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
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
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
than the stars yet the seeds of these are not more ignoble than the seeds of plants or annexed to the stars by the band of a greater subjection Because the Stars were before the Creation of sensitive things therefore it was meet that the Blas of men should not indeed follow the guidance of the Stars but only that it imitate the motion of those not as of motive powers but no otherwise than as by a free motion we do follow the foot-steps of a Coach-man or Post for so our bowels have perhaps assigned the Planets as their fore-runners For every bowel forms a proper Blas to it self within according to the figure of its own Star which also hence is called Astrall or Starlike Because it imitates the foot-steps of the Heaven as well in the priority of the dayes of the Star its fore-runner as in the Laws of appointments in nature Otherwise In infirmities as all the endeavour of nature is sumptomatical so then the Blas of man goes before and fore-sheweth future tempests whereas otherwise in health a humane Blas doth ordinarily follow after the remarkable successive changes of times or seasons But bruit beasts as they were created in a day before man so their Blas doth alwayes go before and fore-run the Blas of the Stars Wherefore many Prognosticks of a Meteor are drawn naturally from beasis And superstition hath had access thereto which hath added Divinings and Sooth-sayings to the credulous and superstitious Yet the Blas which is by the will of living creatures directed to a local motion surely that is by no means connexed unto a Supernatural or Coelestial circumvolving motion Because all carnall Generation flows out of the power of the Seed and the power of the seed from the will of the flesh Therefore fleshly generation hath a Blas of its own readily serving for the uses of its own ends flowing out of the Beginnings of its own Essence which are the will of the flesh and the lust or desire of a manly will Therefore there is in us a twofold Blas To wit One which existeth by a natural motion but the other is voluntary which existeth as a mover to it self by an internal willing Hence therefore it is impossible that the predictions of the Stars should rightly conclude in us It hath now been sufficiently demonstrated that there is something in sublunary things which can move it self locally and alteratively without the Blas of the Heavens and an unmoveable natural mover The will especially is the first of that sort of movers and moveth it self also a seminal Being as well in seeds as in the things constituted of these Moreover as God would so all things were made Therefore from a will they were at first moved For from hence whatsoever unsensitive things are moved they are moved as it were by a certain will and pleasure or precept of nature and have their own natural necessities and ends even as is seen in the beating of the Heart Arteries expelling of many superfluities c. For Galen hath artificially enough distributed the Pulses yet being by Aristotle deluded therein who supposed the end and efficient to be externall causes and thought the ends of Pulses to be their totall Causes For he passing by the proper Blas of the Pulses searched only into the ends and necessities of nature for which things sake indeed the Pulses should not be made but rather measured or modelled And therefore he hath distributed the differences of Pulses into a Scheme or Figure only by their ends And so that therefore he hath not reached their more potent and efficient respects Therefore he hath reduced the Causes of Pulses unto two heads of necessity To wit To the cooling refreshment of the heart to which end the Heart and Arteries should at once dilate themselves and to the casting out of smoaky vapours stirred up by heat For which cause indeed the Heart and Artery should at once presse themselves together and fall down at once for fear of choaking which two by variously interweaving them with their Correlatives according to strength swiftnesse weaknesse hardnesse and greatnesse he hath compiled the differences of Pulses by an artificial diligent search And I wish that his other writings did not bewray that these things were transcribed our of some other Authour But the Antients being not contented with two ends to wit cooling and refreshment and expulsion of smoakinesses have added a third which was the nourishment of the vital spirit by aire As if indeed aire could ever be made vitall spirit For if the Spirit be increased or nourished by aire adjoyned to it seening a Simple Body is not to be digested now only by mixture vitall spirit should be made of aire and now all things shall no longer be nourished immediately of those things whereof they consist Therefore it hath been the ignorance of the Antients who knew not the constitution of the vital spirit thinking that a little water being co-mixed with much wine or a little Tinne co-mixed with much melted gold should be made wine or gold I will tell here what I have perceived after that I made more use of discretion than of the sloath of assenting Therefore I began first to consider That heat was not primarily and of it self in the heart but to be a companion of the life and soul a sign and mean of operation in living creatures that are hot from the nature of the light of the Sun But in fishes that the life is of the nature of a cold light and therefore that it subsists without an actual that is a true heat And therefore that a Pulse is not made in nature for a cooling refreshment of the 〈◊〉 and puffing out or dispersing of smoaks a dissected Frog will teach For in a living Frog thou shalt see his Heart and Arteries to be moved his Heart at every Pulse or by dilating to wax red and by contraction or pressing together to wax more pale although it be not transparent Notwithstanding seeing the Antients thought heat to be the cause of Pulses yet there is none that hath decyphered that heat by its heats by what way reason and mean that heat is stirred up kindled and doth persevere in us because none hath meditated of life and forms And therefore none also of the efficient cause of Pulses None indeed hath hitherto doubted that heat springs from the Heart and none contesteth but that the young is at first nourished by its mothers heat untill that through maturity of dayes a fewel of its own be kindled in it But what that fewel is and why it being once kindled doth not presently dye and doth continue even to the end none hath diligently searched into because all have passed by the life The Schools indeed do feign a fiery heat in us contrary to Aristotle who will have this heat to answer in proportion to the Element of the Stars and hath distinguished it from an Elementary and Fiery one also that it lives
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
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
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
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
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
Some of our Religious Country-men are almost for a whole year so cold from the Foot even to the Belly that they do not feel that they have feet wherefore they should likewise be longer lived than us yea and their Legs should be like young mens when as their whole Breast is crisped with old wrinckles if primogeneal moisture being consumed by heat should afford an unavoidable necessity of death And likewise as well Fishes as those Religious men ought to refuse the daily refreshments of nourishment because scarce any thing doth exspire thorow the pores or if heat should be of the essence of our life certainly the part languishing with continual cold should either die or at least should be changed into a Fish Whence it is plain that heat is onely an adjacent to our life and its concomitant token but not the primary foundation thereof Therefore the Schools may see how unfitly they have hitherto circumscribed the whole constitutive temperature of nature in heat For far be it hereafter so blockishly to phylosophize and not to know that the consuming of moisture by heat which is terminated with in-thickning is one thing and that which is wholly moved forward to transpiration by an extenuating Ferment is by far another For this leaveth no residence behinde it but that a Sandy Stone or Coal But if an increased heat doth sometimes rise up in us so that it is that which doth as it were burn the members gangrene them and like fire make an Eschar or now and then doth eat into the flesh like a Dormouse those indeed are the works of corrosive degenerating lawless Salts that are banished from the vital Common-wealth So also by laxative poysons and Fluxes the whole venal bloud is resolved into putrefaction and the venal bloud being resolve by other poysons into a liquor Sunovie or Gleary water poyson jaundous excrement c. doth flow sorth oft-times most sharp and oft-times raging without a Corrosive For such kind of errors do happen in the life for therefore in a dead carcasse they do cease as they by a proper Blas do put on the animosity of nature corrupted by the Life and the life doth enflame a sword whereby it doth manifoldly hurt it selfe even as sometimes concerning diseases At length whether there be any Animal spirit to be distinguished in the Species from the Vital or whether the disputation thereof be a true brawling about a name I have shewn what a thing is in it self whereunto a name adds nothing or can take away nothing The vital spirit doth climb through the chief Arteries into the head But in the heart or middle of the Brain there is one onely bosom which being beheld above seemeth double but its Vault being lifted upwards it sheweth a onenesse Moreover in this bosom the Arteries do end into a certain wrinckled vessel plainly of another weaving or texture than is the other compaction of Arteries Hereby indeed the vital spirit flowes abroad and exspireth into the bosom of the Brain for the service of the chief faculties to wit of the imagination judgement and memory Hereby also it proceeds to be distributed into the small mouths of the Sinews beginning from the Brain So that if it be to be called Animal as receiving or under-going in the Brain a limitation of the part it doth obtain the properties fit for an appointed function yet it doth not therefore seem diverse from the vital by its matter and efficient cause For truly in the largeness of its own vital light it is capable of all those Properties without the thorow changing of its native essence For that Spirit which is thrust forth unto the tongue doth exercise the tasting but that same doth not tast in the fingers but doth every where receive a particular Character of Organs or Instruments and puts on a particular property The which if thy mind carry thee to distinguish from the vital spirit there shall again be as many essential divisions of the spirit as there are offices and as many as there are services divided by the pluralities of offices In the mean time understand the thing and call it as thou listest For I am not contradictory to the Schools out of a stomackful passion for I being admonished by a superiour Authority ought only to have laid open their errours and to teach things unknown Let they themselves likewise disclose my errours or mistakes with an equal mind surely I shall rejoyce if so be that onely my neighbour do obtain the profit which I wish CHAP. XXVII Heat doth not digest efficiently but only excitatively or by way of stirring up 1. Heat is not the proper instrument of digestion 2. What hath deceived the Schools herein 3. The defences of the Schools 4. The rashness of Paracelsus 5. The anguishes of the Schools 6. They forgot their own Maxim concerning contraries 7. They have constrainedly made heat and the predicament of heat more powerful than fire 8. Digestion and Seething do differ 9. Ferments are angry because they are put after 10. What the univocal action of heat is 11. A fish digesteth without heat 12. There is no place for potential heat in things to be digested 13. An Argument of hunger 14. Another from the unity of specifical heat 15. The third from a Maxim 16. Another Argument 17. Why sowre belching after the savour of burntish ones is good 18. Why one sick of a Fever abhorreth fleshes 19. From the scope of healing 20. The admiring of Paracelsus 21. An error of the same man 22. The digestive sorce of Hens 23. The Authour being as yet a Boy learned the true cause of digestion 24. He knew resolving to be from sowrnesse 25. We grow old only through extream want of Ferments 26. The quality of a fermenting sowrnesse 27. Whence is the dislike of some meats 28. The forces of ferments 29. Mice accuse the Schools of errour 30. Why the Ferment of the stomack is divers from it self 31. A commendation of the Spleen 32. Degrees of heat and cold do vary 33. The errours of the Schools concerning the degrees of Elements 34. The degrees of Chymicall heat 35. The Authour hath made degrees of distinction 36. Moisture and drynesse are not to be considered as qualities 37. Why they do not admit of degrees 38. Hence trifles were introduced by the Antients into the doctrine of the Elements BEcause the whole foundation of nature is thought to hang on the hinge of heat and the Elements mixtures and temperaments are already banished far off therefore to establish the progeny of the Archeus and vital Spirits we must hence following speak of digestions The which because the Schools have enslaved to heat I will shew that heat is not the proper instrument of digestions Indeed the metaphor of digestion hath deceived the Schools to wit it being by a Poetical liberty borrowed from a rustical sense introduced they have made concoction of the same name with digestion And as they knew seething
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
Bowels after the manner of Stars For although the Stars do borrow their light from the Sun yet there is in every one of them his own peculiar property and strength of acting which is far most evident in the Moon about the ebbings flowings and overflowings of the Sea Be it therefore that the arteries of the Spleen do supply the place of the Sun yet the Spleen it self hath obtained a double and native dignity peculiar to it self although the Family-service of the Heart rejoyceth in the preparing of vital blood and spirit Therefore the Spleen is the seat of the Archeus the which seeing he is the immediate Instrument of the sensitive soul doth determine or limit or dispose of the vital actions of the soul residing in the stomach For the sensitive soul doth scarce meditate of any thing without the help of the Archeus because it rejoyceth not being abstracted as doth the minde the which in its ebbing or going back by an extasie doth sometimes and without the props of the Archeus and corporal Air intellectually contemplate of many and great things Also in exorbitances of the Archeus an aversion confusion exorbitancy and indignation is administred And the sensitive soul it self being as it were the husk of the minde doth alwayes will it nill it make use of the Archeus Hence indeed all foolish madnesses some whereof onely have been made known are called praecordial or Midriffe ones and are ascribed to the place about the short Ribs the which notwithstanding do spring from the same seat and the same fountain of the soul as it were by the hurting of one onely point Also Remedies do scarce materially go without the hedges or bounds of the stomach And therefore they are rare which are brought thorow unto the spleen which thing in the difficulties of a Quartane Ague is plain enough to be seen For the immortal minde is read to be inspired into Adam by omnipotency and that without the Wedlock of the sensitive soul And that breath of life he calls a substance And therefore that is not found to be breathed into bruit Beasts Therefore the minde was first of all immediately tied to the Archeus as to its own Organ or Instrument the which therefore it could at its pleasure daily substitute a-new out of the meats being sufficiently and alwayes and perpetually alike strong And from thence to awaken the immortal life worthy of or meet for it self For truly the immortal minde being every where present did perform all the offices of life immediately by the Archeus and the which therefore doth borrow his own liveliness from the minde who also is therefore after some sort superiour to mortal things and seemed to be the foster-Child of a more excellent Monarchy than of a sublunary one These things were so before the fall of Adam But seeing that in the same day of their transgression they were made guilty of death a soul subject to death came unto them the Vicaresse and Companion of the minde To wit unto whom the minde it self straightway transferred the dispositions of the government of the Body For at first there was an immediate Wed-lock of the immortal minde with the Archeus Presently after the fall and the stirring up of the sensitive soul the minde withdrew it â—â—lf like a Kernel into the center of the sensitive soul whereto it was tied by the bond of life The minde is not nourished by foods it could chuse meats for its own Archeus and prepare them for him who now is constrained with an unwearied study to watch for his own support of nourishment And that by degrees he lesse and lesse fitly prepares and applies to himself by reason of the defective duration and power of the sensitive soul Thus therefore I ought to speak concerning the seat of the minde of the material occasion of mortality and the necessities of Diseases and distemper For truly what things are here required in the Treatise of the entrance of death into humane nature is demonstrated at large with an explication of that Text From the North shall evill be stretched out over all the Inhabitants of the Earth Therefore for a Summary The central place of the Soul is the Orifice or upper mouth of the stomach no otherwise than as the Root of Vegetables is the vital place of the same The minde sitteth in the sensitive soul whereto it was consequently bound after the fall But the Brain is the executive member of the canceipts of the soul as it sits chief over the sinews and muscles in respect of motion but in respect of sense or feeling it possesseth in it self the faculties of memory will and Imagination Therefore the stomach failing or being defective there are palenesses tremblings drith's Consumptions of the flesh and strength wringings of the Belly or Guts the Asthma or stoppage of breathing Jaundises Palsies Convulsions giddinesses of the Head Apoplexies c. For the most famous Physitians do wonder that oft-times extream defects are overcome not otherwise than by remedies pertaining to the stomach and that the evil of the stomach doth bring forth Diseases far distant from it self And the more modern Physitians are amazed that vulnerary potions should succesfully cure wounds of the joynts And that according to Paracelsus the Cancer Wolf the eating inflamed Ulcer are cured by a Drink Therefore the errour of those that cure the more outward parts that are ill-affected as if they were fundamental ones and they who do translate all healing about the head it being hurt by the lower parts proceedeth from hence by reason of the ignorance of the seat of the Soul life and government CHAP. XXXVIII From the Seat of the Soul unto Diseases 1. A greater sense is proved to be in the mouth of the Stomach than in the eye or fingers 2. The Schools do every where being unconstrained consent to the Paradox concerning the seat of the Soul although they do openly dissent therefrom 3. The wayling of those that are exorbitant through much leachery 4. The life of the stomach is chief over the other digestions 5. The Ferment that is a friend to the stomach is afterwards an enemy to all the particular shops of digestions 6. Divers Diseases are stirred up by the Ferment of the stomach being transplanted 7. The snare of Gatarrhs 8. The foundation of Diseases 9. The joynt-sickness proves that thing 10. Very many Diseases do flow centrally from the stomach which are feared and healed by the Head 11. Of what sort the co-mixture of the Character of some Diseases may be 12. How Medicines applied to or bound about the Head do operate 13. It is proved that the seat of the Soul is not in the heart it self 14. Remarkable things about the Character of Diseases 15. Why the effects of fear do vary their own effects 16. The same thing is considered for a poysonous occasional cause 17. They are appropriated to the vital light 18. An objection 19. The intent of the Author 20.
that it is written that Abraham carried the Messiah in his Loyns That is unaptly withdrawn from the spleen unto the Reins from a bowel I say chiefly vital unto an excrementous shop and sieve I have noted also very many who from a Quartane Ague had retained their spleen ill affected to have been very much curtail'd in the provocation to leachery I have also observed Women in a difficult labour for some dayes an adventurous or experienced draught being offered them to have brought forth at furthest within the space of half an hour And that thing hath been proved 200 times and more For surely the Medicine being as yet in the stomach the mouth of the share is opened and the folding-doores of the Ossacrum are opened in the loins and the Young is presently expelled Indeed I have noted the Stomach to keep the Keyes of the Womb And this medicine I have divulged willingly for the good of my Neighbour that she who is in labour may not hence-forward undergo the danger of her life But it is the Liver together with the Gaul of an Eele being dried and powdered and drunk in Wine to the quantity of a Filburd-Nut The gift of God is in this Simple That seeing the Woman ought to bring forth in pain by reason of the envy of the Serpent God whose Spirit was carried upon the waters hath filled them with his blessing He would have the Eele or water-Serpent by his bowels of a sanguifying power to appease the rigour of that curse The Liver of Serpents would effect the same and perhaps better but in the experiment of the Eele the event hath never deceived From this time likewise the Judiciary divination by the Stars Hermes his scale and whatsoever is supported by the point of Nativity falls to the ground But upon occasion hereof I shall a little digress in what part the Young is knit to the womb by the Navil-strings and without the coat of the Secundines or the swadling-band of the Young it hath a substance in form of a Spleen as Vesalius witnesseth And so it hath as it were an external spleen to wit wherein as it were the venal bloud of the Kitchin and the Arterial bloud of the Mother is re-cocted the Spleen in this respect stirs up in me a suspition of a more exact sanguification than that of the Liver to wit as the venal bloud being there re-cocted by so manifold a winding of Arteries doth go back as it were from the stomach to the heart Even so as Birds and Beasts that chew the Cud do rejoyce in a double stomach At least it is manifest that that external milt doth command the conceits of her that is with child For the mothers themselves do wonder that they are then affected with such unaccustomed conceits longings furious frights and storms of troubles But it is no wonder to me seeing nothing is milty or like to the milt if it do not swell with the properties of the milt But that is a wonder that this flesh of the milt is not informed by the soul of the Mother or Young but that it enjoyes a life of its own being communicared on both sides For it hath not a sensitive Soul seeing that it is also long before quickning but it possesseth it self in manner of a Zoophyte or a Plant alive such as are Sponges and also the thicker muscilages swimming in our Sea which do enlarge embrace strain suck and shew forth rare testimonies of life being present with them Moreover if the poyson of a mad Dog or a Tarantula do make a madness limited and that like unto it self it is now wonder also that this milty lump is enlightned participatively doth live balsamically and move the minde of the woman with childe with a diverse passion As well because it performs the office of a Kitchin as because there are in the things themselves their own vain visions or apparitions as is manifest in a mad Dog But besides the minde of man being the near Image of the most high wholly immortal doateth indeed with the sensitive soul but is not capable of suffering by a little Liquor Because the passions of the sensitive soul do affect the minde which they cover within themselves do roul up and co-knit in a bond The minde indeed properly is not sick although it hearken to the frailty of the sensitive soul whence it is made manifest that the sensitive thoughts or cogitations are from flesh and bloud according to that saying For flesh and bloud have not revealed these things unto thee Therefore discourse and conceit is from the milt or spleen as being a bowel most sanguine of all and rich in very many Arteries But I have proved elsewhere that the conceit of a woman although it be formed in the spleen yet that it is brought down for the most part with a straight line unto the womb whether there be a Young within it or not and therefore the principality of the womb doth war under banners of its own neither therefore is it evidently seen in its own rest but onely while according to a wicked pleasure and fury it strains wrings blunts choaks resolves and looseneth its Clients poureth forth bloud c. But the Duumvirate doth on every side keep a due proportion of life and that with so sweet a pleasant tuning or musical measure of the life that therefore it hath hitherto been passed by by the Schools But as soon as it withdrawes its government the strengths of the parts how chief soever they are are eclipsed For so there are faintings Apoplexies Epilepsies heart-beatings or tremblings giddinesses of the the Head and madnesses And so indeed that as the occasional root of which defects is voluntarily consumed and the circuits and durations of the same do vanish away even as in the milder Fevers So also they may be voluntarily silent that they may forget to return however the boastings of Physitians do differ in this thing For those whose Roots do the more stubbornly cleave unto them they are the more fully con-tempered therefore after another manner they altogether resist a voluntary resolving and therefore they wax old together with it together with the nourishments of the stomach and do expect their own relapsing fruits unto the end of life And therefore an Epitaph of uncurableness of these defects not voluntarily ceasing is now every where read to be subscribed because they have hitherto wanted a meet Secret whereby they may be rooted out But the Roots of these Diseases as long as they do affect onely the inflowing Spirit they produce off-springs proper to their own seed and Inn For so the falling-sickness because it besiegeth both Spirits it dashneth together as well the faculties of the body as of the sensitive Soul And so that hath distinguished a great Apoplexie from a little one that the lesse hath besieged the inflowing Spirit but the greater the implanted Spirit Likewise there are in Simples those faculties which make drunk
Falling-sickness with a liberty of returning or not according to the requirance of their root Therefore the Head is not onely chief over the lower Organs but also these are likewise chief over the Head the which I have elsewhere declared in a manifest example by hanging For truly the thorny marrow being encompassed in the middle of the turning Joynts cannot be strained by the Rope that it should deny the passage of breathing to the Spirit the mover nevertheless the understanding sense and memory perish at the same instant by reason of the stopping or shutting up of the Arteries of the throat even before an every way stopping of Air whence it is sufficiently manifest that some intellectual light doth continually spring from the lower parts unto the Head by the intercepting whereof presently in hanging and drowning although the Brain thorny marrow and sinews be not hurt every virtue power and light of the Soul doth nevertheless perish As also in a Feverish doatage raised up from the lower parts the discourse of Reason perisheth There is therefore a reciprocal government of the lower parts I willingly confess also that dimnesses giddinesses of the Head deasnesses Apoplexies Epilepsies and other evils of that sort do arise from the lower parts yet not to be derived by vapours unto the Head For if they should ascend by the way of the Throat or Weasand they should at leastwise afford nothing but a distillatory and unsavoury water But I have shewen elswhere that watery vapours or exhalations cannot be carried so much as to the plain of the brain and much lesse into the bosoms of the same Therefore let the fault and guilt of vapours in the aforesaid Diseases be vain And then neither are vapours carried out of the Stomach unto the heart and head through Arteries and Sinewes encompassing the mouth of the stomach Seeing the Schools themselves confess that it is not the office of the sinewes to draw from forreign parts Indeed they will have the Arteries to draw Air for the cooling refreshment of the heart and the pressing out of smoaks Neither of which I have shewen to be true But at leastwise that hath not place here in the Arteries ending into the stomach seeing they do never hope to inspire cold air likewise that not loaded with a smoakie vapour out of the stomach nor out of the bottom of the belly as neither fresh air yea neither in the next place should it be convenient to expel their smoake vapours thither where they should be much more hurtful to the stomach than being detained in their proper seats For the mouth of the stomach hath not undeservedly received its name as to be the mouth of the heart Because more powerful tokens signes of life and more horrible storms of disturbances do arise up out of the stomach than from any other place therefore neither was air to be drawn out of the stomach and much lesse a vapour the fewel and beginning of so many evils or smoakinesses to be expelled into the stomach by the arteries that is giddyish Epyleptical Apoplectical vapours c. are not drawn neither do they voluntarily ascend thorow the Arteries For truly the unutterable Creator hath directed all the aims of things unto the necessities and requirances of uses Lastly therefore if the aforesaid Reeds do not draw hurtful and diseasifying vapours surely much lesse shall the stomach send or expel those thorow the arteries or a sinew Seeing that it could after another manner most speedily free it self by belching For neither is the stomach a pair of bellowes that it ought against the will of the Pipes to derive hurtful vapours conceived for it into the chest of life And moreover the stomach hath but few veins and it is a strange thing for these to beg any thing out of the stomach as hath been proved in its own place wherefore vapours are not carried thorow the veins For which way should they allure and receive that which is besides the appointment of nature How should the stomach snuff up its vapours into most straight or narrow vessels which are filled with bloud especially those which are not strong in drawing For I consider the stomach not indeed after the manner of Galen that it is a sack or naked Kettle dedicated to the cooking of meats but as a vital bowel which is prevalent in tasting smells out a thing and which is driven with divers appetites as if it were a living Creature and now and then it so loatheth some things that a man had rather die than to swallow one morsel which goes against his stomach Indeed the stomach is of necessity serviceable to the whole Body also for the vile Houshold-service of the Kettle But thus far other things do diversly obey it and unless they give serious heed they are cruelly beaten According to that saying He that will be the greatest among you let him be the least Surely the stomach is diligently busied in a low service yet the family-service of the stomach is not therefore vile or base no more than for the High-Priest of the Jewes to have played the butcher but being compared with the stomach he was a certain counterfeit or personage of life with a famous majesty If a Sinew Artery and Vein are seen implanted in the stomach indeed they are rather signes of Clientship and recompences whereby they confess themselves bowels tied or obliged to the stomach than that they were added unto it for Government Mast and Sails But neither indeed will I have this Principality to be so conserred on the stomach as if the Government of that Common-wealth doth wholly belong to that membrane it self For of the Spleen and Stomach I make one onely Wedlock and one Marriage-Bed Wherein I attribute to the Spleen the offices of a Husband in the first motions and to the Stomach in the first sense or feeling Therefore the Stomach is the compleating of the Spleen and the Spleen of the Stomach under the one only Bride-bed of them both is the Principality of one Duumvirate Yet I do never cease to contemplate of that which is sufficiently admirable what the Lord of things hath fore-seen I say in the naked coats of the Brain Womb Stomach Pericardium c. I say in the Membranes but that in things which are abject in the sight of men God hath wont to constitute his wonders whose name be sanctified for ever CHAP. XLIII The Duumvirate or Sheriffdome 1. Sleep is from a Sleepifying or somnoriferous power and not from a defect 2. The Opinion of the Schools concerning Sleep 3. The Opinion of the Antients is opposed 4. Contradictions 5. The thingliness of Opiates 6. The immpossiblity is shewn from the Scituation of the Sinews 7. That Sleep happens the Opiate remaining within the Stomack 8. From the effect of Opium 9. The Sulphur of Vitriol is taught 10. Some absurdities accompanying the position of the Schools 11. A ridiculous privy shift 12. When Dreams are made 13. Why
recompence the fore-going errours and defect Nevertheless although it may be lawful from the aforesaid considerations to prove a greater necessity of difficult Breathing yet at leastwise they do nothing convince why there is a straightned Breathing in our Man of sixty Years old but otherwise in a healthy person not any at all And seeing in the Man of sixty Years old the Lungs do want obstruction even as is manifest from the signs supposed it must needs be also that his defect be fetched from elsewhere especially seeing he feels in his Abdomen or lower Belly the place of his Stomack pressings together the causes of his Asthma Therefore his Asthma is from the Spleen being ill affected and that from the Duumvirate and the cause is stirred up by an ascending motion otherwise sleeping by reason of the considerations above which by the action of government doth otherwise strain a weak Lungs by aspect only no otherwise than as was declared concerning a dry Asthma whither a lurking Falling-sickness the pain of the Spleen after riding the sore shaking of the whole Body in riding c. do tend Moreover that I may give the more safe judgment whether the Lungs did labour by a passion of its own or indeed by a secondary passion I busily enquired whether he felt carnal copulation troublesome unto him and he confessed to me that before the Asthma was manifested Venus had hurt him that after the flesh lyact he felt cold in his Breast a looseness in his Muscles and fainting threatned unto him But involuntary pollutions that he experienced no such thing At length in his old age presently after a seldome carnal act that he perceived a snorter of Phlegms in his rough Artery or else silence Whence I certainly conjectured that seeing from an Infant he had retained his Spleen troubled by a Quartane-ague and falling-sickness and that the Milt is the nest of carnal Lust because in the case proposed the Duumvirate strikes the Lungs with a right Line especially being prostrated by an unequal strength that the provoking and radical cause of his Asthma was in the Spleen yet so as that the Lungs doth not altogether want blame although it labour not with the first or chief affect of the Asthma For it sufficeth that it is trodden down by an unequal strength that the Duumvitate may exercise on it its own diseasie Tyranny For if the Lungs should labour with an Asthma from a primary or first affect or moving they should continually pant for Breath and breath forth a difficult air Indeed a thin or slender poyson layes hid in the Duumvirate which is the cause of this dry Asthma ordinarily fast a sleep in it self nor awakened but by too much motion and so in climbing sooner than in descending for the considerations of the oblique Muscles of the bottom of the Belly afore-touched Neither doth that poyson strike the Heart and Lungs materially in manner of an exhalation vapour or Smoakiness but by the action of Government And seeing the Heart doth beat the pulse is inordinate and also a great and frequent panting for Breath is desired and the place between the Navil and mouth of the Stomack is vexed from one only cause stirred up and by one only motion and after a like manner it becomes undoubted that there is one only Poyson which may affect the vital power of the Heart and Lungs Then also he is vexed more grievously manifestly and cruelly every Year because an unacceptable guest abiding in the Spleen doth daily through old age become more troublesom And these things I have more strongly concluded with my self because that Asthmatical Man doth complain that for many Years his left hand was now and then astonied or stupified and that he was cold in the Palm or hollow of his Hand under the auricular or ear vein and likewise that his left shoulder did greatly pain him although laden with a light habite if he walketh the farther although but modestly For I have observed that all Splenetick persons when the Spleen begins by reason of old age to fail of its office do difficultly breath This therefore is sufficient to be spoken concerning the Asthma of the Man of sixty Years of of age one thing only I will here note to wit that his left hand in the length of the palm doth pain him through cold piercing it and likewise that his fingers are now and then benummed from the discommodities of his Spleen that that is made by the action of Government But if the Schools do command that that comes to pass by reason of blind vapours at leastwise let them strew the way whereby they may go thitherto The archer therefore of this Asthma is in the Duumvirate but his mark is the Lungs Therefore there is a two-fold Asthma a moist and a dry one That indeed hath found its name from a plenteous spitting by reaching and for the most part is made by the proper vice of the Lungs and so is continual and doth more trouble one at seasons the cold and the moist in old age weakness and things a-kin to Death But a dry Asthma is for the most part interrupted And even as it tumultuously sore shaketh the whole Body even the Teeth with a confusion of the vital Spirits it must needs be the Falling-sickness of the Lungs wherein the Lungs alone suffereth a constraining or convulsion of it self because it causeth a straining together of the Pores thereof For in this Asthma the whole Archeus is defiled in its root some part to wit the Womb or Spleen c. doth first affect the inbred Spirit of the Lungs by the action of government And therefore from an invisible and sudden immaterial storm the whole Body is sore shaken and is again suddenly restored to an unhoped for health In vain therefore are openings of the pores hitherto unknown attempted in a dry Asthma and in vain are many and easie expectoratings because they are cloakative and vain helps as many as are intent on products or effects indeed vain are the Remedies which are wont to be administred in Coughs seeing the Cough doth most far differ from a dry Asthma But a moist Asthma although it for the most part produceth the Cough that it may expectorate the produced Snivelliness yet it is severed from the Cough in the whole particular kind because it is wont to be bred from many causes For it hath either a mattery imposthume or some secret phlegm obstructing in the very bowel it self or an imprinted mark of some cold or some other injury from whence it may bring forth many muckinesses or snivels and corrupt its proper nourishment Oft-times also those muckinesses are stirred up not so much from the malady of the Bowe◠as from the weakness of the wandring keeper Although this kind of vice 〈…〉 rather bring forth a Cough than an Asthma yet they do easily happen or agree together for the unequal strength of the Lungs and obstruction thereof The
corrupter of the Lungs which doth empty the membranes of the veins the gristles of the rough Artery and the whole lungs of their nourishment and transchangeth them uncessantly and with a continual thread into divers filths But if a spitting of blood hath gone before and an Ulcer be present learn thou to prepare medicines wherewith Paracelsus hath cured the Consumption Any of those Medicines which cure the Cancer and eating Ulcers being taken in I say at the mouth which is to have cured the Ulcer of the Lungs For whatsoever cureth by its draught an Ulcer of the thigh or foot why may it not do also the same in the Lungs But what will the Schools do they are ignorant of the Causes they are ignorant of the Remedies and with a lofty countenance do mock at Mercurius Diaphoreticus which is sweet like honey and fixed and the volatile tincture of Lile And likewise the milk or element of Pearls For unless the whole Body be universally tinged with a super-eminent Balsam internal Ulcers are never made whole or confirmed For the Lungs first waxing old and first dying doth most difficultly recover from threatned death and doth therefore reboundingly despise the Remedies of the vulgar Wherefore a continued error of the Schools succeedeth which sooner than they do acknowledge a defect in their own wan Medicines they accuse nature of defects and its most glorious Author of a drowsie omission To wit they decree that the four lobes of the Lungs are as long as we live uncessantly enlarged and pressed together like bellows for the use of breathing so that the blast or imbreathed Air is drawn only within the Lungs neither that it doth reach any further to the hollow of the breast which thing surely hath afforded no guiltless ignorance in healing Even as also the sporting or mocking privy shift of the Physitian For by an uncessant and unexcusable necessity of enlarging and pressing together or from a restless motion of the Lungs they endeavour to excuse themselves of the impossible miseries of the Ulcers of the Consumption and other parts Alas as if for the future they could cure an ulcerated Cancer and quiet Fistula of the fundament and eyes at pleasure which error I thus oppose A thin fine dust of Atomes flies about the Air but by a continual necessity we draw our breath together with powdered or dusty Atomes and therefore also the whole breast should be filled up with clay or dirt unless we should have Lungs in the windings whereof the aforesaid Atomes of dust should be affixed and in this respect the Lungs do not else unburden themselves of their excrements but by spitting by reaching to wit that the conceived dust being ensnared may be brought forth together with the daily excrement of the Lungs Surely it is a use which hath been neglected by the Schools unanimously denying the Lungs to be passable Indeed hair in the nostrils doth detain every fiber flying in the Air and drives it away lest it be drawn inwards and then a manifold enlargement of the pipes of the rough Artery causeth whereby the more thin fine dust doth after anothermanner the less fully pass A. Furthermore that it is certain that the Lungs is wholly unmoved that is sufficiently manifest not only from their use already manifested B. But besides much more because the substance of the Lungs is altogether uncapable of enlarging and pressing together C. Therefore in that manner the Lungs of Birds it serving for the same uses in a Bird and us where it is firmly annexed to the ribs refuseth all enlarging and pressing together of bellows D. In the next place the Lungs consist of three vessels suitably dispersed throughout the whole to wit one being the arterial vein the venal Artery and the rough Artery substance of the venal blood and a membrane as it were a gown being poured about or spread over them But the three vessels are channels equally divided throughout the whole Lungs the two former whereof are filled with blood and so uncapable to lay up new imbreathed Air within them But the third channel doth alwayes appear filled with Air and therefore it is also uncapable of other new and in-breathed Air unless the Air contained shall give place to a stranger shall enter into the breast and so that third channel or pipe be bored thorow together with the membrane cloathing the Lungs For this third channel is alwayes stretched out and laying open with gristly rings and those co-touching one another no otherwise than as the trunk of the rough Artery it self But the fourth part of the bowel is its substantial flesh equally uncapable of Air approaching it Lastly the fifth part is the little membrane or coat of the Lungs There is nothing therefore of these which is capable of new Air nothing capable to receive new breath and nothing which may sustain an enlarging and pressing together or motion A wonder surely it is with how great drowsiness the Schools do nevertheless snort in that they know all and admit of the things already spoken nevertheless do not yet even at this day cease to teach that the Lungs like a pair of bellows are driven with a continual motion E. Furthermore it being as yet granted that the third of the vessels or aforesaid pipes were not full of Air but plainly altogether empty of all Air at least wise after respiration or breathing forth when as notwithstanding it otherwise layes open neither is it able to fall down on it self like a bladder the gristle of rings forbidding that thing it should conceive at least as much new Air in it self as the part of the bowel should otherwise be Notwithstanding seeing we do at one only turn breath in at pleasure so great a part of Air as the whole Lungs is large It is altogether of necessity that the Air be not only breathed into the pipes of the rough Artery to press down and enlarge the other impotent parts but that it do proceed inwardly from these into the hollowness of the breast F. In the next place if the muscles between the ribs of any one be pierced by a dagger the wound is presently bewrayed to have pierced thorow For by a windy blast it extinguisheth the flame of a candle But if afterwards the wound be shut by breathing in and again be opened by breathing out it alway blows out the light of a Candle Which is impossible to be done unless the conveighed and inspired Air proceed beyond or thorow the Lungs into the breast And by consequence that the Lungs are at rest Especially because there is in the breast a double Mediastinum or partitional membrane or coat from the top to the bottom of the breast for the defending of the heart from the injuries of the Air. Which Mediastinum or Midriffe divideth the right side of the breast from the left G. Therefore it is manifest by a mechanical necessity that the breath is carried in a right line
incredible straitness and slenderness of Pipes or Channels Hence indeed are there sudden Ecclipses Apoplexies Epilepsies Giddinesses Swoonings c. to wit as oft as the sensitive Soul ceaseth to beam forth its Light into the Organs 7. For there is in the Pipe of the Artery of the Stomack a Vital Faculty of that Soul for the beaming forth Beams of Light unto the heart so long as it is in a good state But when as it behaves it self rashly or amiss presently also Heart-beatings Faintings Giddinesses of the Head Apoplexies Epilepsies Drowsie-evils Watchings Madnesses Head-aches Convulsions c. are stirred up In the next place also there is by the Soul the Governness of the vital Faculties breathed its own vital Virtue through the Stomack-Veines unto the Liver and so from the Unity of the Soul divers natural endowments do flow forth unto all the Organs for truly alwayes and on every side all things as well in the Universe as in us do issue from one point For that mortal Soul and Seminal constant Governess of the Body seeing it is occasionally begged from the Disposition of the arterial Blood it of necessity also inhabits in the Organs as well in the bloudy Spleen as in the unbloody Membrane of the Stomack Verily even as the Brain the Fountain and Judge of the Acts of Perceivances or Feelings doth most especially want Sense or Feeling and therefore also it is many times read in the Holy Scriptures That the Soul of Man dwells in the Blood 8. It sufficeth therefore in this place that the sensitive Soul being placed in these seats doth there unfold its Virtues and from thence diversly send them forth 9. For indeed Sleep Watching Appetite Digestion Ferment Chearfulness c. do discover by their plurality a health of the Functions even as also in the same Fold and cemral Fountain the Apoplexie Epilcpsie Vertigo or Giddiness Madness Fury Forgetfalness c. are entertained For truly the one onely sensitive Soul is the immediate Cause Center Nest Fountain and Original of all vital Faculties and Actions whatsoever But in this Path it is sufficient to have rehearsed that which else where I have profesly demonstrated that in the more inward Coat of the Stomack as it were in a Bride-bed the Mortal Soul doth dwell and that it involves in it the immortal Mind within its Bosom But that all those Powers are vital in their Function indeed distinct although not in their vitality or livelinesse and so so proper and peculiar unto the Soul it self that the Etimology of their Propertie hath sprung from thence 10. Wherefore without Controversie also I suppose that all Diseases universally because they rising up against the Powers of the Soul are Adversaries and Hostile do also immediately assault or invade the fraile and mortal Soul Against which indeed they are able to shake their Spears or Darts and pierce the same by reason of the likeness of a sublunary Symbole 11. Which strife indeed doth first happen in the Archeus himself the Porter of the Soul and from thence they are more inwardly derived and do pierce even unto the kernel of the Soul it self 12. Diseases also which are brought from without and forreignly to within do stand as retainingly subject to this right as those which of their own free accord do wax hot or which are struck out of the Flint of the Archeus Wherefore although I have already accused most Remedies of an impossibility of piercing yet it sufficeth a Physitian if the Medicine doth in the very mentioned Inne of the Soul talk with the same in its own possession But surely these things are new and unheard of an unexpected Philosophy of Healing But the novelty it self ought little to deterre us so truths are demonstrated Especially it should be most difficult to perswade that all madnesses do spring from the region of the Stomack unlesse it had been voluntarily and freely granted me that some Madness is praecordial or from the Midriffs and likewise that the Stomack it self is the Seat of the concupiscible Faculty that Sleep likewise and Watchings are raised up c. from thence Unlesse I say the Falling-sickness were the more frequently felt to be lifted up out of the inmost room of the Stomack into the Heart and Head and so that the upper parts do for the most part languish through a secondary passion of the inferiour parts But if the Falling-sickness doth sometimes seem to be raised up from the Feet yet at leastwise it never invades without Swooning and never takes away the Senses unlesse it shall first sore shake or trouble the sensitive Soul it self and the principal Faculies thereof and the proportion of the commotion should determine or limit the proportion of the fit So that although its occasional nest be reckoned to be in the Head or Feet yet the Epileptical fit doth never depart the which leaves not Thirst behind it and by that Sign it bewrays that it had pitched its Fold in the Stomack and that the sensitive Soul was smitten in that part especially where in it planted the thirsting Power But seeing the Falling-Sickness doth prostrate all the powers of the Mind with an Unsensibleness Convulsion and Beating attending on them It is for a certain Sign that the sensitive Soul it self is pierced in its native and wonted place and that it is there and from thence the Governness of all the Senses and principal Faculties Yea and seeing such a spoiling of the Faculties doth not happen as it were by hands or degrees but that there is a commotion of all of them at once by one onely stroke therefore the government of those Faculties is denoted to be smitten in its Center and the Members farther remote from the Stomack are discovered by a secondary Passion as to suffer an onset of that Disease So in like manner also not to possess from a property those vital Powers which they loose Neither let any one be amazed or think this a vain kind of Doctrine although I shall place the Majesty of the Duumvirate within the slenderness of the Membrane of the Stomack For let that thing be proper to the Soul that it is deteined in a place as it were without a place Therefore the Epilepsie painfully and at unwares invading all the Superiority of the sensitive Soul sitting in the Stomack doth argue the very seat of the Soul to be there But not that Epileptical onsets do happen from Fumes or Vapours slowly lifted upwards The which I have also many times elsewhere plentifully confirmed concerning Catarrhes For those Eclipses do happen no otherwise than as if a hole be suddenly stopped through which Light otherwise doth beam forth into an obscure place For the Light is suddenly interrupted and ceaseth So that that thing is so natural to an Apoplexie that among the Germanes and Dutch it hath obtained the Name of a Stroak the which notwithstanding being new I have many times vanquished by procuring Vomit or by the more strong
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
Quick-sighted and provident Nature comes to meet or prevent this same Dryness with a more large Nourishment of Marrow and She would have it to be Fat and less discussable or dispersable by Heates that it may vindicate the Old Age of the Bones from Dryness by its Unctuous Moisture For therefore there is a greater plenty or Marrow in four-footed Beasts that are Aged than in the little Young Ones because there is a greater necessity thereof I therefore do no longer highly esteem of the irrepairable radical Moisture for the Foundation of Life as neither being astonished at Dryness in as much as it is such neither also am I wont to measure out the Life according to the Pleasure of the first Qualities Because I knew that the Life did not wax dry as neither was it to be drawn from the Bosom of the Elements after that I beheld the interchangeable Courses of a long and short Life to be in the Center of Life CHAP. CV The Vital Air. THe Schools have not performed enough in teaching that Nourishments are transchanged first into Chyle and then from hence into the Digested Juice of Venal Blood and so that in the Liver a natural Spirit is made which by a repeated Digestion in the Heart is formed into vital Spirit and at length that in the Brain it is made animal So as that the natural Spirit should be fit for using the Parts but the Vital for quickning and conserving the same as also lastly that the Animal Spirit should be appointed for the Functions of Sense Motion and of the Mind But moreover in my Judgment it had behoved them more largely to discover the Thingliness and History of the Deed in so long a race of Studies and Repetition of Writers Indeed they know that there is a certain Spirit that Maker of the Assault according to Hippocrates which holds the Stern of Life in its Hand It was to be sought for and pronounced in what Organs or Instruments that Spirit should be made or what it should act and also they ought to have explained every Disposition the Substance thereof and the Properties of its Substance and also the manner of its making I therefore will declare what I may meet with in this respect That therefore we may be led into the Knowledge of the Vital Spirit the Blas of Man should first of all be repeated in this place but least I be tedious I will here omit it and refer the Reader elsewhere unto the Volume of the rise of Medicine I have elsewhere also delivered a Mean or Manner whereby through instilled Ferments an Aqua Vitae may be made of every Plant and Fruit whatsoever Which manner the vulgar Sort hath known and doth exercise while it frameth an Aqua Vitae or Liquor of Life out of Grains Fruits Ale or Beer Hydromel or honied Water no less than out of Juice of the Vine But an Aqua Vitae is a volatile Liquor Oylie indeed as it is wholly enflamed and likewise wholly Salt for as much as being an Air it biteth yea and being but a little while detained in the Mouth it burns and embladders the upper skin of the Gums I in this place taking notice by the way that two Beginnings of Chymistry are one only and an undivideable Simple thing I have shewn also elsewhere after what manner one Pound of Aqua Vitae being combibed in the dryed Salt of Tartar scarce half an Ounce of Salt can be made but that the whole Body may be made an Elementary Water as it was before And so that from hence it is easie to be seen that Water is by Nature a more formerly and simple Body that the Chymical Beginnings themselves While as the Water which at first was not in act in the most expurging or refined Aqua Vitae is nevertheless by its reducement thereby made its first Element of Water The which handicraft Operation moreover by transferring unto the Speculation of Life I find that the Wine in its winy Parts containeth the Aqua Vitae the Water of Life and therefore that is easily quickly and without the digested Maturities of the Liver and Gaul snatched through the Arteries of the Stomack unto the Heart or to be called unto it immediately for the supply and defect of the vital Spirit and in this respect to delude the Opinion of the Schools which presupposeth that the Spirit of the Liver ought to precede For if there be more of the Spirit of Wine in the Stomack than is meet Drunkenness follows to wit as the Spirit of Wine is more largely attracted than can in a fit Interval be changed into Vital Spirit Which thing surely proveth first of all a changing of and also the Operations of a Digestion and Ferment In the next place that also is remarkable To wit that there is a certain more mild Spirit in the Wine a Partaker of another and more noble Quality than that Spirit which is immediately drawn out by Distillation and is called refined or expurged Aqua Vitae The which is easily beheld by the Sight in the simple Oyl of Olives because Oyl being Distilled without the Additaments of Bricks or Tiles and the which therefore is called Oleum Philosophorum differs much from its Oyliness which is extracted the simple Oyl being first reduced into unlike Parts only by the Digestion and Application of the circulated Salt of Paracelsus For truly the circulated Salt is separated the same in weight and antient Qualities from the Oyl after that the Oyl of Olives is disposed into its diverse kinds of Parts For then by this means a sweet Oyl is separated from the Oyl of Olives even as also a most sweet Spirit of Wine from the Wine and that far distinct from the tartness of Aqua Vitae But in us although the meat together with the Drink do after some sort putrifie for that Purefaction is a manner and mean of transchanging a thing into a thing yet in our Digestions the Spirit of Aqua Vitae is not by such a Putrefaction and action of the Ferment of the Spleen drawn out of Potherbs Pulses Bread-Corns or Apples For truly it is not the Intention of our Nature to procreate an Aqua Vitae for it self but there is a far different Ferment in us whereby things are resolved into Chyle And a far different one whereby things do putrifie and are separated into an Aqua Vitae For this Ferment is introduced by many Mediums but that is not attained but by a specifical fermental Property of any Species For while Herbs through a long steeping in Water are made to putrifie by their Ferment or Vicar for the extracting of an Aqua Vitae the stalke branches and entire Leaves remaine in their Figure and Hardness the which notwithstanding being chewed swallowed and well concocted within do in a few hours depart into Chyle and loose the first Nature of Herbs Wherefore I have also elsewhere pressed to wit that there are as many specifical digestive
Ferments as many Varieties of Putrefactions and as many Dungs of one Bread as there are particular Kindes of Animals nourished by Bread Yea and moreover there are more Ferments for the Corruption of Bread because also Bread doth putrifie after many manners as well of its own accord as through the Odour of Places and Impressions of Agents And that which is said of Bread the same thing may be understood of other Foods The Schooles taking notice also that nothings will profit us but that which in its Root containeth the Flourish of Life therefore also they would that the Spirit of the Liver being actually natural should glisten in the Venal Blood like an Air And they have thought it to be a Vapour and therefore also they have confounded it with an Exhalation Not knowing that a Vapour is Water but that it is not a Gas a wild Spirit an uncoagulable Air and Skie Therefore they have thought that a Vapour exhaling out of the out-chased venal Blood even as elsewhere it breaths out of any lukewarm Liquors was that Spirit of the venal Blood from whence the vital Spirit should afterwards be materially framed Of which I have elsewhere profesly spoken For indeed whatsoever defcendeth into an healthy Stomack if it be concocted by the Ferment of the Spleen it waxeth sharp through the fermental and specifical Sharpness of our Species And Superfluities being first sequestred from thence it is at length turned into venal Blood Which Blood after the Bound of its Digestion is transferred into the Heart and is made Arterial Blood which in the holy Scriptures is called A ruddy or red Spirit wherein the Soul inhabiteth For it is made fit to pass over into Vital Spirit and the remainder thereof to undergo the last Digestion of the solid parts and at length without that its residence to exhale into the Air Therefore also for that very Cause it ought to be volatile and to have assumed the Disposition of a Spirit in the Heart Furthermore that Sharpness of the Stomack by Virtue of the ferment of the Gaul is converted into a Salt even as elsewhere concerning Digestions And the Actual Saltness is separated with the Urin and Sweats because it became Excrementitious But the Mass of the venal Blood it self seeing it cannot pass over into Spirit but by the Vital Ferment of the Heart I say there is made a substantial Derivation or Translation of the Venal Blood into Arterial Blood and of the Arterial Blood into Spirit wholly throughout the whole without any residence and separation of heterogeneal Parts because the Excrements are first withdrawn from thence and the Substance of the Heart is restless being continually busied about this Office of Transmutation that it may uncessantly effect Arterial Blood out of the Venal Blood and of this vital Spirit So that a certain natural Spirit doth not fore-exist in the venal Blood from whence as it were of the matter whereof vital Spirit may be made But the whole venal Blood it self if there shall be need is made Arterial Blood and from thence â—ital Spirit Therefore the making of Venal Blood in the Liver and the making of Arterial Blood in the Heart do differ For one is a true transmutation of the Chyle into venal Blood and the generating of a new Being But the other is an extenuating of the Venal Blood into a volatile Arterial Blood and into a Vital Air For venal Blood is made with a thickning of it self and with a Separation of the liquid Excrement or Urin. But the Vital Spirit is made with a melting of that which is thickned and an Aiery extenuation thereof to wit whereunto the Arterial Blood affords a Degree or Mean I confess indeed that the Spirit of Wine is snatched as a Spirit into the Arteries as a certain simple Symbolizing and previously disposed thing that it may easily passover into vital Spirit but the Schooles do from hence conclude nothing for their Spirit of the Liver Therefore let the venal Blood be the Spirit of the Liver it self coagulated and the fore-existing Matter of the Vital Spirits Which Spirit indeed hath the Nature together with the Power of a Body that it may be Spiritualized Therefore even as from the Ferment of the Heart the venal Blood is made arterial Blood and a volatile Spirit So in the Arteries as it were in the Stomack of the Heart and the Ferment of the Heart being drawn the Arterial Blood it self passeth over into the Common-wealth of Spirits Yea the secondary Humours also or the immediate Nourishments of the solid Parts are by degrees made Volatile least they should leave a remaining Residence behind them but they make an egress with a total transpitation of themselves The Heart therefore by its Ferment frameth arterial Blood out of venal Blood the which by the same endeavour it so fits and extenuates that moreover so much of vital Spirits is made out of the arterial Blood in the Arteries as it were in its Stomack as the Grosness and resisting Substance of the arterial Blood in so small a space wherein it is agitated or wrought in the Arteries permits to be made And there is well nigh a single Action while the venal Blood passeth over into arterial Blood and the Arterial Blood into Spirit Because they differ not in their Shops and likewise in the Degrees of Digestion Extenuation and Subtilizing For as much of arterial Blood is bred of venal Blood and as much of vital Spirits is made out of the arterial Blood by the same Feâ—ment of the Heart as is needful for every one of them and the Faculties of concocting are able to make Neither is it sufficient also to have known that the venal Blood doth ascend into arterial Blood but that the arterial Blood passeth over partly into vital Spirit and partly departeth into the Nourishment of the solid Parts Also that at length of vital Spirit it is made animal and the which receiveth an ultimated or utmost Determination in its Nerves so indeed that it is made visive or visible Spirit in the optick Nerves or Sinews of Sight but being exorbitant from thence and being derived into the Tongue it should be plainly unprofitable for tasting even as also the Aanimal Spirits the Authors of touching are unfit for Motion and those of this for them But moreover it behoves us to have known the Marrow of the vital Spirit For indeed of the Sharpe Chyle partly venal Blood and partly a Urin and sweat is made But that excrementous Saltness of the Urin is a volatile and Salt Spirit the which being co-fermented with Earth at length a Salta-peter is formed wherefore that Salt Spirit is excrementous The venal Blood indeed by Distillation shews unto us also a saltish Spirit plainly volatile not any thing distinguishable in Smell as neither in Tast from the Spirit of the Urin Yet essentially different in this that the Spirit of the Salt of Venal Blood cureth the Falling-sickness but the
Spirit of the Salt of Urin not so From hence at leastwise it is manifest that there is a Salt and volatile Spirit in the venal Blood But after what manner the whole venal Blood may be homogeneally transchanged by the Ferment of the Heart cannot be explained by Words because Natures themselves are not demonstrable from a former Cause For the Operations of Ferments for the transmutation of things are essential but not the accidentary Propagations of Accidents for the causing of Dipositions only The vital Spirit therefore is plainly Salt therefore Balsamical and a Preserver from Corruption That although the Aqua Vitae doth easily pass into vital Spirit yet this Spirit is not Oylie or combustile like the Aqua Vitae but the Spirit of Wine only through a touching of the Ferment is easily wholly changed into a salt Spirit and forthwith looseth its inflamable Disposition Even as I have taught in the Book of the Stone in Man after what manner Aqua Vitae may by the Spirit of Urin be in one only instant coagulated into a subtile Gobbet or Lump The which concerning the volatile Salt of the arterial Blood may through the effective Ferment of the Heart be much more evidently proved Wherefore they who for some good while do undergo the beating of the Heart although they shall then drink abundantly and that much of the more pure Wine yet they are not easily made Drunk Because that by reason of an urgent necessity the Spirit of the Wine is most speedily attracted into the Heart and Arteries which are scanty in spirits and is suddenly formed into vital Spirit It restoreth I say the Strength or Faculties neither yet doth it then make drunk because it is no longer a stranger but being drawn into the Heart it easily becomes domestical and then is on every side dispensed through the Arteries For it doth not argue to the contrary that the Spirit of Salt-peter is sharp and that therefore the vital Spirit ought to be sharp For neither was the Spirit from whence Salt-peter was made in the Earth then sharp And therefore the vital Spirit is Salt and nearer to the Spirit of Urin than of Salt-peter the which by reason of Adustion and Extraction is alwayes a new Creature of its composed Body That Foundation therefore which is laid by the Ferment of the Gaul in volatilizing and making Salt this afterwards is perfected in the Shop of the Heart For the foregoing Digestions are as so many Dispositions unto vital Functions and Necessities for a Member being once stupified if Sense or Feeling shall return that surely is made with sensible Spurs and Prickings which are the tokens of true saltness But that the whole venal Blood is a meer Salt may not from elsewhere be more clearly deducted than that because in the Dropsy Ascites and in Ulcers it is homogeneally through a most easie Degeneration changed into a salt Liquor But a salt sharp Quality and subtile Matter was suitable to the vital Spirit if it ought to be sufficient for preserving of the Members The redness also of the venal Blood assumeth a yellowness while it is made arterial Blood because that which is Red through the tartness of Salt waxeth Yellow in its dissolving Neither yet hath the arterial Blood lost all its redness for truly a Part thereof ought to remain for the Nourishment of the solid Members It is a dead or invalid thing whatsoever I have hitherto said that the Spirit of Life is a salt sharp Vapour and made of the arterial Blood by the vital Members their own Ferments I will therefore Speak of the Life of the Spirit For seeing it ought to do its Duty with the Offices of Life it was not required that it should be in the shew of a salt Liquor or arterial Blood or that it should befool us under the likeness of a salt Exhalation but because it ought primarily to live and receive the Life it was meet for it to be enlightned not indeed with a burning enflaming or fiery Light but with a simple vital Light of the Nature of soulified Formes of the sensitive Life and Soul and that indeed of a humane Species For for the Understanding thereof suppose thou that Wormâ— named Glow-wormes have by Night a Light in their Belly which not only shines like the Eyes of a Cat but also pouers forth a thin Light round about that Light is extinguished with the Life of the Glow-worme A like Light suppose thou to be which enlightneth the vital Spirit as long as it liveth it shineth and is propagated into Spirit newly made being duly elabourated And by how much the more impure and the less elabourated it shall be by so much shall that Light be the Darker But that Light is extinguished in us the Matter of the Spirit remaining in the Plague Poysons c. even as by Swooning and Beating of the Heart the Light is extinguished and the Spirit vanisheth away In time of Death also the Membrane of the Eye is destitute of a manifest Light plainly to be seen Yet the Essence of that Light in Glow-worms is not so alike to that which is in us to wit as they differ from us only in Degree But there are as many Species of these Lights as there are of vital Creatures That is unto us a token of divine Bounty that there are so many Species and vital Differences of Lights which by us are comprehended under one only Notion because that those Lights are the very Lives and Forms themselves of vital Creatures So that the thrice most glorious Father of Lights doth recreate himself in the abundance of the kinds of Lights with no less a Lavishment than as in one only humane Countenance he hath fashioned almost as many Varieties as Men because there is in his Power a certain Common-wealth of vital Lights and Band of innumerable Citizens a certain Similitude whereof he expresseth in vital soulified Creatures by a Life a Form that is by a vital Light The vital Spirit therefore Is Arterial Blood resolved by the force of the Ferment and Motion of the Heart into a salt Air being vitally enlightned which Light in us is hot but in the Fish it is so actually cold that it is never able to aspire unto a Power of Heat as long as it liveth and subsisteth Our Heat therefore is not a consumer of the Original Moisture as neither therefore through want of Heat do Fishes hitherto escape Death although their Moisture be not lifted up into an Exhalation and least of all in the frozen Sea For neither shall the Capuchin our Country-man who is cold for the greatest part of the year from his Feet even unto his Belly nor feeling himself to have Feet therefore not undergo a dayly transpiration of the nourishable Moisture or doth he refuse the Refreshment of Nourishments or is the Capuchin changed in those parts into a Fish the which otherwise should be necessary for him to be if Heat should
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
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
it self since it shall not produce any good to it self thereby For that Chyle or juyce being attracted doth as yet want foregoing means whereby it can ever be brought unto the perfection of arterial blood Otherwise the Arteries had drawn unto themselves more vexation but by a little sucking of a forreign liquor than they are able to wear out by long pains for the future I grant indeed that the Arteries do ordinarily and immediately attract a be-drunkening spirit of the stomack which is bred almost in every vegetable which is disobliged from the composed body through art only by vertue of a serment and at length is drawn out by the fire For example If the berries of Juniper are boyled in water under an Alembick an essential oyl and water do presently after rise up and are collected At length if those berries are then in the next place steeped by a ferment the distillation being afterwards repeated a water most gently burning or an Aquavitae is extracted yet less than if from the same berries an oyl were not first withdrawn Thirdly at last if the remaining berries being strained thorow a searse are boyled into an Electuary thou hast now obtained solutive Medicine excelling all the compositions of the shops An Artery therefore willingly snatcheth to it self the burning spirit of life a guest of the vegetable nature out of the stomack which the Grecism of the Schools never saw or knew the which otherwise nature by her first instruction prepares out of the digested Chyle surely she rejoyceth that she hath found a liquor with much brevity from whence she may make vital spirit for her self For in this respect Wines are regularly pleasing to Mortals they exhilarate the heart and do make drunk if they are drunk down in more than a just quantity For the spirit of Wine is not yet our vital spirit because it is as yet wanting of an individual limitation that the vital inflowing Archeus the Executer of our functions may from thence be framed Wherefore since neither the Mesentery nor Liver are ordained for the framing of vital spirit the heart rejoyceth immediately and readily to suck to it that spirit being already before prepared through the arteries out of the stomack Whence it follows If the arteries attract unto themselves the Spirit of Wine like unto vapours they shall also draw the odours of Essences For from hence are faintings yea and on the other hand restaurations But the arteries draw not Oils although essential and grateful ones because they suck not the substance of liquor and much less oils Therefore that a Medicine may be received by the heart and by this heart attracted inwards it ought to be that which yields a good smell and to be unseparably married to the spirit of wine Wherefore Wines that are odoriferous do more readily bedrunken than others because the odours which are married to the spirit of wine are most easily admitted unto the heart head womb c. But oylie odours being abstracted from their Concrete bodies do rather affect by defiling than materially enter into the Arteries For therefore through the immoderateness of Wine and the errours of life not only a meer spirit of Wine is allured into the arteries but also something of juyces together with it Whence at length difficult heart-beatings grow up in the gluttons of Wine and the meer or pure spirit of Wine by an importunate daily continuance strikes the reed of the artery within disturbs the local and proper digestions thereof wherefore also a part of the arterial nourishment degenerating stirs up divers miseries even durable for life For it happens in the Artery of the stomack that the spirit of wine joyning it self by its own importunity to the spermatick nourishment of the artery in the course of dayes stirs up un-obliterable Vertigo's or giddinesses of the head continual head-aches the Falling-sickness I say Swoonings Drowsie Evils Apoplexies c. For in the family-administration of this member as it were that of the heart it obtains its own animosities durable for life which are not to be extirpated but by the greater Secrets The same way also sudden or unexpected death hath oft-times made an entrance for it self because such a vitiated matter is never of its own free accord drawn out from thence For although the Archeus be apt at length to consume his own nourishment yet he doth not obtain this authority over excrements degenerated by a forreign coagulation and so for that cause not hearkening to the vital power or vertue For therefore that part hath assumed the title of the heart stirs up swoonings from an easie occasion Falling-sicknesses also after the twenty fourth year and likewise such affects as are attributed to the heart are accounted uncurable by those who have not much laboured in extracting the more potent faculties of medicine Hippocrates by leave of so great a man and of such an age I speak it was ignorant of this seat of the falling evil because he was he who being constituted in the entrance of Medicine faithfully delivered unto posterity at least his own observations and Medicinal administrations sprung from these For he said If Melancholy passeth into the body it breeds the Falling Sickness But foolish madness if it peirce the soul If therefore black Choler passing over into the body and soul causeth the Falling-sickness and Madness Whither therefore shall it proceed that it may generate a Quartane Ague The Schools especially rejoyce in so great an Author for their humour of black Choler But they are forgetful of a Quartane which far departs from the Falling-sickness and Madness For after whatsoever manner they shall regard it a Quartane shall either not be made from black Choler or this shall not be in the body nor in the soul while it makes a Quartane But as to what pertains to Madness and the Falling-sickness as if they were separated only in the diversity of passages or that the same humours did sometimes evaporate or were materially entertained in the Inns of the principal faculties Surely it is a ridiculous although a dull and plausible devise to have found out the cause of all diseases in so narrow a quaternary of humours For first of all The Falling Evil doth much more strictly bedrowsie and alienate the powers of the soul although Madnesses do that far more stubbornly or constantly Wherefore the aforesaid diseases are far otherwise distinguished let the Genius's of Hippocrates spare me than in the changing of their wayes and bounds And which more is the general kind of foolish Madness shall differ by its species in its proper matter and proper efficient as is to be seen in madness from the biting of a mad dog or stroak or sting of the Tarantula For the cause of things had not as yet been made known in the age of Hippocrates the knowledge whereof the Prattle of the Greeks hath hitherto suppressed Neither also are wrothful doatages made from yellow Choler bruitish ones from
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
in the heart and arteries which without distinction drinks in the pestiferous poyson mutually co-mixed with the air But if a Zenexton takes away or hinders this Magnet now the man is of necessity choaked as being deprived of his accustomed expiring for the necessities whereof they will have the heart and arteries to be uncessantly tired or urged But if indeed we had rather have a Zenexton to be a separater of the pestilent air from the pure that word containeth something beseeming a Fable because the Zenexton should at least undergo the office of a Sieve and Seperater and supply the room of the Archeus But if a Zenexton causeth that our Magnet draw nought but what is lawful then the Zenexton should be the Tutor and School-master of the Archeus to wit that he may rightly perform his office unless happily thou hadst rather have a Zenexton to be distinguished by the name of an office alone and so it should be equally infected with the Archeus and equally feel the contagion of the Pest yea an external thing forraign to the life and perhaps containing a poyson is now assumed with the Etymology of a due Archeus Alas Paracelsus the matter is far otherwise For it grieveth the Archeus of his own government for neither is he intent upon fighting or separation in the Pest who himself is the only object and one only workman of the poyson But he prepares himself for flight casts away the rains as being full of a panick fear and as being mindful of his own weakness that he is wholly subdued by poysons or the least infection of an odour by the biâ—ing of a Viper or stinging of a Scorpion in the top of the finger Therefore he refuseth discretion and being affrighted at the beholding of his Enemy opens the doors and casts away the keys behind him and presently admits of any one to govern and so whatsoever things do happen in a dead carkass after death are in their making at the coming of the Pest A Zenexton therefore only serves not indeed for admonishing the Archeus of his duty and appointment nor for dividing of the poyson from that which is harmless in the objects much less for restraining of the natural attraction of refreshment but that it may kill and annihilate the specifical poyson which is conceived as well in the external air as within in the Archeus But surely none of these hath need of a Magnet nor doth any way respect a Load-stone The invention and end of a Magnet in a Zenexton was unknown by Paracelsus For a preservative Amulet for every event if it should respect a Magnet it should not be of value but in the case wherein the pestilent air is drawn inward through the arteries which I have elsewhere demonstrated to be frivolous in the Treatise of the Blas of man but not if at any time it be brought by the breath as neither where the pestilent poyson ariseth within Therefore the unknown Zenexton of Paracelsus doth in no wise satisfie the necessities of Nature or ends of healing But Hippocrates hath seemed to have more neerly beheld the causes of necessity for a Zenexton He willing that the heaven should make three local motions in us to wit within without and circle-wise he then naming the heaven as yet by an undistinct Grecisme for the vital faculty From whence Successors thought that the heaven is contained in us in a motion outwards by a transpiration that a forraign Pest by that which is breathed in may be hindered For they say something and from an unmindfulness that the bodies of the infected are preserved in transpiration But the same doubt and antient perplexity remaineth about breathing and the framing of an internal plague and in my judgement a Zenexton ought not to lock up the pores nor to shut the doors of breathing least the Enemy enter nor to strive with the Archeus for strifes discords and brawlings if ever before at leastwise while the plague kindleth or rageth is unseasonable especially while the Archeus failing in his courage casts away his â—eapons In the next place neither must a Zenexton be intent in the more outwardly separating cocting or preparing of the pure from the impure But that it be wholly after the manner of an Antidote contrary to the poyson already received not indeed properly against the poyson it self But seeing that its principal use is in preserving rather than in curing Therefore the virtue required in a Zenexton most properly consisteth in this that it takes away the mumial appropriation and suiting without which there is no contagion made neither yet should it be a strange thing if besides it hath obtained the powers of a medicine to expel the poyson And moreover Paracelsus relates many things concerning frogs and toads for the Pest yet all of them confused ones In the mean time he hath opened the earnest desires and eyes of many For he asfirmeth that toads are convenient for women even as frogs for men and indeed he would have them to be hung up and dryed and a stick being thrust thorow their head He hath chosen no month for this act At length he promiseth that a Toad thus dried but having prosecuted nothing of Frogs being applyed to a Bubo in the groyn will so draw all the poyson of the Pest into it self that successively even unto the fourth or fifth Toad they do all wonderfully swell and so he conjectureth at the quantity of the venom by the number of the Toads He wil also have the dryed Toad to be first steeped and moâ—ified in Rose-water Notwithstanding either Paracelsus is unconstant to himself or he chose some other Zenexton to himself besides the Toad For truly he writes that the Toad is prevalent only in the Pest of the groyns and of women But for other plagues he useth other attracters and he saith that the chief Incarnative of the Coelestial wound for so he calleth the Pest is gold and precious stones First of all I confess that I have applyed Toads unto Buboes and Eschars as well in the breast head paps as elsewhere as well in men as in women and every where not without a ready succour and mitigation of the pain But first of all I never saw an applyed Toad to have swoln in the least the which also I therefore afterwards held to be ridiculous And then that of Paracelsus is alike frivolous to wit that the Pest doth no where otherwise offer it self than behind the ears under the arm-pits and in the groyn because the heavenly Archer doth not smite in any other place For truly I have seen a true and mortal plague to have shewn it self every where in the whole body not only by Eschars little bladders Pustules and swellings but also by spots and marks Therefore Paracelsus supposed the same thing to happen unto a dryed Toad which befalls a live creature that hath taken poysons and that is stung by Serpents or that is killed by the poysons of