letting forth of blood made in the Spring-time of my youth and otherwise in the fulnesse of health I took for three dayes together the aforesaid Apozem whereinto on the fourth and fifth morning I put a sufficient quantity of Rhubarb and Agarick to wit that Nature might begin to obey the calling purgative medicine and that both the peccant humors might be rendred pliable unto it They praised all things and especially because I was greedy of learning and obeying But on the fifth day in the evening I took pills of Fâ—mitary because Cordo who was afterwards unto me Codrus writeth that they do draw together or are profitable in both the peccant humours for I had not then as yet known by a feigned name to impose pills on the sick as though they provoked Stools by reason of the Fumitary and not by reason of the cruelty of poisonous Solutives Therefore on the sixth day I had at least fifteen Stools in the mean time they praised my providence whereby I had made or prepared my body so fluid Presently after two dayes from thence because the Scab had not laid aside any of its cruelty I took the same medicine with a notable loathing of my stomach and the like Stools succeeded They said that the flourishing age of eighteen years was apt for the breeding of choler And when they saw that for all that the itching and wheals were nothing diminished they decreed that two dayes after I should take the purging medicine the third time But then a little before evening my veins were now exhausted my cheeks had fallen my voice was hoarse the whole habit of my body going to ruine had waxed lean also it was difficult for me to descend from my chamber and to go because my knees did scarce support me These things had befallen me who was in health from the touching of a scabbed hand Indeed at the first turns I rejoyced when I observed so large filth and such stinking ones But I considered too late that before the purging medicines I was well in health in my bowels but now that through a dejected appetite and digestion I had contracted much leannesse but that the scabbednesse remained safe or firm with a sharp and hoarse voice Lastly that I might see how much choler and how much phlegm I cast forth I had made water in an Urinal and I certainly found that by a thrice
being despaired of by the Schools are dismissed unto old Women to the contempt of Galen namely one which should dry up and drink up the thin Sanies into it self in the next place another which should be a cleanser of the corrupt Pus But how seriously hath this man weaved his own Fables and how undefiled or fault lesse are these toyes kept as yet to this day For now indeed they do no longer remember a four-fold humour and a four-fold excrement resulting from thence from the corruption of those Indeed Galen will have the grosse matter to be venal bloud putrified neither is he mindful of himself while he teacheth that the bloud in corruption is turned wholly into Choler In the next place if purging Medicines do separate three humours apart out of the venal bloud at the will of the Physitian he ought to have remembred that that happen through the corruption of the bloud to wit while it departs asunder into its fore-going constitutives or whatsoever hath been devised concerning purging things and humors is false wherefore in an Ulcer that not two onely but four ought wholly to issue forth yea according to Galen an Ulcer without grosse matter to wit a Cancer a difficult or malignant Sore or acorroding one fluid with liquid Sanies onely shall be more easie to be cured than otherwise a grosse mattery Ulcer is Because it is that which shall have need of driers onely to wit Chaffe or burnt bones For how stupid and unsound a thing is it to have taught that an Ulcer is to be cured by the cleansing and sequestration of excrements fruits or products But not by a cutting off of the Root which they no where and never knew besides an intemperate heat seeing that every excrement shewes a necessary Relation unto the digestion and part in respect whereof it is an excrement So that a true excrement is a superfluous heap left by a digestion and by a part whereunto it is unprofitable and therefore sequestred from it Because the name of an excrement doth contain an expulsion of the impure from the pure And therefore liquid and grosse matter are not the excrements of an Ulcer or of the part as neither of a natural digestion but they are the products of the Seeds or Roots of Ulcers And therefore he for the most part and in the most things labours in vain who cleanseth an Ulcer according to the prescription of Galen especially in the more malignant ones And likewise it must needs be that those things which are not nourished do also want excrements For nature doth no where labour that it may nourish an Ulcer Seeing that in an Ulcer a proper corrupter doth inhabit which vitiateth the nourishable bloud before it be fit to be digested A lee also in speaking properly is not the superfluity of Wine but a meer residence because of Wine there is no nourishing and no digestion Therefore an Ulcer as such is not nourished neither doth nature intend to nourish that Therefore the liquid and thick corrupt matter are not the excrements of an Ulcer but the products of the corrupter and they are the tokens signs products effects or fruits of venal bloud depraved into hurtful matter For the bloud which is appointed daily for the nourishing of all particular parts is sent is distributed by distributive Justice nor otherwise to the part being ulcerous than if it were moreover in good health Whither when it is come down and cannot be there changed into the true substance of that which is to be nourished it undergoes the lot which the Ulcerous Ferment commands and the bloud doth therefore degenerate and is transchanged in the Root of the part wherein the corrupter is placed and resideth but not in the very hollowness or paunch of the Ulcer For else it should of necessity be that meer and harmless venal bloud should alwayes fall down into the very hollowness of the Ulcer and by corrupting in the same place to degenerate which thing the Eye and daily experience do affirm to be false Therefore if the Schools do wipe an Ulcer whether with a Towel or in the next place with a cleansing Medicine although they both do the same thing yet they take away nothing but the last product but do never reach unto the radical cause or Original But if a bloudy Clot or else a bloudy Muscilage do fall down into the Ulcer that comes to passe because the encompassing places to wit wherein the very Root of Ulcers is there is so great a storm of torture that some small vein that is the nigher being eaten thorow cannot contain its own bloud And so that the bloud which thus by chance falls down into the hollowness of the Ulcer is not seen to be changed into corrupt Pus from whence it manifestly appeares that the bloud doth not degenerate in the hollow of the Ulcer but in the brims or lips thereof wherefore also the vanity of Galens Doctrine is seen which placeth the healing of an Ulcer in the withdrawing of the product The Root therefore of every Ulcer is in its bottom and lips or brim that is it inhabits in the parts next to the hollowness wherein indeed is their own Cookroom in which the venal bloud is altered into a corrosive liquid grosse corrupt matter c. But the liquid matter it self is the product or positive effect of Ulcers But the very hollowness thereof which is commonly reckoned to be the Ulcer of Physitians is the privative and deficient product For as a burnt or destroyed Village is not war but is the effect accusing the defect privation desertion and destruction made So neither is an Ulcer the wasted hollowness of the flesh but this is the sign left by the Ulcer For in the Coasts of the Ulcer there doth an hostile corrupter and guest the poysonous Ferment on every side inhabite for which cause we see the lips or coasts and bottom to be diversly altered Let the Schools therefore take heed what they teach while they deliver the curing of an Ulcer to consist in the taking away of the latter product yea corrupt Pus doth not carry the disposition of an excrement neither doth it proceed as an excrement of nature from the Ulcer but it is a fruit of the Ulcer to wit of a forreign corrupter fermentally depraved with a malignity therefore it degenerates eats up gnawes and consumes And indeed the greater Ulcers do want grosse matter they weep out continual liquid or thin matter onely and now and then a tenfold greater quantity than otherwise a just distribution of bloud doth require and the transchanged Liquor flowes abroad into sharp and devouring waters which the Galenists do never dry up with their driers although they do moreover super-add all their cleansing Medicines and however the Catagenians and Catatopian do boastingly glorie of their own experiments For corrupt Pus is not procreated but in the flesh being closed and opened and those not yet altogether ill-affected
to come who scoffed at me with a secret loud laughter And when I endeavoured to wipe of and strengthen my assertion with wine to wit that the moderate drinking of Wine would fortifie him whom otherwise the excesse of the same Wine would render subject to much Spitting Yet when as they would not fall being Smitten by one weapon I descended unto the experience of Lent and Easter now gone and past And that indeed forthwith after Easter he more plentifully spat by reaching and did more troublesomly Snort But in fastings he was scarce or at leastwise little mindful of these Wherefore for deciding of the Question I said there was need of proof and that I was at least to be as much boren with as other unptosperous helpers hitherto wherefore after a more sparing and hard food the which indeed might satisfie a hungry Stomack in digesting although not so desired a fulness of Bloud the Orthopnea or difficult upright breathing was presently diminished which afterwards by a continued Moderation of abstinence afforded quietnesses of the Night For as the Lungs being ill affected the more excrementous Phlegm is begotten so by how much the more plentiful matter is present the same excrement doth the more abound Because it is not made this something but by a matter the more nearly disposed For neither is that Phlegm whether it be thin and watery or next more gross and tough but from a mass of matter the more a kin and disposed to wit the which also fayling the vital Bloud it self is transchanged passeth over into these excrements There is indeed a watery liquor of juyce wandring throughout all the veins in the Body receiving diverse masks of a watery excrement and putting on diverse Idea's no otherwise than as water wherein the Bark of the Teile-Tree or the root of Comphry have been sleeped dissembles the shew of a Phlegm also the very white of an Egge on the first day is Milky the which by a voluntary Motion doth presently snatch to it the thickness of Glew The which in a pose is more cleerly seen where a liquour which is Salt on the first daies distilleth like water and then in the following daies becometh snivelly But in a Consumption of the Lungs while the spittle of venal Bloud begins to wax snivelly the Snivel at first seems to be Yellow and Thick which afterwards becomes of an ashie Colour and at length inclines more towards black Because then they are the excrements of Transchanged venal Bloud no longer the Co-mixtures of the juyce or liquor latex Indeed after this sort both keepers who do at first frame thick Snivel out of the latex afterwards the keeper wandring it presently departs into a watery Brine and again is thickned assoon as the error of the keeper is corrected For the keeper as well of the Brain as of the Lungs is made subject to diverse injuries and unclemencies of Air and therefore he calls to him the liquor latex on every side being swollen with anger through error that he may compel it to go back or depart into excrements like unto his own passion Therefore those Snivelly excrements are formed of the mass of the liquor latex on which mass a certain hurtful blot of error is sometimes imprinted so as as the more liquid and unripe or raw Bloud is transchanged together with it into Snivel Indeed the venal Bloud it self is by both wandring keepers violently alienated into Snivel as well in the Lungs as Head no otherwise than as the venal Bloud in an ulcer doth assume the form of corrupt Pus and Sanies Therefore besides the alterations of both the aforesaid keepers no seldom impression is branded on every part whereby the digestion of every member is mightily hurt or turned inward by which chance I call such an evil impression the Tormenter of a Member the hinderer of digestion and depraver of the last Nourishment About which indeed the whole scope and hinge of healing ought to be conversant Therefore the Keeper of the Wind-pipe is as well provoked above by the injuries of the Air as beneath and by a homebred indisposition of his own Lungs Let these things be thus concerning the masse dedicated to the Keepers and touching a masse bedewed for the last Nourishment of the joints wherein whatsoever is vitiated through want of integrity that also increaseth into the occasions of many infirmities And by how much the worse masse or immediate matter of which shall wash against them by so much the more powerful also is the prick of diseases sprung from thence And by consequence abstinence and fulness of much juycie food are fruitful means as well to cure as to make weak or sick Therefore not any of the Liquor latex rusheth head-long out of the Head which also sets upon us in the shew of Snivel the white of an Egg thin sanies thick Pus and corrupt matter like hony For through the error of the digestions and other impressions offences and vices do happen in the Members obvious with diverse faces Which thing surely is to be diligently noted with a Pen of Steel where the Curings and Healings of Sicknesses are intended Hence the error of cauteries or searing Medicines is confirmed For Issues do in some place profit not indeed because they do Evacuate the descending matter of a rheume divert it derive it or draw it elsewhere but as they diminish the whole Lump as well of the Liquor Latex as of the nourishable venal Bloud In the mean time Issues do not a whit detract from or think of an error of the Members and of a Disease there stamped or Characterized because they are not for the taking away or moderating of a homebred destroyer or diseasie it disposition And therefore neither do Rheums fall downwards but only defects are created by the destroyer in the part wherein this dwelleth or he hath his object and Government In this path Barley Broaths those of Sarsaparilla China and the like decoctions are considered the which besides an elementary Drink do administer one far estranged from true Nourishment and a much juycie substantial and Spermatick or Seedy Food And therefore they cannot but detract from the Lump of imbibing For this is the dryness which Physitians intend to bring on by the aforesaid Drink and Decoctions not as they do dry up humors descending or Phlegm for moist things among Phylosophers do not dry up Humours but inasmuch as they diminish the nourishable masse of the Bloud the which they do elsewhere restore by very much juycie Food cast in and so they render themselves Childish for the most part by the effect of things fucceeding Indeed they might effect more by a slenderness of Food than by all the tearing of the Skin or cruel Scorching of fires or the Drink of Woods and Wild or barbarous Roots These things therefore which I have said are supplied in the Treatises of the Liquor of the Veins concerning Cauteries concerning the wandring Keeper and
take notice by the way That the Sweat of dying Persons is not so much the Liquor Latex in its own nature as a resolved Alimentary or nourishable Dew over which Death commandeth which is manifest for preseutly the Habit of the body falleth even as also in swooning And that Sweat hath wonderful Virtues of mortifying the Hemeroides or Piles and possesseth Excrescences Furthermore that the Sweat is not carried by Heat in the shew of a Vapour is manifest For seeing a Vapour doth occupy a hundred-fold more Room than Water the body should swell in Sweating a hundred-fold more than otherwise its propert extent is For there is not an empty place under the Skin which may receive a Vapour also a Kettle of Hot water hath no Vapour within it and that which it sends sorth it exhales only from the supersicies Therefore a Vapour doth not roue under the Skin but is driven forth only in the shape of a Liquor Sweat therefore is the Liquor Latex materially shaving off or washing away the filth from the Kitchins of the parts through which it is brought and therefore for the most part strongly smelling and that in Diseased persons more then in Healthy ones And so also in a Crâ—â—s or Judicial sign it oft-times finisheth Diseases as it brings forth with it filths according to its ordinary Scope The Schools have admired the dissections of dead 〈…〉 they have not yet looked into the Anatomy of Sweat by Digestious Smoakinesses Vapours Elections Admixtures Resolvings or Expulsions The scope of the Latex was more intimate For seeing the Eye had need of liquor that its Eyelid might be moved without hurt and the Tongue wanted Spittle to temper the chewed Meats with moisture but it should be absurd for the whole Food to be moistened by the Mass of venal bloud therefore the Latex is brought by the Veins whence the Spittle Tears c. should be made for while in Squinancies and the disgraceful Salivation of Mercury more Spittle than is meet flows forth the Paunch is made dryer then it self Therefore the Latex wanders unhurtfully in the Mass of the venal bloud is brought unto fit places readily hearkening unto the distributive faculty The which indeed if at any time it shall snatch the Salt of the Brain with it as in the pose yet the Latex is not hurtful in its own nature neither must that be blamed for a fault which is unseasonably joyned to it being guiltless through accident Likewise although it being observant doth abound in diseases blows up Oedematous legs that happens by chance for nature by a general endeavour brings forth a hateful Guest to her self and stuffs it with Excrements which she desireth to drive away I find a Sheet in a most cold night to be in the morning bent and congealed by the night blast the fourfold quantity of whose water at least hath also exhaled And the blast of Air in Summer dayes is no less but much more stinking Therefore some ounees of an unsavory liquor are puffed out from the Lungs alone But that water is not the Excrement of the Lungs as neither the matter of venal Bloud resolved wherefore it is setched out of the Latex whether it be sent thither by the distributive power of the Archeus or at length the Lungs do allure the same unto themselves at least wise it is continually supplyed and the ministry which elsewhere the Glandules or Kernels do perform this same service the substance of the Lungs performeth And so it is as it were the scope of the Humour Latex to restrain by its moisture that the Lungs do not chap through the dryness of attracted Air. It is also an abuse to Teach that the Latex is in the beginning of a Pose crude or raw and uncocted and that in the number of dayes it is thickned by heat about the end of the digested Ripeness For it being once expelled it expecteth not to be cocted as neither the coagulation of it self that it may grow together neither could the Humour Latex from the beginning of a Pose ever have expected a thickning of it self in an idle or void Scul Therefore the Ignorance of the Humor Latex hath stirred up many Dreams in healing in Catarrhs and Oedemaes to wit the Legs being over night swollen reteining a small pit of the pressing Finger and vanishing away in the morning is thought to be Phlegm turned into venal bloud by a nights digestion An ignorance therefore of the serviceable Humour Latex hath brought forth the fables of a supposed Rhenmatism But if they had once come to a reckoning with themselves they had seen to wit that over-night both Legs were loaded perhaps with four Pound weight of Oedema or Phlegmatish Tumour But it had been as they say a more crude Phlegmatick bloud seeing the Legs are not known by the Schools to be sinks of Phlegm neither is there therefore a reason why Phlegm should rather fall down into the Legs than any other of the threor emaining Humours or than that Phlegm should fall down into the Belly Thighs Loyns c. Truly a just dispensing of Proportion should daily require perhaps 40 Pounds for the expence of unripe bloud to be consumed throughout the whole Body Basins and Champer-pots are in one only night filled with Spittles and the Bed-cloaths together with the Shirts do drop with moisture the which unless they are fetched from the Latex and not from the Mass of lively venal bloud whatsoever things are believed concerning Meats digestions and making of bloud do fall to the ground together For Arithmetick it self and the Ballance of weight do delude paultry Physicians in their Fictions of Phlegm but what ingenious man will ever believe that Spittle Tears Sweats and besides plenty of Urine is to be fetched from the very inheritance of the bloud without a present dammage of life especially because the same doth remain even for long Terms of time For let us feign a small Supper the Stomach and Pylorus to have well performed their office but a plentiful Salivation in a fierce squinancy and exquisite Inflam tions of the Almonds of the Throat Surely that more thick and continual Muckiness doth not flow down out of the Brain the passage of the Jaws being now obstructed and much less doth it aseend out of the Stomach which is empty and under the stopping up of the Jaws therefore let Spittle be the ordinary workmanship of the Tongue and Jaws the matter whereof is fetched from the Latex the which according to the variety of its Ferment doth change with divers Masks to wit Spittles are watery Snivelly Salt Sharp Bitter and tough like a thred A daily plenty of the Liquor Latex was therefore necessary in the Veins and a ready obedience thereof unto the call of the Archeus For although the Latex be unapt for nourishing yet is it fit or convenient for its uses For meats might be reduced into juyce without drinks which thing Mice and Grass-hoppers teach unless
drunk by them from whence they do increase and sustain their own little body so that to other Fishes which eat these small living creatures a Seed is granted to be ingendred in the waters which is passed over into life and is derived into the middle participated life But small living creatures which do immediately make bloud to themselves and their whole substance of water alone have an example almost in every vegetable especially in stony and sandy Mountains which are far seperated from the dung of men wherein perhaps 60 particular kind of Rosinous trees are taken notice of are fully nourished only of rain water and of snow or the Leffas or planty juyce of a stony odour and do grow unto the greatest height being trees so fat that they would be choaked unless they pour forth the same on every side The ferment of the stomack in man doth more easily transchange the meats into chyle than their fatnesses because fatness is more remote from the Latex or the first matter than the meat is Which digestion of transmutation into watery juyces is brought hither to this end that it may be manifest that the Latex a forreign seed and ferment of the members being easily conceived in us is transchanged into a strange off spring And so that out of the Latex I have already shewn above there is next of all a transplanting into an excrementous Snivel where I remember that after drink being abundantly taken in Summer time a muscilaginous spittle which at the time of dry thirst failed was presently after spit out by reaching This is the new History of the humor Latex to be referred unto the treatise of Catarrhs or rheums because the ignorance of that Latex hath given a singular confirmation to conceived Catarrhs as also hath offered rashnesses for things to be conceived CHAP. L. A Cautery or Searing Remedy 1. A Cautery is nothing but a remaining Wound 2. No prerogative of a Cantery made by fire 3. The name of an Issue or little fountain is a Iuggle 4. What things God hath seen entirely good are praised by the Schools as rent or toren 5. The promises of a Cautery are childish 6. The denyal of a Catarrh denyeth the use of a Cautery 7. Ridiculous necessaries for defending Cauteries 8. The position of the Schools is shewn to be absurd and impossible 9. What may be purged by a Cautery 10. Nine conclusions against the appointments of Cauteries 11. Foolish desires or delights in a Cautery 12. Cauteries whom they hurt 13. The undstinction of the Schools 14. The scope or end of a Cautery ceaseth 15. They have circumvented the World by Cauteries 16. That there is no communion of a Cautery with the brain 17. Absurdities following upon the doctrine of Cauteries 18. The one only refuge of the Schools 19. Answers 20. Cauteries are driven against the Rocks 21. What the Schools may answer in the difficulties proposed 22. The multiplying and choosing of a Cautery by what boldness it hath arose 23. Some Stage-play trifles of the Schools 24. The Gowt of Physitians is a mockery 25. Cauteries are foolish 26. They are vain in their own desperate cases 27. It is not yet determined by the Schools in what cases Cauteries can help 28. A case wherein a Cautery profiteth 29. How the cruel and stinking remedy of a Cautery may be prevented 30. A Cautery is unworthy a Physitian CAtarrhs or Rheums have found out Cauteries those therefore being taken out of the way the treatise of these might seem to be in vain unless I should write these things for young beginners I distrusting that my studies will any thing profit the learned or skilful Wherefore I have determined to declare the ends and effect of a Cautery Cauteries therefore are first of all made of fire bright burning Iron a corrosive caustick Medicine yea with the rasour or penknife it self or scissers by cutting off something It is sufficient so the fleshy membrans are broken or pierced with a wound But others do prefer a wound prepared by fire or a caustick Medicine before that which was laid open by cutting Because they think that by actual heat and dryness a flux of humors is the better stopped As if at one only moment the fire should burn any thing besides the escharre it self or should dry up an other thing which they seign is afterwards to flow to the wound Indeed dreams are on both sides greatly esteemed by the Schools For an issue or small fountain for so they call a Cauterized wound that the vulgar may believe diseases to be drawn out as it were by a fountain profits nothing before the escharre be taken away and the footstep of heat and dryness be withdrawn Because the institution of a Cautery hath the avoyding of excrements or superfluities for its object which doth not begin before the decay of the escharre and because it is alway less able to exhale thorow the escharre than otherwise thorow the sound skin therefore successours have accounted it to be all one after what sort soever an issue shall be made so they shall divide that which holds together and keep it divided For that which God hath made whole and entire that it might be very good seems to the Schools that it should be better if it be kept wounded Therefore to be oftentimes wounded and to have kept the wounds open doth conduce to the health of the Schools Surely it s a wonder that they have not transferred to be wounded unto the precepts of defending health even as indeed Cauteriet or constant wounds have been referred thither But in the time of wounding or burning letting out or shedding of blood only doth interpose which ought to excel by that title in the Schools unless the deceit of Phlebotomy or cutting of a vein did manifest it self For they presume and decree that a Cautery is a new emunctory or exspunging place whereby Physitians are able to restrain nature according to their pleasure to unload her self whereby they seign that she doth not indeed otherwise flow down by Catarrhs and unload her self or on every side so doth but only by a hole made That is they cite rheums to appear personally in a place as the Physitian listeth Handsomely indeed if alike truly Notwithstanding these marvels have been so profitable that now Cauteries are also made in Children before the age of three yeers But I first of all have alwaies beheld an implicite blasphemy in a Cautery whereby they openly accuse the Creator of insufficiency in framing the emunctories For I have hidden above a thousand issues to be filled up with flesh whereof it hath not hitherto as I know of repented any In the next place I have considered a Childish presumption of Physitians because they seriously perswade themselves that nature will hearken to their own commands also that a defluxion and falling down of humors which they command being supposed is a most exceeding absurdity But let it be sufficient for
doth flow But none that I know of hath hitherto reached to the Thorn and foregoing motive sharpness as neither to the convulsiue pain from whence notwithstanding comfort ought to be hoped for It might justly be doubted why the Pleura slackening a little while from its contracture doth not again drive back the venal blood contained within it unto the places from whence it came But it is already manifest that the venal blood doth from the sharpness presently wax clotty and hath learned also constantly to stick in this place After another manner Tumours do often disperse els-where because their venal blood is not estranged by a sharpness Furthermore the Dysentery or bloody-Flux differs from the Pleurisie not so much in the sharpness of the material cause as in the variety of the subject For neither have the Bowels flesh behind them for a kitcihn And therefore a Bowel hath its own Thorn fastened in its own coats For besides a double coat of a Bowel or intestine a third is entrenched with the Gown of the Mesentery And because it hath not without it self a kitchin in the flesh therefore the membrane thereof doth not bring an Apostem wherefore the blood comming to it for ease of the gripings or wringings it is not hardned or waxeth clotty neither hath the blood as yet obtained the Fibers of the Mesentery whereby it may be coagulated or swell into an Apostem Wherefore in the bloody-Flux that blood following to the place for an easement of the pricking pain arising from the sharpness flows forth without being made clotty But in the Pleurisie in one respect a bloody Spittle not coagulated because not yet sharp as it were hastening being sent for an easment of the pain neither that nor such Spittle is the occasional cause of that disease but in the other respect sharp blood is stayed between the Pleura and the Ribs waxeth clotty is Apostemized and therefore is made corrupt Pus Therefore very much blood hastening for an ease of the pain where pain is thither bloud hastens beyond or thorow the Pleura doth pierce into the Breast which is reached out by Spitting with a most troublesom Cough Wherefore a Pleurisie differs not from a Peripneumonia or Inflammation or Imposthume of the Lungs in its occasional causes as neither in its Remedy For blood is poured into the substance of the Lungs according to the pleuritical thorn For in a mattery Imposthume although the Lungs do contain venal blood divers hostile things in them yet through want of a sharp Thorn there is not a Peripneumonia but there are other defects proceeding from the Excrements of their own Digestion Therefore many diseases do not differ in their occasional matter but in the diverse agents and properties of members and functions The which for the most part do not so much vary the Remedies as adjacent things depending on the powers of properties For it is thereby manifest how vain the Remedie of Clysters is in the bloody-Flux because the bloody-Flux is only of the slender Bowels which are some ells distant from the more gross ones which are capable of Clysters Therefore in the Pleurisie and Peripneumonia they make use of Blood-letting for a necessary remooval as they say of the causes as if the abounding of blood alone the which nevertheless they say is the one only and suitable betokener of cutting of a Vein were their mother But besides therefore they have prescribed Ecligmaes not indeed for remooval of the Thorn but for a more easie expectorating of Spittles to wit lickings or Ecligmaes of Colts-foot of Fox-lungs c. For seeing this living Creature is almost unwearied they have thought that dying for without thinking the strong authority of the Schools faileth he had bequeathed the Remedie of curing difficult breathers to his Lungs although the Bowel the author of the Thorn in us doth remain badly affected the Apostem which threatneth snotty corrupt matter persisting And the which unless as Galen is authour it be wholly cured by a set number of dayes an undoubted Consumption of the Lungs is to be expected Wherefore the whole study of the Schools doth not aime so much to cure as only to prevent its increase ' that is not in respect of the radical cause but by viewing of the latter product to wit that it decline not into a worse State For the Schools have this faculty always to leave their burden to nature to hope for and defer the time for a critical day For seeing that they scarce acknowledge Remedies besides purging and letting out of blood they proceed only unto things which diminish the liquor and strength and only unto a cloakative cure being busied about the effects and latter products to wit that they may banish the remainder into the Hucksterries of the kitchin and a prescribed diet whether it be those whom a more blessed disposition of strength preserveth or otherwise have rushed into more difficult diseases and being destitute of hope they have reduced into the number of incurable ones For as I have said concerning the Lohoch of Fox-lungs they likewise in the Palsey commend the brain of a Coney and Hare because they are swift in running the Yard of a Stag for those that are cold because he is a wild Beast very much inclined to Leachery If therefore a country man shall eat the boyled hand of a Musitian shall he perhaps artificially strike the Lute But the Schools do require that Ecligmaes be swallowed by a slow drawing and therefore are they endowed with the name of lickings-in that the Remedie may materially descend unto the place of the Cough I wonder in the mean time why they have not likewise prepared Lohoch sanum of a Horses taile which is stirred all the Summer for brushing off the flies But nothing hath been thought of by the Schools for taking away the Thorn of the Pleurisie by reason of one only Fault to wit because they have not known the same and have neglected diligently to search being content with subscribing to each other In the mean time they render the strength of a weak man weaker and pull it back as if they were willing to destroy him by repeated cuttings of a Vein as if the strength being prostrated some commodious thing is afterwards to be hoped for I bewail in the mean time the condition of mortals who have gotten such helpers in so painful a disease who being ignorant of the cause do attempt any absurdities so they have first weakened the Sick through a Penury of venal blood and strength in the mean time they have left nature swimming with her one Oars But if in the mean time a proper strength shall help the infirmity of Youth they require and ascribe honour that is in effect a reward to be due unto themselves And they declare that they have gotten the priviledge of killing two hundred others by the same meanes or if the strength being wearied out by the emptying Chrurgion doth fail
opening of a Vein the Blood already Co-agulated and the Aposteme conceived from thence and the ordained corrupt matter do hasten unto their bound or limit For hence from curing by cutting of a Vein there is a frequent Consumption or a Pleurisie returneth every Year which otherwise by the aforesaid Remedies are not beheld to come CHAP. LV. That the three first Principles of the Chymists nor the Essences of the same are not of or do not belong unto the Army of Diseases 1. Why the Schools leave the Market 2. Why Paracelsus hath sought other beginnings of Diseases 3. He hath theevishly transferred on himself the Invention of Basilius 4. An easie slip or fall of the Paracelsians 5. An Abuse discovered by degrees 6. Paracelsus was deceived by Chymical Rules badly understood 7. He aspired to the chiefdome of Healing 8. He failed under his Fardle or Burden 9. He was deceived also by Ulcers 10. Some Rashnesses of his 11. Robbery is covered by Sin 12. Some Rashnesses of his 13. The Doctrine of the Elements of his Archidoxis is taken notice of 14. He fleeth to the Stars least the curious should follow him running away 15. The Adeptical part of Healing 16. The Boasting of Paracelsus 17. The most perfect Distillation of Art 18. The wonderful Coal of Honey 19. Paracelsus thrown down from his pretended Monarchy 20. Fabulous meanes of Diseases 21. The Venal Blood is blown away without a Dead Head 22. What things Nature hath once refused she never retakes again 23. The Water although it be a thousand times Distilled it is not notwithstanding therefore made subbtile 24. Some Absurdities 25. The Fiction of a Microcosme in the manner of making Diseases 26. The Ambition of Paracelsus 27. Whence he had the boldnesse to invade the Monarchy 28. That the Three first Things are not in us 29. He was ignorant of the Bond of the Three first Things 30. He was ignorant of the Original of Salt 31. Some of his Rashnesses 32. His Error in the knowledge of Feavers 33. An Example that the whole venal blood doth melt by purgings 34. Diseases do not bewray the Three first Things 35. How the Three first Things are made 36. That Galen and Paracelsus were almost alike in Boldness and Error 37. The Three first Things are resisted 38. The Error of Paracelsus about the Essences of Diseases 39. That the Three first Things are not nor do operate in Diseases 40. Paracelsus came more nigh to the Truth than Galen 41. The Three first Things do not immediately support Life 42. Although the Three first Things are not Diseases yet they are Remedies 43. The manner of the Operation of Remedies is badly weighed in the Schools 44. A Quintessence or Fifth Essence is withstood 45. It hath been inconsiderately subscribed unto the foregoing Things because the Essence of Diseases hath remained unknown 46. That the Three first Things is a late Invention 47. That the Three first Things have not fore existed before their Separation but that they are bred anew 48. That Water passeth over into Oyle 49. For those Three Things to be changed into each other doth resist Principles 50. Proofs of Positions 51. Against Aristotle that there are onely two Beginnings of Bodies which are also their beginning or initiating Causes 52. The oversight or rashnesse of the Paracelsists 53. That those Three Things are not in any Bodies whatsoever 54. That the Three first Things are not in the Water as neither in Mercury 55. The Objections of some Writers of the Enterance into Chymistry 56. They proceed further 57. Paracelsus is brought on the Stage 58. An Answer 59. Whence the Immortality of Mercury is 60. The Principiative Maxims of Chymistry 61. The truth of Bacon 62. An Answer to a Paracelsian Objection 63. What the Three first Things in Bodies are 64. Other Instances in Sand a Flint c. 65. It is proved by Handycraft-operation that the Salt in Lime is not an extract of the thing contained 66. How a necessity of Offices hath invented the Three first Things 67. That the Three first Things were not natural or proper to a Body as it was a Body 68. It is proved by Handy-craft-operation that the Fire is the Workman of the Three first Things 69. The unstability of the Three first Things 70. That in the Digestion of Meats a Separation of the Three first things doth not happen 71. Why a Disease is not of the Three first things 72. That the Three first Things are not the Principles of Bodies 73. They are ultimate Things that is Principiated ones or those that are begun 74. The unconstancy of Paracelsus 75. He was ignorant from whence the Salt of the Urine is 76. An Essence is said to be after divers manners 77. A Chymical Essence 78. Some Homogeneal things do not send forth a Fifth Essence 79. A greater Virtue is in some Simples than in their extracted Essences 80. The Rashnesse of Paracelsus 81. Putrefaction also doth else-where generate a Fragrancy 82. What a Quint or Fifth Essence properly is 83. The Liquor which makes Plants fruitful 84. The Essential Oyle of Spice or Crasis of the same How the Elixir thereof may be made and that more strong by an hundred fold NOw after that I have demonstrated the Elements Complexions first Qualities and at length Tartar to have been rashly introduced into the Essential causes of Diseases by the Schools as well of the Ancients as of the Moderns I proceed to teach That the Three Beginnings of the Chymists and those of late brought into the Art of Medicine have been falsely intruded into the Essential causes of Diseases What therefore will the more refined Physitians do while as they do clearly enough behold not onely the miserable stuffe of their Remedies but also the unprosperous Helps of the howling Sick So that they have many times seriously and secretly confessed to me that nothing almost did any longer obey their indeavours and that all the curing aswel of sharp Diseases for of Chronical Diseases they have all every where long since despaired in their mind as of any of the least ones was in very deed nothing but a Cloakative cure and a meer juggling with the sick to wit whereunto unlesse as it were a certain resurrection of the Nature of the Sick doth voluntarily succeed the appointed and sure comfort of Remedies is in vain expected And moreover that hence it comes to passe that many an Old Woman is in many places far more successful in curing some defects than is the whole School of Medicine with all their discursive Speculations speculative Prescriptions Kitching Precepts of Diet confirmed by the long experience of the destruction of their Neighbours and a multiplicity of their Dispensatories When therefore the more ingenuous persons were long since wearied in the Correcting of Distempers in the vain expelling of Humours they now incline to another thing seeking a Haven from shipwrack and being easily seduced by Theophrastus Paracelsus they have
the assisting and co-operating Work-man of all Diseases an angry Parent and revenger For he saith that the unknown Star Zedo is the immediate and containing cause of the Dropsie So he affirmeth that to the Consumption Gout Apoplexie c. doth belong their own peculiar yet unnamed Star and unto every Epilepsie or falling Evil it s own proper constellation But in his Paramires he affirms the three first things to be the immediate causes of all Diseases that is all things confused Let him explain and excuse him that will for I have not dedicated my life to the interpreting of others dreams Therefore have I seriously searched into Nature and the particular kindes of Diseases and it hath happened unto me no otherwise than as to all others before me until that the Doctrines of all Authors being cast off I had seriously implored the Divine Grace For then I suddenly knew that unto every Disease hath happened its own matter which may nourish a Vulcan proper to it self within the which although he doth sometimes imitate the courses of the Stars yet that the enforcing cause thereof did not depend on the Stars For all Seeds do possess as it were their own Common-wealth especially their own vital light whereby of their own proper vertue they do shew forth a proportionable resemblance of the Stars Be it a ridiculous thing that the Consumption or Dropsie although they may be stirred up more severely and mildly under diverse starry positions are caused or made by the motion and light of the Stars the which do after another manner generate by a manifest occasion through so clear a collection of filths and the which being removed Health doth also follow without leave of the Stars The exposition of which Doctrine by me thou shalt read in the Book of the Plague and elsewhere But the matters of Diseases with their seminary Vulcans from the first even unto the last I have prosecuted with all their duplicity and interchangeable courses in respect of humane life The Almighty grant that so much as he hath bestowed on me I may nakedly refer unto his Honour and the profit of my Neighbour and that he may bestow another more able than my self on the world For Paracelsus hath framed divers Books concerning long life to have chosen death for himself that he would by a Divine priviledge have comforted his own old Age by his Elixiâ— of propriety but not by Remedies prescribed by him for long life who died in the 47th year of his Age. So great boasting therefore and unconstancy of this Man have hitherto made me a little careful In the mean time many difficulties have long since held me in doubt about the three first things until that I having obtained help from God knew that Woods and Herbs were to be distilled without any Dead head For I did long ago wonder that out of the coal of Honey no ashes and by consequence neither the salt of ashes could be had Which things afterwards I willingly through an universal resolving of a Body beheld For it was sufficient for Paracelsus to have forsaken all things involved under doubting who in a slender draught had drunk down anothers Invention and had not yet converted it into nourishment and making it his own of robbery hath he striving to flie unto a Monarchy slipped out of his Nest before he had sufficient feathers For he snatching unto himself the glory of the Invention hath well pleased himself in dispersingly repeating one and the same thing often although in the mean time he made little progress in things of his own For it is a ridiculous thing and like a Fable that Sulphur should be distilled sublimed reverberated calcined resolved in us and that from hence divers Diseases should be caused only indeed by the boldness of the Man without a Pledge or Surety of greater authority than himself For he knew not nor durst to draw Diseases into an open profession or publishment he being not yet sully committed hereunto by his Inventer It is also a childish dream that salt is distilled sublimed calcined circulated and doth undergo other torments in us or that Mercury doth sustain these strict examinations in us and for every interchangeable course of variations that it doth of it self alone bring forth other Diseases pains and defects and that others again be infolded with its other two fellow beginnings or masked with divers degrees and doses They are also trifles that Mercury by reason of the highest circulation of its subtilty might be the cause of all sudden death which we have known to be constituted by its causes to cure and prevent For first of all eight ounces of venal blood are daily blown away in nourishing without a Dead head pain and defect yea without feeling while they pass thorow and whereby they pass thorow But whatsoever hath once been dedicated unto expulsion in the shew of Water Mercury or Sweat or whatsoever hath been once reckoned unfit for nourishing or the offices of nourishment being now once performed is designed for scattering or blowing away that is never afterwards distilled sublimed calcined or circulated in us For the works of Nature are too serious because they do ultimately respect God For Nature doth not play at Ball that it should again receive excrements into favour being once rent from the commerce of Life It never returns into the same point because it proceeds and never keeps Holy-day In the next place if any watry liquor be a hundred times re-distilled it shall not therefore be the sharper or subtiler but rather by degrees the Seed of its middle life being worn out it passeth more and more unto the simplicity of an Element For rain water which now falleth down from above is not more subtile or fine than that which rained in the beginning of its Creation But if any watry thing should exhale by our luke-warmth and should obtain a sharpness through dreamed returns that should not be the fault of subtilizing of Mercury but of an adjunct Surely I wonder that so great a Chymist hath not known that the venal blood is not circulated nor that it doth bear the circles of subtilizings in us and that it doth not persevere in us above one only course of the Moon and the which tribute of feeble blood a Woman doth therefore pay Because she is she which ought to abound with very much blood as well for an increase of the Young as for the sucking of Milk But that Paracelsus might the better overshadow his own Fiction he supposeth that one of the three first things being separated doth presently assume from a Microcosmical Nature an actuality in that which is casual to any and one Being of those which are infinite a thousand Seeds whereof being collected into one it did contain and therefore that by reason of a monstrous and strange Nativity a hostile thing is for that very cause in us and is made the cause of Diseases And so that there are
and pory skin resist the water which was able to pierce the scull But when as it should be collected under the hairs then it should either there swell into a descending flood or indeed should flow down with a slender thred of small drops If it being little should be dis-cussed in manner of sweat or if it should make a collection in the temples of the Head it should presently bewray it self to the finger What if it flow down from thence at least wise it could not but in the term or bound to which of motion stir up a tumour of sweet distilled water But at least wise that water could never fall down into the muscles or be the sooner collected among the muscles because they are they which are every one cloathed with their own membrane And moreover neither is there room nor passage for flowing down between the skin and the Periostion of the scull unto the Muscles between the ribs that the distilled water may cause a Pleurisie For that which was without pain under the skin and hairs should presently with so great a fury of pains stir up a Pleurisie and only with its descending by its naked weight rent the Pleura from the ribs it being implanted in and joyned unto them by fibers Certainly a huge cruelty should happen by defluxing At length neither can a Rheume fall down unto the teeth and the sinews or nerves thereof Because the sinews which on both sides enter from the bottom of the brain unto the cheek or jaw do without and within so fitly or exactly fill up the hole that they make a sheath so just and so equal that there is not room for the entring water to run down and so much the less because the water doth not undergo a small hole shut beneath And much less shall it flow down to one only wonted and only rotten tooth which it may afflict And furthermore a Catarrhe being gathered together under the hairs should run down into the cheeks but shall not fall down under the gums thorow the fleshes of these and without being thorowly mixt with venal blood according to the guidance of the sinews under the flesh nigh the jaw bone perhaps unto some one tooth And which more is if the water should rush downwards from above and it be granted for a cause of pain of the upper jaw Yet in no wise nor ever water not alive could molest the lower jaw What if a Rheume can decline unto the eyes or ears surely its troublesome matter should first proceed from the plain and feigned basis of the brain into its bosom it had first called a counsel yea had sooner brought forth death than an ophthalmy or inflamation of the eye Moreover I remember that a Pleurisie is not between the skin or the external fleshy membrane and the Muscles between the ribs whither notwithstanding it should flow down from the skin of the scull rather with a straight line and not inwards but either in the very oblique Muscles between the ribs or between these and the Pleura compassing the ribs whence it hath found its name Which way therefore shall a Catarrhe fall down hither from the Head I grant indeed by way of supposition that snivel doth fall down through the palate even in Children and healthy folks into the stomack Yet this doth not pertain unto a Catarrhe or Rheume Neither doth the snivel arise from that so much reported vapour of the stomack but it is an unprofitable excrement begotten by the wandring keeper As in its own place I further grant that in the joynt sickness and elsewhere a salt excrementitious liquour is oft-times sustained but the humour latex alone is the Vulcan Morter or Parget and fewel of these but not an ascent of vapours out of the stomack into the brain not many humours nor the feigned distillation of Phlegme conjoyned with choler For the very Schools themselves being smitten with shame that the Head being on every side filled with the brain should be the Colledge of Catarrhs and that from thence almost all Diseases should rain down have accused the stomack Alas smoaking with and supplying matter for continual vapours But when as they found the stomack in healthy persons to be guiltless but for the joynt sickness do suddenly accuse defluxions in healthy persons through the shadow of an over-spread bashfulness they whisper neither dare they to speak cleerly as from knowledge for they borrow sharp choler and salt phlegme from the venal blood and leave the controversie before the Judge whether those humours are to be fetched from the Liver and are separated in the veins from the blood that they may be expelled unto the joynts or indeed water or a certain snivel or a certain un-named thing be brought down thither out of the Head between the skin For they are as yet uncertain and so much the more confused because they are ignorant who that separater or who that deriver of humours should be which alone might bring these sincere humours not defiled by the venal blood unto the joynts and should make choice sometimes of this and sometimes of that part but should forsake the more weak and more sluggish part and should daily enslave a new one unto himself yea and invade the knotty part and that which is subject to stoppage Whatsoever therefore the Schools do prattle concerning vapours lifted up out of the stomack for the matter of a Rheume let it be old Wives Fables For the stomack is never more cold than is meet it is the more diminished indeed in its digestive ferment whereunto the coctive faculty ought to be attributed but not to heat as I have elsewhere taught at full The Liver also doth never from its own proper temperature offend in heat seeing there is no heat in us but what is by reason of life and therefore every dead Carcass when the life is extinguished is suddenly cold But the troublesome heat of the Liver is alwayes by accident For example Let a cold thorn be fastened in the finger an example moreover elsewhere minded concerning Fevers there is presently a pulse and heat and swelling from the pain For this is not because the thorn is hot nor because the neighbour blood was hot before the thorn but the heat by reason of the thorn cometh by accident So think thou of the Liver for if it be hot it hath its own thorn which doth not shew a cooling of it but a taking of it away For cooling refreshment makes not only a cloakative Cure but draws the evil it self into desperation And that thing the Schools may seriously take notice of and the vain device of the heat of the Liver and the manifold errors of curing sprung from thence Likewise let them seriously note that the Medicines Alas those appointed or applyed to the Head Stomack and Liver for Catarrhs have been vain and void A Catarrhe or Rheume therefore hath not matter place passage custom admission of piercing into the
faces and visual knowledge of Plants but their virtues they all as one describe out of Diascorides they also tye them up unto the degrees of heat and cold as though they did demonstrate something from the foundation A shameful thing indeed it is to have drawn the Crasis or constitutive temperature of Simples out of heat but not from the fountains of the Seeds Dodonaeus Friso being now become a Dutch-man Tabernomontanus with a few others although they did insist on the same steps of Degrees yet they have subjoyned some additions from their own or the gathered experiences of others but as yet plainly confused uncertain and badly distinct because that they have not written from knowledge but either from the noted revelation of the vulgar or they being things drawn from a casual experiment There is none amongst them all who hath knowingly described the properties of Simples even as he who had described all things from the Hyssop even unto the Cedar of Libanus As a sure token that true knowledges or Sciences are not elsewhere to be fetched than from the Father of Lights even as I have elsewhere touched at by the way concerning the hunting or searching out of Sciences A living creature that is entire and alive cannot be bruised without its dung It is therefore to be lamented that it hath not been yet weighed that Herbs have much dung which have never cast forth any out of them and so that they are to be refined with the greater wariness In the next place we distinguish the arterial blood in a man from his venal blood by divers marks But in plants it hath seemed sufficient to have said it That plant in one only subject consisteth of divers and opposite properties they have acquiesced neither hath there been a deeper entrance than by some common savours and uncertain events For out of the stalk or hollowness of Poppy being hurt Opium distilleth Celendine or Swallow-wort weeps a golden and Tithymal or Spurge a milky juice out of the burdock gums out of the Herbe Chamelion a Bird-lime c. whose Simples if thou shalt bruise they shall give forth another and a far more inferiour juice to wit a dung and venal blood well mixt with arterial blood however they are clarified For let young beginners learn to distinguish and separate an arterial blood from the venal blood and substance of Plants if they do ever minde to have performed any thing worthy of praise by Simples for from hence it comes to pass that how stoutly soever thou hast operated in extracting the manner thereof being taught by those of late time yet one dram of crude Rhubarb doth effect more being administred in pouder than whatsoever thou shalt extract out of a dram and a half For the stomack resolves more by its ferment than whatsoever the mediating or middling juices of extractions can take away because they resolve without distinction liquor of the substance which is like unto a dreg and despised For Quercetanus when as he had taken notice that the innermost powers of things were not to be sufficiently examined by Palmestry and Anatomy which they call Sealed calls divination by the fire unto his help but he failed in the way to wit he had drawn out of the ashes of a nettle a Lixivium or Lye the which by chance of fortune an Ice in his galley pot had a little constrained or bound together for if the Lye had been the stronger it could not have been frozen he wondring in the morning cryes out Behold oh what a figure of the nettle do I behold in the glass And rejoycing he established a Maxim To wit That a seminal figurative Being of Herbs doth remain in the ashes unconquered by the fire That good man declareth his ignorance of Principles not knowing first of all that every Ice beginning maketh dented or tooth-like points like the shape of the leaf of a nettle And then that the Archeus is the figurer of the thing to be generated which is burnt up by the fire long before a coal or ashes is made Thirdly if a Lixivium should express the seminal Being of Herbes surely it ought to resemble not the leafes but the root stalk flowers and fruits But the figurative power of the Seeds lurketh in the Archeus the Vulcan of herbs and things capable of generation which cannot subsist with fleshly eyes It is to be begged only of God that he may vouchsafe to open the eyes of the mind who to Adam and who to Salomon demonstrated the properties of things at the first sight St. Theresa having once mentally seen a Crucifix perceived it to be the eyes of her soul the which she thenceforth kept open for her life-time and the flesh hath shut them up in us through the corruption of nature For neither for the future do we else know natures from a former cause neither do we now know the interchangeable courses of the Archeus but by a naked observation Many Simples are indeed assigned us but for the most part false and disagreeable Neither doth the reading of Books make us to be knowers of the properties but by observation No otherwise than as a Boy who sounds or sings the Musick doth notwithstanding not compose it as neither hath he known the first grounds of harmony by means whereof the tunes or notes were so to be disposed If this thing thus happen in sensible things which are to be known by sence the reason whereof the hearing measureth what shall not be done in Medicinal affairs wherein the virtues of Simples are not penetrable by any sense But the descriptions of all kind of Medicines are read being delivered in the Shops with a defect of the knowledge of properties and agreements For I speak concerning a knowledge of vision such a one as the soul hath being separated from the Body and such a one as God bestoweth in this life on whom he will and hitherto hath he removed this knowledge from the company of those who ascribe all reverence unto heathenish Books The Father of Lights therefore is to be intreated that he may vouchsafe to give us knowledge such as once he did unto Bezaleel and Aholiab for the glory of his own Name and the naked charity towards our Neighbours For so the Art of Medicine should stand aright in us under every weight But it is to be feared lest he who hath suffered the Books of Salomon to perish may reserve this knowledge of Simples for the age of Elias the Artist For the Schools have by savours or tastes promised an entrance unto the knowledge of Simples That as it were the crafts-men of all properties they by sharp bitter salt sweet astringent soure and un-savoury heats and colds would measure them But proud boastings are made ridiculous by the effect For truly also Opium being very bitter the which in this respect they will have to be hot yet they teach it to be exceeding cold So sharp or tart Camphor according to
thirst remaining safe For that thirst doth proceed as a forraign excrement doth cause the nourishable juice of the stomack to melt For truly while I describe my feelings or perceivances I am not so much besides my self as that I shall deny the excess of an external heat to burn and cause a wound or ulcer or that cold excelling doth mortifie as if it did burn But in the Dream proposed I onely perceived them as they are serviceable to the speculation of healing Therefore the examples of excessive heat and cold are like a sword but not to be referred among the occasional and internal causes of diseases to be considered by a Physitian If indeed according to the speculations of Medicine health is expected by the removal of those wherefore the speculation of external and antecedent Causes is not curative but onely now and then significative and directive For a wound being once inflicted although the sword be taken away the wound is not healed neither is the fire to be taken from the hearth although it hath at sometime burnt or scorched some-body in the same place For truly the causes of Diseases are inward as they are connexed occasions therefore the consideration and removal of those is truly medicinal But the Schools when they saw the fire to burn its objects likewise also cold to mortifie and destroy and so the body of man by those external qualities excelling to be diversly disturbed they for that cause thought that Effects which should have heat adjoyned unto them were raised up by fire and in this respect that in Feavers two Elements did strive in us whereof the Water should alwaies obtain the former part of the victory but the Fire the latter part thereof to wit that the Fire did cause Erisipelas's the Prune or burning coal the accute or Persian fire the burning Feaver c. That it did likewise harden by drying or exsiccation of Schirrus's Stones Bones and Knots They have also decreed Remedies beseeming such rules by contrarieties not knowing after what sort the spirit of life may stir up heats and colds without fire or icy cold because neither from the Elements of our body or from feigned humours But they have on both sides neglected the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or violent assailant of Hippocrates Even as I have sometime by one example of a thorn thrust into the finger demonstrated wherein the Heat Pain Inflamation Feaver do not efficiently proceed from the fire of the thorn but because the sensitive Spirit doth grievously bear the forreign thorn So indeed heat and cold are accidents impertinent to the nature of a Feaver even as in the Liver are felt its heats because in the same place there are its thorns and the heat is not the cause but the effect of the thorn And therefore the alterations which do happen in the vital Family-admistration and do cease in dead carcases do not depend on the fire or icyness of the body or humours but on the Beginnings of life Yea if the Schools had touched at the matter as it is they had found that natural artificial Baths c. do not dry and burn us up but rather moisten us unless their heats are inordinate and of daily continuance yea neither then indeed otherwise than because more is consumed than is received doth the body accidentally wither At length I presently after the first qualities perceived the theevish adulteries of Merchants wherewith they load defile estrange and substitutively dissemble foreign Medicines or Drugs who have no need of my Doctrine because they are such as are not moved with the fear of Hell I presently after perceived two distinct Savours at least of things if not sometimes three or four one to wit whereby things are sharp bitter salt c. but the other which is called specifical being appropriated to the seed The first therefore I perceived to be the dignities and offices of Salts not indeed of Salts separated from the three first things or as they say drawn from corporeal Beginnings but of Salts glistening in their composed body But the other of the savours I perceived to be the seminal nature of Odours performing or at least unfolding the office of Forms in concrete bodies for Salts as being most sensible do first offer themselves to the taste whereunto therefore Hippocrates hath attributed the knowledges of diseases to wit bitter salt sharp and brackish pointing forth diseases But heats and colds he rather understood to be subsequent affects or passions than diseases But I do ascribe their judgement to the taste by reason of the aforesaid tastable qualities wherein for the most part a more profound power or faculty sits and containing the seminal and efficient cause But not that therefore the judgement concerning diseases doth belong to the tongue and the pallate but I name it the taste by reason of the tastable qualities Otherwise it is the feeling wherewithal the Instruments are strongly endowed whose sensitive force by an approximation of touching makes the signs of friendship or enmity about the hidden thing perceiveable After this manner therefore I perceived that it is the offices of the salts exceeding in force which do unfold the vertues of the subordinate forms of their concrete body and carry them unto the Archeus as it were their object whereon they act Therefore I perceived that Cures as well by Mediciues as by Nature are made by an appeasing of the disturbed Archeus and the removal of the seminal and diseasie character produced by the Archeus This indeed I have perceived to be the nearest safest and highest or chiefest curing But that which succeedeth by the help of secrets is busied about the taking away of the product And therefore I have perceived that Arcanum's do operate as Salts Indeed such cures do happen by removing of that which is hurtfull and by adding that which is defectuous for else those things which do hinder increases or appropriations have rather a regard unto prevention than unto curing it self but hurtfull things are taken away by resolving cleansing exhaling or expelling which properties are agreeable unto Salts But the removals of that which is hurtfull are not duly wrought by poisonous melting and putrifactive things as neither by the withdrawings of the venal blood and life But the adding of that which is deficient I have perceived not to be done by a proper means and therefore that we go back or decline by little and little through great want of the Tree of Life the which be it spoken of the vital faculties but not of the want of the venal blood which is restored by the kitchins But I have perceived that Nature doth voluntarily rise again and repair some of her defects if she shall be made to sit up after her prostrating To which end also balsamical and tinging things do help I perceived also that in the stomack is bred a soure salt partly volatile and partly fixed But that both are afterwards changed by their
effect is supposed and likewise a cause thereof neither is it doubted what that effect or what the cause thereof may be but the knitting of them both is only sought for To wit after what sort the effect proceeds from the cause or on the other hand after what manner and by what means such a cause may produce its effect The knowledge I say of the Tree and its Fruit is presupposed The which if we compose them for healing for if the whole world be for man also the whole physical knowledge of nature shall therefore be subservient to man the knowledges of ones self shall be first to be presupposed To wit that a true Physitian doth know the Tree of the whole nature of man and the fruit thereof to wit health Likewise also the tree of vitiated health and the very rank or order of health depraved as the Fruit of that Which proper knowledges of the thingliness or essence together with its adjacents are required Therefore that we may know the Tree in its root and properties that ought to be done by the Fruits wherefore also the Fruits are first to be known But the Fruits as well of entire as of vitiated health seeing they are the Scopes whereunto the properties of occult Remedies are referred have themselves in manner of a Tree and Trunk whereinto the young budding slips and seeds of things ought to be ingrafted as it were the Fruits of the same This indeed the ordination of Medicine requireth that Remedies although they have themselves in manner of a cause yet that they become fruits or effects in us as they do fructifie in our Tree and so they are not only the Fruits of their own native Tree whence in the nature of things they are derived but rather they are new Fruits from an ingrafting of a product and so are plainly promiscuous of a branch or Fruit of the Tree implanted and of the vital power of the stock whereinto it is ingrafted Such fruits indeed do bewray their own Tree And so as in every progress of nature a duality of Sex is required for the production of every Fruit it was no wonder that the rank and applications of occult Qualities or Remedies hath remained unknown if it hath hitherto stood neglected that a healthy and diseasie state is bred by the same Parent and so also they have referred the whole essence of a Disease into external occasional efficient and warring causes but not into the true and inward Tree of sicknesses Let us suppose therefore the Archeus to be provoked and almost furious the which being provoked by occasional causes doth pour forth its own blood and causeth the Bloody-Flux or likewise let us feign the Archeus grievously bearing the mark of pain conceived in some part serving to the last digestion and being as it were stung with fury to stir up an Erisipelas The question is of finding out a Remedy by the occult or hidden property The Schools therefore have considered to apply cooling things to the Erisipelas as to the fruit and they would not apply a Remedy to the vitiated tree But the Secretaries of natural things have attended to the aforesaid furies to be restrained by fear so that the fear is not to be incurred on the man but on the Archeus Therefore they have killed the most fearful creature to wit a Hare Not indeed with a weapon that he might dye by an unexpected death but by hunting that he might perish by the biting of Dogs whereby a doubled force of fear may be imprinted on his whole Body Therefore they have tinged a bloody Towel in the blood of the Hare and kept it being dryed And that they have administred by pieces in Wine and the Dysentery was cured And likewise they have put it dry on the Erisipelas and it was cured Yea the Germane Souldiers do give an Hare dryed in the smoak in drink and the Bloody-Flux or Dysentery is cured with an undeceiveable event From whence they have learned that cuttings of veins and purgings are vain whether thou respectest feigned humours or in the next place a diminishing of heat and strength together with the blood likewise that coolings are ridiculous because they are those things which endeavour to heal from the effect do never touch at the roots and for that cause do for the most part provoke nature into greater furies The Erisipelas therefore and Bloody-Flux have obtained some common point wherein they might agree And that is a certain Ideal poyson bred by the Archeus For truly in the Tree of man every exorbitant passion of the Archeus doth tinge its own Idea or likeness on the blood yea and on the excrements no less than in the Tree of a Dog through the exorbitancy of madness Fruits are bred in his spittle which do afterwards produce in us the Fruit of the transplanted madness Therefore the knowledge of hidden Remedies is badly sought into from the Fruit. For I have known that whatsoever things are made in the world are made from the necessity of the Seeds of every Archeus and so by means of an incorporeal and invisible Being But I have known that seminal Beings do arise from an imaginative sorce of soulified things or the Archeus of the same by a co-like perturbation And so that by a certain invisible Principle this visible world is continued But in things subjected or not soulified I have observed that they after a co-like manner have themselves by the same certain Analogical proportion But that every disjoynting or irregularity of the Archeus doth by its Idea's frame the Seeds to be poysons unto its own Body and so a sound Tree rusheth into a vitiated one I have considered that the poysons of some things which are bred with us do bear Seeds not those which by the exorbitancy of their of own Archeus but in respect of our Archeus might produce vitiated Idea's and to themselves natural to us mortal Idea's Whence indeed if Fruits or Branches be implanted into the Tree of our entire health it happens that from both as it were from a promiscuous Sex vitiated or poysonous Fruits do arise in us But the poysons are on both sides among the number of occult properties Let therefore suitable helps or Remedies have Idea's which are chiefly the extinguishers of the poysoned Idea's or those which by an eminent goodness may transchange as well the Archeus the producer of the poyson as the poyson it self produced whence I have very clearly learned that almost every poyson and its Antidote and so also the whole race of occult or formal properties do seminally descend from the activity of a vital light For so the poysons of soulified creatures do arise from disturbances the which by how much the sharper they shall be by so much also the more cruel poysons they bring forth For so the poysons of Serpents are bred from anger envy sury pride and those being variously mixed with fear But the corrosive and putrifactive
poysons of Minerals are bred of Salts Sulphurs and Mercuries whereby their fury is propagated by a Seed Analogical or agreeable in proportion But how evident is that thing in the company of Vegetables where those seminal perturbations and therefore also co-natural ones are by Seeds transplanted with a continued course For we may well know any kind of poysons which are reduced by the ranks of perturbations by distinguishing of them Consequently also the knowledge of specifical properties is drawn per quia or from the Effect of the Cause if they are reduced unto the certain orders of perturbations or disturbances and affections Even as more largely elsewhere concerning the Plague So indeed many things are searched into and found out we thereby by the Effects come to the Causes and being led by the hand from one knowledge to another the poysons of an Erisipelas and Dysentery being in their Tearms from the wroth of the Archeus their cure is in a Hare wherein is fear meekesse flight and an harmless life Neither is the argument of contrariety of value For first of all I have admitted of contrarieties in living Creatures and I say that the properties of those being as it were sealed in the Idea's of living Creatures are in some sort contrary in the priority of the efficient tree as the Seals of Passions do end in to this Idea And so the fruits of this tree do act no more by way of contrary Passions but from the force of a received and inbred seminal Character wherein every thing acteth according to the Talent received even as it is in it self but not by reason of a repugnant duality or disagreeing contrariety Therefore the blood wherein is the seminal product and the effecter of the fearful meekness doth mortifie the poyson which is bred from a poysonous wrothfulness For I have noted in things loves hatreds terrors and the seminal products seals Idea's and characters of these Whence I have found out the immediate Causes of many hidden Remedies But I have interpreted them to be found out and suggested by me with the truth of possible and appearing consequences These things I have spoken concerning occult or hidden properties out of the Dream that we may cease to be occult Philosophers and may follow the manifest Doctrine of the more tractable ones Now I will prosecute my Dream I perceived I say that Smallage Asparagus and whatsoever things are taken to open Obstructions have indeed a Salt of a specifical savour the which being with their middle life made the Cream of the Stomack remaineth surviving although enfeebled yet that they do obtain weak Remedies for the opening of Obstructions For truly those things which do keep the Savour of their own concrete Body under the ferment of the Stomack as Onion Garlick Mace Turpentine Asparagus c. Those I perceived even to slide along with the Superfluities because they wax soure with their specifical Savour and then do take under the Gawl the nature of a Salt and at length under the dungy ferment of the Reines do put on a Urine-provoking or diuretical faculty But whose specifical Savours do putrifie by continuance and perish with the sourness of the Cream those things I perceived to be indifferent meats but whose Savours do not plainly yeild themselves into the sourness of the Cream and do after some sort remain in their mediocrity for the Cream if it should alike on every side receive a ferment and wax soure it should easily be sharper than Vinegar those things indeed-do through the force of the Gawl easily perish in the Meseraick Veines that together with a third or mumial ferment they may be changed into Venal Blood Therefore I perceived those to reach forth feeble aides for dissolving or opening of Obstructions At length I perceived that all simple Salts of the Sea Sal gemmae Fountaines Salt Peter c. as such do depart through the Urine and Intestines and in the mean time resolve the filths or dregs in those passages and render the expulsive faculty mindful of its duty But I perceive that Salts which carry a Mineral fruit in them are Strangers to our Nature and therefore are scarce to be inwardly admitted But Salts which are a part of the composed Body as Lixivium's and Alkalies I perceived to be deprived of Seminal Virtues and to have onely an abstersive or cleansing Soapie or resolving property unless they are volatile wherein I perceived the radical Beginnings and seminal Balsams of the concrete Body to be I perceived I say that these are easily transchanged into a new fruit because they do associate themselves with and act in all things according to their inbred endowments In the next place I have perceived the corrosive spirits of Minerals to differ far from themselves being crude to resolve the Excrements adhering to the sides of the first Vessels Yet not to be altogether destitute of Dammages by reason of an occult infection of Arsenick admixed with them from their original Therefore I perceived that occult properties as they call them being seminally traduced into the Archeus by the generater or efficient do unfold the presence of their Object and a sympathetical knowledge as they are immediately entertained in the bosom of the Formes Some to wit by a motive local Blas as the Load-stone Amber Gummes Lacca the herb Turne-sole Diamond for this also even as Carabe or Amber doth attract chaffes c. do bewray themselves but other things are terminated into an alteration as poysons likewise laxatives medicines tied about the Head or Body Antidotes c. Laxatives I have peculiarly perceived to operate onely by reason of a poyson lurking within them which being once admitted inwardly nigh the entrance whatsoever they touch they do ferment do afterwards resolve the things fermented and for that very cause do putrifie the things resolved I perceived therefore that Laxatives do putrifie the vital juyces but seldom the excrements the occasional causes of Diseases For seeing they are Poysons in respect of us and not of excrements hence they rise up rather against us than against Diseases And most speedily indeed do putrifie the more crude juyce or the not yet vital blood of the Veines or the yesterdays Cream But because they scarce suppress the excrements neither do these in like manner obey them seeing every action or Blas in us doth proceed from the Spirit which maketh the assault whereof excrements are deprived hence no Physitian dareth by taking Laxatives to promise a cure But true Solutives do neither cause Putrifaction nor selectively draw forth feigned Humours neither therefore do they resolve our vitial parts or things and the which Solutives I have perceived to bewray themselves by a three fold Sign First That they draw nothing from a healthy Body neither do they move after or weaken that Body Secondly That they do not fetch any thing forth but what is offensive and therefore they do not aggravate but ease of the burden and presently
past dissolved Gold yet I less profited by its potable juyce than by the decoction of any Simple But afterwards I could dissolve Gold and mock it with the face of Butter Rosin and Vitriol But I no where found the virtues attributed to Gold because it was also so reluctant to our ferments I perceived therefore that Gold without its own proper corrosive is dead dead I say unless it be radically pierced by its own corrosive Not indeed that it doth then resemble the Nature of the Sun and doth add any thing unto its vital faculties but onely that its whole body doth by purging unsensibly cleanse in a unisone tone or harmony Yea also the pretious Pearles called Vnions are by that corrosive changed into a Spermatical Milk which is sociable with the first constitutives of us and in this respect are they a Remedy of the Consumption Palsie c. At length I perceived That the liquor Alkahest did cleanse Nature by the virtue of its own Fire For as the Fire destroyeth all Insects so the Alkahest consumeth Diseases In the next place I perceived That Mercurius vitae reckoned by Paracelsus among his four secrets besides the fiery force of the fire of Hell doth clarifie the Organs no otherwise than as Stibium doth purify Gold from things admixt with it which same thing I judge concerning the tincture of Lile a Sunonymal Nature in the mean time desireth as it were by a new spring to rise again under these Medicines Yet we are without hope of restoring into our former state seeing an infusion of new faculties arguing immortality is wanting unto us For it is appointed for every living Creature once to die Because there is nothing in Nature which can have an equal prevalency with the Temple of the Image of God Therefore I perceived That all renewing Medicines do operate by refining and in this respect by exhilarating otherwise there is not a true renewing of Youth And then I perceived That Secrets which do cure by resolving and expelling do nothing but awaken the faculties placed in us the which impediments being removed do as it were bud again under a new spring Lastly I perceived That there were Simples wherein a proper issuing of the forme doth not operate but the command of a strang form and character doth happen unto them that they might cause a contagion between Symbolizing or co-resembling things and from thence are Sorceries and Inchantments For whatsoever things are prepared by a voluntary Blas are for the most part propagated to the functions of local motion they are directed I say unto the Sinewes being most apt for the stirring up of pains and sicknesses or griefs For neither have they poysons or ferments unless an evil spirit do add them or couple them by functions vanquished by himself for then they do excell other poysons being a-kin to the poyson of the Plague Yea I perceived That even all poysons besides corrosives did act by reason of a specifical property emulous of or imitating the imaginative faculty placed in the seed formally inbred and having the powers of a ferment equivocally acting I perceived moreover That every thing doth variously diffuse its activities according to the manner of the thing receiving and of application For bread operates otherwise within in us and otherwise in all bruit beasts and otherwise in the Stomack Liver and in the other Kitchins by reason of the diversities of ferments So I perceived that flesh applied to the outward parts doth presently putrifie which within is resolved by the ferments and at length assimulated unto our parts To wit I have perceived Polenta or Barley floure dried by the fire and fried after soaking in water to besmear and soften the outward parts which within nourisheth heateth bindes the belly and moves flatus's For every Simple being outwardly applyed doth under the sixth digestion display its virtues with us the which within is almost in its first progresses for the most part subdued A live man being long detained in the water would putrifie but dead flesh being alwayes well rinced in a new stream doth put on the nature of Balsame So the Stomack although it be perpetually moist yet it doth not thereby putrifie For the operations of Nature Galen was ignorant of because he smelt not out the properties of ferments But Paracelsus hath caused the incongruities of an Idiotisme in affirming that Oyles and Emplaisters are digested and transchanged into new flesh in a Wound even as meats are in the Stomack But he is ignorant that there is no passage into the sixth digestion but gradually by precedent digestions For this cause there is no venal blood made in the Stomack as neither is any nourishment made by a Clyster detained in the Colon or confines of the Ileon however the Schooles may whisper to the contrary For Brothes do presently putrifie in the Bowels neither is there a making of Cream but far be it that blood should be made if it shall not be first a Cream neither is the Liver the shop of the Cream much less is there an incarnating in the Stomack But least of all that of an Emplaister flesh or blood should be made For the skin being opened putrifaction is presently introduced into it no otherwise than as the shell or peel of an Egg being bruised there is corruption For hence is there a weeping Liquor Sanies Pus Sandy-water Latex Wormes c. for preventing whereof the whole care of the Chyrurgion diligently endeavoureth and the which being separated the flesh doth voluntarily grow but not by applyed Remedies I have also perceived that Salts which are domestical unto us are fitter for seasoning of meats also for dissolving and exterging or clean wiping away of filths than that they are promoted into nourishment But that Oyles are scarce proper for sanguification but least of all those which ascend by the fire But that distilled waters have small conditions of medicine Because Nature doth every where rejoyce in nourishment caused of Bodies existing in their composition And therefore artificial Salts do pierce deeper than Oyles the which do resist sanguification neither are they thoroughly mixed And therefore the Salts of Spices or sweet smelling things which are made of their Oyles do supply the room of their first Being Magisteries are to be had in great esteem because the substance of these is entire digestible and obedient to the ferments And therefore Nature refuseth meats which are hidden in their Essences by reason of their difficulties of fermentation For all things that are too much graduated do draw after them the middle Life of the Blood but they are not easily subdued by the ferments In brief Those things which do the more stubbornly keep their middle Life are not easily vanquished by our Archeus neither are they onely stubborn in digesting but they are obstinate in perseverance and do act on us so far as they are not subdued But Verdigrease Crocusaeris Cerusse Precipiate Sublimate c.
the Legs is recocted into good Blood about the Ancles without the Shop of Sanguification and dominion of the Liver That is that the once out-hunted and cocted Blood is by a forreign agent and unfit organ at length received into favour that it doth by an inspired motion retire into the mouths of the Veines and is received or associated as equally fit for vital Offices But whence do they spend so much labour in drying up of the Dropsical affect that they can scarce command a possible abstinence of one year from liquid things if the Dropsie be the vice of the one Digestion of the Liver Why do they referre it among Diseases offending onely in moisture the which was to be attributed unto a full half Digestion For I will first dispute about the Liver and under the same by-work I will discover the occasional cause of the Dropsie I saw a certain un-savory Simple nor by any meanes to be manifested administred by a Physitian in the Suspition of the Stone of the Kidneys which suspended the Urine for eights dayes and even unto death the which presently before death was loosed and then it throughly be-pissed the bed cloathes The Disease brought forth another thing like it For truly neither in the Urine-pipe or Bladder appeared any obstacle after dissection But he had his left Kidney triangular free or undamnified from all obstruction and Stone But the right Kidney was plainely monstruous and scarce of the bigness of a Filburd-nut Therefore he had pissed 76 years with his left Kidney not letted or stopped That the Liver therefore is guiltless in the Dropsie I will declare my experiences For because the precepts of the Schooles did the less satisfie me in the Dropsie therefore I was wont being as yet a young Man to hasten although not called unto the Dissections of Dropsical Bodies that I might search out the birth-places of the Dropsie For I thought with my self to what end hath there been Anatomie now for two thousand years if there be not at this day a more successful curing of the Dropsie than in times past For wherefore are we the Butchers of dead Carcases if we do not learn by the errors of the Antients If we do not amend fore-past things For we flee unto Anatomie with a prejudice and sweep the purses of Heires if we do not look into the causes of Death that we may learn the cures For truly dissection profits the Dead nothing Heires also do not expend their moneys that they may heal the dead by Anatomy and much less that they may wound the same least happily he should rise againe nor also that they may learn to cure others which are unwilling to be healed But only the dead Carcase is opened for the Physitian and that he may more perfectly learn the Heire paies the reward of his learning Thus Oxen yee that yoaked are The Plow not for your selves do beare But Physitians seeing they scarce any longer expect to learn they stand by stop their Noses and hope by the expences of the Heires for the most part to escape the mark of Death A Lawyer after divers Gripings or Wringings of his Bowels died of a Dropsie But in the Dissection we saw his Liver without blemish An English-man my Neighbour by eating his fill of roasted Porke sliding into a daylie Flux and presently after into a Dropsie he died and being dissected his Liver was seen to be unhurt Hitherto also doth the Tragedie of Count Stegrius tend In the Autumne of the year 1605. I returning out of England to Antwerp found some hundreds after a malignant and popular Fever to be dropsical I cured many and many under the unhappy experiments of others in the mean time Perished But that People have a perswasion in them that unless all the Water be drawn out of the dead Carcases the Dropsie will passe over into the next Heire And so they are Solicitous of Dissection And I certainly affirme that I found the Liver of none defiled A certain Citizen was long pained between his bastard Ribs neither breathed he without Pain at length the Conjectures of Physitians being tried he died of a Dropsie But his Liver was seen to be without hurt One pertayning to the Kings Treasurie of Brabant after a sudden pissing of Blood was long handled by Physitians in vain and thefore being sent by his Physitians unto the Fountains of the Spaw he returning began to shew a hardness in the left Side of his Abdomen under his Ribs and thereupon the Leg of that side was swollen But the chief Physitians and those of Lovain although they saw his Urine like unto that of healthy Persons and thereby did betoken his Liver to be guiltless yet they desisted not from the continual use of solutive opening and Urine-provoking things yea they gave him steel diversly masked against the obstructions of the Liver to drink And at length having a huge Abdomen he Perished with a Dropsie For neither was there place for excuse as to say they were called late who were present with him from the hour of his bloudie Pissing But his dead Carcase being dissected his Liver was found innocent But his left Kidney had swollen and that more than was meet with a clot of out-hunted Blood such as is in a boyled Gut A Major of Souldiers from a bloudie Flux which was at length appeased died of a Dropsie whose Liver notwithstanding was without blemish however the Schooles may grin A certain Merchant keeping his bed through a Colick of four months fell into a Dropsie but being dissected he had his Liver without fault A Woman of sixty years old hearing in the night Theeves at the windows and rising dashed her Belly beyond the Breast-bone against a corner of the Table But first it pained her and then her Menstru'es brake forth as she thought the which although it was little yet it desisted not but with the birth of a Dropsie it also expurged into the masse of a greater Tympanie But she being dissected Her Liver offered it self undefiled Another old Woman being vexed with a more cruel Husband after inordinate menstru'es Perished with a Dropsie and shewed an unblamed Liver A certain Hand-maid hanging some washed webs of Cloath to high for her Stature sliding into a flux of the Womb at length died of a Dropsie neither offered her Liver it self guiltie to the beholders A Cuaplaine of Bruxells of the age of 31 years complaines to me of the shortness of his Breath he shews his Legs to be puffed up and his Belly to be swollen And he saith that his Cod was swelled to the bigness of ones Head For I saw that he had a face bespotted with red pricks or spects as it were with the marks of stripes He as yet celebrated the Masse yet with difficulty presently after three dayes from thence he suddenly dieth but he being dissected his Belly was found to be without water But in his Breast much Blood had choaked him And
the disposition of an Excrement Because it s own and that which is native to it 1. This is the cause of an Anasarca or in speaking precisely the Water is not the Dropsie as the Anasarca it self neither is the Wind the Tympany it self but the Water in the Abdomen and the Latex in the Anasarca are the Products of the Dropsie As the Wind is in the Tympany Surely the Dropsie is a Guest received with a more inward society of familiarity and is more intimate unto us the which doth attempt the vital principles and faculties of Life before the Water be bred and so every Disease doth by occasional Causes immediately talk with the vital Beginnings wherein at length it findes its matter and efficient Cause 2. And then I have noted that seeing the Urine of all Dropsical persons in general is little and of a ful colour the Latex was the matter as of the Urine so also of the Dropsie For neither is it formally Urine but the matter hereof before Urine was made thereof by a co-mixture of other things and the receiving of a Urinal ferment 3. But I understand in the Dropsie a threefold matter To wit the first occasional such I have said out-chased venal blood to be And then a second which is the Water it self and the very Latex in the Abdomen which is a certain product And lastly the third matter hath its internal efficient arisen in the internal vital principles of the Archeus of the Reines 4. Like as also drink failing the Reines do notwithstanding as yet allure forth the Urine of Blood although sparingly 5. So also in the Dropsie the Urine is of the Blood not of the Drink not of the Latex The Reines do actually conceive frame and contein the Dropsie But the Abdomen or neather part of the Belly through the action of government of the Reines doth afford an Inne and the Kidney sends the Latex thither as the product of the Tragedy For it is not as the Latex is theevishly snatched away by another Bowel but the Kidney alone doth banish the Latex unto places subjected unto it 6. But the Latex being lesse chief in the accustomednesse of Life in an Oedema and Anasarca than in an Ascites it is also again supped into the Veines and slides unto the Reines that it may undergo the last determination of Life 7. An Ascites is regularly cured if the Kidney shall make much and abundanâ— of Vrine of its own accord or by a Remedy But it committeth a relapse if the Disease be not wholly taken away out of the Kidney 8. The Water between the skin or Anasarca by a retrograde motion draws the Latex into the mouthes of the Veines from thence through the Veines it is sucked into the Kidneys and expurged in manner of Urine The least quantity whereof onely doth exhale by transpiration And therefore they abusively teach that the Latex is Phlegm in an Oedema and that it is recocted into lawful Blood 9. Therefore the Command and Action of Government of the Reins doth extend it self not only into the Kidneys Ureters and Urine Vessells But besides into the hollowness of the Belly between the Peritoneum or wrapping Skin thereof and Muscles of the Abdomen and likewise into the several Divisions of the hollow Vein beneath its self even also into the Feet and Legs 10. The Reins therefore do not suffer the Latex to fall down through its own weight but do truely send it no otherwise than as they do truly again draw the same thorow all the blood of the Veines to wit until the Dropsie be cured by pissings 11. And which is more the Kidney doth alwayes co-operate and principally operate in the framing of a Dropsie It is therefore of necessity primarily affected Because it wanders from the ends of its acting 12. And seeing the Kidney is the chief effecter of the Dropsie although another member may now and then contain the occasional Cause 13. Therefore a Cure which is instituted by a removal of the Water is alwayes subject to a relapse and is for the most part attempted in vain Because a worthy or meet Cure is never instituted from the ultimate or last Agent 14. Therefore the Dropsie Ascites is alwaies an immediate effect of the Reins and so the Cure of the same doth expulsively require a restauration of the Kidneys whether the defect be occasionally stirred up or in the next place consisteth in the Kidney it self 15. Wherefore I do far retire from the Doctrine of the Schooles which the Reins being paspassed by and neglected doth continually behold the Liver and direct its desires of curing thither 16. But the Dropsie is not a wandring abuse or exorbitancy of the Archeus in the Kidney a stopping up thereof by a stone or muckishnesse But a certain sleepy or stupifying poysonous faculty in the venal blood which is expelled or in a like manner entertained through importunity whereof the Kidney doth first of all forget its office casts away the Rains of separating the Latex and straightway after also doth snatch up a fury while through an inordinate motion it banisheth the Latex into the Abdomen 17. Even just as I said before that a Kidney was exclusively shut against the simple Urine even until death 18. Indeed I meditate of a co-like devious or wandering quality of out-chased venal blood in the Dropsie through the occasional Cause whereof the Kidney is made forgetful of its duty and the seasonable removal of which poyson doth free the Kidney from its bond and so the Abdomen from the Water For when the Kidney seeth that an Error was committed by it and being well admonished by a right Medicine it earnestly repents and again suppeth up the Latex being dismissed unto it and drives it forth 19. Therefore the true Dropsie Ascites is in the Reins or to lose the stubborn bolt of the Reins is to lose the Dropsie even as to solue the congealed Blood is to solue the occasional cause thereof That is the immediate cause as well the material as efficient of a true Dropsie is the Archeus of the Reins erring to wit so far as he becomes Exorbitant and is as it were driven into a furie by the occasional Cause he begets an Idea or shape the which the implanted Archeus of the Reins himself being stubborn doth foster and nourish Whereby indeed he doth not or scarce separates the Urine or imploys himself in the care of his Office or of his appointment Yea neither doth he only pass by and neglect his own Offices but also being as it were in a rage dismisseth the Latex unto the Abdomen that he may as it were procure his own Destruction Therefore we must dissolve the vice of stubbornness in the Archeus so that pissing may follow if health be to be expected Paracelsus feigneth that in the Dropsie the venal Blood is by the star of Zedo turned into a muscilage but from hence into water But that its cure doth
consist in the withdrawing of the water and first matter or removall of that aforesaid Muscilage But what other thing is this than to cure from the effect I grant willingly indeed that as oft as the Latex doth not sufficiently serve the turn the Archeus of the Reins that he may satisfie his own furie doth sooner cause the blood to melt than he desisteth from his errour begun But where there is a plentiful Latex the dissoluting of the Flesh and Blood into a Latex is not worth his labour For in very deed as speedily as he can he drives all the Latex unto the places of the Dropsie neither is he idle but rageth as if in the driving of the Latex unto the Abdomen his own profitable end were to be expected For neither would it detain the Urine if it were the endeavour of the Archeus to dissolve the flesh and blood Those in whom both Kidneys are stopped by the Stone and do die being at length choaked by the Urine are not nevertheless therefore Dropsical because the Urine remaineth in the veins whereof to wit the Kidney intends to unload it self but cannot But in the Dropsie it is able but doth not intend to unload in it self In a Dropsie therefore there is a poysonus fury of the Archeus not likewise in an obstruction by the Stone And therefore one Kidney being disturbed through a poysonous occasionall cause together and at once all the other Kidneys also alike rageth which thing in a stoppage by the Stone doth not in like manner happen But the Essence of a Dropsie doth require that not only the Kidney do neglect the separation of the Latex and shut the bolt of the Urine But moreover it must needs be that together also it dismisseth the Latex unto the places of the Abdomen yea and that it doth strictly close the pores of the Membranes least indeed any thing of the Latex or Winds do transpire and break out Truly the Archeus of the Reins doth rage with a great and foolish carefulness that he may make a Dropsie and his fury is nourished with a foolish stubbornness because when he feels the powers of nature to be dejected yet he nevertheless not any thing slackeneth from his concieved furie If therefore a stoppage by the Stone doth induce a Disease and death not a Dropsie if a Dropsie also brings a Disease and Death without a total yea or a material obstruction of the Kidneys it becomes manifest that the diversity of the same Diseases doth depend only on the immoderate desire and intentional fury of the Archeus being stirred up by a bloody poyson not likewise from a material errour of the Latex It is a Maxim that every being desires to be and remain Which indeed is to be understood of a Being governed by God by common and ordered or regular nature But not of a foolish Being and that which is outragious through a poyson such as is the Archeus from his corruption by sin and being provoked by the poysonous occasional cause of a Disease For it is even all one as a furious Man Horse or Oxe which casts himself headlong from a high place and procureth his own end For so the Archeus in his furies doth as it were by a stubborn endeavour procure destruction to himself The which indeed in many Diseases is perpetual wherein therefore it is lawful to accuse the madness and furies of the Archeus also that furious and mad images or likenesses are formed whereby he doth seminally communicate his own furies to a potent ferment Whence also it is wont to be said that a man is immediately more powerfully hurt of none than of himself Furthermore with what great carelesness and with how light a foot the Schooles of the Humorists have skipped over the consideration of Diseases may be seen not only from the cold distemperature of the Liver the which only and alone they suppose to be in the present Disease and so as if that being laid down for a Position they had given a full satisfaction and had declared a profound Oracle they repose themselves in quiet Yet without consideration that such a cold distemper cannot be restored but that Dropsical Persons do every where admit of cure But chiefly the negligence of the Heathenish Schooles doth clearly appear Because that among so many thousands Writers the first is as yet wanting who hath dared to think which way or by what possible means the Liver should lay up its water between the Abdomen and its Muscles none I say hath hitherto known that the Latex differs from the Urine And seeing that sometimes the Dropsie is for many months leading the Languishing weak unto their Coffin the Urine should of necessity stink if it should but for a very small time associate the liquid dung or drosse the which concerning the Disease of the Stone touching Fevers and elsewhere I have in words plentifully explained unto it self as a companion Which dross notwithstanding is required unto the integrity of Urine But if a Dropsical Person shall assume any of that dross from a Bowel into the meseraick veins that drosse likewise remaines with the small quantity of Urine neither being co-mixed with the Latex is it sent unto the Abdomen All Writers therefore have hitherto so feared this Gordian knot that indeed they have not mentioned so much as a word of it Let us therefore consider that which others before me have neglected For truly all juice or chyle of the Stomach sliding down through the Bowels is naturally regularly and alwayes attracted and sucked by the Meseraick veins to wit the Mouths or extreamities whereof do end into the Intestine or Bowel it hath also remained scanty hitherto after what manner so plentifully a Chyle doth dayly passe through the intestine into the mouths of the veins of the Mesentery without any hole And likewise why winds being pressed by the intestine do not proceed through the same pores into the veins of the Mesentery seeing they are by so much the thinner and subtiller than the Chyle by how much their Body is lighter which hath no weight with the ponderous Chyle But these things shall by degrees manifest themselves under explication the which because they being reckoned as it were the impossible or at least-wise the unsearchable miracles of nature have suspended every quill of Writers and the Schooles through the excuse of hidden Causes have been content to have suspended all things But go to as to my search in hand Every liquor is sucked by the intestines for that thing I willingly grant without controversy and is snatched into the veins of the Mesentery to wit as well that which is appointed for Blood as that which is after any sort at sometime deputed for excrements But afterwards there is not any passage of the veins of the Mesentery but unto the port vein which insinuates it self into the Liver Therefore the matter whereof a Dropsie is carried into the Liver no otherwise than as
it rush it self headlong into danger which should draw a hurtful poyson within the veins Therefore a solutive poyson while as yet it is detained and that in the Stomach it putryfies and defiles whatsoever was a-loof of deposed in the Mesenteries for better uses and draws the refined Blood out of the hollow vein instead of a putryfied treasure and by degrees defiles it with a poysonous contagion and dissolves it with the stinking ferment of a dead carcass For from hence is there a loss of strength by laxative Medicines and a disturbance of the Monarchy of Life without hope of cure thereby But that fury of laxative things endureth not only so long as their presence But also so long as the lamentable poyson doth burden the Stomach and Bowels with its contagion So indeed an artificial Diarrhaea or Flux ariseth which now and then persisteth even until Death and laughs at the promised help and attempted succours of astringent things Unto the second and third I likewise say it hath been sufficiently demonstrated elsewhere that the Elements are neither tempered for Bodies falsly believed to be mixt nor for the temperature sake of the same Bodies and much less for a just one and as to an adequate or suitable weight Therefore the Schooles presuppose falshoods yea and contend by sophistry For although Arcanums do cure a broken bone as well as Comfrey or the Stone for broken bones yet it is on both sides required that the fracture of the bone be reposed I likewise remember that a burstness being well bound up hath been cured beyond expectation because from the breaking of a bone some one had layen long on his Loynes Neither therefore doth it want an Arcanum Unto the fourth and also the fifth it sufficeth that the Arcanum or Secret doth wipe away the occasional Causes to wit nature being holpen supplying the rest Unto the sixth let the Schooles refrain their tongue For an Arcanum cures Diseases which they under blasphemy have maintained to be uncurable Which thing the Hospitals of those that were uncurable do testifie for me if they are compared with the Epitaph of Paracelsus But the seventh reproach breaks forth from ignorant Jaws to wit from the proper testimony of a guilty mind Unto the eight and ninth it is certain that the Exclaimers do grieve while they are beaten for from a sense of grief the Mouth speaketh reproaches But if of thousands of Alchymists scarce one doth arive unto his wished end that is not the vice of the art because the endowment doth not depend on the will of him that willeth and runneth But because it is not yet the fulness of time wherein these secrets shall be more common Be it sufficient for me that the signs do no where appear but among the obtainers of Arcanums that is Adeptists and that none of the Humorists hath ever come thither neither also shall come Therefore there is no place for reproaches against the truth of the science of healing but where there is no order and an everlasting horrour doth inhabit For Owles and monstrous Bats do shun the light of truth because they are fed with a great lie to wit that they have known how to cure Fevers without evacuation When as indeed they know not by both succours as well of a cut vein as of a loosened Belly how to cure Fevers certainly and safely for let them cure a Fever as they affirm Shall they not likewise for that very cause bring rest to the sick And afterwards safely take away that which they say doth remain which was not lawful so fitly to be done as long as they believe life to conflict or skirmish with Death and the Disease with health But they shun the light of truth under the Cloak of a lie thus ignorance dictating and gain thus commanding miserable men do defend themselves For Medicine is not a naked word a vain boasting or vain talk for it leaves a work behind it Wherefore I despise reproaches the boastings and miserable vanities of ambition Go to return with me to the purpose If ye speak truth Oh ye Schooles that ye can cure any kinde of Fevers without evacuation but will not for fear of a worse relapse come down to the contest ye Humorists Let us take out of the Hospitals out of the Camps or from elsewhere 200 or 500 poor People that have Fevers Pleurisies c. Let us divide them in halfes let us cast lots that one halfe of them may fall to my share and the other to yours I will cure them without blood-letting and sensible evacuation but do you do as ye know for neither do I tye you up to the boasting or of Phlebotomy or the abstinence from a solutive Medicine we shall see how many Funerals both of us shall have But let the reward of the contention or wager be 300 Florens deposited on both sides Here your business is decided Oh ye Magistrates unto whom the health of the People is dear It shall be contested for a publique good for the knowledge of truth for your Life and Soul for the health of your Sons Widows Orphans and the health of your whole People And finally for a method of curing disputed in an actual contradictory superadd ye a reward instead of a titular Honour from your Office compel ye those that are unwilling to enter into the combate or those that are Dumb in the place of exercise to yeild let them then shew that which they now boast of by brawling For thus Charters from Princes are to be shewn Let words and brawling cease let us act friendly and by mutual experiences that it may be known hence forward whether of our two methods are true For truly in contradictories not indeed both propositions but one of them only is true But now the Humourists while any commits himself to me for cure do possess him with fear to wit least they give up themselves unto an Authour of new opinions but rather that they go in the paths of Heathens that they may not through a novelty of opinion be accounted to have put their Life in doubt and that they rather trusting in an old abuse do enter into beaten paths Ah I wish those of another Life and of the intelligible World might return that they might testifie unto whom their death is owing Presently they who being now subtile Scoffers do seem to ask counsel for their own life should acknowledge that they do incurr on themselves the destruction and loss of their Life while they had rather commit their Life to plurality or the great number only by reason of the constancie of an old errour and abuse than that they are willing to be bowed unto the Admonitions of the truth As if War were still to be waged only with Darts or Arrows and Slings because that is the most antient kinde of Weapons But nevertheless neither are our Medicines so new that there are only the thousandth of experiences in them the which
and likewise durations and directions according to places strengths and weaknesses no less than an alterative Blas hath for all successive changes and periods of times These Blas's are Antiently wont to be ascribed unto the aspects of diverse Lights the which aspects notwithstanding as such do not exceed their own efficacy which is to have enlightned But for to stir up so unlike stations of times or seasons and tempests also foreseen that is before the coming of the Stars unto the places of those aspects is surely the effect of a greater weight than only of a simple Light I therefore suppose that the diversities of aspects spiritual Astrall or starry Images of the invisible World are framed which they lay up into the Air for the exciting of a Blas according to the Image of those properties for truly the aspect of the Stars is only momentary as also their place is unstable but their effects do presevere for some long time Therefore it must needs be that the lightsome aspects besides a momentary Light have laid up in the Air the Idea of a Blas operating even unto a Consumption of it self the irregular Rules Locks Bolts Spurs and Period of times or seasons Such an Image therefore is of the Nature of Light that it may operate at a set time for else it should scarce reach to us in the course of many years unless it were of the Nature of Light Therefore as there is in Plants an awakening virtue of a seminal Image for fructification So also there is in the Stars a faculty of framing the Idea of a motive Light which is the original principle of motion making whatsoever is committed unto it for execution But our Archeus whether he hath a virtue or force like unto the Earth or unto the Stars it is all one so we understand that it is proper unto him to stir up a tempestuous Blas in us since the disobedience of our first Parent Whether such a property increased in him from Sin or next whether he doth awaken those Blas's anew by his own beck and from the aspect of his own perturbation it is all one and sufficient so we acknowledge that all the force as well of a regular Life as of an inordinate government doth issue from nothing but from this vital Beginning And therefore all Diseases and the Types or Figures of these are certain conceptions decyphered by this invisible Ruler to finish the storms of our calamities In the Skie therefore of our Archeus are aspectual Idea's decyphered as well from the depth of the starry Heaven of the Soul it self as those formed by the erring or wandring implanted Spirits of the seven Bowels For so a fear of the Plague creates the Plague A sudden fear of Death hath oftentimes killed the Gout Likewise the fear of Honour lost or to be lost if it hath endured for the space of one day hath now and then caused the Falling-sickness The sorrow of poverty hath brought madness but in others it hath brought forth the Scrophulus or Kings-evil All mad folks are for the most part devolved or overthrown from Pride And the Wise Man testifieth That sorrow doth graw the Life of Man as the Worm doth Garments But Sorrow is a Sorrowful thought but this is a non-being because a mental Being the which because it is a non-being therefore it hath no power of acting from it self Therefore a sorrowful cogitation doth produce an active Idea and this something is made of nothing no otherwise than as in a Woman with Child perturbation doth bring forth a Monster and transchangeth the humane Young into a beast-like one because it is proper or natural to the imaginative power to frame Images or Likenesses as well in mental as Archeal Beings Sorrow therefore which is a slow disturbance brings forth an Idea which consumes and gnaws the Life because such an Idea hath the degenerate vital Air of the Archeus for its matter the which therefore pretends to pervert the remainder of the Archeus with its own likeness and this degenerate Air is corrupted in the Duumvirate And therefore presently after Sorrow there are continual Sighs and these things thus happen to the faculties or powers of a sorrowful Phantasie The same thing also happens in the power of the Phantasie proper to the Archeus whether the inflowing or implanted one both of whom even as concerning the Plague-grave elsewhere doth frame the most powerful Images of Imagination Wherefore also a two-fold Diseasifying Archeal Idea of a two-fold Archeus distinguisheth a transient or soon-departing Disease from a Chronical or long continuing one Wherefore they who shall hereafter rightly attend shall find that every perturbation of the Soul which is strong dayly and doth not descend by issuing out of the Archeus of the Bowels dedicated unto imaginative Offices or out of the duumvirate doth bring forth a diverse or distinct madness through the varieties of Idea's They shall likewise find that simples as well degenerated within as received from without do sometimes affect the Archeus himself from without do bring forth an equal Idea of madness of the Duumvirate which thing is manifest in the smallest contagion of a mad Dog which kind of Diseases also being con-centred in the vital Members talking with the Stars whence there is an unequal strength the torture of the Night hereditary Diseases and such as return by circuite are seen to have an invisible store-house within and an original principle of the tragedy whence according to the command of maturities or of a most remote excentricity Idea's the Authoresses of so great storms are repeated But Idea's if they inform the venal Blood or the liquor which is immediately to be assimilated and nourishable tempests are bred conformable as well to the Idea's of perturbations as to the entertaining Archeus Therefore the Archeus doth so wantonize within through his own proper luxury voluntary weariness or heaviness corruption defect furious Blas for names fail us where a thing layes hid as being unknown by a former Cause that although he shake nothing from without yet the Life forsakes suspends despiseth is averse to the Rains of Goverment and rageth Man knowing not of it For so Idea's do arise which being free do break forth into all dissoluteness and unbridled tyranny of Diseases And seeing the motions of a wantonizing Archeus are hidden to a Physitian and so that we are not able to repose the once rejected Rains into the hands of such an Archeus By consequence a certain Universal Arcanum which is a sleepifier and appeaser of the Archeus is to be administred He therefore labours for the most part in vain whosoever being destitute of a Universal secret doth place his endeavour in the brushing away of occasional Causes the Archeus being not first appeased The which surely is to be exactly noted with a Golden Pen For it happens unto him no otherwise than as he who having not first stopped up the spring head presumes by exhausting of
Woman doth seminally conceive by Man besides the first intent of Creation Wherefore if Man were created that at least-wise from a foreknowledge of the consequence he might supply the Place of the Evil Spirits in Heaven he ought either to be created in a great Number at once from the Beginning or Successively If therefore They which are to be saved cannot be born by the will of Man of Flesh or of Blood and there was one only Man created therefore all Posterity ought by a successive Continuation to be born in Paradise of Women alone to wit the Birth-place of the Woman and of necessity to be Conceived from God and to be Born of a Woman a Virgin unto whom he afterwards Gave Power to be called the Sons of God and to be made with an exclusion of the Will of Blood Flesh and Man which Chastity alwayes pleased God doth please him at this Day and will please him alwayes And whatsoever hath thus once pleased the fountain of Chastity can never again displease him And so that Onely those that are of a clean Heart shall see God and shall be called his Sons wherefore the Prophet singeth Create in me a clean Heart Oh God! such as Adam had before the Fall And renew a right Spirit of the chaste and antient Innocency by the regeneration of the Spirit and Water in my Bowels Because my Bowels being now impure have contracted a Spirit of Concupiscence of the Flesh of Sin For indeed Man as long as he was Immortal and Pure Saw thy Face oh Lord and thou talkedst with him which Face afterwards Man shall not see and live But after that Man defiled his Bowels through Concupiscence thou casteth him from thy Face out of Paradise I pray thee therefore that thou cast me not from thy Face and that thou take not thy holy Spirit of Chastity from me Restore unto me the Gladness of the Regeneration of thy Salvation and with thy principal Spirit the Comforter do thou confirm me against the inbred Impurity of the Flesh For truly I shall teach the Unrighteous thy wayes of thy Regeneration the which among the hidden things of thy Wisdom thou hast manifested unto me and the Wicked shall be converted unto thee At leastwise free me from Bloods from the Concupiscence of the Sexes Thou who art the God of Chastity the God of Salvation as of new Regeneration and my Tongue shall exalt thy Righteousness and thy just Judgment whereby thou hast condemned Man who was born of Bloods and by the will of Man in the Concupiscente and of the Flesh of Sin as he hath made himself uncapable of thine Inheritance For loe in Iniquities aforesaid I was conceived and in Sins hath my Mother conceived me although under a lawful Marriage Bed Therefore I confess that besides the primitive scope of the Creator an Adamical Generation hath arisen into natural Death and is devolved into original Sin The Woman therefore as she hath conceived after a bruital manner she also began to bring forth in Pain The Male also in the Law was only circumcised as for a mystery of the deflowring of Eve Yet both Sexes ought to expiate the Offence committed in their privy Parts to wit whereby they had offended which thing although it be chastly insinuated in the Text Yet that was covered before Israel who were otherwise most ready for all Perfidiousness to wit that Godmight not seem a contemner of Matrimony instituted after the Fall The Woman therefore was not circumcised and yet she was saved but not the Pain of Child-birth or the Obedience of her Husband had expiated Original Sin in her For both a single young Virgin dying was saved as also a barren Wife Therefore from hence is manifested the mystery to wit that Eve so much as she could resisted the Insolencies of Adam and was by force deflowred in Paradise So that also our first Parents were Murderers of all their Posterity through Concupiscenc So also the eldest Son was a Brother-Killer For the fore-skin being taken away did of necessity cause a Brawniness of the Nut of the Yard whereby indeed he might be made a Partaker of the less Pleasure Concupiscence and Tickling whosoever should desire to be ascribed or registred among the Catalogue of the beloved People of God The Rabbins also confess That Circumcision was instituted by reason of unclean Virtues walking in a circuit The which I interpret that the diabolical and primitive Enticements of Concupiscence unto Mortality were not hid to the Hebrews and that at leastwise in an obscure sense the Sin arisen from thence was insinuated Also illegitimate Persons were in times past driven from the Temple and Heaven and those who should be born of an adulterous Conception because they did wholly shew forth an Adamical Generation but those who were born of a lawfull 〈…〉 Bed were as yet Impure until that the fore-skin being taken away they might seem to renounce the Concupiscence of the Flesh And in this respect they represented in a shadow also those that were to be renewed from far by the Spirit of God and the laver of Regeneration Moreover the very Word of Truth doth profesly confirm the Position 1 John 3. Except any one be born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God B. Except any one be born again of Water and of the Spirit he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God C. That which is born of the Flesh is Flesh and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit D. The Spirit breatheth where it listeth Thou hearest the Voice thereof but knowest not from whence it may come or whither it may go E. So is every Man who is born of the Spirit F. If I shall speak unto you of Earthly Things and ye believe not how shall ye believe if I tell you of Heavenly things G. None hath ascended into Heaven but he who descended from Heaven H. And as Moyses exalted the Serpent in the Wilderness So it behoves the Son of Man to be exaltâ—d Christ Jesus descending from Heaven took not on him the Flesh of Sin by Adamical Generation or by the will of Man but he receiving the form of a Servant was made into the Likeness of the Sons of Adam being found in Habit as a Man Yet being Adamical was a true Man such as Adam was being newly created But he being made into the similitude of an Adamical Man emptied or humbled himself taking on him the form of a Servant But he was not made a Servant or Impure But in this glad tydings he denieth the Vision of God or the sight of the Kingdom of God and in b. an entrance into the Kingdom of God For not that the Glory which makes blessed may be seen without entring into Heaven or the same thing is twice spoken in vain or that a. doth require another new birth than b. but a. contains a denyal of participating of the Heavens for the Souls of the Dead before the Resurrection
be the primary Foundation of Life but not an adjacent and concomitant thereof God forbid that we should not know that there is one Consumption of the Moisture by Heat but another which is promoted by an extenuating Ferment For truly this leaveth behind it no Lee or Dreg or any Remainder but that leaves a sandy Stone or Coal And therefore the former tends unto a thickning but the latter unto an extenuating But if a great Heat doth sometimes arise in us which scorcheth the Members with the Fire-coal or burning Fever and Persian-fire and doth gangreen them move an Eschar and sometimes gnaw the Flesh like a Dormouse For so are the Works of Corrosive Salts the Acts of the Degenerations of Out-laws banished from the vital Common-wealth Truly that is even as by laxative Medicines the whole venal Blood is resolved into Putrifaction for they are Errours to be ascribed unto the violences of strange kinds of Seeds under which the vital Light doth degenerate no otherwise than as the pressing together of Hay stirs up Fire Moreover the vital Spirit climbe into the Head through the principal Arteries But there is one only Bosom in the very middle of the Brain which being beheld from above seemeth to be double but its Arch or Vault being lifted upwards it sheweth a Unity But in this Bosom an Artery endeth into a wrinckled Vessel and that of another weaving than the other compaction of Arteries Hereby therefore vital Spirit flows forth into the Bosom of the Brain for the service of the Imagination Memory and the spiritual Faculties their Chamber-maids all which are likewise founded in the implanted Spirit an inhabitant of the Brain But if the inflowing Spirit proceedeth from hence into the Mouths of the Sinews beginning from the Brain or the Cerebellum it attaineth Properties fit for the Functions of the Parts there ordained I have said elsewhere that this Spirit doth not essentially differ from the vital Spirit but that in the latitude of its Essence it is capable of very many Properties according to the latitude of Idea's imprinted on it for that which defluxeth to the Tongue causeth tasting the which notwithstanding in the Finger doth not taste because it puts on a particular Limitation of the Organ without the transchanging of its Nature least there should be as many Sub-divisions of the Animal Spirit as there are Services divided by pluralities of Offices In the mean time call the thing as it listeth thee CHAP. CVI. The manifold Life in Man I Have shewn elsewhere that there is in the Womb a Monarch-ship and therefore also a singular Life To wit whereby after the Death of a Woman it as yet casts forth the Young I have also seen a Woman which was never taken with the Falling-evil but when the Pain of Travel was urgent neither also did it cease but after delivery I have shewn also that there doth live a certain piece of Flesh of a spleen-like Form grown up indeed between the secundines and hollow places of the Womb and that its Life is proper to it self so as that it lives not by the Life of the Mother or Young but by a certain promiscuous Life not indeed by a sensitive Life although it flourisheth with a certain vital Power but not through favour of a certain herby or vegetative Soul At length also that the Veins have their own Life as yet remaining in them after the Death of a Man whereby it preserveth the Blood detained in them from coagulation and in this respect illustrates it with a certain Life for many dayes after the Death of the Persons Wherefore that there is another Life of the Veins whereby they not only live but do also conserve the Blood it self in Life Last of all I have also demonstrated that there is a certain peculiar Life in the Muscles together with the sensitive and motive Faculties whereby they all extend themselves with a fearful Convulsion at the percievance of Death As is manifest in a Tetanus in Rigours or cold shaking Fits and Convulsions wherein as well in those that are alive as after Death the Muscles are moved with an unvoluntary will even after the extinguishment of Life And although these Lives are distinguished by their various Subjects and are manifested by their diversity of Offices yet they all arise originally from the Seed they are furious or cruel ones they are implanted in their own Subjects and are in the whole or entire Life as in the total Form of the Parts Wherefore neither are they to be considered in the Treatise of Long Life because they are those which perish without the hope of Fewel at least-wise presently after the Death of the Man Yet are they memorable in the successive Alterations and curative betokening of Diseases CHAP. CVII The Flux or flowing unto Generation I Have seen the Beginnings of our Generation by way of Dream and I will describe them with my Pen so far as can be expressed by Words First of all I saw a Womb contracted with Folds or Plates after an unimitable artifice and in time of Conception to open it self by a proper attractive Blas and that suitably according to the extension of the Seed To wit which Extension or opening of the Folds causeth a sucking and attraction of the Seed by reason of a Vacuum And therein layeth a Rhombus or Figure on all sides equal of conception for the femal Sex For truly it contains the immediate Cause of complacency and attraction of the Seed into the Womb. For neither otherwise in Copulations however voluptuous they are is there made any enlargment of the folded Womb except in the very instant of Conception For from hence it is that the Conception of Bruits is almost infallible For truly there is not any voluntary Extension of the Womb as neither is it subjected unto Artifices or Crafts But rather it after some sort exceeding Nature plainly sheweth that God is the president of humane Generation continued on Posterity according to the Word of blessed Propagation Increase and Multiply Because it is the Finger of God which extendeth these Purses without an organical Mean The which is called in the holy Scriptures God opened the Womb of Sarah Truly the whole History of Generation should seem to exceed Nature unless it had been received within Nature from the right of an attained Propagation and a continued frequency of it self Whosoever therefore meditates on the expectation of Off-springs let him expect not the tickling or leacherous lust not the abundance of Seed yea nor health but altogether and primarily the aforesaid Magnetisme or attraction of the Womb And on behalfe of the Male Sex that the Seed be not infamous through any Contagion For otherwise the Womb once receiving a Seed badly seasoned doth reject that Seed neither doth it thenceforth open it self that it may suck the Seed of that Man inward for Life For the Womb doth oft-times conceive in second Marriages which in the first
Meats Yea which is more The Blood which is avoided in or presently after delivery is not Menstruous through the defect of its condition because it is not superfluous from a fore-going course of the Moon And then also because it is not heaped up fleshy not aluminous or tart not staining linnen Cloathes nor separated from the whole nor banished unto the places of the Womb for expulsion For that bloud which is plentifully voided in time and after delivery and the which being retained a doating Fever doth soon after threaten death is indeed venal blood yet not the Menstrues of the Mother For it is left by the Young who seeing from his quickening he lived in his own Orbe had a kitchin out of himself in the Vessels of the Womb. Wherefore it hath taken to it self another property than that of the Mother and than that of the Menstrues For that guest hath indeed the shape of Menstruous Blood Yet being an adoptive of another Family and become a forreigner to the Mother it is seriously to be expelled surely no otherwise than as the Secundines themselves But being omitted and left behind it is corrupted and brings on death But seeing that in a Woman great with Child there is no Menstrues at all by consequence neither is that Young nourished but with the pure arterial blood of the Mother and afterwards with pure venal blood being also first refined in its kitchins Therefore the Schools are deceived who teach That the small Pox or Measels are due almost to every mortal man by reason of the tribute of Menstruous nourishment For they observed that there was seldom any smitten twice with that Disease and perhaps seldom excused from it Wherefore they searching into the common Cause from whence the Young should be nourished in the beginning have referred the Effect on the Menstrues But in all things they without the knowledge of things have mutually subscribed to each other and have slidden into Fables and Conjectures For first of all they have not considered that it is almost impossible for any one to be made free from that Disease if all are alike indifferently nourished with Menstrues And then because they should be afflicted as it were at one certain and appointed term of the Crisis I confess indeed that the Measels do spring from a Poyson and draw a Poyson with them infect the blood with their ferment and defile others that stand by but especially Children and that the internal essence of Poysons is not demonstrable by a former Cause and therefore we measure the Property of a Poyson by the Effects even as a Tree by his Fruits 1. Therefore The Poyson of the Measels is proper onely to humane kind 2. That Nature is prone to the framing of that Poyson 3. But that it is kindled about the Stomack and so in the Center of the Body 4. That the parts being once besieged with this Poyson do most swiftly repulse that Poyson from themselves towards the superficies of the Body 5. That the shops of that Poyson after that they have once felt the tyranny thereof being afterwards thorowly instructed with a hostile averseness and horror do with great fore-caution prevent or hinder the generation thereof even from the very beginning least they should even at first unwarily fall thereinto Therefore the Poyson is made in Man but not co-bred in him from the Menstrues But of what quality that Poyson may be cannot be described by name because it hath not a proper name out of its effects It is sufficient in this place that the Menstrues cannot be drawn into a Cause for the Distempers aforesaid At first therefore The Menstrues offends in its matter by reason of its abounding alone And then it undergoes a degree that the first may be wherein that blood is superfluous from the foregoing course of the Moon But a Second degree is as soon as it is separated from the rest of blood But a Third degree is while as designed it hath resided about the Vessels of the Womb. A Fourth is that which hath stuck some good while in the same place and hath entered into the way of death At length the last degree is while as it now hath slidden forth as a dead Carcass and into the Air. Therefore the Schooles offend while as by cutting of a Vein they are busied in succouring of Virgins who in respect of their Menstrues do feel an heart-beating or trembling without distinction For although the Menstrues of the first degree appeaseth heart-beatings or pantings by a revulsive blood-letting yet in the third degree of the Menstrues I have fore-told it to our chief Physitians to be a destructive Remedy Because that the Veines of the Arme or Hams being emptied I have observed the Menstrues to be drawn backwards from the neighbouring places into the Veins And truly those Veins which do not remain emptied but which are filled again by a communion of continuation So also after great heart-beatings and pauses of intermitted pulses or after most sharp paines of the sides following from the Womb to wit by reason of an aluminous Poyson of the third degree Virgins have suddenly died by reason of Phlebotomy by me instituted at unawares In the first degree indeed the abundance of venal blood is taken away But it is the less evil although a part of the barren blood be left surviving Truly I had rather to help Nature in her sequestration and expulsion than by drawing of undistinct blood to have weakened Nature Moreover that is to be noted That although I have distinguished Diseases by the Ranks of Digestions yet I have scarce made mention of the Menstrues Because the Menstrues is neither digested nor is it a superfluity of Digestion and so is of another condition For at first it offends with a good abundance and then with a burdensom superfluity presently after it is deprived of Life and becomes a Poyson yet it cures Swine which are inclining into the Leprosie even as Horses straightway which were contracted or convulsive from unseasonable Drink if they drink up but a small quantity of Menstrues And likewise the poysonsom and true Menstrues of another Woman being administred in a few drops hath presently strangled a Woman labouring with a Flux of the Womb. But the blood which is at length avoided in plenty in Fluxes of the Womb being drunk in a few drops stayeth those Fluxes Furthermore because Woman only the Ape perhaps excepted doth suffer Menstrues and although the Menstrues do accuse of an abundance alone yet that the Cow her Dug being dried suffers not Menstrues otherwise she flowes down with very much Milk denoting that the abounding of venal blood is indeed the material Cause but not therefore the final and the which therefore I have not reduced among natural Causes For that the Almighty alone encloseth all the final Causes of all things within himself who sweetly disposeth of all things according to the unsearchable Abysse of his own Judgements
vital Substance In Mountainous Places elsewhere it rains Milk no less than Blood Oft-times also there lyes upon Stones and Bones a white and slimie Substance let down from Heaven which becomes Mosse This Substance in other Places where it putrifies or grows stony induceth a Crust or Parget upon Stones and elsewhere degenerates into a Mosse Hitherto the Dew or Balsam of the Air Manna Troni or the sweetest celestial dewie Manna's Tereniabin or the Fatness of Wood-hony found in good quantity in the three Summer Months Nostock or that which is called a falling Star being a kinde of slimie or gelly found oft-times in Fields and Meadows Nebulgea or the Salt of the Moisture of a Cloud falling upon Stones in Meadows and hardened with the heat of the Sun Laudanum which in the place may not be taken either for the Paracelfical preparation Laudanum or for Laudanum which is the liquid Sweat of the shrub Cistus or Ledon but for some Aereal Meteor or Production arrsing from the Conjunction of some seminary celestial Influence with the fatty evaporation of Plants and such like Aereal Productions have regard although these partake more of the Substance of Air. Whereas in the mean time Mosses growing on dead Skuls are of a higher pedegree being the Excretions or Superfluities of the Stars and are named celestial Flowers By these many things or rare effects have been atchieved because seeing they are enriched with the continual favour and influence of the Heavens they want not the Foundation of excellent Virtues The Usnea therefore or Mosse of the Skull seeing it hath received its Seed from the Heavens but its Womb and Increase from the Mumial Marrows of the Skull of Man and Tower of the Microcosm it s no wonder if it hath obtained notable Astral and magnetical Powers and that beyond the common Condition of Vegetables although Herbs as they are Herbs want not their own Magnetism I will declare what I have seen A certain and that notable Souldier bare a small Lock of the Moss of a Mans Skul artificially fastned between the Skin and Flesh of his Head who friendly interceding between two Brothers who were fighting a Duel with each other for their Life was smitten with a Sword on his Head that he fell to the ground with which stroak his Hat and Hair were cut through as it were with an incision-knife even to the Skin yet he escaped with his Skin unhurt Conjecture your selves to what Cause the safe-guard of the Skin may be ascribed I have not accustomed my self to perplex my Mind with uncertain Conjectures for truly Lightning which is more powerful than a Sword if it shake or smite a Bay-tree yet at leastwise not a Sea-calfe neither doth it touch upon a Horse whose Snaffle is anointed with the Fat of a Sea-calfe neither doth it smite the Stable whose Posts are besmeared with such Fat the Experience is trivial or frequent Yet I pass by this Controversie and leave it to others when I shall have first put you in mind of a like Example In Arduenna St. Hubert is worshipped whither all that are bitten by a mad Dog have address even as others flock unto the Chappels or Temples of St. Domine and Belline there a small lock of the Stole or upper Garment of St. Hubert is fastned within the Skin of the Forehead of him that was bitten by a mad Dog and for the future he can be smitten by no mad Beast whatsoever and that small Lock drives away or secures from their Teeth Thou wilt answer that that is a Miracle of God by the way of Reliques be it a Miracle Yet that God doth for the most part in Miracles walk side by side with Nature and observe the custom or rules hereof those bitten Persons by their smal Lock of the Garment do shew For He who can do all things by his Word alone doth now and then also make use of Means So let the Sweat in the Stoye of St. Paul be a magnetical Unguent But let the Sweat of the Sick or also the unsensible Efflux issuing from them be the Blood of the Wounded put on a piece of Wood within the Box of the Unguent forthwith all hurt is on every side magnetically drawn out of the sick Party And that is the more powerfully done by how much that supernatural Magnet is of the greater efficacy Indeed there is on both sides a like reason and a like manner of Operation but that in the material World it happens through the Blood and the Unguent as from corporeal Means but in the supernatural through the Reliques of the Friends of God which even in this respect are much to be reverenced which Reliques that they may become of a nearer Affinity with the magnetical Unguent our merciful God hath out of some of them raised up a Fountain of Oyl uncessantly dropping Liquors of Balsam Whereby we being indeed on both sides supported or relieved by a magnetical Remedy may certainly know that the magnetical or attractive Cure is received from God and doth proceed in both Worlds in a co-like order in an equal space and by one Guide or Directer Hence indeed it is that new Reliques work more and more famous Miracles even where they are carried about applyed by touching c. because it is of necessity that the Magnet or Load-stone be rubbed and stirred if it must attract I return unto thee Usnea thou seminal Off-spring of Heaven for he who hath recovered from his Hydrophobial Madness by the small Lock of the Garment and other pious Rites is not only himself left free from a mad Dog for the future but which is more royal he can grant unto another that hath been bitten by a mad Dog a delay for the space of many Months until the Patient can with his convenience come to St. Hubert the Poyson of the mad Dog being in the mean time silent and suspended Nature hath also afforded a magnetical Remedy Cozen-Germane to the other The Zinzilla which is an Excrement of the Diaphragma or Midriffe departing into an Inflamation when it hath like a Circle encompassed the same kills the Party but it is safely and speedily cured if the place be outwardly and even but slenderly anointed with the Blood of any one who hath once laboured with that Disease For he who hath once recovered of that Disease hath obtained not only a Balsamical Blood from whence for the future he is defended from the Disease but also he cures the same Effect in his Neighbour and by a touching of his Skin with the same Blood through the Power of Magnetism transplants his blood into the like Balsam Thou wilt say if the Magnetism be in the Usnea or Moss other Ingredients are in vain Physitians answer that some of them are principal Ones but others less principal that some are as the hinderers of Contrarities but some as spurs or exciting ones some also are Promoters by increasing the less active Magnetism That this
after an Inferiour manner and a proportionable resemblance of the Tribute of Inferiour Bodies in the Superiour Do not Herbs Animals and Sick or Diseased Man fore-feel and presage of future changes of Times or Seasions Is not the more cruel Winter to be expected by how much the deeper a Frog shall scrape his Inn in the Earth for harbour against the Winter at hand For from hence arise meteorical Divinations not indeed that those happen from a fore-timely Motion of celestial Bodies and that as yet to come because then it should cause that presagious feeling in Sublunary Bodies before it be present Far be it For the Firmament doth only foreshew future Events but not Cause them But indeed all particular created things have their own Heaven within them and the Revolution of that Heaven depending on the Being of their Seed in whose Spirit because it is that which contains the Idea or Engravement of the Universe is their own Heaven and there are moreover their own Ascendents Neither is there cause to think that we hereby trample upon Astrology but we illustrate or explain it because every thing contains its own Heaven and for that Cause a conjunctive relation of the Heavens yet the Motion of the Heavens because the most known because the most common directs the Heavens of particular things I may so call them for want of a Name according to it self This indeed is the Cause of every natural Inclination and where a Creature by the perswasion of its own proper Heaven wanders from that Motion of Heaven as the most common rule Sickness and Defect is forthwith present For a Sheep without a guide wanders into uncertainty For therefore sick Persons do fore-feel the Seasons and the future Mutations of Times healthy Persons not so For if the Sea did flow and ebb through the guidance of the Celestial that is the fiery signal Moon only and not from the conduct of its own watry signal Moon Winds also if they were stirred up through the guidance of the celestial Mercury only and not from their own Chaomantical or seminally signal Star truly there could not be any provincial Winds in any Place and because there is one only Mercury and one single Moon in the Heavens a co-like Wind should blow throughout the whole World and the Sea should every where flow if not at the same time at least-wise in the same harmonious Motion which modern navigation disproves Sufficient it is therefore here to have shown by the way that there is a celestial and impulsive Nature in things themselves the which notwithstanding doth excite and govern it self according to the Harmony of a superiour tributary Motion so long as it will not be accounted refractory That the Firmament also doth not Cause future events unless remotely and that only by the first Qualities playing the part of a certain Cook but otherwise doth largely or loudly proclaim the Handy-works of God But that things themselves do contain a particular Firmament in their seminal Being by reason whereof Superiour Bodies do by the Law of Friend-ship and Self-love bear a co-resemblance with inferiour ones From all which we may now at least collect that there is a Magnetism and Influential Virtues every where implanted in and proper to things the which he who expels from Sublunary Bodies seeks a vain Evasion Thou wilt urge that we must yet come nearer to the point neither that it is yet sufficiently manifest that in Sublunary Bodies there is a Quality imitating the Heavens and such a one indeed which carries an Influx unto a far removed and absent Object the which notwithstanding is presupposed in the Armary or Weapon Salve and so that Magnetism is indeed a celestial Virtue yet in no wise to be attributed to Sublunary things and much less to the feigned Weapon Salve But what other thing is this I pray than to deny Magnetism without or besides Magnetism For if we universally call every Influence of Sublunaries on each other Magnetism and for want of a true Name do name that Occult co-suitableness whereby one absent thing acts on another absent one by way of Influence whither that be done by attracting or impulsing a Magnetism truly whosoever denies an Influential Power of Sublunaries toward each other to be by Magnetism and requires an Instance to be given him to the contrary he requires an Absurdity to wit a Magnetism without Magnetism and knows not what he may deny or what demand For truly I have alleaged Examples of the Fact in Sublunary things and brought very many and suitable Instances namely concerning the ingrafted Nose of the Saphire of Water-Pepper Asarabacca and most Herbs But ye deny I sufficiently know because ye are ignorant thereof that either those Effects do not thus happen or thou wilt affirm which thou art more ready to do that they come to pass through the assistance of the Devil It is not suitable to the custom of Naturalists to dispute from naked Authorities we must come up to Handy-blows with those that contend with us to wit unto Experience Make tryal therefore and convince us of a Lie if thou canst not at least believe us Therefore it is an Action of insolent malepartnesse for any to deny the Being of that Fact which is every where frequent because indeed he hath not searcht out the Truth thereof nor hath endeavoured so to search and much more insolent it is indifferently to ascribe that to the Devil which is every where consonant to Nature as shall be hereafter taught and that indeed for one only Fault to wit because the manner of its Operation by its Cause cannot be understood by our Censurer by a Censurer who by the sharpness of his own Understanding and the Study of Aristotles Physicks presumes that he hath on every side exactly viewed the whole Circle of Nature by a Censurer I say who although he can discern nothing of Superstition in the Ungent and nothing of unlawfulness yet by reason of the manner of its Application being Paradoxical to him he condemns and detests it as Impious and affirms that it contains I know not what diabolical Juggle in it But for what I beseech thee Indeed because the Sword or Splinter thereof besmeared with Blood is emplaistred with the Mumial and Magnetical Unguent because the Blood which is once expelled out of the Veins knowes not how to hold a correspondence with that which is as yet nourished within the Veins and because he doth not believe that the Action of the Unguent is extended unto an Object scltuated at a far distance But return to thy self because anon thou shalt both understand and believe those things unless thou art stubborn We will now for thy sake recal the Action of Magnetism in Sublunary things unto the Bar of Light For indeed I will now shew that there is without the Classis or order of things and Herbs undeservedly suspected by thee an influence of some things on each other and that it
detestable yet are supported by the same root namely a Magical power without difference as unto good and also unto evil For neither doth it blemish the Majesty of free Will or the Treatise of the same although we now and then discourse of a Thief Robber or Murtherer a Whoremonger an Apostate and Witch Grant therefore that a Witch kills a Horse in an absent Stable there is a certain natural virtue derived from the Spirit of the Witch and not from Satan which can oppress or strangle the vital Spirit of the Horse Suppose thou that there are two subjects of Diseases and Death namely one of these the Body wherein a Disease inhabits And because all Beings act on this Body as that which is the most passive subject the other spiritual Dominion hath been thought to have been from Satan But the other subject is the unperceivable and invisible Spirit which of its own self is able to suffer all Diseases The Spirit suffering the Body also suffers because its action is limited within the Body for the Mind after that it is fast tied to the Body flowes alwayes downwards even as when the palate is pained the tongue continually tends thither but not on the contrary For there are some material Diseases which are tinged onely materially For so manifold is the occasion of Death that there is no other ground from whence we may receive an ability for pride The act therefore of the foregoing touch of the Witch is plainly natural although the stirring up of the virtue or power be made by the help of Satan No less than if a Witch should slay a Horse with a Sword reach'd unto her by Satan that act of the Witch is natural and corporeal even as the other fore-going act is Natural and Spiritual For truly Man naturally consists no lesse of a Spirit than of a Body neither therefore is there any reason why one act may be called the more natural one or why the Body only may be said to act but the Spirit to be idle and to be made altogether destitute at least of such action that is proper to it self as it is the Image of God Yea the vital Spirits in speaking most properly are those which perceive move remember c. but in no wise the Body and dead Carcass it self Every act therefore doth more properly respect its agent than the Body the Inn of the Agent Therefore some certain Spiritual Ray departs from the Witch into the Man or bruit Beast which she determineth to kill According to that Maxim That there is no Action made unless there be a due approximation or most near approach of the Agent to the Patient and a mutual coupâ—ing of their Virtues whether the same approximation be made Corporally or also spiritually Which thing is proved to our hand by a visible testimony For if the fresh Heart of a Horse for that is the seat of the vital Spirits slain by a Witch be empaled upon a stick and be roasted on a Broach or broyled on a Gridiron Presently the vital Spirit of the Witch without the interposing of any other mean and from thence the whole Witch her self for truly not the Body but the Spirit alone is sensible suffers cruel torments and pains of the fire The which surely could by no means happen unless there had been made a coupling of the Spirit of the Witch with the Spirit of the Horse For the Horse that was strangled retains a certain Mumial Faculty so I call it whensoever the virtue of the vital Liquor is as yet co-fermented with the Flesh that is the implanted Spirit such as is not found in Bodies dying of their own accord by reason of any sicknesse and any other renting asunder of an inferiour order whereunto the Spirit of the Witch being coupled unto it is a companion Therefore there is made in the fresh Heart a binding up of the Spirit of the Witch before that by a dissolution the Witch her own Spirit return back to her again which Spirit is retained by the Stick or Arrow being thrust into the Heart and through a roasting of both Spirits together from whence by Magnetism it happens that the Witch in the utmost limit or gradual heat of the Fire is sorely tossed or disturbed in her sensitive Spirit That effect is changed from the intention for if Reveng stir up the experimenter then the effect is reprobate But if tryal be made that the Witch may thereby be constrained to bewray her self to be subjected to Judges or the Justice of the Magistrate and that a benefit may be hereby procured to his Neighbour and himself and as by the taking away of so impious blasphemous and hurtful a Vassal of Satan glory to God and the greater peace and rest may arise amongst all Neighbours then certainly the effect cannot be rejected as reprobate We must not think that the whole Spirit of the Witch departeth into the Heart of the Horse for so the Witch her self had departed from the living but that there was a certain univocal or single participation of the vital Spirit and Light even as indeed a Spirit which is the Architect or Master-workman of the whole Man is propagated in the Seed at every turn or act of Generation being sufficient even for many off-springs the Spirit of the Father remaining entire notwithstanding Indeed that Spiritual participation of Light is Magical and a wealthy communication by Virtue of that Word Let Animals and Herbs bring forth Seed and one Seed produceth ten times ten thousand of Seeds of equal Valour or Virtue and as many entire seminal Spirits as Light is kindled or inflamed by Light But what a Magnetical Spirit may properly be and the Entity or Beingness begotten by its Parent the Phantasie I will hereafter more largely write I am now returned unto our Ends proposed Neither is there any ground for any one to think that this rebounding of the Heart into the Witch is a meer Supposition or plainly a superstitious and damnable Juggle and Mockery of Satan seeing she is infallibly discovered by this Sign and is constrained will she nill she to bewray her self openly which is a thing opposite to the intent of Satan as in the second of our suppositions is above sufficiently shewn for the Effect is perpetual never deceiving having its Foundation in reason and the spiritual Nature but not in the least supported by Superstitions Hath not likewise a dead Carcass also that was murdered be-bloodied it self before the Judges or Coroner and his Inquest when the Murderer was present and hath oft-times procured a certain Judgment of his Offence Although before the Blood had already stood restrained Indeed in the Man dying by reason of his Wound the Inferiour Virtues which are Mumial for those are unbridled ones and are not in our Power have imprinted on themselves a Footstep of taking revenge Hence it is that the Murderer being present the Blood of the Veins boiles up and flowes
Excitation is as it were by a waking sleepiness by a Catochus and therefore is imperfect in regard of the manner Evil in regard of the end Obscure in regard of the Meanes and Wicked in regard of the Author Nor doth the Turn-coat-impostor suffer that the Witch should know this Power to be natural unto her self whereby he may hold her the more fast bound to himself or least the exercise of so noble a Power being stirred up should incline otherwise than to Wickedness therefore he commands the Rains himself neither hath the Witch known how to stir it up at her own pleasure who hath wholly prostrated her self to the Will of another Tyrant Also Man himself is able through the Art of the Cabal to cause an excitement in himself of so great a Power at his own Pleasure and these are called Adeptists or Obtainers whose Governour also is the Spirit of God That this same Magical Virtue is also in the more outward Man to wit in the Flesh and Blood Yet after its own and far more feeble manner yea not only in the external Man but also proportionally in Bruits for so the Book of Genesis minds us that the Soul of Bruit-Beasts is in their Blood and upon this account it deservedly enrouls the same out of the Bill of our Food and perhaps in all other things Seeing all particular things contain in them a delineation of the whole Universe and upon that account at least the Antients have seriously signified unto us that there is a God that is an All in All that the Magick of the more outward Man hath need of exciting no less than that of the more inward Man neither that Satan doth stir up any other Magick in his Imps than what belongs to the more outward Man For in the more inward bottom of the Soul is the Kingdom of God whereto no Creature hath access We have further taught that there is a connexion between things spiritually acting and that Spirits as they combate with Spirits as in example of the Witch So also we have shewn by Magnetical Examples and proper Reasons for the fascination and binding up of Soules that they hold a friendly correspondence even as concerning David and Jonathan c. Last of all we have endeavoured to shew that Man predominates over all other corporeal Creatures and that by his natural Magick he is able to tame the Magical Virtues of other things which predominacy others have falsly and abusively transferred on the authority of Verses or Charmes and Enchantments By which Hierarchy or holy Dominion we have sufficiently and over-sufficiently cleered up that those Effects whatsoever they be are wrought which those who not but too rustically and corporeally Phylosophize have referred unto the dominion of Satan It must needs be that those who were ignorant of all things that have been spoken should as yet doubt of many things therefore we determine to repeat all things First of all whereby those things may become the more clear which we have spoken above concerning the Duel of Spirits or their mutual friendly Conspiracy It is worth our labour to define the Weapons of Spirits and the Common-wealth of the same Wherefore we must seriously note the Example of a Woman great with Child who if she hath with violence of desire conceived a Cherry in her Mind the Foot-step thereof is presently imprinted on her Young in that Part whereon the great-bellied Woman shall lay her hand Nor is it indeed only an idle Image or Spot of a Cherry but that which flowers and grows to Maturity with the other Trees in their season to wit the Signatures of Colours and Figures being changed Truly high and sacred is the force of the Microcosmical Spirit which without the Trunck of a Tree brings forth a true Cherry that is Flesh ennobled with the Properties and Power of the more inward or real Cherry by the Conception of Imagination alone from whence we understand two necessary Consequences The First is that all the Spirits and as it were the Essences of all things do lay hid in us and are born and brought forth only by the working Phantasie of the little World The Second is that the Soul in conceiving generates a certain Idea of the thing conceived the which indeed as it before lay hid unknown and as it were Fire in a Flint So by the stirring up of the Phantasie there is produced a certain real Idea and a quiddative or some particular essential Limitation of a Cherry which is not a naked quality but something like unto a Substance hanging in suspense between a Body and a Spirit that is the Soul That middle Being is so spiritual that it is not plainly exempted from a Corporeal Condition since the Actions of the Soul are limited on the Body and the inferiour orders of Faculties depending on it nor yet so corporeal that it may be enclosed by Dimensions the which we have also related to be only proper to a seminal Being This Ideal Entity therefore when it fals out of the invisible and intellectual World of the Microcosme it puts on a Body and then also it is first inclosed by the Limitations of Place and Numbers The Object of the Understanding is in it self a naked and pure Essence not an accident by the consent of Practical that is mystical Divines Therefore this Protheus or transformable Essence the Understanding doth as it were put on and cloath it self with this conceived Essence But because every Body whether External or Internal hath its making in its own proper Image The Understanding knowes or discerns not the Will loves and wills not the Memory recollects not but by Images or Likenesses The Understanding therefore put on this same Image of its Object and because the Soul is the simple Form of the Body which turns her self about to every Member therefore neither can the acting Understanding have two Images at once but first one and anon another Therefore the whole Soul descends upon the Intellect or Understanding and the comprehended Image being as yet tender and forms this Knowledge of the Essence into a persisting Image or Ideal Entity or Beingness The Mind being defiled hath slidden into the Indignation of God and because the same mind was at once polluted the nobleness of its former Condition being put off Death found an entrance not indeed by the command of the Creator but from the degeneration of Man being slidden into filthiness and degenerate from himself by reason of the same Ideal Entity being now put on which Filthiness seriously and diligently springing up even in all particular Sins it is conveâ—ient to extenuate or consume by Repentance here or in the World to come This Entity therefore being as yet in the Understanding is but lightly imprinted neither doth it find a consistence any where but in a Woman with Child the which in us Men it doth not obtain but by the Will that is the Understanding doth alwayes procreate an Entity
Virtue which the Stalk or mossie yellow tuft thereof hath not and that Virtue in the Leaf is not from the three first things but from its native Life which when it s destroyed then it hath other Virtues as suppose thou a grain of Corn which nourisheth in its first Life the which if it looseth then it fructifies And then thirdly there is a magical Virtue which proceedeth from the Phantasie of the Life of the whole entire composure that is in Bruites and in the external Man which being now spiritual is more absolute than the former nevertheless not yet advanced unto the highest pitch of Efficacy notwithstanding now and then through much exciting by a strong Phantasie introduced by an Entity it ascends unto a great height and as near as may be imitates the true Magick of the inward Man But moreover the Soul of every Bruit-beast hath a Power of Creating a real Entity or Beingness and through the Will of dismissing the same to a far distant Object The Bruit of this sort is Magical as the Basilisk the Dog many Fishes described by Olaus c. Such also is the Virtue inhabiting in the Blood of many Animals For from hence the holy Scripture saith That the Soul is in the Blood though hunted out of the Veins and although boyled by Fire perhaps also being plainly putrified through a keeping warm Last of all there is a magical Virtue being as it were abstracted from the Body which is wrought by the stirring up of the more inward Power of the Soul from whence there are made most potent Procreations most famous Impressions and most strong Effects Indeed Nature is on every side a Magitianess and acts by her own Phantasie and because by how much the more Spiritual her Phantasie is by so much the more powerful it is therefore also the Denomination of Magick is truly proportionable or concordant Every magical Virtue almost stands in need of excitement for the lowest sort wants an excitement by a foregoing luke-warmth Indeed a certain Vapour or spiritual Air is stirred up by reason whereof the Phantasie which profoundly sleeps is awakened and there begins a skirmishing of the corporeal Spirits as a Mean which is that of Magnetism and it is excited by a foregoing touch But that of the highest sort which is that of Bruits and Men is stirred up from an intellectual Conception and indeed that of the inward Man is not excited but by the holy Spirit and by his gift the Cabal but that of the External Man is stirred up by a strong Imagination by a dayly and heightned Speculation yea and in Witches by Satan But the magical Virtue of the out-chased Blood wherein the Soul dwelleth which is as yet made to lurk in Potentia or by way of possibility only is excited either by a more strong ascending Imagination conceive it of the Magitian making use of the Blood as a Mean and establishing his kindled Entity thereon or conceive it through the ascending Phantasie of the Weapon Salve the excitress of the Property lurking in the Blood or by a foregoing Appointment or Disposition of the Blood unto Corruption to wit whereby the Elements are disposed unto Separation and the Essences which know not how to putrifie and the essential Phantasies which lay hid in the Power of the Properties come forth into Action The Phantasie therefore of any Subject whatsoever hath obtained a strong Appetite to the Spirit of another thing for the moving I say some certain thing in place for the attracting expelling or repulsing thereof And there and not elsewhere we acknowledge Magnetism as the natural magical Endowment of that thing firmly implanted in it by God There is therefore in this respect a certain formal Property separated from Sympathetical and abstruse or hidden Qualities because the motive Phantasie of these Qualities doth not directly flow unto a local Motion but only unto an alterative Motion of the Object Let every Magnetism therefore be either Sympathetical or Antipathetical yet every Sympathy shall not be Magnetical We returning to our scope proposed I think ere this that it is well understood that there is not only in the Blood a phantasie and magical Appetite but also in the Humours Meats and Excrements since the various off-spring of Diseases doth also make manifest that thing For teeming Women desire strange Meats and Virgins through a natural sting or fury of the exorbitant Womb do with paleness and speediness digest what they desire not indeed by reason not a near affinity of humane Nature requiring that particular Meat but they being seduced by the forreign Phantasie of those Humours thus foolishly over-powering them which Filths being expelled we have oftentimes restored a sudden Health to their hurt or vitiated Appetites Or also we have restrained them by fully satisfying of the mad Phantasie of the same Humours Therefore the Blood hath its own Phantasie in it the which because it there more powerfully flourisheth than in other things therefore doth the Scriptnre by a high Elogy or Publishment of praise call the Blood as yet boyled and ready to be eaten an animated or soulified thing And because this same Phantasie therein is capable of Derivation for that reason indeed the Manners Gestures and Conditions of the Grand-father shine forth in his posthume Nephew Nobility drew its Original from well deserving Virtue Hence Nobility should be suspected to be without desert increased by a continued Propagation of the Stock or Family unless the Manners and Virtues of the Ancestours should probably be hoped to shine forth in their modern Nephews Doth not also the enmity conceived betwixt the Wolfe and Sheep remain in their Skins Wherefore the stubborn Phantasie of an Animal is imprinted not only on his Blood after Death But also whosoever is covered with Bed-cloaths made of the Skin of a Gulo or Glutton it is a living Creature frequent in Swethland and of a most devouring Nature is constrained to dream continually of Feasts devouring and laying Snares for or catching living Creatures therein to wit according to the Disposition of that Animal while living and so that only by an external covering the Phantasie of the Beast which when once alive was entertained in his skin is derived into a Man that sleeps under it Therefore by the Ministery of the Phantasie of the Blood it come to pass that the out-chased Blood being received on the Weapon is introduced into the magnetick Unguent For then the Phantasie of the Bloods being otherwise as yet drowsie and slow as to Action being stir'd up by the Virtue of the magnetical Unguent and there finding the Balsamical and Medicinal Virtue of the Unguent wisheth that the quality induced into it might be bestowed on it self throughout and from thence by a spiritual Magnetism to draw out all the strange Tincture of the Wound the which seeing it cannot fitly enough effect by it self it implores the aide of the Moss Blood Fat and Mummy which are conjoyned together into
if ye proceed on in the same way to morrow will yield horrors and the agony of Death for a conclusion of the Tragedy I pray you let five hours at least be granted unto me and it will as yet appear whether that famous man commanded me his most loving Friend to be sent for yesterday in vain They readily consented except one Fonseca perhaps because he was a Portugal who despised Chymical Remedies as being fiery and that they poured Oyl on the Fire And so by the Vote of one Physitian that Knight underwent Death For although Priests his Friends stood by also Noble Persons of his houshold yet they more hoped in the accustomed Remedies and the Votes of many than in as yet unknown Medicines Therefore he began to be left by good ones because thou wert absent when these things happened For as just Indignation brings forth a Song so I being provoked by the unskilful determined to set forth a Little Book of an Unheard of Doctrine concerning Fevers And it fitly fell out that Cardinal Ferdinandus our Kings Brother is killed by Portugals his chief Physitians through an immoderate exhausting of his Blood and inordinate cooling But that that would so come to pass I had foretold in my Writings unto Carmelita his Confessor But forthwith after his Death that thing was disputed by a controversal right Fortunatus Vopiscus Plempius a Dutch-man very well learned and Professor at Lovaine was Victor in the Controversie But I have prefixed a Verse to my Book whereby not so much the Malice as the Bruitish and unpunished Blockishness of those Physitians might be manifested Therefore I have added that none was ever made free from a Fever by the method of Galen as neither that he who otherwise laboured with a more grievous sickness did escape but whom the strength of Nature did the more timely snatch out of their hands Because that in the Schools as well Fevers essentially as the Remedies of the same were hitherto unknown Therefore I set forth a Book which might confirm that thing but bespattered with so many faults on every side that I blushed to acknowledge it for my own But however it was such yet by reason of the novelty of the matter it began soon after its birth to be desired because it was wanting or not to be had For I shew that a Fever is unknown That its Remedies are unknown And likewise that a Quaternary or Fourfold number of Humors are old Wives Trifles whereby credulous mortals do as yet to this day fat the places of Burial Therefore let it be a Probleme to wit that I have altogether erred therein or not indeed I but the Humorists have erred And the whole School of the Huniourists hath gone to the Wall Because now the Hinge whereupon the posts of Healing are supported doth lye on the ground That matter since it toucheth the Life the Common-wealth and most Families I intreat the Christian World that from Charity it would take good heed to the deciding of a difficult Question so unthought of and of so great moment I in like manner adde a Book wherein I have demonstrated That the Causes Remedies and also the Manner of making the Stone in Man have been constantly unknown hitherto That the Pest also Apoplexie Palsie Leprosie Lethargy Convulsion and that sort of Diseases are as yet alike unknown in the Schools But I have written these Paradoxes for a Pledge of a bigger Section promised wherein I will lay open the Beginnings of Natural Phylosophy and new Maxims of Healing for a publick good To wit that the Schools may learn and repent Let them learn indeed not of me who otherwise have always despised all vain glory but from the Giver of all Good But I have endeavoured so to manifest my Talent received for the profit of my Neighbour that hereafter any one of a sound mind ought to confess whether he will or nay that very darkness it self hath hitherto banished Truth out of the Schools of the Gentiles And since I wish my Labours may speak to the whole World therefore I decreed to dedicate the same unto thee for a Pledge of Friendship because thou wert a Patron of the Muses and a Favourer of the Art of the Fire For I have never dedicated my Books unto chief men that I might represent their famous deeds and the pictures and pedigrees of their Ancestors Indeed I would not seem to have been willing by flattery to corrupt their integrity I know also that whatsoever is of flatterers doth no less displease thee than my self Lastly neither do I offer my Writings that they may be fenced under thy authority Far also be such stupidity which knows not that Kings themselves are unfit for such Protection Nor that any thing can subsist which hath not obtained its Patronage from God I give therefore O Illustrious Man and dedicate these my Labours unto thee with a naked title that thou mayest proceed to love me thy most loving Friend who intreateth God that he would preserve thee in health In the mean time Enjoy thou Rejoyce and Farewel as thy Friend Bruxels the 6th of the Kalends of October 1643. JOHN BAPTISTA Van HELMONT desireth On the WORKS of the Noble and most Famous D. J. B. HELMONT A Verse of the Noble and most Honourabl-Lord Janus Walhorn D. Counsellour to his Majesty SHut up thy Schools O Galen for enough of Men are slain Ho now it is Sufficient full Graves do ring again For Blood and Clyster are thy Medicines nothing oftentimes Thou giv'st but to a Critick day thy hope alone confines In touching of a vein the while and eke of parched tongue And in the Urine wholly th' art dismayed and so in Dung A Med'cine's to be got for him this helps not the sick man No need of tests of the Disease but of a Physitian Yet thou expect'st a great reward after the man 's enshrind So doth the Dog look for and love the Cattle sickly kind Helmont is one who able is by his Apollo's art To snatch from th' jaws of Death whom t'oher left to dye in smart TO THE Medicine-Loving Reader John Baptista Van Helmont of Bruxels Toparch or Governor in Merode Royenborch Oorschot Pellines c. Being a Philosopher by the Fire wisheth Peace Joy and Knowledge I Lately sent forth a new Doctrine concerning Fevers wherein I have shown That a Fever is unknown to the Schools in its Essence Root Properties and Remedy That matter diversly affected Physitians and especially it perplexed those that refuse to learn For they who perswaded themselves to be wise enough said Shall therefore the Universities sustain this Calumny without punishment and have so many famous Wits and we our selves been Blockheads doth Helmont alone sit at the Table of the Sun that from those Dainties he hath dared to arrogate the Adeption or Obtainment of Healing to himself But although my ignorance doth most poorly accompany my Intention and the Confession hereof doth not blot
disposition it uncloathing it s own Coagulum or runnet constraines the same vapour into an earth and both their forces being conjoyned a new creature is made which is the nativity of Duelech But moreover the Schooles insisting on their own principles of heates prescribe that the Patient must not lay on his back also that his loynes are to be anoynted with cooling oyntments yea that a plate of lead is to be locally borne upon them They command a bed of wool instead of a bed of feathers least his reines should wax hot And moreover between the bed cloathes and the bed they spread a hide of leather For indeed the Schooles are busied only about subduing of the effect and have respect only unto the product or effect but in no wise unto the cause not so much as to the occasional one For by watching diligently over trifles they successiuely subscribe unto each other without any observance of help And so they seriously dream waking that they may flatter the sick For neither are stones bred because the loynes are hot but the loynes are hot because stones are bred They therefore chuse wool or flocks before feathers by reason they say of the heat of these As being ignorantt that feathers do lesse heat than wool by reason of their exact exclusion of aire which thing the sense of touching may judge of In the next place it being granted that the feather should more heat the body laying upon it and that is wrapped in feathers than wool Yet all that ceaseth if a sheet interpose between the feathers or wool For truly the heat which issues out of the feathers or wool is not the very heat of these simple substances but the reflex heat of the party laying thereon and being received in the feathers or wool For it being from thence layd aside in the middle of the bed returnes through the sheet not indeed stronger than it self was before but being almost suitably co-tempered with the same importance of heat wherein the body it self is prevalent But the very glassen instrument that was framed for the measuring of the temperature of the encompassing aire visibly determineth this controversy whereof in our elementary principles Neither doth it argue to the contrary that he that hath the stone in his reines feels himself hotter in a feather bed than in a flock bed For that happens not by reason of the greater heat of the feathers but fitly because the patient is sunk deeper in the feather bed but he layes only on the top of the flock bed and the cooling aire blowes on him from the sides Will the Schooles thus never distinguish of any thing from its foundation Cause and Roote And with rustick wits will they alwayes savour of the heathenish opinion of heat and cold I intreat you for the love of God wherein every one when this life is finished with him can desire that he may be beheld cast away stubbornesse presumption and sloath and do not despise a better doctrine CHAP. VI. The Womb of Duelech 1. Why the womb of the stone is to be sought into 2. The bladder also generates a stone of another condition than the kidney 3. Prognosticks or presages 4. Heate doth not coagulate any thing in urines 5. Another necessity of the womb 6. The scituation of this womb 7. A handicraft operation 8. Observations had from thence 9. The extension of this womb is conjectured of 10. The reason of wonderfull events in those that have the stone in their reines 11. From whence there is a relapse in the stone of the reines 12. The stone of the reines hearkens unto meteours 13. The manner in making thereof 14. The urine why it is troublous or foule 15. The paine of the stone of the reines is from a contracture 16. They are deceived in the cause who bring the straightnesse of the Ureter as for the fiercenesse of paine 17. The ignorance of the womb hath caused a neglect of the cure 18. A fabulous perswasion of the Schooles 19. Another necessity of relapses 20. The cleering up of a certaine doubt 21 A history of a mad man 22. The seperation of the urine from the venall blood 23. The disorderly generation of a strange stone THe seed matter and processe of making the stone in man being already made manifest and the urine being known in its contents as it is the seminary vessel bringing down the seed of the stone yet there hath not as yet been enough spoken For truly one kidney being safe and sound the other only is oftentimes stony It is not sufficient therefore to have accused the common Beginning of the urine and therefore this is the more powerfully to be imagined that every generated Being presupposeth a certaine womb from whence to wit the product it self doth now and then obtaine no sluggish disposition For it is of necessity that there be places wherein things may be made before they are bred and that as well from the priority of places as of motions For the urine is already materially in the liver yea and in the mesentery veines before it be in the kindeys Nether could the reines by a seperation sequester the urine from the venall blood unlesse the urine and the blood where now the while really distinct But if it be urine before it come down to the kidney or unto the sucking veines it must needs be also that the stone is after some sort prepared before it come unto the Innes of the reines For if the dung begins to be prepared even from the beginning of the gut Duodenum why shall not the same thing happen to the urine Wherefore it hath seemed to me that neither also could the urine performe the reason or office of the womb of the stone and much lesse the Reines themselves so great is the hasty passage of the urine thorow them as it were through Syringes wherefore it hath behoved me first to give heed unto the womb of this monstrous ofspring especially because the Schooles have even hitherto skipt over this top of knowledge as being content with the judgment of the vulgar nor being wise beyond the country folk who behold only the reines and bladder But surely the mine or womb doth euery way cause a great diversity of the thing that is to be born if it for the most part conteines the fruitfullnesses and barrennesses of generation For if nature be subject to the Soyle certainly nature cannot but be in a womb especially if she stonify in one of the kidneys the other remaining safe And that thing is chiefly to be contemplated of from the same and in the same matter of the stone and urine of one seed From the womb therefore and not from elsewhere is the cause of the far fetcht infirmity to be required For the bladder also and the same urine in number procreates a Duelech of another condition than that which is made in the kidney or at leastwise which was never made before
the last sink of the urine it is also more and more burdened with its own uriny ferment and Duelech receives an increase almost at every moment and is by degrees confirmed into bigger grains For I did argue if a vein even after death preserves the blood from curdling contrary to corruption it should not be unmeet for a certain preservation from a stonie coagulation likewise to exist in the wombs or veins of the urine but that this preservation is very strongly trampled upon by a vitious ferment of the neighboring-kidney The which when it hath once seriously happened so as that the veins have but a little departed from their native goodness it befalls these as to any kind of impure vessels and those molested with a neighbouring stinking or strong smelling ferment whereunto something of the residing impure contagion doth stubbornly adheres for such is the continued succession of relapses in those that have the stone in the reins that all the dreggy filth adhering unto them is not fully wiped off and that there is the same neighbour character of the bad disposition which forged the former calamities After the same manner whereby a hen carries mature eggs and those less mature and others like grains in her loynes which are the pledges of a birth successively to follow for some moneths This indeed hath been the necessity whereby those that have the stone in the Reins do for the most part obey the importunities of a Meteour do also presage future tempests and the pains of these do ascend from the loynes into the back Because while somewhat more of those filths is now affixed to those veins or wombs they are grieved and contracted at least on that side whereon they are molested or on both fides throughout their loynes in a like manner Under which contracture and wrinkled frizling of the veins a pricking lancing and as it were renting pain ariseth And the more gross atomes which were collected in the sucking veins fall down in that frizling unto the kidneys a lump in the mean time remaining for a pledge being as it were the seminary or seed-plot of the next fit even untill the mature ripeness of its age In which painful convulsion of the veins the liquor latex doth at length speedily run from far out of the veins unto the kidneys for help or is drawn thither and being obedient flowes thereunto from whence there is a disturbed urine But what that latex is which seeing it is not urine yet it is mixed herewith hath been largely enough declared by me in its own Treatise But after that the small pieces of sand and stones are cast forth and the pain ceaseth because the contracture of the veins ceaseth That cruel pain therefore of the diseased with the stone of the kidney ariseth from the contracture or drawing together of the veins but not from the passage of the Bolus or sand For oft-times a great stone is afterwards less painful which at first being but of a small bigness was exceeding painful not indeed that the Ureter is become larger than it self was even as the Schools otherwise think but the convulsion was greater while the malady was unaccustomed For otherwise if the Urine-pipe should undergo so great a largenesse they contradict themselves while Diuretick Medicines forbid the straightness of the Vessels And then I have further considered that about the beginning the urine is voyded clear watery and abundantly For since the urine is tinged by the dross or liquid dung but since that dross is not drawn forth but nigh the end of the Gut Ileos and night to the fewel of the Ferment of the dung From thence it comes to pass that that dross is not allured from so far a distance under the confusion of the fit at hand for that the Family-administration of that Kitchin is confusedly troubled and interrupted Because the stomach together with the whole Abdomen or neather-belly is disturbed and in a guess or fear fore-feeles the storme at hand no lesse than it co-suffers with the same and undergoes it being present For it seems to fore-feel the sand not yet seen but surely it is then present in its own womb and while it is fore-felt from that very time the beginning of that contracture is present The Archeus therefore being willing to wash off the enemy and excuse the fit at hand calls to him from on every side all the Latex and sends it down to rince the Kidneys Therefore the veines are contracted in the stony Reines and the Bowels consent and therefore by reason of their consent they dissemble the pain of the Colick For which cause the pain of the stone in the Kidney is not yet sufficiently distinguished by the Schooles Neither is it a wonder that at the convulsion of the veines the Bowels themselves are also convulsed or pull'd together seeing contractures of the Joynts by reason of the near affinity of consent do follow as well the cruel paines of the Colick as those of the stone in the Kidneys Far therefore do the Schooles wander from the Truth as that the dross is drawn or sent for the framing of the stone but rather the tincture thereof comes upon the urine by accident while the Spirit the Coagulater uncloathes his power on the volatile earth Because other things being agreeable the stone that is tinged is alwayes more brickle than pale ones And that thing clearly argues that the tincture of the urine if it could would totally hinder the composition of Duelech And therefore those that have the Jaundice although they are otherwise subject to the stone yet in time of the Jaundise they are scarce seen to be stony For therefore in time of the generation of the affect of the stone the urine at the first conception of sands waxeth yellow and looks pale about the beginning of the fit Because then it is as yet Latex and not yet meet urine Therefore I have certainly known that if all the sand which is voyded should be made onely in the bosome of the Kidney the pain would be greater while it is voyded than while the sand doth not yet appear The which notwithstanding contradicteth experience Moreover because the sand being once bred the urine is troubled more than it was wont and becomes thicker seeing otherwise a troubled confusion perswades that it containes more of a pouderish matter for in a more gross consistence there is more pouder than in that urine which is at first clear and watery That plainly convinceth that the womb of the affect of the stone is already filled up neither that it can entertain that more gross balast Therefore the variety of the Womb being unknown hath neglected not onely the curing of the stone in the Reines but hath also introduced interchangeable alterations of its causes and curing Indeed it is one thing for the sand floating from the Kidney to be thrust down by a succeeding drop of the urine and a far different thing to shake
off the adhering sand not indeed through the water washing it off but from a conspired convulsion and frizling of the parts For they perswade by the Marsh-mallow Mallow Oyl of Almonds and the like to asswage paines to moisten enlarge and besmear the passages and so in this as also in all other things every where the Schooles are either intent onely on the effect or propose that which is ridiculous while as they ought by a cleansing faculty to brush off the sands and lump from the whole Womb they totally employ themselves in loosening the passages and in moistening the membranes which are alwayes most moist in themselves For truly although the sand be expelled yet the womb thereof is not therefore safe but at leastwise the sides of the veines remain defiled with the Bolus or lump for a future punishment of the stone whither the Schooles hitherto have had no regard For I sometimes wondred that he that a good while before had the stone in his Reines after he hath dismissed that stone into his bladder doth the more seldom stir up new stones in his Kidney as long as the other molests his Bladder yet that he that hath the stone in his Reines if together also therewith he be gouty doth notwithstanding admit of the Gout as a Companion with the fit of the Nephritical affect or stone in the Reines For from thence I have learned that as pain in a Wound stirs up a sandy or gleary water so also that it can change the urine it self which may hinder stoniâ—ying in the antient womb of the Loynes Wherefore also there is a troubled urine and that without sand seen in persons that have the stone For the pain is the Trumpet which occasionally cals to it the Latex from on every side which inflames yea and disturbs the urine with a strange Guest being admixed with it But in so great a confusion of Offices nothing is thought of the confusion itself For the pain hath oftentimes set before mine eyes the Image of feruent heat For water after the boyling up of heat is for the most part troubled and confused For so because there is a Bolus made of the volatile earth of the urine that is not yet sufficiently seasoned with a salt by reason of the want of an Urinary Ferment stablish'd in the Reines therefore also that Bolus or lump melts with the fiery heat neither is it constrained into the more hard and great sands as long as it doth not experience the force of the Ferment of the Kidneys But the Bolus is sufficiently tinged not indeed from the dross the more lately coming thereon which tingeth the Sands for that red lump is beyond the yellownesse of the dross but from the washy venal blood which is erroneously translated in the veines the womb of the Bolus for uses being the ends of Turbulency And for this cause in the signification of urine the Bolus testifies of the Liver and venal Blood but the sand nothing of these It is manifest therefore that the urine is by it self salt although a man be not fed with salt and thou shalt find the cause thereof concerning Digestions A certain Curate in our City being beside himself passed over 17 whole dayes without any meat and drink before his death but he never wholly wanted a daily urine although a more sparing one and by degrees a more red one departed from him From whence I conjecture that there is in the Kidney an exchangeative faculty of the blood into urine and the which faculty I elswhere in the Treatise of the Dropsie do studiously prosecute no otherwise than as a Wound doth of the blood prepate a speedy and plentifull Sunovie or gleary water Therefore the urine for the last limitation of it self requires and borrowes a virtue from the Ferment which the Kidneys do inspire into the womb of the urine No otherwise than as the Liver inspires the faculty of blood-making into the veines of the Porta and knittings of the Mesentery Wherefore the whole Chyle of the stomach doth in the same place presently dissemble blood in its colour But the plainly Lord-like power of the Kidneys over the veines I elsewhere prosecute concerning the Dropsie But although the Ferment of the Kidney serving for the ministery of the whole entire urine be as it were the digestion of a certain Bowel yet it is not reckoned amongst the number of digestions because it concerns the concoction of a superfluity but not of a nourishment For since every transmutation which proceedeth by digestions hath its own Medium's or proper Ferments which are fit for a new Generation also the Kidney begins to imprint its own Ferment on the Creame presently assoon as it is stayed at the ports of the Liver Through the vigour of which Ferment the urine sequesters it self from the venal blood in its native properties And although that blood be not yet coagulable yet the liquid from the liquid do there separate themselves The Mysterie of Sanguification or Blood-making is indeed homogeneal simple and altogether single and so included in Sanguisication alone yet a separable unlikeness ought to be bred in the Cream presently in its entrance of the Port-veine For else the blood while it attained a vital condition in the Liver would undecently be defiled with the blast of the Ferment of the Kidneys But that the urine is naturally salt and from whence that saltnesse is unto it thou shalt find elsewhere concerning Digestions But here let it be sufficient to have given notice that as much of an acide salt as is bred in the Chyle under the first digestion so much passeth over into a salt salt by a substantial Transmutation in the second I have now pointed out the womb of the Urine and Stone beginning I have also declared the wonderfull property of the Spirit of Urine in coagulating and stonifying From thence also it now is sufficiently manifest that if the spirit of urine happens to flow by a Retrograde motion through the Liver into the Port-veine and from thence to be expelled as an unaccustomed stranger through the Mesentery into the Bowels that it shall there also easily coagulate unwonted stones and the which Paracelsus calls congeoled but not coagulated ones because they ascend not unto the hardnesse of the Duelech of Urines the which are confirmed from their mother-matter a muscilage But if indeed the spirit of urine be carried upwards or downwards through the hollow veine it by a faculty proper unto it self estrangeth the spermatick and muscilaginous nourishment of the similar parts into a more hard compaction from whence at length Scirrhus's quartane Agues and also divers obstructions do arise the which surely they do vainly endeavour to brush away by Jeleps or Apozemes Lastly the Gaul is nourished by the venal blood its Neighbour whereinto if the spirit of urine shall wander out of its own womb stones are presently bred also in the Gaul For whatsoever enters into anothers harvest becomes
the scope of pain Because they are onely abstracted Names and for the most part not in the least point conteining the cause thereof even as I have demonstrated in the Treatise concerning Diseasifying Causes as it were in the combating place of exercise For in the Urine-pipes for an Example in the tearms of the Disease of the Stone there is no necessity dependency of Dominion Clients-ship Usurpation Possession Custome and no community of the Pipes and Excrements with the bowels or stomach For if when the left side of the Throat is in pain not so much as the right side thereof in such an angiport or narrow passage be now and then afflicted why shall we not deservedly suspect the nearness and dependency of parts which are unlike and differing in the Ordination of their Offices and Scituation It is therefore sufficient hitherto that all pain the author of a Convulsion or Contracture presupposeth a hatefull Guest For there are also unpainfull Contractures as before concerning the Cod and the which draw their original not so much from pain as from meer trouble But painfull Convulsions are made from Hostile Causes For so Those things cause paine which smite the Spirit called for the Soul Sensitive with sharpness brackishness or degrees of heat or cold But the most intense pain is from fire and then from Alcalies and corroding things because they are the nearest to fire after that from austere or harsh brackish and four things because they are the nearest to Contracture Presently after from salt things then next from sharp things and lastly from some bitter things But from poysons as such cruel pain ariseth the which in the Plague is ordinary and because so great pain oft-times ariseth without sharpness a Truth is denoted To wit That pain issues from the judgement of the Sensitive Soul For Corrosives since they gnaw the sensitive Soul it self they wast the parts themselves like fire But Alume Vitriol Aqua Fortes's next the juyce of unâ—ipe Grapes and also any sharp things as they do by themselves crisp and pull together the Fibers of the Organs therefore such Excrements are Convulsory and painfull There are also Alcalies which sleepifie paines To wit in Cases where they break the greatest sharpnesses of Putrefactions For under the Dog-star while as Fleshes threaten corruption at hand the Broaths of fleshes are made sharp with an ungratefull savour whence in the Gout Colick and gnawing and putrifying Ulcers I conceived paines to proceed at first from a sharpness Likewise the sensitive Soul at first feeles pain the which being at length accustomed waxeth the less wroth even so as an accustomed Horse refuseth Sâ—urs For Nature in her self is wholly furious and Sumptomatical and being by degrees accustomed to paines waxeth mild Wherefore Self-love and Revenge are before or more antient than sense or feeling because they are intimately in Seeds in the bosome of Nature before Sense For the Characters or Images of anger agony fear revenge and sorrow do bring forth Convulsions like to those their own Idea's For from the knowledge whereby a Mouse abhors a Cat not before seen the Spirit being provoked is stirred up into anger fear c. The which by its own Idea uttereth its fury on the members as it were by a Brand. 1. The hand waxeth cold because the heat there cherished by the Life is extinguished by cold but not that the vital Spirit retires inward as having left the arterial bloud whch it had married and much less that heat as a naked quality passeth departeth and returneth inward as it were in a Comedy 2. The heat being now diminished cold also persisting the cold waxeth strong and then Sense in the hand is stupified For the sensitive abstracted Spirits are pressed together To wit those which are in the sinewes but not those which are in the Arteries because the Spirit hath the more firmly married the arterial Bloud and it is the property of the Veines even after death to preserve the Bloud from Con-cretion or Coagulation For the vital Spirit is sustained from behind by the fewel or cherishing warmth of the heart as much as may be and therefore in that stupefaction Life is as yet deteined 3. Motion languisheth in the Hand because the Spirits being grown together in the flesh seeing they are not sufficiently nourished from behind by the heart they by degrees perish and by degrees are altered 4. And then together with the perishing of Motion Sense also is extinguished To wit while the Bloud being chased out of the Veines threatens a clotting Life as yet remaining 5. And so at length the joynts are by cold totally deprived of Life To wit when as the venal bloud hath now departed into Clots and dyed Therefore in the third and fourth degree aforesaid pain springs up in the Hand being heated For as the Heart inspires a new sensitive Spirit from behind the which while it takes notice of death to be readily at hand it being as it were enraged in the same place presently frames the Idea of its own indignation and so puts off its native sweetness or Complacency Even as in the Treatise concerning diseasie Idea's in the work concerning the Rise or Original of Medicine I will more clearly demonstrate So the sensitive Spirit which was not trampled on by cold but repulsed by pressing together in its return stirs up another Idea of its own indignation and another pain as it were like that of the pricking of a pin Let the Reader in the mean time pardon me in that I ought to borrow the Name of an Icy or freezing Poyson without the necessity of fore-going Cold For I call not that an Icy poyson as if it were made cold as I have already spoken concerning the stupefying astonishment of the Hands but I call it a cooling and also a stupefying poyson and that which takes away sense and motion Therefore the similitude of the Name draws its Original not from the Root but from the Effect And last of all in this By-work for a Conclusion of this Work and Sensation Let us meditate at least of the Remedies of Physitians in the Apoplexy in astonishment or beâ—ummedness giddiness of the Head in the Catalepsie Catochus Coma Convulsions plucking of the Eyelids Eyes Tongue and Lips For thou shalt find that presently cutting of a vein and a Clyster are prescribed They doubting in the mean time Whether the dung of the Fundament may pluck the Tongue and Lips in the mouth may likewise stamp drowsinesses and astonishment in the sick As it hath brought forth blockishnesses and neglect in the Physitian Or indeed whether these arise from the venal bloud therefore they are presently intent upon both at once And then on the day following they administer purging things And thirdly as being full of uncertainty after Rubbings they provoke Sweats For their Succours are universal because others are wanting and they are ignorant of such And therefore their total usual Medicines are general
fermented to the spirit of life From whence there is a relapse unto the same straights But if they understand Putrefaction beginning onely or a Disposition unto Putrefaction and that the Heat is an Effect of Putrefaction therefore it followes that a diarie Fever shall have onely a Disposit on unto Heat but not a true heat even as that neither therefore shall it be a true Fever But the Schools require a formal and absolute putrefaction that they may find out the cause of a feverish Heat Having forgotten that then heat shall be an effect of the Putrefaction and not of the Fever and so they shall constrainedly distinguish Heat from a Fever For why seeing a non-putrefied continual Fever is a true Fever without putrefaction and by consequence ought to be without Heat In the mean time they by little and little lay aside the fear of heat neither must we in healing employ our selves thereabout while as a greater dammage is to be feared from the contagion of putrefaction in those things which have a co-resemblance And therefore it would be better to divert the putrefaction than vainly to have smeared over a Fever with cooling things But surely whatsoever things resist putrefaction are hot For Myrrhe preserveth the dead Carcases of Aegypt for now two thousand years The which otherwise with Succory Plantain and their Coolers had putrified long since Therefore the putrefactions of putrefied Humours likewise of the blood and spirit are so like unto Fables that I should scarce believe that the Schools spake in earnest unless they did fatally even unto this day confirm those Positions by the practical part For a Conclusion I will as yet add one thing Whatsoever hath been once corrupted in the body never returns again into favour but the blood of the veins however corrupted it may seem to be returns again into favour Therefore it was not once corrupted The Major proposition is proved because Corruption in us is an effect of the sequestration of vital dispositions and so it presupposeth a privation and death of the corrupted body or matter it self The Minor proposition is proved by those who are cured of the Plague Pleurifie and a Fever without the drawing out of blood And likewise if the blood be ever to be reckoned putrefied or corrupted while existing in the veins that blood shall especially be that of the Hemeroides but this is not corrupted although it be as it were almost hunted out of the veins Therefore the blood is never to be reckoned putrefied in the veins Whole Chyrurgery proves the Major proposition concerning Ulcers bred from an accidental happenning of the Hemeroides or Piles But I prove the Minor because I compound or compose a mettal A Ring made whereof if it be carried about one the pain of the Hemeroides is taken away in the very space of the Lords Prayer and the Piles as well those within as without vanish away in twenty four hours space how greatly soever those veins may tumefie or burgen Therefore that blood is received into favour and they have themselves well at ease That Ring also prevails in the strangling and motions of the womb and very many Diseases The Description and manner of composing whereof I deliver in the Treatise upon those words In Words Herbs and Stones there is great vertue where I speak of the great vertue of things CHAP. III. The Doctrine of the Antients concerning Circuits is examined 1. The causes of Feverish Circuites in the Schools 2. The first errour 3. Galen is accused of errour 4. A quaternary of humours why suspected 5. The great and stubborn blindnesse of the Schools 6. Galen is hissed out of the place of intermitting Fevers by many perplexities issuing from thence 7. An account of Choler necessary for the Fit or comming of a Tertian Ague according to the Schools 8. He is refuted 9. From their Suppositions it is concluded that there cannot be a Plethora in a Fever or Ague on every other day 10. A begging of the principle in the Galenists 11. Galen being ignorant of Anatomy hath copied out many books concerning Anatomy 12. Unhappy Speculations of healing invented by the Devil to the destruction of Mortals 13. An argument on the contrary drawn from Cases or Receptacles 14. That yellow and black Choler are not entertained in the Spleen and little bag of the Gawl 15. Against Astrologers who derive the Circle of a Fever on the Stars 16. The similitudes aforeread in the Schools do not suqare 17. Some arguments against the Doctrine of the Schools 18. The desert of Fernelius 19. The rashness and unconstancy of Paracelsus 10. That man is not a Microcosm or little world if the holy Scriptures are to be obeyed 21. Paracelsus deceived THE Shools say the causes of set Circuits are to wit because as much Phlegm is daily generated as there is of Choler every other day and as there is of black Choler every third day I gratulate the language of our Countrey which would willingly want these same names drawn from a Grecisme But the Schools do not thus teach the effective cause but only the remote cause which they call that of Sine qua non or that without which it is not Therefore I am deservedly angry that the Schools have not feigned a fifth Humour for a Quintan Ague nor an half and a one and a half humour for the Fever Epialos and for Semite-tians Likewise that they have neglected a doubled yellow Choler for a double Tertian nor that they have made mention of a doubled black Choler for a double Quartan That they have not invented a wandring and uncertain humour for a wandring Fever or Humours continuing and uncessantly substituted for continual Fevers exasperating themselves every day every other day or every third day And lastly a slow humour for a slow Fever At leastwise they ought to have explained if putrifying blood be changed into yellow Choler why it is wholly converted into corrupt Pus Why doth not purulent thick or mattery blood cause a burning Fever in a Consumption of the Lungs and why do not yellow expectorations or spittings out of the breast produce a Tertian but an Hectick Fever and that presently after meat Wherefore a Quaternary of Humours for so great a Catalogue of Fevers and other diseases being as yet daily increased ought to be suspected of every one But as to what belongs unto the seat of the putrified humours of Fevers Galen is so alike stupid herein that it had shamed me to lay open his errour if the Schools did not as yet to this day stifly defend the same unto the destruction of Mortals they craving respect rather from Antiquity than from the Truth as if the fountain of Wisdome were drawn out in Galen who that he might find the causes of a set trembling in Fevers hath writ nothing but old wives Fables the which as oft as I call to mind I ingeniously admire that so many wits could subscribe thereunto ever since
flowing be more inclinably obedient unto the Clientship of a putrefactive humour than phlegm otherwise was But why doth not Choler move a fit daily if a lesse moiety thereof be sufficient for a Tertian To wit while as the greater moiety thereof is rejected by Vomit Lastly They ought to have told how many ounces of a putrified humour should be required for every fit whether six or seven Truly oft-times a double quantity thereof is rejected by vomit about the beginning of a Tertian and the fit is nothing the lesse Therefore if as yet seven ounces have proceeded unto the mouthes of the Veines and twelve ounces were voided by vomit Therefore 19 ounces are requisite for a Tertian Whereof if thou shalt take the half To wit 8 ounces of yellow Choler every day and by consequence a double quantity of phlegm there shall be 17 ounces thereof and at least 4 ounces of black Choler every day and at least as much of Bloud every day as there is of phlegme That is 17 ounces which being joyned together 46 ounces shall be daily made even in an abstinentious Feverish person Let him give credit to these Fables that will and let the Musitian make an Harmony of these pipes that can I at least conclude from the supposed dreams of the Schooles That there ought in no wise to be the cutting of a Veine as neither a laxative Medicine for those that have a Fever if so much of humours be bred in him seeing as much is consumed in an abstinent Feverish person because his appetite digestion and Food failing Yet it is of necessity that this weight be recompenced out of the Masse of the Bloud Therefore an emptying is not to be instituted in a Feverish or Aguish person who abstaineth for the space of two dayes But I pray from whence hath Galen known That as much of yellow Choler is made every other day as there is of phlegm daily and of black Choler every third day Especially who is proved by Andrew Vesalius of Bruxels and the Prince of Anatomists in 106 places never to have pryed into a humane dead Carcase For if Galen writeth this without proof at leastwise the Schooles were not bound to subscribe to his Doatage But if he learned this as being perfectly instructed by Fevers themselves Verily he could not refer this same thing into the effect and also into the cause of one thing For it must needs contein an absurd and blockish begging of the Principle to produce the same thing to be for a cause and effect for it self Namely That a Tertian happens from yellow Choler putrified every other day and a Quartane from black Choler putrified every third day because as much of yellow Choler is made every other day as there is of black Choler in full three dayes space And again Let him prove the truth of this matter That a Tertian assaults us every other day and a Quartane in the space of three dayes because as much yellow Choler is made every other day as there is of black Choler in three dayes space Surely miserable are the Speculations of Healing which are handed forth in the spring of young men being commanded to serve the sick and hitherto adored by the Schooles To wit From whence unprosperous curings of Diseases daily succeed to the destruction of the Christian World and salvation of Souls But at leastwise if yellow Choler should exceed Melancholly or black Choler in one part and an half of its proportion the Spleen exceeds the little bag of the Gawl sit times at least If therefore it be supposed that the Schooles do teach with Galen That as much of Gaul or yellow Choler is made every other day as there is of black Choler every three dayes and the Spleen be the Case or Receptacle of black Choler and the little bag of the Gaul be the sheath of yellow Choler the Creatour hath either erred in his Ends in framing the very Receptacles of those otherwise than Galen hath determined or the Gaul and Spleen were not the Butteries of the Fables of the School of Medicine Therefore others whom the devices of Galen concerning the Circuit of Fevers did not satisfie have begged Astrology for their ayd because a Fever doth sometimes return at set hours But these also are dashed against other straits while as Fevers begin at all houres and likewise do delay or forestall for some houres yea are silent and sleep for some turns Whence they have not sufficiently confirmed That mans nature is constrained at the pleasure of the Stars as neither that there is a wedlock of the matter of a Fever with the Stars They are Rubbish and vain Tincklings poured over credulous eares Others also at length suppose that they have given themselves satisfaction to the Question by Similitudes if they shall say that Fevers have themselves after the manner of other Seeds To wit some whereof do quickly bud as the Water-cresse but that of Parsly far more slow But the example availes not because it resolves one doubt by another For Seeds which are the more slowly resolved in moisture by reason of their Gummy oyliness do also more slowly bud as also others more readily which obtain a muscilage nearer to the juyce of the earth wherefore such a Similitude hath no way regard unto Fevers wherein they will not have fits to be made by reason of an easie or difficult resolving but by reason of a scanty or plentifull afflux of putrified humours Otherwise surely phllegm being the most estranged from putrefaction should scarce afflict on the seventh day whereas in the mean time black Choler which is reckoned to be most like unto a dead Carcase or flesh should far sooner putrifie But at leastwise the Doctrine of the Schooles concerning the cold fit and circuit of Fevers standing it must needs be That a Tertian is cured by exhausting of the matter in the fit and by a defect of new Choler requisite for a future fit if the Patient shall abstain from meat and drink for full two dayes space But the Consequence is false therefore also the position of Galen But if the Schooles do teach and say that then new Choler is dissolved out of the venal bloud Yet this is to feign Nature to be more solicitous that she may preserve the Fever than otherwise the Life and Bloud the Treasure of Life Again That Choler being separated or made out of the Bloud if it be putrified why is it not banished by the veines together with the Choler of the foregoing fit the which was already before deteined in the veines with the Bloud or hath perhaps that remaining and putrified Choler fore-known that there would happen an abstinence of two days To wit that it might reserve it self for this defect for a continuance of the Fever or Ague which otherwise should perish through want of Choler Or hath Nature well pleased her self in the preserving of putrified Choler But if indeed that Choler issuing
out of the veines be not putrified truly now Nature is mad and outragious because she rather dissolves the Bloud that she may have that which may putrifie for the continuation of a future Fever But the Schooles of Galen confess that Choler to be putrified and that a putrified humour is poured out through the veines at every fit and brought into the slender extremities of the veines and that is the cause of the trembling of the fit and great cold To wit the putrefaction of which humour when it is the more intense or heightened in the same place that it straightway after causeth so great a heat I have accounted these Doctrines to be dry stubbles unworthy Fables miserable old Wives Fictious and ignorances most pernicious unto mankind But surely Fernelius first discovered this Ignorance of the Schooles Wherefore Rondeletius and the followers of Galen inveigh against Fernelius as a forsaker of and an Apostate from the School of Medicine Fernelius therefore first smelt out the Nest of intermitting Fevers to be about the stomach Duodenum and Crow and indeed he fixed the seat of continual Fevers about the heart but he durst not to decline from the ancient Rule of curing Feuers For he had begun openly to dispute against the foregoing Schooles for the Nest of Fevers but afterwards he hid himself among retired places for he not being able to rid himself of the strawy Bonds of putrified Humours suffered the essence and knowledge of Fevers to be snatched away from him But Paracelsus being affrighted with the Rigour of Fevers perswading himself that he held the knowledge of a Fever by the eares and pleasing himself with his own Allegorical invention of a Microcosme defines a Fever to be a Disease of Sulphur and Niter and elsewhere again to be the Earth-quake of the Microcosme As if Sulphur and Nitre were made far more cold than themselves while they are separated from the mud or Limbus as he saith of the Microcosme and moreover after some hours were of their own accord inflamed with the fire of Aetna For as Galen every where stumbled in the searching into Causes and so therein bewrayed himself not to be a Physitian the Name of whom he saith is the Finder out of the occasion So Paracelsus by a wonderfull Liberty slid into the Similitudes or Allusions of a Microcosme or little World unworthy a Physitian Because that was a hard Law which had violently thrust man into the miserable necessities of all Diseases nakedly that he might resemble the Microcosme or great World I certainly gratifie my Soul that I shew forth the Figure of the living God but nor of the World This good man was deceived because he knew not that fire doth no where kindle unless it be first inflamed neither however he hath feigned that there is a Flint and Steel in us and also a Smiter in the point of rubbing of the Flint Surely there was no need of these things as neither of Gun-pouder for a feverish heat unless we are burnt at the first stroak and cleave asunder in the middle An actuall matter therefore of Sulphur and Salt-peter is wanting in us a connexion of them both is wanting an actual fire is wanting And lastly a Body is wanting which may undergo that kindling at one onely moment Therefore let the Causes and originals of Fevers in the Schooles be Trifles and Fables CHAP. IV. Phlebotomy or Bloud-letting in Fevers is examined 1. One onely reason against humours others elsewhere 2. A universal proposition for Bloud-letting Galen being the Author 3. A Syllogisme against the same Galen 4. A Logistical or rational proof 5. That a Plethora or abounding fulnesse of good bloud is impossible 6. That corrupted bloud doth never subsist in the veines 7. That there cannot be said to be a Plethora in a neutral state of the bloud 8. That cutting of a vein is never betokened by the Positions of the Schooles 9. What a Cachochymia or state of bad juyce in the veines may properly be 10. That co-indications instead of a proper indication and those opposite to a contrary indication or betokening do square amisse 11. A proposition of the Author against cutting of a veine in a Fever 12. The Schooles disgrace their own laxative Medicines by their tryals of the cutting of a veine 13. The ends of co-betokenings 14. A fore-warning of the Author 15. After what manner the letting out of bloud cooleth 16. A miserable History of a Cardinal Infanto 17. We must take special notice against Physitians that are greedy of bloud 18. A guilty mind is a thousand witnesses 19. An argument drawn from thence 20. The essential state of Fevers 21. An explaining of the foregoing argument concerning cooling and the privy shifts of the Schooles 22. That there is not a proceeding from one extream unto another is badly drawn from Science Mathematical into Medicine 23. It is a faulty argument in healing 24. The argument from the position of the Schooles is opposed 25. The false paint of the Schooles from stubborn ignorance 26. The faculties obtain the chiefdom of betokening 27. Hippocrates concerning great Wrestlers or Champions is opposed but being badly understood 28. The differences of emptyings 29. A Fever hurts lesse than the cutting of a veine 30. The obligement of Physitians 31. A general intention in Fevers and the cutting of a veine opposite thereunto 32. Science Mathematical proveth that cutting of a veine doth alwayes hurt 33. The uncertainty of Physitians proves a defect of Principles 34. Cutting of a veine cannot diminish the cause of Fevers 35. An argument from a sufficient enumeration 36. Another from the quality of the bloud 37. Whither the Schooles are driven 38. Vain hope in the changes of bloud let out 39. That the co-indication of Phlebotomy for Revulsion is vain as well in a Fever as in the menstrues 40. Derivation in local Diseases is sometimes profitable but in Fevers impertinent 41. Cutting of a vein is hurtfull in a Pleurisie 42. The Schooles may learn from the Country Folk that their Maximes are false 43. Revulsion a Rule in Fevers 44. What Physitians ought to learn by this Chapter BEfore I proceed unto further Scopes I ought to repeat what things I have elsewhere demonstrated in a large Treatise To wit That there are not two Cholers and phlegme in Nature as the constitutive parts of the venal blood but that the Treatise of Fevers required me to be more brief especially because those very things do of themselves go to ruine in this place where there is no mention made of Humours except putrified ones since an Animal or living Creature that is putrified is no longer an Animal I will therefore examine onely the two universal Succours To wit Bloud-letting and Purging as the two pillars of Medicine and the which being dashed in pieces the whole Edifice falls down of its own accord as it were into Rubbish and these Succours being taken away Physitians may forsake the sick they not
able to proceed and whether they hope that bloud being at sometime after what manner soever once putrified in the veines there is aforded in Nature a going back or return To wit from such a privation For let them shew that it is not a contradiction that it is proper to a Fever to defile the bloud it self and for this property to be taken away by the effect to wit by a removal of that which is putrified For if the more impure bloud be at first drawn out of the vein and they repeatingly open a vein in the mean time they prostrate and disturb the Faculties hence also they take away the hope of a Crisis what if then the more red bloud shall flow forth Surely they cry out as if the whole Troop of the Malady were taken away at the first turn and as if the Seat of Fevers had been extended onely from the Heart unto the Elbow but that the good bloud resided about the Liver But I have alwayes discerned evacuations of the last excrements to be fearfull in the Dropsie and therefore much more in a naked snatching away of the bloud which withdrawes in a direct passage the vital spirits from the Heart through the Wound whether that bloud be accounted bad or good or neutral First of all I have proved that as well those things offend in begging of the principle which are supposed concerning a putrified continual and burning Fever as those which are supposed concerning the emissions of putrified bloud Wherefore in speaking according to Numbers I have alwayes found Succours that are made for the snatching away of the strength to be full of deceit as that for a very little ease the Faculties the Porters of Diseases are weakened For even so as drink at the beginning of Fevers seemeth to comfort Thirst for a little space but who is so mad that he would then drink if he knew that the drink would filch away his necessary powers Therefore the ayd of cooling by cutting of a vein is unfaithfull deceitfull and momentany At length concerning neutral bloud which in respect of cutting of a vein is neither good nor evil it is not worth ones labour to speak any thing seeing that which is denyed under a disjoyning may also be denyed copulatively For whether that be neutral bloud which consisteth of a co-mixture of the good with that which is depraved by supposing that to be depraved which is not or that wherein a neutral alteration is introduced for both events the particulars aforesaid do satisfie Lastly That I may cut off the hope that is in Revulsion and so equally take away all co-indications as the wretched privy shifts of obstinacy It is a mad ayd to have cut a vein for this end they for the most part require a plenteous one whether in Fevers or next in the Menstrues for Revulsion because a Feverish matter swims not in the bloud or floats in the veins as a Fish doth in the water but it adheres or sticks fast within to the vessel even as in its own place concerning the occasionall matter I will declare But for the Menstrues in like manner because a separation thereof is made from the whole and that not but by a separating hand of the Archeus But Bloud-letting separates nothing of the separable things because it acts without a foreknowledge of the end and so without choyce But presently after the vessel is opened the more nigh and harmless bloud alway flowes forth the which because other afterwards followes by a continual thred for fear of a vacuum therefore the Menstrues otherwise by the endeavour of Nature collected about the Womb are by cutting of a vein drawn away from thence and go back into the whole Body But if Phlebotomy shall sometimes well succeed in a Woman that is plethorick and full of juyce yet surely in many others it hath given a miserable overthrow For if the Menstrues should offend onely in its quantity while as it is now collected and separated in the veins about the Womb I shall willingly admit of an individual betokening of Phlebotomy and onely in the Case supposed But the Menstrues if it shall flow in a well-constituted Womb it abundantly satisfies its own ends and in this respect Revulsion is in vain although the Supposition supposeth it to be even an impossible thing For Bloud-letting is nothing but a meer and undistinct emptying out of the bloud But the veins being emptyed they out of hand recall unto themselves any kind of bloud whatsoever from on every side Because as they are the greedy sheaths of bloud so also are they impatient of Vacuity or emptiness And therefore the veins that are emptyed do allure the Menstrues designed for utterance That is being in this respect once enrouled by Nature in the Catalogue of Excrements But Derivation because it is a sparing effusion of bloud so it be made out of veines convenient it hath often profited in many locall Diseases and so in Fevers it is impertinent But they urge that the cutting of a vein is so necessary in a Pleurisie that it is enjoyned under a Capital punishment For truly they say that unlesse the bloud flowing together unto the Ribs be pulleâ— back by the effusion of much bloud there is danger least the Pleurisie do soon kill the man by choaking of him Surely I let out the bloud of no person that hath a Pleurisie and such a cure is safe certain profitable and sound None of them perisheth whereas in the mean time under Phlebotomy many do at length perish with a long or lingring Consumption and experience a Relapse every Year For according to Galen Whosoever they be that are not perfectly cured on the fortieth day become Consumptious But I perfectly cure them within few dayes neither do they feel a Relapse Neither indeed have I alone my secrets for this purpose But moreover I have seen a Country man curing all Pleuritical persons at the third draught For he used the dung of an Horse for a man and of a Nag for a woman which he dissolved in Ale and gave the expressed strayning to drink Such indeed is the ignorance of Physitians and so great the obstinacy of the Schooles That God gives knowledge to Rusticks and Little ones which he denyes to those that are blown up with Heathenish Learning We must now see if there be any use of Revulsion in Fevers For indeed since the work of Revulsion is not primarily any other thing than the cutting of a vein whereunto the succeeding bloud is by accident hoped to come and that by the benefit of that thing it should not flow unto the place affected Upon this Position it followes That by such an Euacuation the offensive Feverish bloud so I connivingly speak shall be drawn as dispersed into the veines which otherwise lurking in its own Nest far from the Heart could not so cruelly communicate the Ferment of its own hurt unto the Heart which is to say that it should
unhappily is this Enemy drunk in that it may exercise this bruitish Butchery within in the flesh and bloud For by an History of the Fact I will declare the Beginnings of my own Repentance and Knowledge in Healing For indeed I was scarce past my striplings but that I had took hold of the Glove of a Gentlewoman infected with a dry Scab From whence I contracted a Scab first on that Hand and afterwards on the other Hand being infamous with corrupt pus and wheals The Seniour Physitians of our City being called unto me They first commanded the cutting of a vein for the cooling of the Liver And then they prepared an Apozeme of three dayes continuance for the bringing of yellow torride Choler and salt phlegm out of the Body And at length they began the purging of the aforesaid Humours by the Pils of Fumitory and provoked many stools abundantly I was glad because I had voyded an heap of stinking Liquor They therefore admonished that the same Medicine was to be taken next day after the morrow and likewise again after three dayes with the like success and in my judgement if the putrified and stinking matter had all been joyned together it had easily filled two buckets which I thought to be Humours For I who before was healthy chearfull of entire strength light in leaping and running was now reduced into leanness my Knees trembled my Cheeks were slid together and my voyce was hoarse I said therefore and too late in what place were those Humours entertained in me For neither did I find Room for so great a Hotch-potch mixture in my Head Breast or in my Belly For although I had been deprived of all my Bowels yet the whole hollowness could scarce have conteined the half part thereof Therefore I concluded with my self that those Humours had not fore-existed in me but were made in me And I clearly knew that that putrified Liquor was made by the received Laxative Medicine That the same thing was to be done as oft as I should take it in the mean time the same scabbedness assailed meaâ— before Whence 1. I knew That scabbedness is a contagion of the skin but not a distemper of the Liver 2. That the vice of those Humours in the Scab was feigned The which was gotten only by a co-touching of the Glove 3. That purging Medicines did not purge or cleanse but putrifie 4. That they had melted the lively substance of my Body and had resolved it into putrefaction 5. That they did indifferently defile whatsoever they did any way touch at whether it were bloud or next the lively flesh it self but that they did not selectively draw out and separate one thing instead of another 6. That the matter defiled did denote its Defiler to be a meer liquefactive or melting and putrifying poyson of the Body 7. That the defiled matter flowed forth Nature expelling it until that the force of the purging Medicine was spent 8. That this was done no otherwise in an healthy than as in a sick person 9. And that therefore a Solutive Medicine was dangerous before that Nature was the Conqueresse in Diseases but afterwards that the hurt thereof did not so manifestly appear Which things I having long and seriously weighed with my self I desisted from Galen who was wholly so incumbred about those Humours that he affirms all Diseases to consist thereof But seeing better things were as yet wanting unto me which I might substitute in the room of Humours and Laxatives I was willing with an admiration and compassion of mankind at length to suspend the study of Healing untill the most High of his own good pleasure after much expence of Monyes and Yeares vouchsafed to grant understanding unto me that sought it The which I wish the World might by my works apply unto it self for profit Boldnesse increased in me in proceeding and I was daily the more confirmed by the daily observations of the Errours of Physitians Among other things I remember that chief Physitians had administred to a Prince a purging Medicine with Scammony whence in one onely day forty and one stools had succeeded The which being by my Command weighed together with the urine of that day weighed eighteen pounds and seven ounces of yellow and putrified Liquor I therefore said unto him and to his Physitians Truly if that Liquor be yellow Choler and one of the four Humours now the phlegm remaining from thence in the Body it according to Galen exceeding Choler in one third part shall weigh twenty and seven pound and ten ounces and by the same account nine pound and three ounces of meer black Choler remained That is thirty six pound and thirteen ounces of phlegm and melancholly unmixt with yellow Choler Therefore they ought to confesse That a Purgation is not a purifying of the Body but rather a distempering of the Humours left behind if there were any such And then that the aforesaid loosening was not an Elective cleansing out of yellow Choler or a freeing of the Body from superfluous Choler but a meer putrefactive melting of the Bloud For truly the Bloud did not stink before while it was in the veines it presently stinketh in the Bowel at the same instant wherein it falls out of the veines But I pray In what vessell shall thirty seven pounds or pints of remaining phlegm and black Choler be now conteined Especially while as after the purging the veins which were before swollen have now fallen down and no longer appear For on the morning following that miserable man who committed himself to your judgements or wills and supposed that he was purified speaks with a feeble sharp and hoarse voyce he trembles with his Hands and staggers with his Knees his eyes being hollow his veines exhausted his Countenance being dejected and being pressed with an importunate Thirst and a dejected appetite affirms that he suffered many thing a the day before through so deceitfull and vexatious an experience of purifying and doubteth that he shall again return the same way Yet he certainly believeth if the Dose of the Laxative Medicine had been more encreased the buisinesse had succeeded ill with him For from that strong Purgation in the Prince the poysonous property of Solutive Medicines ought presently clearly to appear The Physitians answered That the ready nature of the Prince had too much hearkened to the purging Medicine and for eschewing of the aforesaid filth of the humours that were left and also for the disproportion of the same which Choler that that Scammony not onely by its property draws forth but that of the bloud it self or of a composition of the four Humours it made one onely Liquor being rejected by stool Whence I again concluded that it was an Imposture and Deceit which supposeth Choler or phlegm to be drawn out and the which avoucheth one Humour to be selectively avoyded before another while as now they confesse that all of them are melted together And according to Galen when the
Bloud putrifies yellow Choler is made and that it is false that a Cholagogal or Extracter of Choler for examples sake cures Cholerick Diseases and that it is a deceit in those who say Choler is drawn out if the other three also being first corrupted are ejected together with it Certainly there is none studious of the Truth who may not from hence presently understand That the Foundation of Healing of the Antients goes to ruine as well in respect of Humours as of the Selection of solutive Medicines Truly I admire even to amazement That the World hath not yet taken notice of the destructive danger of Laxative things The which otherwise so suddenly well perceives any wiles or subtle crafts extended over their purse For truly it is not to be doubted but that Laxative Medicines do carry a hidden poyson in them which hath made so many thousands of Widowes and Orphans For neither do they draw forth a singular Humour after them The which I have demonstrated in a singular Treatise never to have been in Nature except in the Books of Physitians For increase thou the Dose of a Laxative Remedy and a deady poyson will bewray it self Come on then Why doth that your Choler following with so swift an efflux stink so horribly which but for one quarter of an hour before did not stink For the speedinesse of flowing forth takes away the occasion of putrefaction as also of stink For it smells of a dead Carcase and not of Dung. Neither also should it so suddenly borrow such a smell of stinking dung from the Intestines Therefore the stink shewes an efficient poyson and a mortified matter drawn out of the live Body The which I prove by way of Handicraft-Operation If any one shall drink a dram of white Vitriol dissolved in Wine it presently provokes Vomit But if presently after drinking it he shall drink thereupon a draught of Ale or Beer Water c. he indeed shall suffer many stools yet wholly without stink Scammony therefore and Vitriol do alike dissolve the bloud of the Meseraick veines This indeed by its violent brackishnesse But that by the putrefactive and strong smelling poyson of Laxatives From the consideration whereof alone purging ought to be suspected by every one as a cruell and stupide Invention For if according to Galen the bloud when it putrifies is made yellow Choler therefore the stinking and yellow Liquor that is cast out by Laxative Medicines and which dissembles Choler is generated of putrefied bloud And by consequence that Laxative Medicines themselves are the putrefactives of the Bloud The which is easily collected out of Galen against the will of the Schooles For he chiefly commends Triacle because it most especially resisteth poysons He also affirms also a discernable sign of the best Triacle to be that if together with Laxative Medicines Triacle be taken undoubtedly stools shall not follow Do not these words of Galen convince that Laxatives are meer poysons To wit all the operation whereof is evaded by Triacle the Tamer of poysons unto which suspition the effects do agree Because a Purging Medicine being taken the sick and healthy do equally cast forth Liquors of the same colour odour and condition Wherefore it requires not a offending Humour before an unoffensive one but it indifferently defiles whatsoever it toucheth upon Moreover the Schooles also oppose the selective Liberty which they attribute unto solutive Medicines For if any humour of the four be putrified in Fevers and naturally betokeneth a removall of it self But if Laxatives do selectively draw out a humour from the Bloud yea in healthy persons as they will have it do cause sound flesh to melt that they may thereby obtain their scope which is to pour forth a putrified ot stinking Liquor which the paunch casts out At leastwise Laxatives shall not have the like Liberty in Fevers for drawing forth of the offending and putrified excrement For that which is corrupted hath no longer the former essence and properties which it had before its putrefaction For if the Loadstone attracteth Iron it shall not therefore draw rust unto it And therefore if a purging Medicine resolves the flesh and bloud that it may thereby extract Choler which it drawes bound unto it self by a specifical property it doth not therefore likewise draw stinking and putrified excrements included in the veines which should be the cause of Fevers Surely none should ever dye by Fevers if the two Maxims of the Schooles were supported with Truth To wit if putrified humours are the cause of Fevers And likewise if they depart selectively through purging things Besides it should be a mad Caution That purging Medicines be not given in the beginning of Fevers before the matter be troubled or rise high To wit before the maturity and Coction of the peccant matter From whence it is sufficiently manifest that loosening things should otherwise be hurtfull But if they are given after that the matter of the Disease be now well subdued the aforesaid Caution conteines a Deceit Because it attributes the effect procured voluntarily and by the benefit of Nature unto the loosening Medicine From which surely an honest Physitian doth then also more justly abstain Because it then disturbs the Crisis induceth the danger of confusion and of a Relapse For a loosening Medicine doth alwayes and by it self draw out things not cocted no otherwise than those which are afterwards called cocted ones because it is on both sides alike cruel and poy sonsome But after that Nature hath overcome the Disease it brings on lesse dammage neither is the deceit of a Laxative Medicine then so apparently manifest And so if then a loosening Medicine be given the Physitian shall seem to have conquered the Disease by his own Art But besides if all particular Laxatives should extract their own Humours by a Choyce they should of necessity also be of concernment at every station of the Disease because they are those which alwayes draw out the same Liquor and that alike stinking but they disturb as much as may be as long as Nature shall not become the Superiour Which victory of that Disease the Schooles have called Concoction Not indeed that Nature attempts to digest or Coct any thing which is vitious orwhich fals not out for her own use or profit because she is that which is governed by an un-erring Intelligence Let these Admonitions suffice concerning both the Universal Succours in Fevers I concluding with Hippocrates unto Democritus That every Solutive Medicine robs us of the strength and substance of our Body CHAP. VI. The Consideration of a Quartane Ague 1. A Quartane hath deluded the Rules of the Schooles 2. Why they know not how to cure a Quartane 3. That the wonted excuses in other events of Diseases do fail 4. A presage from a Quartane in other Fevers 5. The examination of a Quartane according to the account of the Schooles 6. The weaknesses of Galen himself 7. Failings noted in Physitians 8. Constrained
black Choler and jesting or merry ones from blood Surely otherwise we should all of us be daily jocound doaters or deprived of blood For feverish doarages are especially fetcht out of a feverish matter creeping into the shops of dreams and not from elsewhere But not that it forsakes the body that it may enter into the mind And likewise a doating delusion should never happen in a burning Fever in a Synochus or continual Fevers but alwayes in Quartanes and black Cholery Diseases Truly a Doatage is already from the very Beginning of Fevers To wit where the Fever and the Cause of the Doatage are jointy in the Root For the malice being encreased and the Organs weakened by little and little the Doatage or Delusion ascends unto the maturity of its own perfection So in Wine and also in some Simples yea and likewise in feverish Excrements a hidden Doatage is covered neither doth it bewray it self unlesse the power thereof shall ascend into a Constitutive mixture At leastwise all things do by the same Royal wax according to the Genius of their own malice Rage on the Organs of the Phantasie even as elsewhere concerning Madnesses The Seed therefore of the doating Delusion lurked from the Beginning in the feverish matter which at length is promoted unto its due malignity If therefore Madnesses differ in their matter and efficient cause That is in their whole Species and Being Surely the Falling-sicknesse and Madnesse do much farther differ from each other and do more differ in a forreign Seed than that one onely black Choler being exorbitant in its Seats should bring forth both Even as elsewhere concerning the Dunmvirate Madnesses I will say in one word are all nourished by the arteries and in the Inn of the Hypochondrial or Midriffes According to that saying In whom a vein beats strongly in the Midriffs those are estranged in their mind Therefore also they oft-times want an exciting disturbance before they relapse into a Mania or bruitish madness Because this is bred by a perturbation very like unto that CHAP. VII The Succours of Physitians are weighed 1. Of what sort the Succours of Physitians are 2. The vanity of the same 3. The hurt of local Medicines and their feigned derivation 4. The water in Vesicatories was meer venal blood 5. An Objection solved 6. A Vesicatory or embladdering Medicine is more cruel than the letting forth of blood 7. To what end Vesicatories were devised 8. A Clyster why hostile to the bowels 9. A Clyster never reacheth unto the gut Ileon 10. Laxatives in a Clyster are the more sharp being hurtful as purging things are but less hurtful 11. A poyson hurts to have taken it inwards by whatsoever title and entrance 12. That Fevers are never drawn out by Clysters 13. They therefore hinder long life 14. A Clyster how it names Physitians 15. A fore-knowledge from the use of Clysters 16. It is a blockish thing to nourish by Clysters 17. A conjecture 18. The common sort of Physitians are taken notice of I have determined to examine the common Succours before I determine of the nature of Fevers But those are Scarifications openings of the Fundament-Veins Vesicatories and others of that sort and they all concut unto the diminishments of the blood strength and body And the which therefore have already been sufficiently condemned under universal Succours They are indeed foolish aids about the superficies of the body when as the Central parts labour and are besieged and the which not being freed from the enemy it is vain and hurtful whatsoever is attempted by the gestures of such Apes Surely it is a vain rudiment of hope to be willing by consequence to remove the root out of its place by taking away the guiltless blood from the skin which thing Prince Infanto the Cardinal by his exhausted veins the Circuite of his Tertian Ague nevertheless remaining hath confirmed to Anatomists with a mournful spectacle And likewise a Paracenthesis or opening of the belly nigh the navil in the dropsie ought long since to have extinguished the like kind of hope For there it is plainly an easie thing to draw out waters from the nigh Center and daily to draw from the fruit a part of the water at pleasure But in vain because not any thing of the root departs And so incision nigh the navil doth only protract life for a few dayes But let Vesicatories or embladdering Medicines be alwayes exceeding hurtful and devised by the wicked spirit Moloch For the water dropping continually from thence is nothing but venal blood transchanged For while any one scorcheth his hand or leg the fire calls not the whey of the blood unto the burned place Neither doth that water lurk in any other place and waiting to run to it with loosened rains while the skin should be at sometimes scorched The water should be deaf at the call of the fire neither should nature obey a commander from without What if a water swims on the blood which they call Choler surely that floats not as being separated from the blood except after its Coagulation or Corruption Embladderers therefore intend this but not Preservation and Healing That salt water therefore is not but is made it is not separated I say from the Blood but the Blood thereof is transchanged into water very like unto the Dropsie Flux and the like defects By so much therefore are Vesicatories fuller of danger than the cutting of a vein Because this is stopped at pleasure but that not the which after the cuttings of a vein and vain Butcheries of the body is at length dreamed of for the hinderances of a Feverish Coma and so for the adulterating of a latter effect For they rejoyce to awaken the sleepy or deep drowsie sick by reason of the pain of so many Ulcers And however thou considerest of the matter it is a cruel torture of Butchers For neither is the drowsie sick ill at ease because he sleepeth But he sleepeth because he is ill at ease And so to hinder the sleep is not profitable But that only prevaileth to take away the root of drowsiness They therefore who suspend the sleep only by pains do cruelly drive the sick headlong into death For they flatter the people in being cruel toward the sick party In the mean time they persevere in the office of a cruel and unfaithful Mercenary Helper For if the drowsie feverish person sleep or being pulled be daily awakened such stupid allurements perform not the least thing in Fevers Wherefore I am wont to give my remedies in at the mouth and food at set hours nor to regard whether he shall sleep or not I say that antient saying with the Apostles If Laxarus sleep therefore he shall be healed For the tortures brought on him that hath a Fever have never profited any one But as to what pertains to Clysters it is a frequent and shameful aid of Physitians I at leastwise in times past never perswaded and described Clysters
but with shame But after that I obtained faithful remedies I wholly abhorred Clysters as it were a beast-like remedy being declared by a Bird as they say For that every Clyster is naturally hostile to the bowels is from thence easily manifest Because all particular things are received after the manner and in respect of the Receiver The which I thus more largely explain The tear of the eye although it be salt yet it is without pain because familiar and nearly allied to the eye But simple water is painful in the eye and any other thing The urine also although it be salt bites not the Bladder But any kind of decoction whatsoever being sent in by a Catheter although most sweet causeth pain within But if the urine shall draw but even the least sharpness from new Ales or from elsewhere presently there is a great strangury and distilling of the urine by drops The dung therefore since it is a nearly allied and houshould-content of the bowels bites not nor is not felt until it hath come down unto the fleshy parts of the strait gut which do as it were perform the office of a Porter and therefore do feel and urge it Whence I conclude that every Clyster since it is a forreigner to the intestine it cannot but be troublesome and ungrateful thereunto Again A Clyster never ascends unto the gut Ileon For if thou castest in eighteen ounces now a great part thereof remaineth in the pipe or slides forth in its injecting and so it reacheth only into the beginnings of the gut Colon. In the next place if loosenig Medicines are in a Clyster for the sick party that very much abhorreth laxative things is for the most part thus deceived as I have already hissed out the poyson of purgative things so also the use of a laxative Clyster by a like right I confess that a Clyster is of less danger as the mouth of the stomack doth alwayes perform the most noble office of life and as the life is hurt by the loosening poyson But at least wise none can deny but that it is a hateful thing to have admitted poysons within by whatsoever title and entrance Because purgative clysters resolve the blood in the Mesentery And at least wise in speaking in the termes of Fevers Non ever drew forth Fevers by clysters because they have never come unto the places beset with a feverish matter nor do ever comfort those places Neither the while do they cease to defile and wipe out the blood from the veines which are co-bordering on the bowel For that thing I have learned from old men that whosoever loveth a long and healthy life let him abstain from purging things taken into the body under what deceitful pretence soever A clyster at this day is so familiar unto the more wanton people that it is called a cleansing and succour As if they would cleanse the natural excrement Surely however thou mayst look upon those wiles of Physitians they are not but from evil from deceit and a lye and do stir up shame in pious eares And so they are now the correcters the rincers of dungs that is the inventers of evil arts But there are some who have introduced a sluggishnesse in the intestine by a clyster or some other vice and therefore they afterwards perswade themselves that thence-forward they must accustome themselves to clysters Surely the vice of binding of the body as it springs from and dependeth on a different Root it is easily succoured by the proper terme of curing For as he who hath the lesse loose belly is sicke So also he that suffers a slow one laboureth The malady is to be cured but not by cloaking by a clyster is the paunch to be dayly provoked and loosened For there is an easie prognostication that by thus proceeding the last things will be always the worst and that the life which is committed unto such helpers is of necessity cut short Nations will subscribe to these things as many as have laxative medicines in abhorrency As the Campanians Arduennians and likewise the Asturians c. Unto whom as a clyster is unwonted and also unheard of so there is a strong and most frequent old age But besides the last scope of a clyster is that they cast in the broaths of dissolved fleshes from an hope of nourishing the which truly is an argument of unfufferable stupidity For those injected liquours do at first mingle themselves with the dung there found and then they are poured into the parts whose property it is to change all things into dung and thirdly it is manifest by experience that such broaths if they are cast back two houres after they smel not only of the dung but after somesort of a dead carcase For seeing there is not a proceeding unto the second or third digestion but through the first but that blood cannot in any wise be made of meates undigested in the stomach and not changed into true and laudable chyle or juice it also followes that broaths being cast in at the fundament can never passe over into nourishment Neither doth that prove any thing that those broaths do carry dissolved flesh in them after the manner of chyle for nothing is done unlesse they shall first recieve the fermental properties of the first digestion the preparatories unto life which are not any where to be found out of the stomach For whatsoever slides undigested out of the stomack is troublesome stirs up Fluxes wringings or gripings of the guts and also burntish or stinking belchings and breeds the little wormes Ascarides But those things which are injected from beneath because they have not any thing of the benefit of the first digestion are of necessity mortified Because they experience indeed the heat of the place but are deprived of the true ferment of a vital digestion Surely I commiserate the paultry Physitians that they have wrested clysters aside unto such abuses nor that they have once had regard unto the aforesaid reasons and I fear lest they who so greatly flatter great men after that they bid any one to take food and three hours after do constrain him to vomite that what he vomited up they should cast in through the fundament into those who were pined with much leannesse and consumption for lack of nourishment Surely the ignorant flatterer is a slavish kind of cattel acting the part of a Physitian yet not having any thing besides the diminishments of the body and strength refusing to learne because he hath grown old in ill doing neither hath he ever diligently searched into any thing worthy of praise as being wholly intent upon gain and assoon as he is dismissed from the Schooles alwayes insisting in their steps excusing the deaths of men because he hath cured according to art as having followed the flock of predecessours Unto these men Senca saith many have not attained unto wisdome because they thought that they had attained it They esteem it to be a thing
full of disgrace that himself being once a Doctour or Teacher ought as yet to learn of others A nourishing clyster therefore is an old wives invention For I have seen broaths in the more strong persons to have been rejected as horride through the stink of a dead carcase but in the more tender persons to have provoked swoonings when as in the mean time clysters of Mallow and Brans cherished a lesse discomodity Vain therefore are the common helps taught by Physitians for the intentions or betokenings of Fevers Because they take not away subdue or reach to any thing of the roote of Fevers CHAP. VIII The usual Remedies are weighed 1. A censure of distilled waters 2. Of what condition essential waters may be 3. A censure of decoctions 4. The comforting remedies of Gold and pretious stones are examined 5. A mechanical demonstration of abuses 6. Gems are not any thing dissolved in us hewever they are pawdred 7. Pearles that are beaten and dissolved in a sharp spirit are examined by the way 8. The Authour testifies his own bashfullnesse 9. The Pearles which are dissolved in the shops are not Pearles 10. Pearles or Coralls being disssolved in some sharp liquour remaine what they were before 11. Five remarkeable things taken from thence 12. The help of an old Cock an old wives invention 13. Alkermes is examined 14. Comforting remedies are in vain when as the enemy within tramples even on the strongest sick THe internall remedies used by Physitians in Fevers if they are look't into will be found to be of the same leaven with the other of their succours For except that they are brought into one heat as it were the scope and hinge of the matter they are as yet of no worth in themselves neither do they any way answer unto a putrified matter For first of all distilled waters as well those which are called cooling ones such as are those of Succhory Lettice Purslane and Plantaine as those which are of the order of the greater alterers such as are those of Grasse Dodder Maidenhair Carduus-Benedictus Scorcionera c. Or those also which are fetcht from cordial plants are in very deed nothing but the sweates of herbs but not their blood and I wish they were not adulterated for the perswasion of gain For they are the rain waters of green and fresh herbs but not the essential liquors of the herbs which shew forth the whole Crasis or constitutive temperature and savour of the thing Therefore they cover an imposture in their name and in the mean time the occasion of well doing slips away Moreover the decoctions of plants since they conteine the gums and muscilages of simples they provide pain or cumbrance for a feverish stomach loathings overthrows and other troubles therefore also they joyn themselves with the excrements and are sequestred after that they have procured all those perplexities nor at least wise is any thing of them carried inwards unto the places affected and vitall soiles Physitians also are wont to brag of their exhilarating Cordials and restoring remedies prepared of Gold and gems or pretious stones surely from a like stupidity with the rest For although they are broken into a fine powder they undergo nothing from the fire and much lesse do they suffer by the digestive virtue For they are first made into a light powder in a brassen morter and the gems shave of a part of the brasse with them because they are harder than any file And that thing I have at some time demonstrated to the shops while as I steeped that powder of gems in aqua fortis For a green colour presently bewrayed it self and the Apothecary confessed that his fortyfying remedies acted most especially by communicating verdigrease or the rust of brasse unto the sick And then if gems are afterwards the more curiously beaten in a grindstone or marble which is far more soft than themselves they increase in weight and become comforting marbles and stones beyond the original gems For at length gems that are made into a light powder do no more profit than if flints or glasse powdered are taken And that thing as many as have ever been diligent in examining the resolution of bodies will subscribe to with me and with me will pity the empty blockishnesses of Physitians and the unhappy clientships of the sick Yea they administer Pearles and Corrals being beaten to dust or dissolved in distilled vinegar orthe juice of limons and again dryed and solvable in any potable liquour But Pearles are not of the same hardnesse with Christalline gems but of the Animal kingdome and they conreine most pretious natural endowments they cannot but bestow a famous help For Pearles are of their own accord resolved indeed in the stomack of a Pigeon but in ours they do not undergo any thing whether they are drunk being beaten into a powder or being dissolved as before For first of all it is to be noted that I before my repentance had learned by some pounds of Pearles being so prepared that it was only vaine boasting whatsoever Physitians promise concerning them And then that a true Pearle hath not within it a mealy powder and that of a different likenesse from its own bark but that the whole body of the Pearle even unto its center is meere little skins laying on each other as it were the rhines of onyons spread under each other which thing they know with me as many as have known how to reduce Pearles of an egg-like figure unto a circular Pearle But the aforesaid barks of Pearles are in no wise dissolved by the aforesaid sharp things therefore they shall dissolve only the meale of false Pearles Yea although the aforesaid barks were dissolved which they are not the Pearles should as yet be the same powder which they were before To wit wherewith the salt of the sharp dissolver is now combined and so it happens that that salt of the dissolvent being dissolved the powder of Pearles or Corrals which that salt drinkes up is also solved together with it Which powder however it may be reckoned to be dissolved by the judgment of the eyes and the substance of the Pearle thought to be changed yet it is nothing but a meer deciet and delusion of the sight For Pearles or Corrals do as yet remaine no otherwise in their own former nature than otherwise Silver remaines safe being dissolved in Chrysulca or aqua fortis it been plainly unchanged in all its former qualities For otherwise the same silver could not be fetch 't again from thence seeing there is not granted a return from a privation to an habit They therefore that drink Pearles thus solved so far is it that they enjoy the milky substance of Pearles that they drink unto themselves nothing but the dssolved salt of the vinegar The which I thus prove by handicraft operation If thou shalt poure some drops of the salt of Tartar on dissolved Pearles or Corrals the hidden pouder of the Pearles presently falls
to the bottome which is a demonstration of the deed First therefore the pearles of the shops are not true ones but a certain abortion of those sowed within through the middle substance of the Pearle Secondly the powder of Pearles or Corrals dissolved although it may delude the eyes yet it is not truly solved it remayning the powder which it was before Thirdly instead of comforting remedies they substitute nothing but the acide salt of the things dissolving Fourthly that powder being thus solved cannot be made bloud and therefore neither can it enter into the veines Fifthly what if it had entred unto the Liver hollow veine and so by the power of digestion that sharp salt adhering thereunto had at length been wasted into a transmutation What other thing should such Comfortatives performe besides to besmeare the veines within with a forreign powder And at length to load an un-obliterable malady with aâ— forreign guest This is the harvest that is to be exspected from Gems It is an alike doating monstrous thing which they promise concerning the broath of an old Cock being joyned with herbs For first of all there is more of life and strength in the more young birds than in decrepite ones Let the judgment be brought unto Hens And also medicinal broaths are ungratefull and troublesome to the stomack and so they are easily dismissed unto excrements Therefore after this manner under a changed maske they again dissemble their Apozemes under the broath of an old Cock Last of all there is the Antidote Alkermes which although as it consisteth of the Syrupe of the grain that dieth Scarlet I wish it were not adulterated by roses it be laudable neverthelesse inasmuch as it being scorched and roasted is impregnated with the more crude silk untill that it can be powdered the whole power of the dying grain is vitiated which silk being thus roasted is nothing else but the wool of silke wormes depraved or vitiated by burning For the invention of some covetous old man brought up that thing as thinking that nature is exhilarated or rejoyced with things that delight the eyes Far be it for neither Gold gems not pretious stones as such shall refresh the vital spirits and much lesse crude silk roasted and that if it were tinged with a Purple Colour unlesse the vitall spirits shall well perceive restaurations to themselves by the additions of strength But moreover vaine are comforting and cordiall things which are wished for the fewel of Fevers remayning and the blood and strength being diminished For if a Fever prostrateth a strong person and one that is in good health how shall it suffer him to be strengthened being now dejected Especially by things which are forreigners in the whole general kinde nor agreeing with the spirits in the union of co-resemblance How shall a Citizen fortifie himself who hath received an houshold enemy stronger than himself into his possession The wan therefore and vain promises of Physitians concerning fortifiers and strengtheners are full of deceite For he that exhausteth the strength or faculties together with the blood and withdrawes them by evacuating medicines but forbids wine and things that do immediately restore the strength also who continually prosecures after cooling things as enemies to the vitall heat how shall he procure strength by such electuaries CHAP. IX The true cause of Rigour or the shaking fit in Fevers 1. Rigour or extreame cold and trembling is from the spirit making the assault but not efficiently from the diseasifying cause 2. Why he intends Rigours 3. Why he stirs up cold and heat 4. Why he begins with cold 5. The Authour runs not back unto the lawes of the microcosme 6. There are intermittences almost in all agents 7. The manner of making cold 8. The manner and cause of rigour 9. A marke of ignorance in Galen concerning the tossing of a member 10. The burning cause of a Fever 11. That every motion as well an healthy as a sick one is made efficiently by the Archeus 12. How the Authour learned that thing 13. The turbulency of the Archeus disturbs the urine 14. The ordinary office of the Gaule is troubled and makes the Chyle bitter 15. VVherefore also the bitter vomitings thereof diminisheth nothing of a Fever 16. VVhence is burning heat and sweat in a Fever 17. VVhat sweat may betoken 18. Sharpnesse increaseth cold the which an Erisipelas proveth 19. A Gangrene how it may undoubtedly be stopped 20. VVhy the beginning of a continval Fever is from horrour 21. Paracelsus is noted 22. The errours of Galen especially concerning the putrefaction of the blood and spirit 23. The true seat of a diary and hectick Fever 24. The fabulous similitude of Galen for the parching heat of an hectick Fever 25. VVhy lime is enflamed by water 26. A mechanical proof 27. The blockish cause of gaping 28. The true cause and the organ of the same 29. Sleep the drowsie evil giddinesse of the head Apoplexy c. are from the mouth of the stomach 30. Gaping is not in the muscles of the cheekes or jaw HIppocrates first put a name on the Spirit of life to wit that it is that which maketh the assault and the guider of all things which happen in us which prerogative surely none hath at length called into question In the mean time the Schooles that succeeded being as it were giddy with the vice of whirling about have wrested aside the causes of trembling into old wives fictions The Spirit therefore being the Prince of the world in us hath alone obtained a motive beginning in us as well local as alterative to wit conteyning the cause of Rigour or extremity of cold as well in respect of locall motion as of the alterations of cold and succeeding heat For the Archeus intends by trembling rigours to shake of the excrement adhering to the similar part Even so as a spider also shakes her cobwebs and joggs them with rigour that she may shake of a forreigne thing which lighteth into them But the Aroheus taking notice that he can little profit by rigours or shaking extremityes stirs up an alterative Blas All which I have elsewhere taught to consist naturally in Winter and Summer cold I say and heat To wit through the successive interchange whereof all sublunary things do decay in the coursary number of dayes From Winter therefore in the very universe it self the beginning of the year proceedeth through a spring and Summer into Autumne wherein the fruites are at length ripened For whatsoever things are made by nature undergo this beginning increase state and declining So the Archeus himself as all seeds and vital things do imitate the nature of general ones stirs up feverish rigours colds and heats But not the offensive matter of the Fever even as hath already been sufficiently and over-proved at the beginning For so also in disjoynting of the bones the teeth presently shake and rigours spring up And likewise while a woman with child untimely expels the not
triumph that they propose to others what they have tasted down with the tip of their lips and so they have nor yet had access unto the inner Chambers of Phylosophy But again the Galenists will urge saying that the stones of Bezoar Crabs Snails c. being taken as well by way of a powder as being dissolved in a sharp dissolving liquor do notably profit in the Plague Fevets the disease of the Stone wounded persons and in those that are thrown down from an high place wherefore that the same thing is blockishly denied by me in Pearls Corals c. whereto I answer That gems small or flinty stones and rockie stones have much latitude and that they differ very much among themselves For first of all Gems Flints Marbles and whatsoever things have a Christalline hardness do not any thing act or suffer on us or from us unless by way of a remedy hung on and bound about the body and that so long as from the mouth they pass thorow the superfluities of the Body The virtue therefore of these is feeble because it layes hid as being shut up in a too thick body But Pearls and Corals and whatsoever stones have the rocky hardness of Shell-fishes do indeed yield to Gems in hardness yet they are not therefore concocted in the stomach of man as they are well in some birds But the stones of Bezoar Crabs c. being as yet less hard then Pearls are not of a rocky nature but they are made rather of a milky juice half cheesed and half stonified and they have the nature of a Tophus or sandy stone being neutral between a gristle and a stone even as the shells of stones in medlars peaches c. do keep a neutral and middle kind between woods and a sandy stone These things being for the truth of the matter and the better understanding thereof thus supposed I say That although the stone of Bezoar of Crabs c. as to the solide matter of their powder are in no wise digested by mans stomach yet there is in them a certain milkie and muscilaginous juice of great virtue yet of small quantity Such as also happens to be extracted out of the shaving of Harts-horn by seething If therefore thou dost a good while boil the powder of the aforesaid stones in rain or distilled water if thou separatest the decoction from the powder by straining it through a Filter but dost in distilling this decoction by a bath draw it forth thou shalt at length find some small quantity of the aforesaid Muscilage But the remaining powder as it is unconquered by boyling so also it remains undigested by our stomack And so from the small quantity of the aforesaid liquor there dependeth a reason why one only dram of that stone being powdered and taken in some liquor effecteth more then otherwise one scruple of the same doth when as in the mean time the Wine or Vinegar being drunk up at the same draught with the aforesaid powders do not dissolve the sixth part of the powder but the rest they forsake entire not changed which is manifest if thou shalt drink the stone of crabs being not beaten into powder but into pieces and after voiding them forth shalt wash them clean thou shalt find the same weight thereof which there was before and so nothing thereof to be subdued by the stomack nor any thing of those stones to be participated of by the digestion Come on then I will also press the Galenists with their own weapon for if the aforesaid Stones or Pearls being taken by way of a powder should melt in us ye attempt in vain to dissolve them Therefore it is already manifest by handicraft operation that the more tender Stones of living creatures do contain a Muscilage which Pearls Corals and rocky Stones do want yet the bodies of somethings remaining in their pouder and homogeneal and unseparable solidity as they suffer in their dissolution an action from the dissolver so also in like manner the dissolver suffers by the body dissolved without any participation in the mean time of the unchangeable body for from the Chymical Maxim The dissolvent is by the same endeavour coagulated whereby the body dissolved is dissolved And therefore if the body dissolving be taken away from the body dissolved nothing is ordinarily recovered from thence besides a water without savour being without actimony and sharpness the which surely as they are the Clients of Salts they are coagulated in the thing dissolved and stand by it as Companions Thou shalt know the same thing more clearly if thou distillest the Oyl of Vitriol from running Mercury the Oyl is coagulated with the Mercury and they both remain in the bottom in the form of snow And whatsoever is distilled from thence is meet water but that snow if it be washed is made a citron coloured powder which is easily reduced into the former running Mercury being altogether of the same weight as it was before but if thou shalt distil the water of the washing off thou hast in the bottom a meer Alum from the sharp salt of Vitriol For so dissoluents are changed although the bodies dissolved have not lost any thing of their own matter or substance And such dissolvers act on us by way of an alteration attained in their own sufferingness but not from a property partaked of from the dissolved bodies being unchanged Therefore to the argument proposed The salts of vinegar wine juice of Lemons or of the Oak and likewise of the sharp chyle of the stomach as they are vegetables and alterable by our digestion by digesting indeed are changed in us into a urinary salt notwithstanding by reason of the diversity of the thing dissolved those dissolutives suffer something from the aptness of their own convertibility yet they transfer not any thing on us of the thing dissolved that is not digestible unless it contain the digestible part of it self even as I have said concerning the milky muscilage of the stones of soulified creatures But if indeed otherwise such a dissolved body should proceed inwards into the veins which it never doth that it might communicate its endowments unto us to wit pearls or the aforesaid stones very many anguishes would follow from thence instead of succours For first since they are not digested in the stomach even as I have already proved neither in the next place shall they be able to be cocted in the second digestion because there is no passage unto the second but through the first Secondly therefore they shall never be converted into bloud but into some other superfluity of the veins Thirdly powders shall be bred in the veins and kidneys and they shall be stopped up with the powder being a forreign guest never to be drawn out by any remedy for the future These things are spoken concerning thigs dissolved by a dissolving vegetable and therefore digestible in us Notwithstanding if things are dissolved by dissolvers that are not digestible
inherency is the very same power nor the exciter or spur of its own self or that that power subsisteth alone without a root which stirred it up But every power hath a nourishing causing and directing Being of it self far more spiritual and abstracted than is the Case of its inhesion More abstracted I say than is the mean it self whereinto the motive power is received yea more formal than the very quality of the power it self is Truly there is a master-work man-like image of evil or good the Effecters of effects as well in diseases as in other seminal Beings But that image takes its Original beginning from the cogitation of man or from the conception of the Archeal spirit surrogated in its absence I now speak of Diseases For the Sensitive Soul is in the spirit or Archeal air after the manner of the Receiver And although the Archeus be not vexed after the usual and humane manner of the soul yet the Inn of the sensitive soul which is the Archeus himself arising enjoyes the Idea's as well from his own conceptions as from the exorbitances of his conceptions after the manner proper to his receiving For neither doth the Archeus alwayes fish those passions out of his own conception but also from things undigested badly digested and transchanged Even so also from excrements not being rightly subdued or separated And so also not only from our faculties being estranged or erting but besides from the in-bred endowment of things Even as in the spittle of a mad dog there is a poysonous Ideal property which alienates the imaginations of the sensitive soul in us at its own pleasure There is therefore in things a certain accidental power which if it can perfect its own contagion and propagation it wants a formal and seminal power which may be the Governess of the action For seeds as they utter the figure and similitude of themselves in their products of necessity they have this Image engraven on them if they ought to act out of themselves or to erect another thing like to themselves in the thing produced seeing such a likeness presupposeth a forming Idea In the next place the occasional matter of Fevers if it were of the essence of Fevers or if it should not precede at leastwise it should alwayes accompany the proper effect to it self Wherefore since a quaternary of Humours and the existence of these are feigned things it must needs be that the feigned humoural cause doth neither fore-exist nor follow the Essence of a Fever neither that there is any respect of Humours unto a Fever nor likewise of a Fever unto feigned Humours Again neither can the blood the treasure of life after any manner be the constitutive cause of Fevers yea nor indeed the occasional cause thereof except it be hunted out of the veins and first corrupted that is unless it first cease to be blood For truly there is no other reflexion of the out-chased blood than that it is a dead Carcase in a living sheath that in the mean time it undergoes divers transmutations according to the variety of the Idea of the Archeus governour of the stern of the family-administration in the nearest kitchins For this vitiated blood is now a cadaverous excrement and an occasional cause whereby the Archeus being excited frames an Idea of fury Lastly any other excrement whatsoever being defiled by a succeeding digestion transfers the right of an occasional cause it self and occasionally brings forth a Fever no otherwise than as I have already said concerning the blood And such an excrement is heaped up by a vice digestively and distributively or by degrees or at length is produced by a Fever or by forreign things breathed into the body However it shall be at leastwise in respect of Fevers it alwayes remains external neither doth it ever enter into the Essence hereof They are indeed only accidental considerations which do most nearly respect the degree of Fevers for if the action of diseases proceedeth immediately into the life and takes its beginning from the life verily it is necessary that the essence of diseases do also wholly pierce the very essential marrow of life But other external things of what sort and how great soever do only regard whether the occasional matter be greater or less in quantity Whether the efficient cause in a young man be stronger than in an old man in the beginning of the disease than in the end thereof in a malignant Fever than in a more mild one c. But such degrees of powers are only the Correlatives of the efficient being compared unto the strength And they teach indeed how much it is to be feared from an accident occasionally rushing on the sick But I here have regard unto the formal essence of a Fever Therefore the essential power of the internal efficient or of the life it self is alway present and remaineth and the denomination thereof drawn from a term of Relation although it may change the hope of the Physitian may vary the superiority of life and the proportion of the Agent yet the life it self is alwayes the intimate principal formal and essential efficient of Fevers and the occasional matter every where remains without the true and internal material cause For a Fever is oft-times taken away or ceaseth a remnant of its occasional matter and efficient as yet remaining For a Quartane oftentimes ceaseth of its own accord and perhaps returns again a month after and so it keeps its occasional matter in the mean time untouched and without action as it were sleeping And the same occasional Being is elsewhere of its own accord wholly consumed the storme of the Archeus being first appeased Oft-times also Fevers leave weaknesses and local diminishments of the faculties behind them being durable for life as the life of the implanted Archeus was curtailed and suffered his own too many tribulations CHAP. XVII A narrow search into the Essential thinglinesse of a Fever 1. An erroneous speculation of the Schooles 2. The Authour differs from the Schooles 3. The manner of making a Fever is enlarged for betokenings 4. The center of a Fever 5. An examination of thirst and cold 6. The Doctrine of its center is confirmed 7. Why a Fever is sometimes terminated by the appetite of unwonted things 8. The family government of a Fever in the Pylorus 9. The Quartane ague is an outlaw and the unheard of seat of strange Fevers 10. Why vomiting looseth not these strange Fevers 11. The definition of a Fever is rent 12. An examination of remedies 13. The vanity of hope from whence it is introduced HItherto as well the modern as more antient Physitians have considered the nature and essential thinglinesse of Fevers from the speculation of heat as well internal as that of the encompassing heat of Summer And also they have measured that essence by the sharpnesse cruelty multiplicity of the occasional matter or from the malignity of one or more of the four feigned
its shop 28. From the impertinencie of the supposed position 29. From a convenient or agreeing thing 30. From the Gowt and wringings of the bowells 31. From an Erisepelas 32. From Causticks 33. From an Evangelical word 34. From a defect of the seperater 35. From the nourishing of the similar parts 36. From an impertinency 37. The deformity of a formed argument of the Schools 38. From a like thing 39. From the nature of an Element 40. From the simplicity of its end 41. A denyal of a position 42. From a Phylosophical maxim 43. From tast and properties 44. Who was the inventer of humours 45. What a diversity of Soiles may argue 46. From the blood of an Aethiopian 47. Whence the venal blood is the more red in its superficies 48. From a like thing 49. Whence there is a change of colours in things 50. From a shew of the deed in many things 51. The childish in inspection of the Schools of out-issuing blood 52. Miserable impostures 53. A ridiculous omission of the Schools 54. The judgment of Physitians fights against it self 55. Privy shifts sliding from unvoluntary cheeks 56. A cruel or hurtfull little book concerning the nature of man 57. From effects and fear 58. From the confession of Physitians 59. Dunghill Physitians distinguish not men but by dungs 60. A ridiculous argument of the Schooles 61. An argument on the contrary from a maxim of naturall Phylosophy 62. A convincing argument 63. Galen ridiculous about the cause of the variety of humours 64. The perplexities of Galen 65. Refutations by the Beginnings of natural Phylosophy 66. An errour of Paracelsus 67. The Schools are ignorant of the venal blood 68. An argument against the position 69. A false and ridiculous supposition of the Schools concerning the supplying office of the Spleen 70. Absurdities 71. A handicraft demonstration 72. Against the position concerning black Choler 73. Many absurdities follow 74. The Schools do most miserably prove their position for black choler 75. Some defects following thereupon 76. A convincing argument 77. An Idiotisme of Paracelsus 78. Sharpnesse doth not ferment Earth 79. From an impertinency 80. A convincing argument 81. From an impossibility 82. A ridiculous supposition of the Schools and four absurdities thereof 83. Some absurdities accompanying the opinion concerning the hony of Galen 84. From things implying 85. By a convincing argument from the supposition of a falshood concerning the Elements 86. From a number of the Elements 87 A bruitish objection 88. If we must not proceed by humours how therefore must we cure 89. The praise of the valatile salt of Tartar I Have sent forth an unheard of Doctrine of Fevers that I might hear what the more fruitful wits might teach me For there were some who had promised that they would be arbitrators or judges in the Case whom notwithstanding I conjecture so long to be silent untill I had set forth a treatise of humours which I had promised to gather out of my great works For truly they could not be ignorant that if I could sufficiently demonstrate that the humours accustomed in the Schools besides blood were never or never to be in nature they also were to have no contention with me concerning Fevers And that thing I now promise ingeniously to performe not indeed as that I may be glorious by the name of a Paradox but altogether from compassion towards young beginners that are badly instructed and toward the sick that are badly handled under the device of humours Therefore I will state the forme of the matter For indeed the Chyle or juice of the stomach being supt up into the veines of the mesentery they affirme the same chyle to be conveighed unto the Port-vein of the Liver to wit a trunk arising out of the small branches distributed through the mesentery into the intestines or bowels And that that Chyle in the time of its passage through the slender trunks of the veins extended into the liver is by the power of the Liver converted into blood and also into phlegm and a twofold choler And that this choler is afterwards seperated partly into the spleen and partly into the litle bag of the gawl To wit that they may be the keepers of both their own superfluous choler but that the two natural Cholers as the entire and constitutive parts of the blood are co-mingled together with the blood for the necessities of the parts to be nourished in the due proportion of the quaternary of which humours that as health doth consist So on the other hand that in an undue proportion thereof all diseases are entertained But that an undue proportion thereof proceedeth as well from the perpetual strife and hostile and unwearied contrariety of the four repugnant Elements as from the voluntary distemperature and inbred fight stirred up of things received into the body Truly I have already in the Beginnings of natural Phylosophy and rise of medicine sufficiently removed the foregoing cause of so great a fiction To wit where I have sufficiently demonstrated that there are not four Elements in nature and by consequence if there are only three that four cannot go together or encounter Therefore that the squadron being broken cannot cause four unlike Elementary combates temperatures mixtures contrarieties hatreds strifes c. For I have taught cleerly enough that the fruites which antiquity hath believed to be mixt bodies and those composed from a concurrence of four Elements are materially of one onely Element In the next place also that those three Elements are naturally cold nor that native heat is any where in things except from light life motion and an altering Blas And so that heat in the Elements is a meer Relolleum In like manner also that all actual moisture is of water but all virtual moisture from the property of the seeds Likewise that drynesse is by it self in the aire and earth But in fruites by reason of the seeds and coagulations Therefore that it is a false doctrine which is celebrated concerning the Elements mixtures qualities temperaments discords degrees in order unto diseases and the curings of these I have also profesly demonstrated that there are not contraries in nature That health is opposed to a disease with relation of that which is entire unto that which is defectuous To wit that remedies do take away a disease not by the force of contrariety as neither by reason of a naked similtude or likenesse but by reason of a meer gift of goodnesse restoring nature by helping her the which otherwise is the Physitiannesse of her own self These things surely were sufficient and might be able to take humours out of the way unlesse an opposite custome had as it were tied up the mind least it should hasten unto the knowledge of the truth For it is a very difficult thing to disaccustome those who are confident in themselves that by those humours they have long since compendiously viewed every catalogue of a disease Wherefore unto those that
air from the scope proposed by the Creator But I have elsewhere shewn in our Physicks that Water can never by Art or Nature be changed into Air nor likewise this into Water If therefore Phlegm resemble Water because it containeth it and Blood Air the adopting of any Phlegm into blood shall never be able to subsist And by consequence it is a feigned thing whatsoever hath hitherto been diligently caught concerning the union of Humours and Elements their Likeness Commixture Complexion and Necessity yea if phlegme be not as yet mature and through an over-hasty swiftness of time it be only in the way unto bloud and therefore left in the veins and mixed with the blood that it may be perfected and at length may nourish now not only the Liver shall be the shop of the blood but any Pipe of the veins shall have the nature of a bowel and because it containeth its properties and offices it should be preferred before the Liver in sanguifying and in the perfecting of the blood Yea neither should Phlegm be essentially a separated Humour from the blood no otherwise than as a sour grape differs not essentially from a ripe one Therefore by the same title the whole Chyle of the stomack shall be Phlegm Again since Phlegm is attributed unto old age defect and imperfection therefore also nearer to death then Choler and hence also more an enemy to nature the workman of things had seemed to be the more severe who had left such an enemy to be suitaably mixed with the bloud throughout all the veins and had not designed a receptacle for it He I say who madâ— not death had from the beginning coupled the necessities of a defect unto humane nature In the next place since that being granted Sanguification should not be the proper office of the Liver and the Liver shall be able to operate more perfectly and more at a far distance in the windings of the hollow Vein than near in its own house unless the Schools had rather to attribute Sanguification independently to the veins Finally if Phlegm differs not but only in maturity it is not an Humour essentially distinct from the blood and by consequence the Quaternary of Humours passeth into a Ternary And then as Galen witnesseth more of phlegm by two-fold is daily made which he proveth by a Tertian Ague than of Choler How much Phlegm therefore shall not be made in healthy persons and those perfectly digesting And how much of phlegm shall not be daily generated in the more cold bodies if Humours are made according to the dispositions of Complexions Yea from thence it follows that every digestion is alwayes of necessity and naturally defectuous and vitious Because nature shall never attain the end and purpose of nature If phlegm be naturally generated as a fourth Humour of the blood After another manner phlegm ought to fail in temperate bodies together with both the Cholers Why I pray is blood abounding turned into Fat since it is far more easily as they say concerning the Drawers forth of Choler changed into Choler and loads nature with a less weight than Choler which so obediently obeys a calling Solutive Medicine But why doth he that lives soberly in a temperate complexion as they call it daily lay up both the Cholers into their own Receptacles Doth it not rather from thence plainly appear that the Gaul and Spleen are nourished by some other thing and by a vital liquour than that which being banished from the blood hath attained the conditions of an excrement But go to yet what is that Humour in the Gout which is troublesome with so cruel a pain I indeed have elsewhere on purpose proved That it is a sharpness Wherefore also according to the institutions of the Schools it is cold and therefore different from Choler and Fire Yet in the Gout which they call the Hot one for by how much the sharper it is by so much also the more cruel they complain of most sharp pain and heat Therefore Choler either shall be sharp nor any longer bitter or the Schools have forgotten a fifth Humour Let the same equal Judgement be in the Colick and wringing of the bowels In the Erisipelas also or Anthonies fire the Humour is sharp because it is that which waxeth mild by soapie Remedies Therefore Choler or Gaul is not bitter And then in Caustical and Escarrhotical affects namely in the burning Coal Persian fire c. there is a Caustick or burning Salt of the condition of Alcalies but not a bitter one Even as neither in the Cancer Wolf all running cancrous Ulcers and those causing the greatest pains For the salt which gnawes is no way bitter Wherefore effects that are most fiery in us deride the vain device of Choler Especially seeing they who imitate the nature of Fire are not the Clients of a Cholerick Humour Therefore if according to the admonishment of the Word of Truth The Tree be to be judged of by his fruits but every thing by its Works and Properties I see not from what Use End Necessity or Rashness they have feigned yellow Choler to be fiery For there was no necessity like a Fable to feign three daily and domestick constitutive Humours of us that is without which we cannot live which never were in the nature of a thing or do suggest any necessity of themselves But what or what sort of bowel shall separate both the superfluous Cholers from the choice blood of the veins The Reins indeed separate the Urine for the Bladder Shall therefore both Cholers want their own Separater Or shall excrementous Choler go of its own accord unto its own sinks For there is not so great a necessity of the Urine as well in its Being as in its Separater as there is of both Cholers if both the Cholers are simply necessary as to their Being For truly Birds could commodiously want Urine Why therefore was nature less careful that she might make a bowel for the expurging of Choler than she was for the ejecting of Urine Shall therefore the Chest of the Gaul and Spleen perhaps strongly attract both the Cholers unto themselves without the aid of a Separater Yea seeing Sanguification is a Simple single action and of a natural scope surely one only Liver could not produce four Humours at once out of an Homogeneal liquor diverse from each other in their whole Element and separate two only as hurtful far off from each other Otherwise if the Liver should be sufficient for the separating of its own Liquors it had separated the Urine by a stronger right and had made the necessity of the Kidneys altogether vain In the next place if it doth not sequester all the Choler out of the blood not so much as in the most temperate strength nature shall alwayes of necessity offend even in the abounding of both Cholers in the excess of heat for the forming of Choler and of Cold also for Phlegm and likewise shall contiaually offend
of the necessities of agents and ends Truly on both sides great trifles do involve great cares and great absurdities The which if they put on obstinacy they now nourish madnesse if not also malice The trifles of Humours therefore being invented by the evil spirit were derived into Pagans and hitherto subscribed by the Schools For they were fit for the Devil because they contein confusions in healing fallacies and lyes and therefore they produce dayly deaths they obscure the light of nature they presuppose plausible fictions and are destitute of all examples from their like and by so much the more dry stupid dangerous and rash those fables are by how much they are the more toughly believed for the destruction of Mortals Galen therefore is wholly giddy who affirmes Hony to be totally turned sometimes into blood and sometimes into Choler 1. First a messenger hath been wanting unto this rash asserter which might the more surely certifie him what and how much was made from the totalnesse of Hony And so he is wholly suspected of rashnesse and a fiction 2. Truth is wanting to the affirmer For truly in nature Choler failes and therefore also a Cholerick complexion 3. For he who throughout his great volumes attributes the properties of the members unto Elementary qualities alone constantly writes that a quaternary or fourfold number of Humours are framed onely by the actual heat of one Liver in one onely action of Sanguification When as notwithstanding actual heat cannot but be simple in one onely member at one and the same time Let Galen therefore learn to dream more truly concerning Hony and Sanguification Neither let him depart unto childish principles by believing that four conquering and contrary complexions of Elements do remaine at once in the Liver every one whereof formeth to it self its own Humour out of the single or simple Chyle which is connexible into the one only Subject of blood and falling down from thence at the pleasure of a loosening medicine Let him therefore desist from believing that Humours are made to vary out of one only Hony or Chyle by reason of heat alone and that a simple one seeing that wretched Prince of medicine doth not consider that hereby there is required in a temperate heat of the Liver as many heats at once for so many Humours diverse in making warm from the supposition of their Being Take notice my Companions that we are in no wise constrained unto the fiction of four Humours For those things which are voided forth in the Flux the disease called Choler and dreggishnesses of vomits are not Humours boasted of by the Schooles but they are excrements which the revenging disease frameth and expelleth even as those which laxative medicines do eject are the corruptions of sound or entire blood And that which the revenging disease there acteth That the Laxative medicine here executes indeed with much brevity For neither is the gate of diseases shut by the feigned perswasions of Humours Since that according to Phlosophy Those things are never drawn out of a transchanged Being from whence it is naturally constituted in its making Moreover although I have sufficiently proved elsewhere that there are not four Elements nor the combating congresse of the same for the framing of bodies which are believed to be mixt And that it followes from thence that there is not an unlike action of the Liver in the alway procreation of four Humours Yet whereby the Schools may see with what a prop their whole foundation in healing is supported I will treat from their own meer granted and delivered doctrine For truly if the Elements do not with their Formes remain in the mixt body neither also could their properties remain therein seeing the forms themselves are the immediate subject of inherency of their own properties But if they had rather have the Elements to remaine with their formes in the mixt body Now even the formes of those Elements shall not be substantial acts but only the bonds of the Elements For they shall alway return entire from every sore shaking of the supposed mixt bodies To wit the formes of the Elements shall soundly sleep so long as they shall have rule over the forme of the mixt body Since therefore the Form of a mixt body is of necessity a pure and simple ultimate act it cannot be fourfold yea although the material and remote principler of that matter should be the very actuall Elements and by consequence there is no reason of feigning a Quaternary of Humours in respect of the agent Because the action of sanguification is in no wise Elementary but vital and of the Ferment of the Liver The every way simplicity whereof could not finally respect a quaternion of Humours to arise out of an uniform and most exactly united Chyle So that although there were in a mixt body twenty Elements there should not therefore be as many necessary productions of Humours It is therefore a blockish speculation and of a divelish perswasion which saith that of three Elements never concurring unto the mixture of bodies four Humours in number ought always and ordinarily to proceed and that from thence one only venal blood is regularly constituted To wit that from thence the necessities of curing and of diseases are dictated Perhaps they will object thou admittest that the hurtfull cause is to be driven away thou forbiddest laxative medicines because they are poysonous and indeed do withdraw the blood and vital strength But from a Hungarian horse they have learned the cuttings of a vein from a bird Clysters c. Therefore I may say truly with the Prophet Do not ye become as the horse and mule which have no understanding Do not ye learn of such Masters For the half part of the Continent will subscribe to my desire Because under the Ottoman Abyssine or Aethiopian Empires and the chief part of the Indies the cutting of a vein is unusual Yet the strengths nimblenesses readinesse vâ—gâ—ancy of these nations and constancy of their labours as well to do as to suffer learn ye out of Histories And ye will deservedly lament with me that the Nations which in times past were formidable in war have at this day by degrees under Physitians become ready to dye at every turning of the wind For the North and West which were wont to disperse their warriours into the whole world do henceforth by reason of these follies of the Schools dye as soon as the army is marched far from home Lastly they will object If thou takest away universal succours neither directest thy self unto the withdrawing of Humours by what meanes therefore wilt thou overcome diseases I answer with the aforesaid Nations that Nature is the Physitianesse of diseases therefore that she is to be comforted and not dejected That there is need of a promotion of ends For if excrementitious filths shall adhere unto the first dens or privy places of the Body we must insist on resolving and cleansing medicines nature being safely
Anthonies fire c although the mouth might sometimes be bitter yet the liquour issuing from an Erisipelas is not bitter but plainly of sharp is become salt That Humour I say of whose burning heat the Schools complain in an Erisipelas is called a most sharp one when as in the mean time it bears neither any sharpnesse nor bitternesse before it And they are unconstant in this when as notwithstanding the sharpness of Humours ought to differ as much from their bitterness as Pepper doth from Coloquintida or from wild Cucumber And so the Schools have treated thus carelessely and unconstantly concerning the properties of their own Choler Because in Law a varying witness is unworthy of any credit he is accounted for an unsavoury or foolish or false witnesse and he is constrained to restitution by how much hurt he hath brought unto another by his testimony But come on then let us suppose but not believe that the liquour swimming on the blood is Gauly Choler and of the natural composition thereof At leastwise that blood on which that Choler now swims should be no longer blood if one of its four constitutive parts hath failed it and there be made a seperation of the Marriage bed to wit a real seperation of things composing for Cheese from which the Wheyinesse is withdrawn is no longer Milk For neither do I deny that the whole entire body subsisteth from an union of Heterogeneal parts but the integrity of the former composed body ceaseth assoon as one of its constitutive parts hath retired The Schools indeed suppose a permanency and co-knitting of four Humours for the constitution of the blood Yea besides this simple and vain supposition nothing hath been hitherto proved by the Schools which may not be more worthy of pity than credit Therefore I deny their blockish supposition not proved to proceed unto the false derivations of Choler and embassages of these into the diverse parts and passions of the body If they shall not first make it manifest concerning the question whether there be any Choler requisite for the constitution of the blood Therefore Choler hath not place in the constitution of the blood although a uriny wheyishnesse swim upon blood let out of the veines For that whyishnesse is unto the blood by accident which thing the blood of those who have drunk little and laboured and sweat much doth sufficiently prove For oft-times the blood of such being taken away by Phlebotomy wholly wants all Wheyishnesse And by consequence it should be deprived of Choler And likewise neither doth that blood cease to be blood the which doth not admit of Wheyishnesse but by accident The which I have in the Chap. of the Liquour Latex hitherto unknown to the Schools concerning the rise of medicine elsewhere demonstrated For the Latex is left in the blood for its own ends the ignorance whereof therefore hath hitherto secluded Physitians from the signification of the urine and the knowledge of many diseases I will therefore re-sume by supposing That yellow Choler is naturally a watery liquor swimming on the blood Let the Schooles therefore at least reach if Choler be an Humour most fiery representing fire and conteining it in substance and properties how fire can glister in a meer salt water How is it that it is not stifled in that water After what manner do fire and water co-suffer with each other under the famlinesse of unity as also the air immediately under Phlegm What have they any where found in nature which may constraine fire to conjoyn in salt water They will finde at length that they are driven to believe these trifles by reason of a Quaternary of Elements and a necessity of mixed bodies Both which after they have been oppressed by demonstrations propter quid or for what cause the world will Sue for my writings The very Schools themselves and all posterity will laugh at the blockishnesses of Ancestours which have hitherto been so stubornly defended they being so pernicious in healing and false in instructing Because will they nill they they ought to swallow two Maxims of mine elsewhere demonstrated One whereof is That there is no Element of fire and that kitchin or artificial fire is not a substance And consequently that if more things than one should concurre unto the composition of the blood at least wise that four Elements could not flow together thereunto And therefore that the fiction of four Humours doth badly square for our blood for mixture tempering strife and likewise for the truth existence actuality diversity and healing of diseases and cures But the other of my Maxims is elsewhere sufficiently proved That every sublunary visible Body is not materially composed of four as neither of three co-mixed Elements They must therefore seriously repent Because the fire is neither an Element as neither a substance neither is a salt watery liquour to be called into the composition of us for the feigned comparison of a Microcosme or little world that it may represent the form of fire Again I by way of connivance suppose That nature scarce makes enough blood of all the food dayly even as in the book of the unheard of doctrine of Fevers At least wise nature approves of that since she hath hitherto appoynted no place of entertainment for superabounding blood Yet she alwayes prepares out of all food both Cholers abundantly and super-fluously which the Schools prove by the tincture of the urine and filths of the belly therefore at least wise the nature of the Liver daily erreth and is founded in errour and offends also in abstinent persons fishes and Nations that are satisfied with the drinking of water only Because indeed it generates the least of a super-abounding fiery and earthy humour and yet more than it hath need of for its own nourishments Why therefore doth not nature offend rather in quality even as she daily without distinction offends in quantity Why also in the place of blood to wit the fourth ordinary Humour doth she not likewise in offending produce a certain abortive excrementitious blood to be sent away into banishment as she daily actually banisheth the two excessive Cholers out of the composition of the blood and fellowship of life Why also doth she daily bring forth more of malignant humours and those to be expelled out of good and much juicy meats moderately taken than out of the best blood Since as Galen is witnesse in hot natures hony which otherwise in temperate and therefore in Sanguine persons is totally turned into blood is wholly turned into yellow Choler To wit it s other three companional Humours being excluded Whence it followes That the framing of Humours proceeds not from the complexion of the food but altogether from the condition of the Liver From whence consequently if more of both Cholers than is meet be daily made that all that is to be attributed unto the offence and vice of nature And therefore that every naturall complexion of the Liver is vitious
and erronous in all and in every thing In abstinent and likewise in dry parched persons as also in bloodless and in Feverish ones there is daily an offence committed in the excess of either Choler as also in the penury of blood Whence it follows that the primary and principal scope of nature is conuersant about the framing of both the aforesaid excrementous Cholers Who therefore from so many absurdities shall not see and discern the falshood of the supposed position I therefore supposed further that the Schooles teach black Choler to be sharp But they prove that because it being rejected by vomit and falling on the earth if it be over-covered with Earth it ferments it The foundation of this blockish argument I have already above oppressed Secondly they reach that black Choler is now and then made of yellow Choler being re-cocted or abundantly cocted as if yellow Choler did at length of its own free accord flow down into black as it were its ultimate end which positions of the Schools many absurdities do accompany For first of all the Schools contradict themselves in this that they determine four Humours and also those to be bred or made by the same motion of digestion to wit if the composition of the blood doth happen from four Humours being conjoyned Secondly they struggle with themselves while they teach that yellow Choler in cocting is terminated into a Leeky and Cankery Choler That is to put on a green Colour and in the mean time to increase in bitterness Therefore black Choler is not sharp from an overcocting of yellow Choler neither doth that arise from this else either the coction of nature is not single in the same body and promoted by the same ruler of digestion or surely that which is rejected being sometimes sharp and black is not black Choler Unlesse that perhaps both may be alike deservedly denied And then where and after what manner shall yellow Choler be overcocted For not in the Liver where the slender little veins do not undergo the delay of cocting to wit they being filled with continual blood and urine passing thorow them Neither in the next place shall black Choler be made of yellow Choler re-cocted in the veins of the mesentry seeing these are continually extended with sucking of the meats and with the passing of drinks thorow them and the recoction of yellow Choler should not only be for an impediment but moreover for a contagion to the fresh Chyle tending unto the shop of Sanguification But if indeed yellow Choler be recocted neither beneath nor above the Liver nor at length in the little branches themselves of the Liver that from thence it may be made black Choler but yellow Choler be brought to the Spleen that in that Bowel a transmutation of yellow Choler into black and of bitter into sharp may happen then at leastwise they ought to have remembred that that being granted now black Choler or a fourth Humour should fail for the Composition the blood and that the blood should be only composed of the other three Which thing utterly overthrows the position of the sanguification of the Schools At length to what end shall the recocting of yellow Choler into black serve If an hostile Element and earthy sayling in the blood should a while after arise from thence Is nature so greatly buisied in preparing of Humours that are forthwith to be banished And the which a little after I shall shew to be Non-beings Meer fictions designed to no end Next by what means shall yellow Choler draw that sharpnesse to it self from bitternesse they being hostile qualities unto all bowels out of stomach If it directly passeth over into an ordinary and natural Humour How shall a fiery Humour through a delay of coction assume the heat of cankered rust especially under the same slow and vital luke-warmth And shall be made a black sharp and Earthy dreg Is therefore perhaps Earth materially bred of a fiery Water being re-cocted In what part of the world also doth a sharp thing proceed from a bitter thing being thickned And from whence have the Schools learned this feigned Metamorphosis Is happily that sharp black and earthy Humour a certain singular Humour one of the four Elementary humours of the three Elements But therefore it is false that they have affirmed the same to be made of re-cocted and burnt Choler Yea moreover it is to be feared least it be to be called a fifth Humour which as yet hath not had another like unto it self and that this shall be no lesse necessary than the other four if they as yet dare to devise four other Humours For truly this is a sharp one unworthy of the family of Choler The which is wholly spoiled of every property hereof to wit which is a sharp grosse black thickned re-cocted cold Earthy and leaden Humour But where have the Schools learned to call Earth a black sharp cold and dry fire that they may begin a fourth and Elementary Humour requisite for the integrity and consistence of the blood Consider Reader with pity whither the enfolded absurdity of a fiction hath driven the Schools that through the penury or scantiness of names and truth they have made two Elements and feigned Humours from thence a cold Earth and also a bitter sharp soure and fiery liquour And that they have called it yellow Choler and also the same presently black sharp bitter and foure Choler Alas they may fear a deadly chance will befall them since they have now proceeded in stumbling for so many ages and in running away so miserable lyed But at leastwise I conjecture that this new branch of black Choler hath not a sure assertion in the constant dulnesse of the Schools the which I at first demonstrated to have been the nourishable blood of the Spleen sometimes becoming degenerate through a sinister event nor to be requisite from the beginning and for the constitution of the blood but that it is said to be produced from degenerate Choler by re-coction in stead of a privy shift to wit that they may after some sort free themselves from so many perplexities of absurdities At least wise they are compelled rather to grant that that black sour liquour being now and then rejected through the vice of the Spleen is an excrementious unprofitable dreg and not an Humour made from the intent of nature However otherwise it is if they say it issues forth from the intent of nature although that be the more rarely beheld and not likewise from yellow Cholet being first re-cocted at least wise it hath attained the underserved name and property for neither do the Schools sufficiently explaine themselves they wandring in an unconstancy of their own recieved opinion of Choler which is of a fiery and Gawly property Now earth shall sometimes be nothing besides fire being thickned if the feigned Humours do fitly square with the Elements attributed unto them Also yellow and black Choler shall be made at once and
neither Choler nor Gaul and much lesse a constitutive part of the blood Because they were neither as yet slidden of the Stomach nor therefore experienced in the Sanguification of the Liver but through a long delay and the smal veins of those of the mesentery Wherefore likewise that neither was there a passage from the Liver unto the Stomack but by the same passages being very remote and impossible to be believed Especially while as the badly withdrawn meats are seen to come forth whole togethe with the yellow and bitter vomiting Furthermore I learned by the example of a Calf and ocular inspection that this yellow rubbish was generated in a Stomach being badly disposed and more regularly in the gut Duodenum in temperate bruit beasts Seeing also that the suckings of Milk recieved do wax yellow in the gut Ileon For a Calf drinking only his mothers Milk sheweth presently after death that the Milk presently clots into a sharpish curd and watery acide liquor both of them being much desired for the making of Cheeses This curdy runnet I say presently after layes aside the whitenesse of Milk in the Stomach becomes brown and in the Duodenum and beginning of the Ileon waxeth yellowish afterwards in its progresse it is more fully yellow but further it is plainly made of a Citron colour but about the blind gut it waxeth greenish Last of all it becomes dungy Let the Schooles therefore shew whether those colours are made from a yellow and Leeky Choler While as in the mean time they are so changed before their coming into the Liver Or whether indeed these colours are made from the property of the Bowels In like manner infants having sucked Milk do presently cackya Citron coloured excrement and thou wouldst call it meer Gaul and the Schools are constrained to confesse that all little infants are at their first beginning more cholerick than men themselves whom notwithstanding their age food of milk smal heat continual sleeping and want of excercise do excuse from the suspition of Choler But if the infant suffers gripes or the sumptomes of sharpnesses by and by after the same dung becomes greenish and so much the more by how much it shall depart the farther from health Whence it is made manifest that the Milk as well in us as in braits is made of a Citron or deep yellow colour by a digestion of its own to wit that all Cream in sliding by the voluntary thred of nature and corruption unto an excrement and by its own motion waxeth yellow through the proper endeavour of the Stomach and intestineâ— And that it is most easily estranged looks yellow green and obtains diverse savours or tasts under the digestive faculty going astray But not that therefore it is or is made Gaul For these excrements are made in the Bowels out of the shop of the Liver and by strange faculties nor in a Fold committed unto the making of blood For truly if the Gaul be a constitutive part of the blood for that very cause it is made also in the place and matter wherein and whereof the blood is generated but not in the intestine For the first change of the milk should be into yellow or green Gaul and that naturally and from thence into blood That yellow Cream therefore doth presently of its own accord profit in the Duodenum and puts on those colours not of feigned Humours but of a natural excrement Wherefore neither is it a wonder that the same thing happens in the Stomach being hard-bound or distressed under any guilt of offence whatsoever To wit that the whole Cream conteined therein is presently translated into a vitious bitter and yellow Chyle the which in the Jaundise presently happens In the mean time in the running of the Chyle downwards thorow the gut Ileon it is sucked into the veins whatsoever the Archeus hath judged to be not only most nearly allyed to nature and meet for the preparing of blood but moreover also the whole Whey ascends towards the Liver together with it But if therefore the Chyle doth fore-timely assume the countenance of an excrement about the hedges of the Stomach as being prevented by the errour of the digestive faculty either an offence of the Pylorus or an errour of the digestive faculty or a vice of the food or Cream or too much delay is signified And therefore that it hath felt the vital ferment of the Gaul to be amiffe or badly applyed For so oft-times it happens unto him that is in good health that good Cream being offered and rightly subdued in the Stomach is a Laxative cup being offered estranged from the scope of nature and through that tyranny is wholly made a bitter and yellow putrefaction in the bowels And the which although it be cadaverous or stinking and being newly produced from the blood yet by reason of its bitternesse and the poyson of the solutive medicine it is not tasted down by dogs as neither by a swine they otherwise lesse abhorring the eating of dungs For they percieve a bitter poyson of the purging medicine to subsist being far different from the goodnesse of Meats blood and flesh Be it therefore a faulty argument The poysonous medicine hath caused a bitter juice from the Meats drink and blood therefore it is Gaul and Choler And likewise the Stomach being ill at ease hath caused a bitter excrement therefore it is Gaul and Choler procreated in the Liver and poured out into the Stomach through indirect trunks It is plainly an undiscreet fiction that Choler is a part intended by nature and that it should be framed by the Liver which from the corrupting of a solutive medicine and vice of the digestive faculty in the disease called Choler the bloody flux c. is commonly bred by proper causes As if the off-spring effects fruits and products of errours were a constitutive part of our blood Therefore that which the Schools name a native part of the blood a compeer with putrifying Chyle and Choler or Gaul That is wholly a meer excrement alienated and degenerate from a natural agent being badly disposed So also the filths of the eares shall be Gaul if yellownesse and bitternesse be sufficient for it to be called Gaul which being granted now that yellow excrement which is rejected by vomit as dung shall be near skin to and of the family of the blood But at leastwise the Schools will have the yellow and bitter excrement which is rejected at the beginnings of a Tertian Ague to denounce gaul infallibly for they prove gaul from a Tertian and this again they prove to be gauly from gaul being cast up First of all they consider not whether such vomiting shall succeed from an aguish fit or next in one that is in good health from an inordinate supper c. That notwithstanding the property or nature of that excrement is not therefore changed otherwise so great an ejection of meer Choler should import a trampling of the Tertian under
foot if this were caused from choler wherefore it is neither choler nor gaul but the meer excrement of the stomach and Jejunum or empty gut Because that yellow excrement which is ejected at the beginning of a Tertian comes not from the liver or gaul and so from the shop of Choler but it comes not far off from the orifice of the stomach to wit where its birth is but not from the Liver seeing it neither takes away the ague nor even diminish it And likewise it ought to be derived from the liver unto the stomach through unknown thwarting passages wherefore neither could it come thither easily nor readily even as otherwise it is quickly present in the like vomiting and choler nor safely nor unmixt and it should sail over far more safely from the gaul into the intestines and from the liver backwards through the veins of the Mesentery than unto the sensible orifice of the stomach Indeed as well the feigned shop of choler as the very seat of a Tertian it self is placed too far from the stomach that this may be the ordinary Emunctory or avoiding place in these maladies Why therefore is gaul brought rather unto the stomach than to the bowels which are far more prone and apt For if that bitter excrement be bred elsewhere than in the stomach it is altogether impertinently and through a guilty passage derived unto the stomach And likewise there is oft-times sixfold more of this yellow and bitter Balast rejected at one only vomiting than the largeness of the little bag of the gaul can receive The which therefore could not be the Inn of that gaul as neither could it obtain a capacity in the liver for its generation nor be entertained between the liver and the stomach without a mortal hurt full of confusion But if indeed it be gaul and the product of the stomach it self now the stomach hath stoln the faculty of making gaul from the liver and now choler and gaul shall be made out of the liver in a different Inn by a different Guide and equivalent workman from that whereby the simple bloud is prepared with it self or certainly there is no Choler of the essential composute of the bloud Is peradventure therefore this choler and this gaul which is rejected by vomit made in an irregular place and by an erring workman Therefore also of necessity it shall be neither choler nor gaul But there is nothing as yet manifested concerning another choler that of the bloud It is therefore an injurious thing to the bloud and to the inbred choler of this if there were any to be founded and proved by an excrement which is never prepared by the princiciples or in the shops of choler Yea from thence there is an equal right and liberty for whatsoever is supposed to be cholery to be compared in essence colour savour and in its efficient cause unto this poysonous excrement voided by vomit in a Tertian Ague and other nauseous effects and likewise for that which in the disease called choler is expelled as well upwards as downwards and in solutive medicines through a continual framing thereof And so now from hence it clearly appeareth that the Standard-defending inventers of choler have by a rash and undiscreet boldness introduced choler for an elementary apposition or making up of the bloud which they call its composition and have falsly affirmed that yellow and bitter vomited-up excrement to be gaul and choler from the efficiency of the liver and of the constitution of the bloud For how uncertain and stupid is the begetter separater sender conducter way and channel by which that choler should be designed from the liver unto the stomach by a retrograde motion unless they had rather that the obediences and necessities of these should be foolish But the Schools have never examined these things but with a swift foot they have skipped over the bridge and clay from whence they feared perplexities from absurdities as if they gaped only after gain the which notwithstanding they might have diligently searched into to their greater profit than to have daily over-added their own centuries unto the writings of Galen For neither doth an excrement less differ from the bloud than the dead carkass of a swine from a man For that carkass was at sometime alive but that excrement never lived But it hath been already proved that no choler is formed in the liver But if choler also be made elsewhere than in the liver from this supposition of the Schools also it was not true choler and much less from the essence of that to wit of an excrement shall the essence of Choler be capable of proof but if indeed Choler shall with any foot originally enter into the family of an excrement now for that very cause it shall be an Humour different from Choler the which notwithstanding the Schools do with a serious intention will to be intended caused and desired by our nature as if they were advertized by an Elementary necessity At leastwise none of a sound mind is able to understand why the veins of the stomach which I have demonstrated elsewhere never to be able to sup any chyle at all shall allure unto themselves as a freind that which the Liver and which the veins and the whole family-administration of the body have been once seriously averse unto as worthy of banishment which indeed so naughty a Fardle being begotten in some other place being a Bastard and Forreigner should be brought unto the stomack which possesseth the Sense Nobilities passions and tenderness of the heart Surely in an inverted and confused order of things should filths be thrust down unto a bowel expressing the harmonies of the heart if they should be adopted being as forreigners comming from elsewhere Who is that mad and straying guide which may thrust down such excrements to the stomach For noâ— the term of Choler ceaseth while as the reliques of yesterdays supper are supposed to be badly digested and to be cast back again as yet whole with an unchewing tooth yet yellow and bitter For neither are they correlative things that much Choler should flow forth into the stomach as oft as any notable vice hereof is present For after a liberal and troublesome supper even as also after the fit of a Fever loss of appetite sufferance of hunger bitter burntish belchings loathings weight giddinesse of the head c. are alike present wherefore it is easily to be believed that those sumptoms have also sprung from a like mother So that which I promised in the title it is nothing but a dissembled vomiting of Choler whereby the first inventers of Humours have credulously perswaded Choler They also say that therefore Choler is also drawn out of the little bladder of the Gaul unto an hungry stomach But by how sluggish a judgment that is confirmed and that filths are by a retrograde driving motion fetcht back unto the stomach let Phylosophers speak For hunger desires not iron or
of the Schools 9. VVhat the yellownesse of the urine may betoken 10. That nothing of Choler or Gaul is in the urine 11. A threefold errour in this thing 12. A begging of the principle 13. That Choler is not snatched out of the urine unto the brain 14. Some accompanying absurdities 15. From Anatomy 16. From the Jaundise 17. VVhat watery urines suddenly after tinged ones in Fevers may fundamentally denote 18. That the prognostications of the urine have been meer dreames hitherto 19. A channel is wanting 20. Under the division of motions 21. The little cloud of the urine whether it denoteth phlegm 22. All things are cocted in us for one only end to wit that they may nourish 23. VVhy the spleen hath a double ferment 24. VVhat that may be which the spleen doth sometimes belch forth into the stomach 25. That any effect is not taken away the cause being removed 26. VVhat a confused or troubled urine may be speak 27. VVhence erudity in the urine is 28. VVhy the strangury is scarce cured in old folks 29. Whence the lumpy sediment or ground is 30. Errours about contents as well those proper as forreign elsewhere concerning Duelech 31. As yet a new method of judging of the urine by the weight thereof ANd moreover the Schools for the divination of urine presuppose a washy of watery matter on the opposite part to this a thick one and then a moderate one And likewise confused turbulent dark even as also cleer and perspicuous urines But some of confused ones do by heating return into their former transparency others remain troubled Lastly some urines being made cleer are presently again disturbed but others with difficulty Secondly they consider almost all colour from the watery white milky and dull and also from the cleer watery even unto the blackish colour Thirdly its proper and forreign contents are viewed Forreign ones indeed I call slimy bloody shavings sands and stones And those either soon affixed to the urinals or freely setling But proper contents are those which are almost ordinarily thrust down out of confused urines or which swim in cleer ones in their superficies a little under it in the middle about the bottom or laying on the bottom it self and those either cleaving together or rent asunder Fourthly they consider the froath and bubbles Fifthly they at length consider of the circle But Paracelsus moreover distinguisheth the body of the urine into the urine of the drink and mixt of both He cals it that of the blood if he that makes water in the morning hath not as yet drunk the day before in the evening and in the night But the urine of the drink is that which is collected from much and little waterish drink Also he calls that a mixt urine which is that of sober or temperate persons Furthermore what he feigneth concerning an Alcooled and tartarous urine shall be manifested in the treatise of Tartars First of all I protest that I do not any where strive to reckon up those things that have been well written by Ancestours and much lesse to chastize them nor to handle the precepts of the judgments of urine nor to explain the inventions of others as neither to make an Apology for them But I only desire to discover the Antient errours of the Schools that have arisen from feigned humours that juniours may not hereafter be led aside according to rash beliefs of dreams First therefore I will reckon up the errours concerning the circle of the urine and then those committed in its colour thirdly those which happen in the little cloud or swim thereof and fourthly I will make manifest those which have happened in the judgments of its coagulations or contents From whence any one may easily understand that the judgments and prognostications of the urine have hitherto stood without judgment and a foundation To wit that the wonderfull impostures of Gordon have been set to sale unto ignorant poor people under the false title of a Diviner First of all therefore they have stumbled in the circle of the urine since it hath hitherto been unknown why the circle is oftentimes of another colour than the rest of the body of the urine Indeed it hath been supposed that the circle is separated from the rest of the body of the urine as the fat from the watery part or as it were the cream from the Milk whereon it swims In the mean time although the urine be stirred yet the same circle which was before forthwith appeareth and not any thing hath been further searched diligently into concerning the circle out of its supposed bounds They see indeed the circle to be oft-times more red and more full than the colour in the remayning body of the urine yea that a more ruddy and more deep yellowness doth for the most part want a circle distinct from the colour of the urine Yet have they not diligently enquired from whence there should be that variety of the the circle and urine Notwithstanding neither therefore is the circle a certain colour falsly appearing and deluding the eyes with a false shew of it self For neither otherwise could a somewhat yellow urine yield a more red and heightned colour by a naked reflexion of it self but should rather paint out a more pale colour than a yellowish one if the colour of the circle were only appearing from a reflexion Therefore the reason of the altered colour in the circle of the urine dependeth in very deed on the very body of the urine it self And so the circle alone shewes the whole consistence colour and transparency of the urine because it conteineth them which thing the wood Nephritical or for the stone of the kidneys teacheth by a notable example For this wood being steeped in rain water if thou shalt afterwards behold its infusion sideways it is wholly red in its body but that decocted or infused steepage hath an Azure or Sky-coloured circle however disturbingly thou shalt shake it at thy pleasure For so the colour of the blood being beheld thorow a vein appears of an Azure colour So also the sky-colour in the circle of the decoction of the Nephritical wood is indeed Azury but being multiplied it lookes more black and of an obscure colour tends more to white than a red one being diametrically seen thorow a glasse or vein After the same manner in the body of the urine a red colour appears simply such as it doth in the circle which being re-bounded or weakned from a crosse the urine is not of so citron a colour in the circle The circle therefore is a true token of colour in transparent urines but in dark or thick and troubled ones a circle doth not apear But as to what pertains unto the colour of urine the Schools say that a watery thin pale urine is a sign of digestion being deficient even as that which is tinged with a manifest yellownesse is a token of good digestion It is a saying of Galen
I make water after midnight the which while I see it not yet to be tinged with a due yellowness I return to sleep And awaking two or three hours after I again make water and I find my urine filled with a due colour Whence I conjecture that a perfect digestion and yellow Choler of the Gaul is now poured on my urine This is also the moderne doctrine of the Schools Yet I as yet doubt whether the yellownesse of the urine may be always attributed to one cause Since they unconstantly attribute it sometimes unto digestion being finished but sometimes unto yellow Choler being mixt therewith But least they should erre they have joyned both I therefore since I found none who hath distinguished himself herein am constrained to explain both For the urine of him that is feverish is yellower than that of him who is in good health yet the digestion of this is far more lively which thing is without controversy Therefore let the yellownesse of urine only without a laudable swim be a deceitfull sign of a good digestion And then if but one only drop of Gaul shall be in two points of urine the whole becomes bitter but the urine although of a Citron and Saffron Colour is never bitter Therefore it receives not Gaul admixed with it nor is the tincture thereof of Gaul Truly if the Schools do judge of things by savors or tasts why are they so little carefull as that they have never made tryal of that thing concerning urines For doth yellownesse only suffice that Gaul may be judged to be in urine Or is it a more beseeming thing for a Physitian to teach falshoods and to affirme lyes to the destruction of the sick than to have once tasted down his own urine seeing that not so much as the most full yellow urine of the jaundise bears any thing of bitternesse before it Pride therefore hath justly discovered the errour of the Schools At least wise it is not to be doubted from the words of these Schools but that a tincture is added to the urine about the end of digestion The which if it be so why at leastwise have they not from thence acknowledged the yellownesse of the urine to happen not from Choler or Gaul but from elsewhere Because if Choler were made in sanguification together with the blood and urine and being co-bred together with and sprinckled on the urine from the beginning should ting the urine Choler should neither be the last thing constituted in the Liver if it were a constitutive part of the blood and its superfluity should be straightway wiped forth with the urine neither should it make a seperated Inn for it self for a time Or if that be supposed at least that Inn ought to be named and by Anatomy to offer it self and to be found But seeing yellownesse in the urine of Galen is more late than the body of the urine a place of the utmost part of the gut Ileon is denoted where when as now the cream begins to wax dungy something of the liquid dung is drawn from thence through the veins of the mesentery in the end of the Ileon which is besprinckled on the urine as profitable for its own ends even as before concerning Fevers and elsewhere concerning the disease of the Stone But that the yellownesse of the urine is of that liquide dung and in no wise of the Gaul not only the tast of the urine but also its distillation do manifestly approve For truly the stink therof riseth up in distilling But for what end the liquid dung may be conuenient in urine is taught tin he places cited Now it is sufficient that the Gaul of a bird or fish being even but slenderly burst however most exactly they may be washed yet a bitternesse remains Therefore if there were but the least of Gaul in the urine or liquour Latex which swimmeth on the blood let out of the veins it should be of an unexcusable bitternesse But the consequence is false therefore also the antecedent The Schools therefore have trebbly erred in this matter First while as they being ignorant that yellow and liquid dung is mixed with the urine suppose it to be Choler Secondly Because from yellownesse alone and a custome of subscribing they have conjectured of Choler As if nothing were of a saffron Colour in us which ought not also to be Gauly They indeed prove the same thing by it self To wit that Choler is in nature because it is manifest in the urine And again that what is yellow in the urine that ought to be Choler Because with us nought else but yellow Choler should be of a yellow colour Thirdly at length For the judgment erring concerning the ordinary colour and so concerning the very content of the urine it must needs be that prognostications of the urine do fall to the ground as many as have hitherto been supported by Colours and contents But at least wise since it is now manifest that the yellownesse of urine is not Choler but a dungy excrement it is no wonder that another yellow excrement is bred in the stomach which also is bitter by a far different and proper errour of its own ferment which therefore ought not to be of the family of the Gaul Furthermore seeing that in Fevers yellow urines do suddenly wax pale and a future doatage is signified and since that thing is interpreted by the Schools to come to passe as Choler is snatched into the brain It is a faulty argument of not the cause as for the cause For it is sufficient that it hath been already demonstrated that that doating delusion is not bred from Choler snatch't up into the brain but because the liquid dung which was wont to go with the urine is now detained in the Hypochondrial or place about the short ribs neither is it mixed with the urine as it was wont to be That doatage therefore draws its original from that seat from whence all madnesses derive theirs as I teach in its own treatise For by this title also alone some madnesses are therefore named Hypochondriacal ones For otherwise who should that snatcher of Choler be which should bring this unmixt into the brain and being seperated from the blood of the veins through which it should be brought or from the urine For to what end should it snatch that Choler since nothing is done without an object at leastwise appearingly good How should he bring it thorow the blood unto the brain without contagion After what manner should it be rightly seperated from the blood for truly the supposed Choler swims not on the blood let out of the veins unlesse the blood be first dead and coagulated in the veins not so much as in those of a dead carcase Again into which bosome of the brain at length should that uriny Choler be powred sorth wherein it should work a speedy death Who in the next place shall that seperater be who should now wrest aside that
it self being cold And therefore let the vessel be of a short neck and sharp pointed that it may measure the urine almost in a poynt Another shall add and meditate of more things And it is a far more easy method than that which is reduced into Aphorisms by weighing of the whole man I have always breathed about the essences remedies and applications or for the curing of a disease and who am one that have hated the common applause I have hated also the prognostication prediction and fore knowledge which was familiar to divinations I have rather rejoyced to heal the sick party than by speaking doubtfully to have foretold many things CHAP. V. That the Jaundise is not from yellow Choler 1. The supposition of the Schools in this case 2. A fit answer 3. An ordinary and ridiculous privy shift 4. Another evasion 5. The cause of the Jaundise is taught by Anatomy 6. The Schools intangle themselves 7. From an impertinency 8. A double vice in the jaundise 9. The forgetfulnesse of the Schools 10. Absurdities upon the causes of the Jaundise of the Humourists 11. Four absurdities 12. That the bitternesse of the mouth doth not argue Choler 13. That the Jaundise is not from the Gaul being stopped 14. There is always some poyson in the Jaundise 15. That colours if they are inordinate in an excrement are not made from causes ordained in nature 16. It is proved by proper remedies 17. That curative betokenings are not drawn from things helpful and hurtful 18. The adequate or suitable cause of the Jaundise 19. That the Jaundise is not bred but from single causes 20. That the Jaundise is not cured by yellow remedies as such 21. A History in the strangury of an old man 22. The Oxe scoffs at the causes of the Jaundise delivered by the Humourists and at the use of grasse-roots 23. That Choler is not dismissed for tinging of the excrements of the belly 24. The pale dung of the bowels doth not so much accuse of the absence of the Gaul as of the errour of its transchanging 25. Against the possibility of the Gaul being obstructed in the Iaundise by reason of the essential thinglinesse of the disease being unknown 26. Another argument 27. A third 28. From an impertinency 29. From the impossibility of tincture 30. From bitternesse 31. From the disproportion of the thing tinging and of the thing tinged 32. The generating of an unnamed poyson in the Iaundise 33. Some absurdities are proposed to be seriously considered by the Humourists 34. A conclusion from the premises 35. The nest of the Iaundise 36. An errour of Physitians about the passing of Choler into a fish THe standard-defending argument whereby the Humourists believe that from a full necessity they have confirmed the existence and generation of yellow Choler and that which supplyeth the room of an Anchour is the Jaundise In favour whereof they contend that the Chest of the Gaul is stopped up in its passage towards the empty gut Therefore that the Choler daily generated is presently also after its birth regorged and dispersed into the whole body wherefore as they supose an ordinary and necesary generation of Choler or gaul so also a daily banishment and seperation thereof But they prove the Lower passage of the Gaul to be stopped because the excrements of the belly are destitute of Gaul therefore also of an ashy colour and not yellow Wherefore the urine offers it self twenty-times more tinged than is meet and daily more meerly or purely so Therefore as well the excrements of the bladder as paunch draw their tincture from the Gaul First They have not yet proved any upper entrance of the Gaul unto the little bag as neither hath it hitherto by exact Anatomy been found Therefore the excrementous Gaul should either daily enter through the lower passage or unsensibly not in this manner where there should be so great abundance of gaul daily nor also after the former manner Seeing it should vainly enter that way through which it ought presently to go forth And also if it should enter that way it ought to enter through the bowel upward neither thus should the gauly tincture of the dungs ever fail although the lower passage were shut up The Humourists therefore stick in the entrance in proving of the question whether the thing be And then they fail in the passage and seperation of Gaul from the Liver Thirdly At leastwise from the disproportion they might easily collect that they were decieved For if one that hath the jaundise shall drink eight pints in one day he is to make well nigh as much of most yellow urine whereof four pints at least should be of meer Gaul and by how much the weaker the sick shall be and nearer to death by so much the deeper their urin shall be also in yellownesse yet not any thing bitter It was therefore to be measured how much of yellow Choler may be daily expelled by urine and through the skin in those that have the jaundise to wit whether there be daily as much of Gaul expelled through the paunch in healthy persons especially in whom there is a seldom going to stool But if not therefore it is not Gaul not Choler or of the natural Humours which is made in the jaundise but plainly an excrementitious poyson And by consequence the jaundise doth not prove it self to arise from Gaul At length the argument of the Humourists being granted by way of supposition at leastwise for that very cause they confesse that no Choler in nature not so much as that which is believed to float together with the blood in the veins is made from the intent of nature or for nourishment but that alwayes however it may be taken it is excrementitious and a certain product which as well in its quantity as quality is besides nature and the scope of sanguification By consequence also that Choler is neither of the composition of the blood as neither of the intention of nature which it hath in generating of the blood That is that Choler is not a constitutive Humour of us or an entire part of the blood But if they shall answer that Choler in the jaundise is indeed a diseasy Humour and therefore also excrementitious but not therefore also ordinary Choler But that I might believe them it had behoved them first to prove a radical difference of both Cholers When as otherwise only the obstruction of the Gaul is the cause of the jaundise in the Schools which cannot change the species of Choler since obstuction it self hath respect unto passage but not unto Choler or Gaul Again if the cause of the jaundise be a diseasy excrement and a far different thing from the constitutive Choler of the blood and not otherwise ordinary and natural Choler Therefore at least it is an impertinent argument of the Schools to be willing by a feigned and excrementous Humour to intrude the necessity of a natural Humour and to confirm
faculties Because it is the part of same faculty being in good health to beget this something and of the same being ill at ease to make this something vitiated At length a pale excrement of the belly and urine of a yellow ruddy colour in the jaundise do not indeed accuse of a co-mixture of gaul as neither of Choler but of errours committed in transchanging and distributing For specifical remedies of the jaundise being given especially in a small quantity as they are wont to be should not profit if the lower that is the one only orifice of the gaul which is supposed were suitably and totally shut for whatsoever is not totally shut layes open sufficiently to the gaul flowing thorow For an emunctory place being so shut as it is no way an expulsive of its own superfluities furely much lesse shall it be an atractive or admissive of a forreign remedy and that being first transchanged in the stomach And therefore also plainly in vain Again if there were any upper mouth in the chest which there is none for a passage is not found to be but beneath surely that should be least of all fit for drawing of of Choler and much lesse in so great a plenty of Choler as is supposed in the jaundise Therefore Choler ought to be drawn through the Liver neither could so great a quantity of excrements be dismissed through the little bag of the gaul it self which is judged to be void of pores above and so there should not be that from whence the lower pipe might be stopped Then again from hence it followes if there were any Choler and that Choler were not sent from above through the chest of the gaul that a remedy also against the jaundise cannot slide from above into the chest nor likewise to be admitted from beneath because it is supposed to be exactly shut and of necessity any jaundise shall always be without hope of during because without a remedy Then at length it is manifest from elsewhere that the liquour of the gaul is a meer vital bowel but not the Choler or daily excrements of the Liver Therefore if there be not yet found a passage conspicuous and not yet proved to be from the Liver thorugh the chest why therefore the passage of the little bag beneath bein stopt up should the whole body presently re-gorge it self with gaul for truly this presupposeth as much gaul to have been first prepared by the Liver Furthermore if yellow Choler which they imagine to swim on the blood let out of the veins doth as well tinge the excrements of the belly as of the bladder and that Choler be scarce palishly yellow certainly that shall never be able to tinge or dye a jaundous urine into so thick and full yellownesse of colour Seeing that for which every thing is such that ought as yet to be more such And far is it that meer Choler which ye say is ordinarily generated together with the blood its cousin German Humour should be more coloured than the urine of him that hath the jaundise which not only is not Choler but scarce one part of Choler is reckoned to be added unto fifty parts of the Whey Neither in the mean time doth the urine of a jaundous person therefore ascend scarce in its fiftieth part unto the tincture of meer Choler Therefore if the urine which in its own body every where and always materially representeth drink doth as yet borrow its colour from gaul and Choler the tincture of a jaundous urine it self ought ' in its body to exceed the tincture of gaul yea and of saffron at leasts by thirty fold and the gaul should be thick like the yolk of eggs The which seeing it is not of the nature of Choler or gaul therefore neither shall the tincture of a jaundous urine be able ever to be from gaul And this argumentation is from number extension measure and thicknesse The Schools therefore ought to have regard unto their own positions concerning the obstructions of the gaul and they should easily finde that there is not about the hundreth proportion of gaul or Choler daily bred although it be granted that the little bag of the gaul be stopped and that gaul is not thrust down unto the excements of the fundament unto that which is voyded by the urine alone And then that there is not a reason why the jaundise growing great the urine and colour of the habite of the body should wax great and be increased when as otherwise sanguification and the generating of gaul happens to be lesse daily death being urgent And which is more the urine of the jaundise is not bitter which thing even one only smal drop on the top of the tongue may cleerely enough fignify but it should be far more bitter than gaul if it should derive its tincture from this or the gaul ought in every urine to loose its own natural bitternesse Both whereof are alike absurd and seeing otherwise all bitternesse is banished from all other urines but it is a most absurd thing to beg all yellownesse of the whole urine from gaul or Choler alone and yet that in the mean time no urine is bitter at leastwise bitternesse in a jaundous urine should be a very forreign quality nor to arise from Choler Which is to say to arise from a forreign excrement bitter in it self such as is that which is now and then rejected by vomite as well in healthy as in sick persons but not from natural Choler But in conflraining the Schools to measure A yellow heart whereby in one only day atleast the urine is tinged in the jaundise might infect as much dung with a full colour as is cast forth through the belly in fourty days But it should be sufficient for so much colour to abound in the urine daily as Choler doth infect of the dung every day Therefore the obstruction of the gaul cannot be for a cause why more of tincture and gaul is generated by fourty fold if the tincture of the urine and yellownesse of the whole body are beheld at once Yea when the other troop of absurdities might be excused yet by the jaundise more of yellow Choler so I now by a liberty call that dreg is daily dispersed throughout the habite of the body and also through the urine and more of gaul by tenfold is daily thus expelled than there is of blood bred Therefore it had at leastwise behoved the Schools to teach why a detainment and obstruction of the gaul doth multiply the generation of gaul if they will not at once grant that that generation of such gaul and of all feigned Choler is otherwise excrementous And so that Choler and a'quaternary of Humours is feigned But whatsoever of these excrements is generated that it is partly of an unnamed poyson which they have falsely believed to be Choler being deluded by the jaundise and the chances of the foregoing Chapters Therefore they have accounted a narrow search into
filths of the digestions even into the uttermost coasts of the body otherwise in the last digestion very many griefs do offer themselves they being referred by the Schools among incurable ones by reason of one only fault of a remedy alone which accompanies and accuseth the defect no otherwise than as they are destitute of curing in the work of witches because remedies are neglected which may go into the root of the malady For truly those devilish discommodities do not lay hold so much on the body or the filths thereof as on the Archeus himself the which since he is as it were the clear image of the man it follows that while that Spirit is wrested aside in any Organ of its body the same member suffers the sumptoms of the Archeus And so whatsoever the Spirit suffers which is the Ruler of life and sense it must needs be that the body suffers but not on the contrary For neither doth he that is maimed in one leg therefore generate a maimed off-spring because the spirit is not defectuous For whatsoever the body suffers although the Spirit feels this same thing yet this is not drawn together unless the passion incline unto extremity that is that it is co-fermented within the root of life or implanted spirit even as I have elsewhere shewn concerning the convulsion in the Colick It s no wonder therefore if a Tartar of the blood be stirred up by the state or insisting urgency of the Archeus For who is he that knows not that indignation confusion a sorrowful message affrightful fear c. do presently take away an appetite of eating do stir-up sighs or tears and extend an unwonted fardle under the Midriffs to wit as the nourishment of the sixth digestion degenerates in the stomach namely where such passions are immediately framed This Tartar of the blood therefore being once become degenerate doth presently molest in manner of an Enemy And even as a dog being once mad pays the punishment of his madness with his own death So that Tartar being once banished and referred into the number of excrementitious filths doth never afterwards return into favour because whatsoever the Archeus once forsaketh straightway dieth and that which is dead doth no more revive nor strike a peace with the Enemy Therefore an earnest desire of revenge and indignation of self-love are radically co-bred in the first Fountain of Nature They do also more manifestly rise up in the more perfect subject and so in sensitive creatures do challenge to themselves the animosity and glory of a wrathful power Wherefore that Tartar of the blood being subdued by the plague doth no longer obey the Laws of Life but repenting of its former obedience arrogates to it self an unbridled liberty of fury and by so much the more cruelly molesteth us by how much the more confidently it hath once received the hidden counsels of the Archeus within which thing the Schools name to symbolize or co-resemble For then it is an houshold-Thief unto which the ways to the treasure and privy store-houses are known For how speedily do a few drops of corrupt matter under the scull kill and what cruelty doth not the blood chased out of the veins threaten how cruel is even but one only thorn in an Aposteme It s no wonder therefore that the Pest the most fierce of diseases doth presently bring forth its own product and if it shall not find â— seaâ— that it presently makes one for it self notwithstanding a hope of curing the plaguâ— remaineth because that Tartar and the Pest it s own Inn may be pufâ— away or disâ—â—ssed by a due banishment of sweaâ— The which understand thou as long as it shall remain in the shape of dissolvable Tartar For otherwise if it shall catch hold of a solid part the hope of life fails unless the part it self which is catcht hold of can forthwith be sequestred But Wheals black strakes or black and blew spoâ—s or tokens denote the Archeus to be affected for they are the superficial tinctures of the skin the which if they shall the more deeply lay hold of they do also cauterixe it and since they do immediately pierce the Archeus before others they stand in need of a most speedy remedy It is also worthy to be noted thâ—t an unsensible transpiration in the plague differs from sweat because Diaphaeresis or unsensible transpiration is the matter of the nourishment and so also of the Tartar of the blood being defiled but sweat is of the substance of the Latex But transpiration seeing it is continual it is also without sweat Hence it comes to pass that sweat doth most especially wash off and for that cause a dry transpiration is seldom sufficient for curing of the plague and therefore a plentiful rincing sweat is to be provoked that while the Pestilent Tartar breatheth the naughtiness of its poyson thorow the pores it may be partly washed off by the sweat and the delay of its departure be partly speedied Here a difficulty is manifest to be noted and not decided by the Schools to wit why some defects of the stomach are cured not by vomiting or stool but only by sweat because they consist in the Retents of the stomach being transchanged in the sixth digestion but not in the remainders of the Cream The Plague therefore for the most part begins in the stomach and there begets and infects the Tartar whereon as soon as the perturbations of the Archeus have made their assaults For every imagination of the desirable faculty hath its seat in the same place and there frames its Idea and chiefly about the orifice of the stomach the vital powers are concealed as I have elsewhere many times profeâ—ly demonstrated But because the Tartar of the blood is in the form of a mucky sliminess Hence the Idea of the Pest willingly buds forth into Glandules for the stomach and the Archeus thereof because it sends a continual society of imagining into the brain hence are Parotides or tumors behind the ears But it pierceth thorow the Diaphragma into the lungs and arm-pits and a perplexity of breathing doth arise But pestiferous odours being prepared in the stomach frequent vomitings do accompany them together with a pain in the head the which we having often experienced from the odours of burning coals to have vomited with headach and a dejected appetite But if they proceed unto the Liver Now there is a Bubo in the groyn CHAP. IX Minerals and herbs do imagine after their ownirregular manner VVHatsoever subsisteth by a real essence doth after some sort love it self Wherefore also it hath the sense of a friend or enemies that is of its own commodities and troubles wherefore a self-love resteth in the bosome of Nature But things do scarce ever remain in the same state without interchange Therefore they undergo somewhat but if they suffer and walk in the way of destruction verily it must needs be that they have a cause from whence they are
Exhilerating Wines are to be drunk as also the more strong Ales or Beers because that by causing carelessenesses and animosities they shake off grief and terrours But the cold air and winds hurt those that are infected yea that are fearful and sorrowful after any manner or whatsoever is opposite to exhalation and sweat A washed house doth now and then indeed take away the fermental putâ—efaction and contagion and the waâ—ery vapour hurts those that are infected therefore it were first to be dried Forty dayes shutting up although they may increase the fermental putrefaction yet they take away the pestilent poyson as it perisheth of its own accord in that space of time Perhaps therefore custom hath brought over those Quarentanies or forty dayes enclosures for any renovation whatsoever For although swimming or cutting of a vein may seem to diminish the fermental putrefaction yet seeing nature hath laid up the bloud for her treasure it follows that as oft as she shall perceive the bloud of the veins to be taken away the Archeus as it were fearing treachery is disposed unto terrour and draws the rest of the bloud inward to himself and by consequence also it calls the pestilent poyson together with it into the inner chamber which motion is diamentral with or directly opposite to sweat And therefore let as well the cutting of a vein as swimming be destructiue also all loose solving of the belly is to be avoided because so the more crude bloud of the meseraick veins is made to putrifie through the ferment of the solutive mâ—dicine even as elsewhere in the book of Fevers to wit at the evacuation whereof the meseraick veins do â—etch back bloud out of the hollow vein and this out of the small branching veins of the body which motion is diametrically opposite to the curing of the plague Those things which I have â—iâ—herto spoken are of the number of negative preservations or they are admonitory rules of things to be avoided which rules do not yet contain health But among positive preservatiues Amulets challenge the first place to themselves which obtain a proper faculty whether it be for killing of the poyson or else for preventing of the mumial appropriation of the Archeus Both of them indeed are curative in the making of the Pest Next a sudoriferous one follows which is a rooter out of the plague and of its seat by washing off Again the Archeus being grieved and affrighted straightway betakes himself inwards fleeth as it were to his Castle begets sorrow and sighings and the enemy being received within increaseth venemous perplexities Therefore he is to be called forth unto delights and by sudotiferous medicines For sudoriferous or sweat-provoking remedies are all of the same intention and almost of the same weight but at leastwise they differ in the degree of goodnesse In the next place in an Antidote being adjoyned I praise the potion of Hyppocrates whereunto I adde Ginger and the black berries of Ivy because they are Diaphoreticks which are acceptable to the stomach Also antidotes are to be given in generous or rich wine and that presently after food not indeed so much that the sick party may sweat as that his body may be kept in transpiration But let the food be light and little for in every fever and rather in the plague digesti on faileth therefore let the more pure drink supply the room of the more large food For pure or unmixt wine excludeth fear cares sorrow and terrour And therefore also the chief preservative is establâ—shed in confidence Indeed I do not here speak of Christian faith or confidence although in Spirituals there is every where matter of great moment for they also who lay down their life for the sheep do now and then die of the plague other carelesse persons remaining safe For their confidence hath either a defective rottennesse within or some other obstacle The Lord not working miracles but for his hidden Judgments The faith or confidence therefore of which I speak in this place is the natural mean of animosiry or stoutnesse of mind fighting against and strongly resiâ—ting terrour neither is that faith positive I believe but altogether negative not abhorring not fearing yea neither therefore believing that he shall be infected For as a pestiferous terrour hath a suspitious and fearful faith annexed unto it that they have lately conceived something of contagion or do feel a murmuring about the mouth of their stomach so the preservation thereof is a a belief that they have conceived nothing neither therefore is it sufficient that the confidence be not terrifying which is a mean between terrour and animosity but it is required that it be operative by not believing that they shall be insected And that not by an inducement of reason but altogether by a free power of animosity and the meer mother of confidence otherwise children and mad-folks although they have conceived no terrour yet they oftentimes perish by the plague for want of an operating confidence which frames a preservative ot it self For not to believe that one shall be infected works far more strongly than the presumption of fear not onely because a negative destroys more strongly than an affirmative builds up but because it together therewith contains a privation which is stronger than every positive For we are those who proceed from an infinite nothing and therefore our nature doth more strongly apprehend nothing than something itself from whence also it obtaineth rest to it self even as is to be seen in negative Syllogisms wherein the conclusion follows the negative and forsakes also a particular affirmative connexed with it that it may bring it self into quietnesse by a denial For truly the understanding being now degenerate and naturally distrusting it self in understanding this something of things had always rather lay down in not knowing or not being able to know And that is the cause of fluggishness in Sciences Therefore the belief requisite in terrour for preserving is positive and therefore it ought effectively actually and â—fficiently to stand although with hope it concludeth negatively from the weaker part A good man in readily serving those that are infected with contagion if by reason of the piety of his work he hopeth and trusteth more in the goodnesse of the work or of desert than in a free valiant confidence on God he hath a faith con-joyned with hope and it includes an agony of fear and terrour Therefore he naturally undergoes an infection unless he be preserved from elsewhere But the confidence of this place is drawn not so much from Saffâ—on or the exhilarating things of boasters as from the cheerful drink of the more pure wine Women with child also women in child-bed or menstruous women because they are then more restrained under the command of their womb than under the conduct of the universal Archeus therefore they are the more dangerously oppressed with the Pest For truly the Archeus of the womb doth no way obey reason
incorporeal Gas which is therefore straightway comixable with our Archeus Therefore that Gas refresheth those that are affected in their womb with its smell but not the oyl not the tincture milk or floure of Sulphur But after what sort thou mayest know that Gas of Sulphur to be distinct from the watery vapour thereof kindle a sulphurated torch or candle in a glass bottle thou shalt forthwith see the whole bottle to be filled with a white fume and at length the flame to be stifled by the fume Afterwards keep thou the bottle most exactly stopt with a cork and thou shalt see a sulphur to be affixed unto the sides of the vessel and in the superficies of the water if there were any in the bottom But if indeed after some daies thou shalt put the same enflamed torch or bottle into the neck of the candle the flame is forthwith extinguished by reason of the condensable Gas of the Sulphur no otherwise than as the odour of an Hogshead putrified through continuance stifles the flame of a sulphurated candle But Hippocrates perfumed all the wine which he gave in the plague after this manner He perfumed the pot or cup of a narrow neck with a candle of burning sulphur he powred in wine to the filling of the pot a third part full and stirred the pot being exactly shut by shaking it a good while together upwards and downwards until the wine had drunk up all the Gas of the sulphur into it self For medicines to be hung on the body and Amulets or preservative Pomanders had not yet been made known But he supplyed external medicines that take away weariness or faintness in the room thereof by anointing the body with Greek Wine wherein he had boiled the most fine powder of Sulphur But he besprinkled the same fine powder being dryed in the Sun on those that were in a sweat and commanded it to be applyed with rubbings But the Pest since it never wants a Fever and that the Grecans saw the remedies of Hippocrates they began first to call the Pest and then every Fever 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or a fire Not indeed by reason of a remarkable and necessary burning heat of Fevers although it so pleased Galen For truly they called the beginning cold rigours and horrours Pyâ— or a fire as well as a burning Causon For Hippâ—crates lightly ground Sulphur with water on a Grind-stone and being again dried he kept it for his uses But he gave twenty four grains of Sulphur with salted and hot wine that he might provoke sweats But he first made the salt to crack in a glassen pot and presently afterwards he melted it by increasing the fire for else salt containeth in it excrementitious filths which at the first cracking fly away the salt cleaving asunder and leaping a little These Spirits do easily putrifie through continuance and subject the salt to a fear of contagion for they are very forraign to the salt the which although they fled away a good while before the fusion of the salt yet he made a melting of the salt that whatsoever forreign thing was contained in the salt might be consumed by the fire For indeed he saw that presently after the invasion of the Pest the appetite was prostrated and then also that fermentally putrified and burntish impurities grew in the stomach from whence arose the headach vomitings loathings doatage the drowsie evil c. which would hinder the cure of the plague Therefore he took the common balsam of the salt of fleshes which might overthrow the fermental putrified poyson and putrefactions by cleansing them away together with a conâ—â—â—ing of the strength and he gave the wine being salted hot but not luke-warm 〈…〉 restrain the loathings of the stomach and mightily provoke sweats and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sulphur that it might kill the plague as it were with its odour because salt cleanâ—â—â—h preserveth from corruption and Sulphur restrains poyson But he prescribed this sweat for three daies space at least yet oft-times he extended it unto a weeks space but they did sweat twice every day and at every turâ— for the sixth part of a day if they were able on the first daies more and on the after succeeding daies less For in time of sweating he took away all drink but the term of sweating being finished he fed them with Barley-Cream and for drink they had Greek Wine pitcht wherein were a few grains of the aforesaid salt and Sulphur But he laid the leaves of Assara Bacca being steeped in vinegar upon the Bubo unto the soals of the feet and palms of the hands which after every twelve hours he commanded to be buried because they stink greatly It came to pass afterwards that Greece be sprinkled their grapes divers times with the Brine of the Sea before they were carried to the Press For Hippocrates perswaded that thing that so together with it Inâ—ects might be driven from the grapes Hence it is that the Wines of Greece are salted even unto this day the reason of this use being unknown Unto great Buboes in the groyn and marks he applyed hot Towels tinged in rich wine wherein as I have said he had boiled Sulphur Furthermore he reserved a secret to himself through the sight whereof he attained to himself divine honours But it was the flesh of a Viper or or Snake which he cleansed for the utmost part of the tail and the head being cut off he stript off their skin casting away the bowels together with the gawl he reserved only the Heart and Liver but he drew out all their blood with the vein running down the back-bone But he boiled not their flesh after the manner wherein it is put into Triacle but he exactly bruised the same together with the bones and aforesaid bowels and dryed them in a warm Oven until they could be powdered which powder he sprinkled on hony being sufficiently clarified and boiled until he knew that fleshes in boiling had laid aside their virtue as well in the broath as in the vapours But he added unto this Electuary the Spice of his Country for to cloak the secret and therefore neither was it made manifest by the Angel But the cure contains a mystery that as Death crept in by the Serpent it self also ought to be vindicated by the death of the Serpent For Adam being skilful in the properties of all Beasts was not ignorant also that the Serpent was more crafty than the other living Creatures and that the aforesaid balsam the remedy of death lay hid in the Serpent Wherefore the Spirit of Darkness could not more safely deceive our first parents than under the Serpents skin For perhaps they hoped that they should escape the death sorely threatned by God by the aid of the Serpent Hippocrates used also wine that was pitched Wherefore it is worthy our consideration that Spain is seldom afflicted with the plague not because sins or filths are wanting where there are almost no Jakes's It s a
a falling sicknesse of the lungs 361. 29 368. Common Remedies for the Asthma vain 3623637. The seat of the Asthma in the Duumvirate 361. 28 The Asthma not cured but by an Arcanuâ—â— 362. 40 A moist Asthma from Endemical things drawn in 363. 45 The reasons of the Schools concerning the Asthma rejected 364 53 The grounds thereof 365 366 367 58 A dry Asthma is the Falling-sickness of the Lungs 368. 60 Remedies for Coughs vain in the dry Asthma ibid. VVhat remedies are fit for both kind of Asthma's ibid. 370 68 The â—ume of Sulphur profitable in drinks for the Asthma 372 77 The Authours intent to have burnt this book 10. 13 His breeding 11. 1078 He Read about 600 Physical Authors 13. 15 How stird up to be a Physitian 14. 20 The way he took to attain knowledg 22. 43 Why he brake down the old received doctrines 37. 3 433 18. His persecution 470. 2 His dream Ibid. 3. 1073 His challenge 526 The Authors observations on his stomach being loaded 123. 41. His visions 265. 13 716 His vision of generation 736 His medicines never Exhausted though he cured thousands yearly 1080 What happened to the Author upon the rasting of Wolfsbane 274. 12 The Author understood wholly in his heart but not at all in his head 275. 13 The Authors search into the cause of Madnesses 277. 25 The Authors diâ—â—inctions of the office of a Physitian and a Chyrurgion 1080 How the Author was hurt with the smoak of Char-coale 300. 20 How two of the Authors sons died of the Plague 1135 Of the search of the Author after the Tree of life 808. Of his dream 810 How the Author cured himself of a Pleuriâ—ie 399. 35 400 B. BAlsams c. made with hony 467. 56 Barrenness from what 630 The Beard bred from the stones 333 38 334 41 335 47. Concerning Bezoar 991 The great vertue of its milkie juice 992 Beâ—s generated from a strangled calf and dew 478. 1026 65 Of the virtues of the Birch tree 892 The Blas of the heart the fewel of the vitaâ— spirit 180 Blas of Government hitherto unknown 330. 19 20 21 22. The Binsica of the Rabbins 24. 51. The Blas of man voluntary 177. Blas twofold Ibid. What Blas is 78. 1. Defluxions of the Bladder Ridiculus 856 The venal blood exhales without any dead head 404. 21 112 5 182 34. It s salt made by a mumial ferment 473. 19. What operation precedes blood-making 479. 49. How it nourisheth 112. 4. Out-chased blood the occasional cause of the dropsie 517. Blood never putrifies in the veins 941. Blood-making not hindred in the dropsie 517. Blood of the hemeroyds not putrified 943. Blood of a Bull why poysonable 174 49 783. 19. Of the difference between Arterial and venal blood 179. The spirit of the blood not in the liver 181. 32. The Arterial blood exhales without any Caput mortuum 182. 34. By what 185. 40. The making of venal and Arterial blood are different 732 In what time the Bloud of man is renewed 640 The best part of the Bloud the Schools calâ— Phlegm 1050 23 An eâ—statial power in the Bloud 777 75 Bloudy Flux cured by Horse-hoof fried 334 41 Of things cast into the Body 597 With the manner thereof 604 Of things breathed into the Body 617 A solid Bâ—dy not changed into another Body without reducement into its first matter 241 6 Bones broken cured by Comfry 457 5â— 461 26 Of the Stone for broken bones 564 Bone of the Head profitable against the Falling-sickness 770 51 The Emunctories of the Brain 435 13 The defects of the Brain â—ise from the Midriff 276 19 Of Bread 451 14 White Briony resolves congealed bloud and profits in the Dropsie 519 Butler 557 His wonderful Stone 558 Butler cured the Plague 1149 And by what 1151 Buboes and Glandules terminated by sweat 1104 Burial of Malefactors why nâ—cessary 1134 Why slain Souldiers ought to be buried deeper than usually they are 1135 C. IN what respect Camphor is said to cool 471 4 The Cabal first manifest in sleep 781 98 99 What each mans Calling properly is 124 36 A new Catheter 886 Of the operation of Cantharides in thâ— living and the dead 480 60 The original of a Cancer 544. its progress and Cure 545. 546. 158 A Canker in the Stomach cured by a fragrant Emplaister 115 22 A Cancer curable by a reduced Frog 141 Â 56 c. Of a Country mans curing the Cancer 546 Catarrhs or rheums proved ridiculous 429 430. c. Cauteries what 380. 1 The promises of a Cautery childish 381. 6 Nine conclusions against the appointment of Cauteries 382 10 A Cautery prevents not a Catarrhe 384 Â 14 The benefit of Cauteries accidental 384 20 Whom a Cautery may profit 383 28 29 Causticks act not on the dead as on the living 499 170 No nutriment from Clysters 479 49 Cliâ—â—ers unprofitable 969 The prayse due to Chastity 682 Why Cheese loathsom to many 115 25 Chewing food well necessary 4â—3 â—1 Child-birth hastened by a Potion 127 49 Black Choler according to Hippocrates subsisting in the Midriff if dispersed thorow the Body begetteth the Falling-Evil if into the Soul madnesses 29â— 15 What the Choler of the Schools is 454 22 How it is made 1045 Choler wholly an Excrement 1048 16 The bitterness of the mouth not from Choler 1060 The Seat of Choler not be found 1053 No Choler in Nature 1054 The Incarnation of Christ not according to the order of Nature 665 Chymistry commended 462 32 It creates things which not before were c. Â 477. 36 486 What one of its chiefest endeavours is 115. 17 It prepares a universal Dissolver 482 Chymical Medicines adulterated by the cavetous 990 The degrees of Chymical heat 202 35 Of that Cinnabar whereof half an ounce Impregnates a Barrel of Wine 578 Whence the yellowish Spittle of Consumptive Persons proceeds 440 39 What a Consumption is 449 63 The remedies thereof 441. 43 Of diseasie Conceptions 608 Thirteen conclusions from fire pepper and causticks proved by Handicraft-operation 500 The power of Cold as to reduction of Bodies into water 108 29 109 38 Coughs whence 430 5 259 â—3 Purging in Coughs condemned 431 9 No true Remedies found for Coughs 260 Â 37 Pose the fore-runner of a Cough 569 67 Remedies for a Cough the same with a Pleurisiâ— 570 68 Concerning Coral 991 719 The virtue of its Tincture 605 Coral by what it changeth its colour and is restored by 1143 Coraline Secret what 390 25 805 Its preparation Ibid Crabs Eyes 991 Their milkie juyce 992 Observations on Crabs 886 Their virtues in wounded persons 294 295 The ashes of burnt Crabs against the madness occasioned by a Dog 297 15 Cramps cured by mans fat 480 58 What the Crasis of a thing is 415 82 The right way of curing 473 14 D. THe virtues of Daucus 837 Of desperate Diseases 307 53 A description of desire 270 Contemplation of Diseases 530 Difference between death and
ibid How the Antients remedies may profit though not cure the stone 708 Why an expulsion of the stone is not to be intended 709 The quality of a remedy resolving the stone 710 56 Why stones are sometimes white 248 28 Whence a three-fold stone is made 249 3 Of the Stone 828 The flux of seeds for a stone 829 706 20 After what manner a man is made a stone 833 Of the Coagulum and Runnet of the stone by handicraft operation 840 Salt profitable in the stone 843 Of the occasion of the stone 857 Of the womb of the stone 866 Its Scituation 867 The pain of the stone from a contracture 86 Of the intention to cure the stone 701 15 874 Its cure 878 879 With testimonies thereof ibid. Of the manner of ministring a remedy for the stone 883 Of the stone that maketh gold its projection 674 58 751 807 The stone that maketh gold hath not the blessings of the tree of life 807 Sulphur only resists a fermental poyson 1158 In Sulphur is the life and death of bodies 66 14 Sulphur boiled in Linseed oyl 427 70 In oyl of Turpentine 515 The whole band of diseases hearken to some Sulphurs 577 260 39 The Sulphur of Copper hot stupefactive yet sweeter then honey 304 39 How floures of Sulphur profit those that have a Cough 309 94 Sulphur commended against the Plague 1154 Of the Gas of Sulphur 1155 The Sun scorcheth without pain 72 14 Is hot 74 23 139 41 794 The gifts of the Almighty are placed in the Sun 796 Sugar hurtful in most diseases 462 30 Loaf-Sugar not so good as the common 467 57 Swooning from the Stomack 302 303 27 What that Sweat is that accompanies death and Swoonings 42 What the Synovia is 842 389 20 Of Sympathetical Mediums 616 The cause of Sympathy 775 68 Of the Sympathy and Antipathy of things 1114 T. TAst in the midriff 909 Tartar its distillation 412 68 427 68 183 39 Why salt of Tartar dissolves crude Tartar 234 19 How Tartar is made 233 No disease ariseth from Tartar 235 1 Tartar not in foods 241 8 Tartar afâ—â—â— digestion in the stomach ceaseth to be a Tartar 242 243 Tartar not in drinks 250 7 Of the Tartar of the blood 1103 Of the original of the Tarantual 1509 The poyson of the Tarantula 787 148 What thirst is and whence 471 8 Thorn in the flesh how cured 521 Of thunder 90 17 A preservation against its effects on Beer c. 91 21 The seat of the Timpany and by what it is made 520 Why Tin is lighter than other Metals 107 20 The Toad commended against the Plague 1149 How prepared for that use 1150 How it kils the Ferment of the Plague 1151 How quickly he dies with fear Ibid. The Toad given by God as a Remedy for the poor against the Plague 1152 The bone of a Toad cures the tooth ach Tooth-ach whence caused 438. 30 247 Of the original of the tooth-stone 246 Of the flourishing and decaying of teeth 247 25 How the Transmutation of bodies is effected 115. 23 The tree of good and evil why forbidden 656 664 665 666 680 Of the tree of life 745 753 754 755 Tree of life what qualities it ought to have 808 The Cedar tree doth signifie the tree of life in this world 810 Of the preparation of the Cedar tree 811 V. VAlerian good against Inchantments 605 All Vegetables not woody contain a winie spirit 413. 73 Their Archeus hath no anatomical affinity with man 458 5 Their whole property from their seed and not from the heaven Ibid. 7 Their degrees whence different 146 88 Why vegetables unprofitable to the sick 578 Vervain commended 605 Venal blood wholly turned into nourishment 257 13 Venal blood never putrifies in its place 941 The natural endowment of the veins 942 An example Ibid. Vesicatories more hurtful then Phlebotomy 968 Vital spirit is salt 195. 19 733 734 Made of Arterial blood 196 24 732 By the ferment of the heart 733 Actuated by a vital light 734 The virgin earth 689 The Author instructed by visions 22 42 His vision of the soul 726 A vision of a Layick concerning the Lues venerea 1904 The spirit of vitriol reduced into an Alum by its dissolution of Mercury 473. 21 The dignity of the sulphur of venus and the nativity of vitriol 889 The best vitriol where to be had 891. 695 15 How vitriol may be made Ibid. The preparation of the Sulphur of vitriol 339. 9 Unguents how applicable 47 58 Ulcers their principal vice where seated 〈◊〉 18 21 23 Of the Difference of Ulcers 321. 29 The cure of Ulcers 322. 31 323 35 Volatile things fixed by fixed things  Volatiolation caused by ferments 117. 33 To provoke Urine in lingring fevers 465. 46 VVhat true provokers are 473. 19 476 31 Urinary salt made by the kidnyes 473. 19 Observations on distilled urine 847 Of the various actions of the spirit of urine 864 Urine-vessels not enlarged by drink but by the stone 708. 41 42 Urine not an excrement of the Kidneys 257 11 Of the division of vrines 1051. 1 Of the errours in the circle of urine 1052. 4 What the circle in the urine is demonstrated 1052. 5 What the yellownesse in urine may signifie 1053. 9 Watery urines after yellow ones signifie dotages 1054 VVhat a troubled urine signifies 1056. 26 VVhat the litle cloud in the urine may signifie 1054. 20 Of the several sediments of urine 1056 Examinations of urine by weight Ibid W. WArts how cured 141 55 154 VVater the material cause of things 32. 31 105 3. Proved so by an experiment 48. 11 109 30 Likened to the internal Mercury of Metals 65. 8 Never radically conjoyned with the earth 10 c. The parts of the water 71 8 410 54 What its unrestable appointment is 74. 28 Easily putrefiable under the Equinoctial 116 30 All bodies thereinto reducible 116. 33 The great use of that which comes from the Quellem 117 33 Water doth not always fal in a circular Figure 684. 50 When waters loose their life 689. 9 Waters the womb of seeds 693. 1 Why some waters hurt those that have the stone 251 Wheat changed into mice c. 113. 9 Winds whence generated 730 18 80 14 771 59 What the wind is 78 4 The vanity of the Schools defining it 85. 23 Violent ones how allayed 79. 13 Remedies for windinesse 4â—0 28 What causeth it 422. 41 Only in defective persons 424. 54 Some wind in the Ilcon c. Natural and necessary c. 428. 76 Spirit of Wine how reducible into water 69 27 105 9 106 11 VVines hurt by keeping in their Gas 107. 16 Wines profitable to our natures 966 Spirit of wine passeth into the Arteries without digestion 194. 12 731 Cold preserveth wines 232 VVhy wines wax soure 234 15 21 How wines become troubled 773 62 The labor of wisdome 184. 45 Of witches and witchcraft 568 The Devil how concerned therein 569. 1
of the belly which is sometimes otherwise seen in devouring Children their Pylorus being not yet sufficiently able to obtain its own ends Therefore weaker stomacks do complain that great sournesses do arise in them which in the morning they do cast up with their yesterdays food or at night with the Chyle of the precedent Noon and the Reliques of their last meats Furthermore for a more full knowledge of these things we must repeat that it belongs not to the veins of the stomach to suck to them the Chyle detained in the stomach likewise that vomiting is made by the Pylorus being shut and that the whole length of the stomach is contracted from the neather parts upwards to the Orifice Lastly that this motion is made by the Pylorus which if he should be opened he should certainly unload the stomach of a lesse trouble but seeing he openeth not himself he judgeth it to be inconvenient for health to have those dregs dismissed beneath And so he hath seemed to me to be the Rector or governour of digestion But that vomiting doth happen two manner of wayes To wit by the proper Blas of the Pylorus but then it is without pain But the other is made by provokers and that although it be made also by the Pylorus yet not by its own proper will Therefore also it is troublesome and grievous at leastwise vomiting is not made unless by the shutting of the Pylorus Else that should fall down into the Duodenum which is expelled by vomiting For when vomiting is made by the proper motion of the Pylorus all of whatsoever it judgeth to be hurtful to it self parteth at the first vomit But if the Pylorus be provoked by a repeated vomit other things are ejected than those which bewrayed themselves in the first vomit To wit yellow yolkie things and then those things do follow which are of a more transparent yellowness like the Oyl of Rape-seeds and which are believed to be gaulie by reason of their bitterness and at length now and then things Skie-coloured and green which by taking of the more cruel purging Medicines do happen straightway after the beginning Here the Pylorus was opened between the first and following vomits so that whatsoever doth lay hid in the empty or fasting gut and in neighbouring places the Pylorus may pull upwards unto himself whereby he may wash off as it were the mark imprinted by the Medicine But those things are for the most part bitter both because they have again and again undergone the ferment of the Gaul and that an exorbitant and angry one then also because they are besides their Custom snatched up into anothers Harvest where they are corrupted into an excrement made notable by the quality of the ferment which it hath immediately drawn therefore the Chyle in the same place becomes gawly and bitter But in this place I do behold the Schools with admiration that they should prescribe meats of an easier digestion to be sent into the stomach before those which are of a harder cocture being unmindful of their own Doctrine which sheweth that all Contents of the stomach are turned into a single or simple Chyle but the Pylorus to be so shut from the beginning that it suffers nothing even so much as a drop to slide forth before digestion be finished Next that coction is made by the un-cessant heat of the stomach and so for this cause also the digestion continued from the beginning to begin neither ever to keep holiday as long as its Valcan heat doth remain But that all particular things contained do receive that digestive heat after the manner of the receiver which Doctrine indeed standing seeing all things are reduced into a liquid Chyle and are thorowly mingled exquisitely in the one onely pot of the stomach it followes that in feeding those things are first to be sent in which are of a harder digestion because they are cooked by so much the longer space of heat Suppings say the Schools and things of a more ready coction if they are taken last would putrifie if they expect the ultimate bound of the more hard assumed things As if the digestive faculty were the parent of putrefaction neither that there should be made a co-mixing of things eaten or a conversion into a fluid Chyle but that those things which are taken by morsels should lay secret by Soils or Grounds As if I say the Pylorus should open it self by set periods or turns that the order may be kept in dismissing the Chyle which there was in receiving of the meats which things if the Schools shall believe to be possible the Pylorus at leastwise should have a greater power of discretion in observing the priorities of meats than that the Schools should so sloathfully neglect its office But the closure of the Orifice doth not conduce unto digestion neither doth it govern the appetite But the Pylorus doth command both because a sufficient satiety is indeed for the most part present yet moreover we as yet do eat and drink from vice Therefore the closure of the Orifice is not from an appetite as neither from fulness But weariness loathings and aversion from fleshes do begin presently after Fevers and the rise of Diseases of the stomach and they have the Orifice shut Therefore the Orifice is neither shut from fulness nor for the necessity of concoction as neither is it continently or sparingly opened by reason of appetite to wit if it be shut without appetite fulness and concoction and doth remain open after fulness in time of coction For belchings are uttered in the morning the stomach being fasting empty and desiring yet belching doth denounce a closure of the Orifice In the next place the Orifice is shut in those who being pressed with long hunger do languish and who have been infirm through a long continuing abstinence from food To whom the unstopping of the Orifice is very difficult grievous and painful If therefore the Orifice be not necessarily shut from hunger appetite fulness and coction therefore the closing or opening of the Orifice doth not respect necessities in the coction of the serving faculties but the Orifice doth especially serve for this least to him that layes down the Chyle should re-gorge into the jawes whence first of all it is manifest that the service of the Pylorus is more famous than that of the Orifice For truly he is the Ruler of the whole Family-administration of the stomach even unto the last Circle of the Intestines or greater bowels wherein because seeing the operation of the Gaul is perfected therefore also the Gaul ought to be superstructed and incumbent on the Pylorus Of both which if there be not a full consent Fluxes wringings of the Bowels Dysenteries the Hemorrhoids or Piles and divers miseries of the Abdomen or bottom of the belly do arise It is also an erroneous thing in Galen and his modern Schools that we do hunger and thirst onely through the penury of venal bloud and
is extinguished by a long Consumption and a daily mournful Spectacle at least wise the Physition can excuse himself by a cruel and unwonted greatness of the disease because the best Remedies being administred he hath nevertheless declined into a Consumption none such whereof would happen for I promise and promise upon the penalty of proof if the cruel cutting of a Vein being despised the Balsam of life and strength of nature being reserved the radical thorn be plucked out so the pain bloody Spittle and Fever do pleasingly cease and that which held together being rent a sunder is it self presently incarnated But the causes being hitherto unknown have brought forth the ignorance of a Remedy For my Remedies are such as forsake none in the Pleurisie and Peripneumony The Powder of the Yard of a Stag or Bull or the venal blood of a He-Goat or the juice of wild Succhory of the flowers of wild Poppy and many such like I especially commend the Blood of a He-Goat not indeed that which is sold but I hang up a He-Goat by the Horns and his hinder feet being tied to his Horns his Stones being cut off he is gelded The blood issuing from thence even until his death is received and dryed And it is known from the Saleable blood which is nothing but Sheeps blood because that which is sold is easily beaten and the Powder thereof is of a red or Pomegranate Colour but the true He-Goats blood is most difficultly and tediously beaten and the Powder thereof is of a pitchie Colour But the beating is so troublesom not indeed by reason of its toughness but by reason of its meer and incredible hardness For these kind of Succors being friendly to the Archeus and homebred or familiar to mans nature do correct the immediate cause in the Archeus and take away its sharpness and do dispose the blood to transpiration do appease the pain because they extinguish the sharpness Also the ferment of Tartness being taken away they resolve as much as they can of the out-hunted Blood and the appointment of Corrupt Pus being neglected they do seasonably cast out the rest by Cough Wherefore the same Remedies are given to Drink to those that have been thrown down or have fallen from an high place as they do disperse the venal blood made clotty by the Bruise that is they take away the thorn they take away the poyson and for that cause do incarnate the place And so they do satisfie all betokenings by the one only amendment of the thorn For the which the unexhausted bounty of divine clemency hath made many the like things For a bloody Flux doth not require astringent Medicines for under an ordinary judgement or under a close stoppage and astriction death is straightway present For I being present and greatly astonished after 426. vain Clysters at length an emplaister of Diapompholigos dissolved in Oyl of Quinces was cast into a noble man with a Clyster by our chief Physitians with an notable stupidity of the Schools For truly after 18. hundred stools and more he was cured by me without a Clyster by a Remedy taken in at the Mouth And likewise the Schools proceed as yet still to Teach that the bloody Flux doth not consist but with an Ulcer of the Bowels for healing whereof the Physitians did therefore infuse or pour in the aforesaid Emplaister As if an Ulcer of a greater Bowel were to be healed by that emplaister When as a simple Wound thereof is reckoned uncurable And likewise if the bloody Flux be in the slender or small Guts why do they not emplaister the long ones For who of the Galenists hath ever cured an Ulcer of the Oâ—sand Wind-pipe or of a Bowel by Clysters seeing they know not how to cure a Fistula of the fundament which they have at hand by Emplaisters I pray let Physitians remember that the natural Tear doth not bite the Eye thereof as neither the Urine the Bladder So also the Dung in a Bowel is not to be perceived untill it be nigh the place of utterance Because it is a natural excrement But that a Clyster doth pain because it is a forreigner to a Bowel Therefore it is hurtful in the Bloody Flux That error floweth from the Schools who define the bloudy Flux to be an Ulcer of the Intestines or greater Bowels The which how inveterate soever and almost desperate I have seen to be very often cured and indeed with much safty To wit by administring some specifical remedies But surely I behold a bloody Moloch to sit president in the Chairs of Medicine Look behind ye or recollect your selves therefore my fellow Brethren For a cruel horror will invade the world at the Sound of the Trump when every one is to give an account of his Stewardship Finally I will declare what I my self having a Pleurisie have observed On the third of the Calends of the 11th Month called Ianuary a Fever suddenly invaded me together with a gentle rigour so as that my Teeth did shake there was a Pricking pain in the forepart of my side about the Breast-bone which hindred my in-breathing presently after a bloudy Spitting was present at length meer blood bowrayed it self I took presently a cropped piece of the Genital of a Stag for it was at hand and the pain was presently diminished by and by I drank a dram of He-goats blood On the fourth day therefore my spitting of blood ceased a seldom small Cough remaining together with some Spittings out by reaching but the Fever continued For on the second day the pain about my Girdle enlarged it self on my left side with a difficult breathing an increase of the Fever and an intermitting Pulse I had now finished my 63d Year and I did expect that an Aposteme was Co-agulated in my Spleen Because my Milt waxing round into a Lump did cause a weight for if I did lift my knees on high or lay down on my right side I felt the falling globe of a great weight And so I suspected the Pleurisie to be stirred up from my Spleen the which when it was driven away by meet Remedies from my Ribs it at length afflicted my Spleen The which I presently withstood by drinking of Wine boiled with the stones of Crabs and within few daies all the pain and lump of weight vanished away In the mean time I was visited by a Noble man who had heeled his Boots with sweet-smelling Prussâ—an Leather through the smell whereof I presently felt the pain of my Spleen and the Fever renewed From whence I collected that the Archeus of my Spleen was the Author of the whole tragedy Lastly I noted that in the beginning of a Pleurisie a Vein being cut doth indeed stay the inward breaking forth of blood and the Sick seem to be the better And although a letting out of Blood shall increase weakness yet they adjudge the same not to the Launcet but to the Pleurisie But if there be a more slow
so a small vein being burst had caused a difficult breathing and did also dissemble a Dropsie But when as the rupture of the vein being more rent had poured forth its Blood it choaked the man A certain Dropsical Man and but one onely being seen by me shewed a black and stinking Bubble in the hollow of his Liver Barth-Cabrollius an Anatomist of Mount-Pellier Saith that he cured very many Dropsical Persons by Incision made in the very Navill it self standing out and that in both sexes But surely if the errour had been in the Liver it could not have issued forth with the water through the Navil or that the Liver being mortally defiled should admit of a restoring Which thing the Schooles will not admit of Wherefore I remember that I have restored above two thousand Dropsical Persons also whose Urine did now wax-blackish with Bloodinesse and who had scarce made a spoon-ful of water in one night whose Liver if it had had but even a mean and not a mortal fault I consess I had not Cured them I have seen also that they whose Liver hath been notably wounded have escaped who although they thenceforth fore-perceived the Storms of the Aire yet not the Dropsie I have seen moreover those whose last day a slow Fever had closed in whose Liver small Stones had grown yet they had not shewn a Dropsie It is a familiar thing for the Liver of Oxen to abound with small Stones although they are continually fed with grasse Whence at leastwise I have learned that Grass-roots do never remove the obstructions of the Liver The Schooles will say to these things the Dropsie indeed is not made from a visible corrupting or obstruction of the Liver as neither from the Salt of the feigned Jamenous-alume as otherwise hath seemed to Paracelsus but from a meer cold and moist Distemperature thereof for so a large Flux of Blood because it brings the aforesaid distemperature it causeth the Dropsie But this is wholly prattle old Wives Fables and vain sounds For first of all I have sufficiently demonstrated the nullities of mixtures and temperatures not any more to be repeated 2. I have seen many all the venal Blood of whom a Consumption had exhausted so as that scarce two ounces had remained when their Heart Lungs and Liver were plucked out but their Liver was of a yellowish Colour because it was without Blood yet there was no cold and moist distemper in these Livers as neither a Dropsie the Supposed son of its feigned Mother 3. If much Flux of Blood should generate cold and moist distemperatures surely the Schooles do not affirm that thing to be done but by the reason of a withdrawing of the vital Spirit which alone is the cause of our heat But the defect whereof seeing it includes a privation it cannot induce a positive Being such as a cold and moist distemperature and Dropsie should be 4. And likewise seeing they will have contraries to be contained under the same general kinde our vital heat which they will have to answer to the Element of the Stars cannot have an Elementary cold contrary unto it 5. A notable Flux of Blood doth of necessity cause cold And therefore if a cold distemperature arisen from a Flux of Blood should be of necessity the mother of the Dropsie at every notable flux of blood the Dropsie should of necessity be present But the consequent is false Therefore also the Antecedent 6. And moreover seeing cold from a flux of blood becomes universal there is no reason why the Abdomen should be rather loaden with water than the Breast whither to wit the Aire being continually breathed in doth increase the cold 7. If the Dropsie be the son of that distemperature in the Liver Whence therefore is there an uncessant thirst 8. If the Expulsion of water into the Abdomen be an action of a distempered Liver Why doth not the Liver use the same its own expulsive action while the Veines do swell with Urine they being intercepted by a destructive Stone 9. Likewise the Blood of Dropsical Persons even as also the Urine should be exceeding watery if the Dropsie should be from a cold distemperature of the Liver But the Urine should not be so reddish and Bloody 10. In the next place between a Dropsie and cold distemperature arisen from a flux of blood a positive cause being a third from a cold should of necessity interpose Which the Schooles do hitherto name because of a non-being there is no search made 11. Neither also do such distemperatures produce thirst together with a Salt Water in the Abdomen seeing they do not thirst who do plentifully detain a salt Urine throughout all their veins in the Stone which stops up the Reines on both sides 12. If the Dropsie be from a cold distemper Then a Dropsie should never be expected after a Fever or wringing of the Bowels if there be not a branded confusion of causes And in vain do they flee unto a cold distemperature for a Dropsie the which should equally proceed even from opposite causes 13. Every old and decrepite Person should now nourish the necessity of a Dropsie 14. A cold distemper seeing in its root it is like to Death extinguishment old Age and privation every Dropsie should contain a necessary despaire of health even as such a distemperature denies a restauration 15. If the Liver be the Liver and not the Lungs by reason of its Elementary co-tempering as the Schooles say and so from one only Seed all the Elements do proceed and wander hither and thither confused that they may be the constitutives of appointed Organs therefore the Liver receding from its natural temperature shall cease to be the Liver and shall be the Kidney Lungs or Milt 16. At leastwise a Member struck with a Palsey should not be wasted but should be after some sort swollen with a Dropsie 17. At length if the Venal Blood be resolved into four or again into three Humours from whence it is either naturally composed or they are in it being applyed unto or co-mixed in the subject of the Blood The Blood shall never be able to be changed into a Dropsical water Seeing this is not any Humour of the constitutives of the Blood Yet I have seen a country-man out of whom all the water was taken by a Borer in twelve hours space for he being become my Opposite Scoffed at me But the morrow morning being swollen with the former Lumpe of his Belly he died For the Dropsie increased not by degrees even as it had increased from its beginning but it presently hastened and proceeded unto an extream extension For I observed that his Flesh and Blood being melted into Water had made their retreat to the neather part of his Belly For in that one only day he had descended into extream Leannesse Therefore his Flesh and Blood shall now wander into an Hydropical or fifth Humour through the cold distemperature of his Liver I could perhaps pardon
of the Stomack But as a defect of Blood is restored by the more meer or pure meats and drinks So the defect of the Latex is recompenced by watery things it being that which experience teacheth Thirst therefore proceedeth from the governour of the Latex and not from the Bowel of sanguification for there is as much necessity of the Latex as there hath been hitherto dulness in the passing it by Some Authors do commend live Toads being fast bound to both Kidneys to lose the Dropsie by the Urine At leastwise I have seen a Country-man that had a Dropsie cured by an Adder tyed about his Belly and Reins For an Idea of fear is brought on the Reins whereby they loose their indignation Indeed by the same title thirst doth stir up an Idea of sorrow or of a denyed appetite whence the Kidney forgets its wroth From what therefore hath been said before the ignorance of Causes in the Dropsie is sufficient manifest and next with what great obscurity they have laboured about the distemperature of the Liver and emptying of waters how vainly they have thought of provokers of Urine of Vesicatories and of solutive Medicines and it is to be observed in this place that purgative Cholagogals or movers of Cholar have been wickedly given to drink to Dropsical People because they are such things which trans-change the Flesh and venal Blood into a stinking and yellow ballast without the help of a Dropsie But with the destruction of the a Hydropsical person But a hydragogal or mover of water differs from a Cholagogal because that being drunk down the Belly asswageth neither doth it expurge stinking things or excrements unless the force of a Cholagogal be adjoyned to an Hydragogall Therefore Mercury precipitated according to the prescription of Paracelsus cures every Dropsie not as it purgeth but forasmuch as it material passing through the Bowels dissolues the out-hunted Blood But if it together with that do provoke Vomit or Stool that is to the Dropsie by accident Take notice therefore of this that white Briony or white Vine being scraped or filed and laid on a bruise wherein the blood looketh black under the skin doth in few hours resolve that blood into water the which it likewise fetcheth through the skin Wherefore take notice that there is the profitable virtue of an Hydragogal or mover of water in Briony if thou shalt take away the solutive poyson from the same But surely I have observed if Antimony be turned into a liquor and afterwards into a pouder which purgeth only by sweat a remedy is procured which modestly takes away every Dropsie whithout fear of a relaps for truly it removeth as well the occasional Cause as the distemper of the raging Archeus it self For such remedies as are carried through the intestines their natural endowment remaining and being secure and the which are therefore apt to resolve the occasional Cause do free Nature of her impediments whence the Archeus of the Kidney percieving the proper madness of his fore-past fury doth open the veines suck to him and strain the water through according to his due and wonted manner and recompenceth with diligence the stubbornness of his fore-past fury by an excentrical and opposite motion of the Latex grieving that through disorder he intended his own destruction whence it is plain to be seen that the government of the Kidney over the Abdomen and Veins hath hitherto been unknown The Dropsie therefore is a Disease occasionally arisen from a bloody depraved matter as it were from a fermental Beginning at whose incitements the Archeus of the Reins formeth an Idea of indignation through the power whereof he shuts up the Urine-pipes and Veins corrupts and diverts the abounding Latex and transmits this Latex into the compass of the Abdomen or nether part of the Belly in the mean time he so straitens the pores of these Membranes of the Abdomen that they can let nothing of all thorow them even until Death But the Tympany doth very much differ from the Dropsie For there is unto it a different occasional Cause a different manner of making in the next place a different matter and also a different efficient Cause Therefore a different Disposition and a different Product For Water is not generated but Wind And then neither is a Tympany made through the Arbitration of the Kidney but onely by a poysonsom ferment of the spermatick or seedie nourishment sticking and defiled in the crooked bought of the Intestine sitting as President Neither also hath Anatomy hitherto viewed the veines to be swollen with wind neither ought the Liver to suffer punishment by reason of the wringings of the Bowels although aswel the Dropsie as Tympany may follow wringings or gripings Also if the Flatus's of the Intestine should be made by the Liver a Remedy is to be applied to the Liver but not a carminative Medicine to the Intestine or the Schooles make themselves guilty through a different manner of curing For if they were mindfull of their own Theorem that of the same faculty there is a found and infirm Action they had known that Belching and Flatus's are generated by the Bowels and Stomack And so that the crooked bought of the Intestine is no lesse apt for generating of Flatus's than the concave or hollowness thereof A Tympany molesteth from Liquors which were to be assimilated but are become degenerate For a Windinesse or Flatus is made in the Intestine from a certain indisposition of the Archeus of the place who then doth forthwith change meats which are nothing flatulent into a flatus Seeing therefore in the Tympany it is in the out-side or in the crooked bought of the Intestine the same flatulent indisposition is to be considered to be with-out-side as is within in the Intestine To wit it is made from a similar nourishment degenerating whereby a dungy ferment happening the very Archeus of the place being wroth and ill affected doth turn not indeed the aforesaid occasional Cause but the proper nourishment of the Membranes into Flatus's But for this purpose a part of the dungy-ferment doth passe from the inward cavity unto the outward bought of the Intestine And therefore that is not the unsavoury or four flatus of Belchings as neither doth it smel of dung because it is not of a dungy-matter but of a degenerated and cadaverous or mortified nourishment A certain man by the perswasion of Physitians sustaining an Incision on the side of his Navel who was judged to have the Dropsie and that they might draw out the water I being a Young Man and looking on the Chyrurgions Lancet or Fleam being drawn out his Abdomen presently pitched and he by and by died But a Flatus which hugely stank uttered it self and his dead Carcass smelt It is manifest therefore that the occasional matter and next the true matter and inward effecter with all the knowledge which credits a Physitian have remained unknown The vanity also of Remedies appeareth and