health the mind or life is alienated but hurtful matters being conceived bred and procured within or also characters only divers properties are introduced into the life or into the Archeus the instrument of life And not only those good inclinations of fathers or grandfathers are propagated into the Seed but also certain diseasie seedinesses such as are in simples are co-bred being as it were hardly threatned on us The which indeed as they do deserve a serious observation so much the more as oft as that hostile and diseasie poyson is divers wayes coupled somtimes to the ferment of the Stomach somtimes to the implanted Archeus then next unto the arterial spirit also oft-times beamingly to the life it self which indeed is nothing but a central light capable also to be pierced by any radial or beamy light So indeed the vital light of the sensitive soul is pierced by a forreign light being coupled with it no otherwise then as light thorow coloured glasse doth tinge a simple light in the wall Truly in the Monarchy belonging to life and the which descendeth from the father of lights are those living lights which otherwise do shine in a simple Sunnie light or in a coloured light being attributed wholly to a fraile or mortal light And there is a combination of living lights not only capable of bearing each other but also active on each other so that from hence it is plain that the Father of lights doth restrain the Bridles of life and of whole nature Therefore in the Arteries of the spleen or in the very substance of that Bowel is now a property stamped which I call the characteristical one of a disease or next in the very coat veins sinews of the Stomach or also in the vital Archeus of the same which property doth propagate it self by intervals or spaces into the sensitive soul or it shineth thorough it with a continual fewel and compels that soul to be its Chamber-maid so that the soul it self or the life or vital Archeus thereof being vexed or troubled by turns they are carried headlong into some motion of fury madness swooning giddiness of the head falling evil apoplexy palsie convulsion c. I know well enough that the adverse party that is not desirous to learn will accuse the mist which I spread while I wrest these sublunary things aside unto the life unto vital lights or unto the invisible world where the Father of lights is President But I pray let them remember that this is the right way which else cannot be searched into from a former cause And let them know that vital motions are not disturbed by and doe not depend on the life Whether the while we contemplate of our life or in the next place of the life and vital properties which do appear to us diseasie mortal and hateful Truly I every where behold it to be nothing but the common good of my neighbour for to open the windows whereby the light of nature hitherto obscured may come into the Schools and wits more successful than my self Wherefore I have withdrawn the Complexions of elementary qualities and likewise the humours tartars and these kind of dreams of Writers I could wish that in the room of them a true knowledge of nature and diligent search of our selves were introduced Lastly I have taken away Catarrhs or Rheums out of the midst of them as vain fictions and broken staffs wherewith mortals have been hitherto supported And se whatsoever hath deceived these through the fraud and deceit of a humour flowing down as the cause making a disease all that is to be referred into the fruit and product of a vital cause and that which is thought by the Schools materially to flow down out of the head that is darted shot 〈…〉 forth and propagated from the vital seat of the soul by a common guidance of the Archeus or is in stilled by a participation of life * Good God how far do I dissent from the tradition of the Antients I would there may be such or at least I would thou mayest make them such who may comprehend me and nourish the hope of the sick with a richer talent But thou O God wilt do in these things according to thy own good pleasure to whom I totally refer and offer all things and every thing which I have know see and am able to do I return therefore unto my path First of all I have elsewhere shewn that vulnetary or wound-herbs do operate by virtue of a certain in-bred Alcali or Lixivial Salt Indeed I have taught that vulnetary Mercury as well the praecipitate as sublimate are easily to be revived a clarified juyce being imbibed by boiling Whence it follows that those herbs are the more excellent in this degree that juyce of whom being boiled with the praecipitate and afterwards washed away shall the more easily and plentifully revive the Mercury Wherefore also in healing the stone of Crabs doth excell if it be drunk with wine more than if in water because that stone in wine doth most easily put on the virtue and savour of a Lixivium or Lye Neither I pray therefore let the Physitian abhor the use of wine in a wound or fever c. For at that very time that it savours of an Alcali it loseth the virtues property of wine For so the Lixivial Salt of the Teil-tree is successfully given to drink no otherwise than that powder of Crabs For the goodnesse of God hath invited us that by reason of the rarenesse whereby that stone doth subsist in a little space mortals may be drawn into an admiration thereof and thereby also may learn its virtues and may sift out its property alike wonderful whereby it profiteth wounded bruised people and those that have fallen head-long from an high place And here presently a wonder not yet declared comes to light to wit that a wound in the foot and also in the leg or in the most remote parts from the mouth is healed whither notwithstanding no Alcali hath ever obtained accesse to wit as the Lixivial Salt of this Stone doth correct the sharpnesse which is kindled in the utmost members or habit of the body and which is prepared to be kindled For neither doth the force of the Alcali passe from the Stomach thorow the Veins even into the Toes But neither is it admitted thither and although it should be admitted yet it could not proceed free and unbroken thorow the foregoing questions and examinations of digestions For there is no man which may be ignorant of this and not grant me what I have said Therefore from thence it is altogether manifest that that Alcali although it go not materially even unto the habit of the body yet it is sufficient that it doth disperse its property even thitherto beamingly onely that it shall forbid a sournesse or sharpnesse in the stomach the Fountain of Digestions and the chief Court-house of life wherein is manifested the power of the Stomach
unto Colours therefore we leave the Speculation of those unto others being content with the attainment of the Cherionial or occult quality Last of all notwithstanding we must answer to an objection To wit wherefore is the Fountain Tonneletius with the Plenty of its hungry and hot Salt said rather to Cool and to be troublesome to the Stomack I will give Satisfaction The hungry Salt although it be hot in its first qualities no otherwise than as Oyl of Vitriol Sulphur Aqua Fortis c. are yet it Cooleth by a third and proper Cherionial quality to wit as either being hurtful through its super-abounding it weakens our heat but especially because through its sharpness it dissolves the Secondary humour or immediate nourishment of the Stomack and makes it unfit for nourishing through the scantiness of which lively Liquor it is no wonder if the inflowing and begged heat of the Stomack do suffer CHAP. XCIX A Sixth Paradox 1. In what manner Foods are not for hurt 2. A Paradox out of the Text of holy Scriptures against the Dietary part 3. It is proved also 1 by an Experiment 2. From the destributive Justice of God 3. From the indication or betokening of Remedies 4. From a Rule 4. From whence the necessity of a Diet came 5. One Precept 6. The praise of Sobriety 7. How the Waters may pass speedily thorow the Midriffs 8. A Purgation 9. The manner and requisites of drinking How much is to be drunk 10. A commendation of Elecampane prepared 11. The sick must drink speedily an why 12. Returning after what manner 13. When he must Dine 14. Whether the Water of the Spaw be to be mixed with pure Wine 15. And indeed after dinner 16. Three Digestions 17. Why he must not sleep after his Dinner at the Spaw 18. The hour of Rest I Will now subjoyn a few things concerning Diet and the manner of using the Waters of the Spaw That thing in the first place through experience being our guide we have seen in the Dietary part of Medicine that the quality of Meats or Foods as such doth no where bring Dammage unless where a weakened bed-rid person and a defectuous Remedy is present For God saw that whatsoever he had made was good and consequently that whatsoever he had ordained for meat was a good food but that its quantity onely is able to hurt For eat thou whatsoever meats thou wilt for example sake and be thou wounded so thou shalt not exceed in quantity and thou hast apt Balsames and consolidating Potions of Wounds thou shalt feel no pressure and no dammage from the Meats no otherwise than as if thou wert nourished with their most delicate choice A Testimony of which thing Souldiers and poor Folks shall give Unto whom the Judge or Arbitrator of things had seemed to have been severe if in Diseases they ought to be fed with Phesants Partridges and other huckstery of Kitchins For Nature despiseth the Rules of curiosity as being defended by that aid that she were vainly to desire a Help and Succours against a Disease by a Remedy which from a small quantity of Food is not able to satisfie the Defects which are to be prevented For whatsoever ought to attempt the single combate of a Disease surely by a stronger right it ought to divert Symptomes which are to arise from Meats that I say which is handed forth or instituted for the brushing off of blemishes or hurts Therefore the necessity of a Diet is believed to have been brought in from the penury of the more profound Medicines and not from the dainty allurements of Foods That one Precept of Diet is to be observed I counsel him that drinks of the Waters of the Spaw that he study Sobriety and that he eat Sparingly like his neighbours For what shall it profit to accuse the Health of our bordering neighbours by the Waters of the Spaw if we live the more deliciously and with too much fullness Therefore let the Supream defence of Long Life although it be a cruel thing to those that are unaccustomed be Sobriety Otherwise those things which savour do nourish best and a hungry Man will easily concoct those Foods which do savour him most By that onely rule of Diet the Waters will pass thorow him safely speedily and pleasantly But besides it shall be profitable to brush off the filth from the Stomack but the more crude and less sincere Chyle from the Meseraick Veines Which shall comodiously be done if one dose of the Pills Rufi being duely prepared and not from the perswasion of gain be for the space of three daies continually taken before the Waters Or if he listeth not to wait the space of three daies let him infuse an ounce and half of Conserve of Roses in eight ounces of the Water of Pouhontius adding thereto a Scruple of Salt of Tartar Let him drink the strained infusion He that is to drink of the Water of the Spaw let him endeavour first to unload his Belly betimes in the Morning and about the Twilight let him drink twelve ounces of Pouhontius and ascend the Mountain From whence when he shall be come down let him drink twenty or thirty ounces of Savenerius at the first of the Morning For he must passe by degrees unto things not accustomed As also Pouhontius shall premeditatingly open the branching passages not with a loaded quantity He must add to the quantity daily even unto a sufferance as every one is his own Judge The which thereby shall be easily conjectured because if they shall drink as much as it behoveth them after the example of Hippocrates they are in a good frame and do easily bear it But at the time of Drinking in stead of Annise Myva or Conserve of Elecampane being taken the Water that is drunk is easily strained thorow the Midriffs But let the appointed dose be speedily drunk seeing the progress of the Fountain is hastened and therefore let the first Water be cocted if indeed that is to be said to be truly cocted which doth not depart into nourishment and expelled before the last Water approach which renders the Action of the native Heat renewed or frustrated He returning from the Fountain to the Village let him slowly proceed that not Sweat but Urine which is in his Desires may be provoked But let the hour of Dinner be when the Stomack shall be dispatched of the Waters least the remainder of the Water being almost concocted should over-hastily bring the crude juyce into the Veines It hath been doubted whether the Water of the Spaw be with conveniency to be mixed with pure or unmixt Wine I will say That so Wines shall be made easily passable and the passages shall be kept passable and therefore with the borderes I shall counsel to admix the Fountains with their Foods that is with their Drinks And therefore because he must eat sparingly about the tenth or eleventh hour he is to go to Pouhontius at the third hour because we
no matter in the waters which was created to stir up the Tragedy of Tartar or a Duelech in us Moreover if there be any evil now or that may come to passe among the digestions surely that is not from the Creation appointment property efficient of matter and the finall intention of the Creator but doth issue wholly from our errour and the corruption of nature Indeed such things do happen through a received importunity of forreign seeds a defectuous transmutation of nourishable things or a not sufficient severe expulsion of hurtful things Tartar fore-existing and being solved in the drink if it were so verily it should by its appointment presently wax corrupt in us before digestions putrefactions and resolutions neither should it expect the counsels of coagulating into the last passage of the Urine And the same should rather stonifie equally in all Notwithstanding seeing the stone doth not grow up in the drink but onely in the excrements by the admission of the Salt of the Urine and the assistance of other co-workers even as abundantly in my Book of the Disease of the stone it is presumed that Duelech doth not consist of a fore-existing Tartar of the drink which is made plain by a Handicraft resolving thereof in the fire For Duelech being distilled the Glasse-vessels also being shut doth produce a stinking Oyl lastly the Spirit and Chrystals of the salt of the Urine being such kinde of things as are allured out of mans Urine by distilling For it is certain that the stomach bowels veins Liver and kidneys do not generate Duelech or the stone in man of their own nature much lesse do they continue the same and as yet much lesse of a prepared and fore-existing Tartar in drinks For else all likewise which do generate mans Urine and in any man without exception no otherwise than as little stones do grow in Crabs without exception should procreate Duelech But Duelech doth wax stony from a seed being at length generated in the Urine by a transmutation of a matter That seed is so prevalent that although one subject to the stone drink nothing but distilled water he should not therefore cease to generate Duelech But they say red Wines do generate very much sand in those subject to the stone therefore they do contain a sandy Tartar therefore not onely in those subject to the stone but in all altogether they should bewray a Sand but seeing that thing happens onely in defectuous persons hence it is made manifest that the sand is not made by way of matter but some other way For truly the stomach of those that are defectuous should separate the sands before they should come down to the kidneys The ignorance of the Schools hath arisen from hence that they know not or do not thorowly weigh that many things are made by transmutation which were no way materially within For truly none but a ridiculous man will say that bones are in grasse This dispute will cease when I shall shew that Duelech is formed of things far estranged from coagulation for neither doth it follow some Wines do contain more of the spirit of Urine or of a volatile Earth therefore they contain the stone Tartar or therefore the Tartar of Wine doth materially generate the stone of man by its separation of it self Ginger brings forth much sweat therefore Ginger containeth very much sweat materially For the Schools do give their judgement after a rustical manner concerning the things of Nature not knowing that many things are brought to passe by the endeavour of the Efficient of transmutation I say by the seed of the thing coagulating and at the time of the Operater's transchanging which works are never due to matter nor to their heats and feigned combates of the Elements For I have seen two that were Twins educated also by the same Nurse and meats the elder whereof was subject to the stone the younger not so for the milk did contain no more of Tarâ—â—r the one than for the other Likewise the Childe of a certain Governour or chief Ruler being born of two healthy Parents had three healthy Brothers and Sisters before him but being nourished onely three moneths by a Nurse that had the stone he underwent Lithotomy or cutting for the stone once at seven years and then again at ten and thirdly two years after and the last time he gave up the Ghost under the knife these two Histories at least happened not from the coming of a forreign Tartar Seeing therefore there is not matter existence truth knowledge necessity or consequence in things taken which may square themselves unto Tartar Paracelsus hath to braggingly boasted that he first found out every cause of Diseases that he was the chief Monarch of Secrets and Medicine and that by this his own invention he hath accused others of ignorance But moreover also that he did discern by the Tartars of Countries to what Diseases the Inhabitants were subject For if there never were Tartar either by creation or from the curse which may be the original of Diseases surely its a frivolous thing that he hath searched into the same by distilling and hath found that which never was Indeed he had seen great stones to be generated in the bottom of waters Also that in Stiria Subaudia Valesia horrible Strumaes or swellings in the neck did with a miserable spectacle deform the shape of man And he being deceived hence he concluded that from the Tartar of waters there were stones Strumaes and consequently every stopping thing For he was badly ignorant and that for the destruction of his followers that all things do arise from seminal Agents and that it is granted to them to bring over the matters subjected unto them according to the appointments and ends of the seeds For indeed although some drink be more hurtful to those that have the stone yet that is neither Tartar nor doth it from hence contain it neither is any thing of the form of Tartar co-thickned into Duelech as I have taught in its place but it is the work of that which operates whatsoever is in the waters by an actual seed unto a Rockie Stone or Bole. But if there be any thing in Wine it shall be as to the Lee by it self but as to Tartar by accident but not as to Duelech For thou shalt ask in vain whether waters in distilling are potentially made a Rockie stone For Rivers and Springs do teach that without labour and expences But of Wine a Rockie stone or Tartar is never made much lesse Duelech neither shall also the plurality of Lees or dregs accuse Tartar as neither the stone Because Duelech is of another Family than Tartar Hence by how much the richer vvines are in Tartar they ought to be so much the more healthful against Duelech if Tartar otherwise be given to drink for the cleansing of filths I agree indeed that Rockie waters are of a wild disposition of a mineral condition and the causers of
undigestions as they do contain strange or forreign things But they do not therefore materially contain Duelech in them altbough they do occasionally destroy digestion do imprint a rockie middle life whence the enfeebled vegetative faculty of man puts on that wild inclination But that makes nothing for the Author of Tartars For truly it is a far different thing to be made stony occasionally from a stonifying virtue of the middle life of things imprintingly and sealingly introduced into the Archeus and to be made to have the stone from Tartar melted and resolved in waters which at length in the period of dayes may re-assume its former coagulation in the drinker For this latter to be in Nature I deny but the former I affirm to be among ordinary effects But as concerning Strumaes or Kings-Evil-swellings in the Neck and swelling pimples in the face many think that they proceed from mineral waters being drunk also Paracelsus from the use of waters of an evil juyce or disposition But I could wish according to the mans own Doctrine that he may shew by the fire those evil juyces in waters whose property it is to be coagulated onely in our last digestion nor elsewhere than about the neck or throat-bone But I know that he never found in waters such a Tartar Therefore he may be condemned by his own Law wherein he gives a caution that none is to be believed but so far as he is able to demonstrate that thing by the fire I confess indeed that there is in the water a middle life whose property it is to stir up the Archeus and to infect it in the exchanging of good nourishment but not of a forreign Tartar existing in it materially into a Rockie hardness But unto Strumaes a matter is required which by the property of its own Archeus may be bred to stop up our jawes and as it were to strangle us and that without the tast of astriction or an earthly sharpness or harshness for otherwise this tast sticking fast in the bosom of the matter being ripened by the first digestion dieth and which being transchanged into nourishment and retaining the antient virtues of the middle life performs its power more about the throat than elsewhere which power being left to it by an heredicary right in nourishments and from hence in the venal bloud doth convert the nearest nourishment of solid Bodies into a Rockie excrement which goes unto the throat by a strangling faculty of the directer And I narrowly examining that thing in Germany have found Mushromes to be strong in the aforesaid poyson of strangling and that those do often grow out of the Root of a Fountain the Fir-tree and Pine-trees in steep Rocks toward the North where black Agarick an Heir of the same crime is often in the Trunk or Stem I have learned therefore that the whole Leffas or Planty juyce of the Earth is there defiled with a Mushromy disposition Therefore I have believed that hard swellings of the Neck are bred by the use of Herbs and waters which have drunk in this sort of Leffas Furthermore that an Archeal power of the middle life in things doth beget Strumaes but not a reviving ill juycy Tartar of the water the thing it self doth speak For otherwise a Struma should bewray it self no lesse in the bottom of the Belly and Liver nor more slowly than in the throat For River or ill juicy waters do not respect the throat nor should promise so great hardness Not surely should the hard swelling of the neck or throat dissolve by an astrictive and earthy Remedy whereby I have many times seen very great Strumaes or hard swellings of the Neck to have vanished away in one onely month and the strangling suddenly brought on people by a poysonous Mushrome to be cured which Remedy is on this wise Take of Sea-Sponge burnt up into a Coal 3 ounces of the bone of the Fish Sepia burnt long Pepper Ginger Pellitory of Spain Gauls Sal gemmae calcined Egg-shels of each 1 ounce mix them with the stilled water of the aforesaid Spongei and let it be dried up by degrees Take of this Powder half a dram with half an ounce of Sugar the Moon decreasing that it being melted by degrees may be swallowed Or make a Lincture or Lohoch It shall also disperse Botium or the swelling pimpâ—â— in the face Others for want of the Sponge did take the hairy excrescency growing on wild Rose-Trees very like to the outward Rhine of the Chesnut rough and briery or hairy the powder of which alone they did use succesfully Likewise I have used an unction in Strumaes and Schirrus's Of Oyl of Bay not adulterated by Hogs-grease 8 ounces of Olibanum Mastich Gum Arabick Rosin of the Fir-tree of each 3 ounces distil them then distil them again with Pot-Ashes If therefore the hard swelling of the Neck or a hard Scirrhus elsewhere should grow together from a forreign Tartar it should rather wax hard by hot Remedies neither should it be so easily dissolved Therefore the Struma is a defect of the Archeus the transchanger and not through the coagulation of Tartar even as concerning Duelech or the stone in man I have more clearly and abundantly demonstrated For the Archeus transchangeth every masse subjected unto him unless being overcome by a more powerful middle life he shall give place Therefore the Strama is of good venal bloud on which a strangling power of the middle life is felt And Botium or the swelling pimple of the face a remedy being taken perisheth which is not for dissolving a Rockie matter if it were of Tartar brought over thither otherwise it is altogether impossible that Tartar if there should be any should conceive a breathing hole of our life be made lively be co-sitted to the members and be admitted inwards unto the last digestion conceive a ferment of the Arterial bloud but to be discussed or blown away by an unsensible transpiration as also Schirrhus's bred of vital venal bloud the aforesaid Remedy being administred But besides the contention is not about the Asses shadow for truly it is not all one to have denied Tartar to be materially in meats and drinks and likewise to remain throughout the shops of the digestions and therefore at length to be coagulated in miserable men and it is far remote from thence to admit of a thing in us to be transchanged out of a good Cream Chyle or venal bloud into an evil one by virtue of the middle life transplanting the directions of the Archeus For as there is one order of generation so also is there every where another of fore-caution and healing Therefore there is no foundation truth appearance or necessity of tartarizing For which way doth it conduce to devise Tartar to be the stubborn Prince of coagulations which oweth his Birth to a fiction For truly the dispositions coagulations and resolutions of things do depend on their own Seeds Duelech is made no lesse of the purest
idly to be denyed that Iron or the Fragments of Iron are in the Fountains of the Spaw but the Vein of Iron to be in them For truly there doth more Virtue occur in the Vein than in the Iron to wit of those subtile Parts which the Furnace filched away in time of Fusion Wherefore the Juice Spirit or hungry Salt call it as thou listest doth not grow within the Vein of the Iron so that there may be a like co-melting of both in the Waters far be it The Salt hath obtained other Wombs in the Earth from whence the Water sliding by melts that Salt and snatcheth it away with it self as it were a Cousin-germane being once the Son of another Water But if therefore it be the longer detained in a notable hollowness about the Vein it suppeth up more of the Vein into it self as doth Pouhontius and this the Fountain Geronster doth as yet more amply do But Tonneletius being richer than the two foregoing Fountains in a hungry Salt yet is poorer than the same in the Vein For from hence it is Cold and more troublesome to the Stomack Therefore which-soever Fountain doth more provoke Stoole is the more fertile in the Vein Neither indeed was that thing unknown to the Antients who used the Scale of Iron for the loosing of the Belly Virgins also taking Stomoma or the Powder of Steel are wont also to vomit on the first dayes Geronster therefore hath received more of the Vein than Tonneletius but as much of Salt but mitigated by reason of the Activity of the Vein received into it and therefore that Salt hath become more gross and corpulent But Savenirius is far more washy in Waters having the least of the Vein and hungry Salt and therefore it sooner finisheth the Action of the hungry Salt and Vein and the Medicinal water sooner dyeth And for the same Cause it most easily passeth thorow the Stomack is sooner concocted and doth penetrate The presence therefore of the Spirit acting into the Vein enlargeth the Pores in the Water and works up the Water of the Fountain unto a lighter weight It is further to be noted that even as in Wines and unripe Oyl of Olives there is a fermental boyling up So the Action of the hungry Salt it self is made And not only upon the Vein while it gnaws and passeth thorow the same but also it operates for some time upon the same being snatched away with it Pouhontius I say far longer than Savenirius c. until that the Activities of the Spirits being worn out of exhausted as well the Agent as the Patient the thing dissolving I say like as also the thing to be dissolved do decay or faile in the same endeavour CHAP. XCVIII A Fifth Paradox 1. The virtues of a hungry Salt 2. The effect of obstruction 3. How far Fountains may act in a Man 4. Whom they may not help 5. An example of an effect by it self and by accident 6. A Woman is subject unto double Diseases 7. The faculties of the Vein of Iron 8. An objection 9. A Solution 10. After what manner Iron opens and after what manner it doth binde 11. A proof by an allied Example 12. Whether they are convenient in the Stone and how far 13 That is a Cloakative Cure which doth onely expell the Stones 14. The Waters of the Spaw are for a Cause that the Stone doth the more easily re-increase or grow again 15. Wherein the true Cure of the Stone is placed 16. From whence the remedy is to be fetched and of what sort it is 17. The first qualities are in Fountains 18. Water not Air is Internally moist 19. The Virtues of Rellolleum and Cherto 20. An objection 21. A resolution thereof WE being now about to Treat in a brief Method concerning the Virtues of the Fountains of the Spaw and being to speak by the Rule of a supply will resume that no other Natural Endowments are to be found than those which are drawn out of a hungry Salt and the dissolved Vein of Iron Wherefore seeing a hungry Salt dissolves Muscilages cleanseth them away consumes them and sends them forth therefore first of all it helps Stomacks that are beset with Muckiness also by the same endeavour it dispatcheth the same preter-natural sliminess which we have called a Coagulable excrement of things in us being crept a little more deeply and inwards as well into the innermost Chambers of the Veins as into those of any Bowell but by so much the slower by how much farther it hath taken its Journey from the mouth Hence it doth not sluggishly succour the obstructions arisen in the Liver Spleen and Kidneys and Fevers the Dropsie and Jaundise bred from thence For the matter obstructing being consumed the obstruction ceaseth which otherwise seeing it is a hinderance whereby the Spirit of Life may spring the less freely throughout all Places and perform its offices Therefore it deprives the parts which are behind it in a future order of a Vital Communion and consequently calls for Putrefactions Therefore the Waters of the Spaw being drunk are convenient altogether in all Diseases which arise from the Enemy Tartar being received and Coagulated within besides Nature So that a sufficient Root of Life be remaining that is if they are drunk seasonably enough Yet with that adjoyned Limitation that the Power of the Waters doth not Transcend the Hypochondrials or places about the short Ribs For the Waters do not reach beyond the Reins to wit unto the Heart Lungs or Brain Wherefore also the Waters of the Spaw do not succour those affects which are Naturally or peculiarly from a property of Passion unless by accident The reason is Because seeing Minerals are altogether unapt for nourishment they are banished out of the Body with the Urine the last excrement of Salts to wit the Commerce whereof the lively Arterial blood doth no longer suffer Therefore if they may seem to bring any help unto the Head Heart or Lungs all that is to be reckoned to happen by a withdrawing of the affect which causeth a distemperature therein by a Secondary Passion and consent In the next place neither do the Waters of the Spaw profit in Epidemical Endemical and Astral Diseases as are the Plague Plurisie burning Coal c. as neither do they very much profit in those Diseases wherein a Poison subsisteth being either inwardly received or bred or participated of from contagion As also neither in Diseases of Tincture such as are the Leprosie Pox or Foul Disease the Morphew Cancer Falling-Evil c. Wherefore we do not well agree with those who commend the Water of the Spaw for all Diseases altogether without Exception And so that they extoll the same even unto blasphemy To wit There is no cause that we having obtained the Fountains of the Spaw should now henceforeward be amazed at the Miracles of Ancient Waters or of the Fish-Pool of Siloah or of Jordan curing of Naaman seeing here also we see those
although I knew mans urine to be onely in our species and that the spirit of mans urine alone was in the possession of man Yet I examined Horse-pisse in the name of the bigger Cattel as being carefull whether perhaps there might not be another like coagulating spirit which by reason of Impediments co-bred with it could not every where obtain the command of coagulating But however I laboured I found not that spirit the Coagulater in Horse-pisse As neither the spirit of a ferment or of Aqua vitae Therefore I found a potential Aqua vitae intimate with mans urine and that a pliable one between that spirit the Coagulater and the putrified spirit the Receiver of the aforesaid Runnet or Coagulum And it is chiefly to be noted that the spirit of urine doth not coagulate but by the Wedlock of Aqua vitae the which I have often approved by distilling There are therefore three things in the urine of man which must of necessity concur and by so much the more powerfully by how much every person troubled with the stone doth now bear no light or small principle of corruption in his urine as presently in its place from whence indeed a ferment is swiftly stirred up in the urine for the aforesaid Aqua vitae that is capable of Coagulation For neither doth it withstand these things that as well the spirit of Life as the Aqua vitae it self are exceeding swift of flight and so scarce fit for the stubbornnesse of Duelech for it is certain that the spirit of Vitriol doth most swiftly flye from its volatile Companion yea and that it is presently fixed by the swift Sal Armoniack So that it undergoes a fusion or liquidnesse of substance whereby our followers being perfectly instructed do presently cease to wonder which things otherwise affect the ignorant with amazement CHAP. IV. A processe of Duelech 1. The manner of making Duelech 2. It is a singular Being nor having its like 3. A mechanick or handicraft Operation of the Fountaines of the Spaw 4. Oker in the Fountaines of the Spaw might have scared Paracelsus from his device of Tartar 5. A dissection in the actions of Spirits 6. The Fire-water that hath not an homogeneal Being like unto its self 7. The difference of the aforesaid dissolving liquor with all others of the whole Universe 8. Some Oyl of Gold is of a Pomegranate or light-red colour 10. What the generation of Duelech may bespeak 11. The action of Bodyes on Bodyes of what sort it is 12. The Doctrine concerning the action of Bodyes and Spirits 13. The participations of faculties out of mettals without a metalick matter 14. The delusion of the Alchymist 15. Diseases are appointed for a punishment and Reward 16. Some exercises beginning from salts 17. The spirit of salt is made earthly 18. A trivial Question 19. The device of frosty Tartar 20. From whence the Strangury of old people is 21. Four remarkable things issuing from thence 22. A second Question 23. A third 24. A fourth 25. Catarrhs or defluxions of the Bladder are ridiculous 26. A fifth Question 27. A sixth 28. Astrologers are taken notice of 29. Paracelsus is noted like as also Galen 30. The solving of a question proposed 31. The heedlessnesse or rashnesse of Galen THe spirit of the Urine laying hold of the volatile earth that was procreated by a seed and a hoary and putrifying ferment stirs up the spirit of Wine the inhabitant of the Urine as yet laying hid in Potentia or possibility by the which as it were by two Sexes concurring the certain aforesaid earthly spirit drinks in the one onely aforesaid Coagulater by reason of which reciprocation or mutual return a most thorow connexion of them both ariseth in acting because they conjoyn in manner of spirits throughout their very least parts And so the Coagulater doth at one instant coagulate the spirit of Wine that was potentially stirred up in the putrifying ferment whereunto when the hoary or fermental putrified Masse hath applyed its matter they are condensed or co-thickned together into a true Duelech surely a Monster this new something coagulated in the middle of the urine Nor therefore capable of being again resolved into water For it is a rocky Animal Being like unto no other and the which therefore Paracelsus names Duelech And that Being will the more easily enter into the mind by a daily example which the Fountaines of the Spaw present unto us For they have a sulphureous spirit manifestly tart from whence they are called the sharp Fountaines and also a vein of Iron For both being of an imperfect and immature shape are contained as dissolved in the simple water Therefore they both begin mutually to joyn their reciprocal forces against each other And at length when as their strength being tyred they have desisted from their action they are condensed into a stony body which affixeth it self to bottles in the form of Oker and so the water returns into its antient Element as uncloathed of every strange quality Which Sharpish Fountaines if Paracelsus had sufficiently contemplated of or he had neglected the history of the Tartar of Wine borrowed from Basilius Valentine for he had known that there is not the like birth of Oker and of Tartar of Wine At leastwise he might have been with the more difficulty convinced Because Tartar is resolved into water but Oker is not as neither is the stone For neither have I ever attempted to deny that solid bodyes are constituted of Liquors But I refuse tartarous liquors they being forcibly brought into the Causes of Diseases as in the Treatise concerning Tartars but on the contrary I have reverently admired the activities of spirits on spirits Truly since Oker growes out of the waters of the Spaw or since a stony crust is spread over bottles throughout their whole hollownesse let it first of all be wickednesse to give the water of the Spaw to drink if we believe that Tartars are made just as Oker is in the spaw-Spaw-water That is if we believe that there is Tartar in the water of the Spaw which is presently to be coagulated in the Drinker he commits wickednesse who gives the spaw-Spaw-water to drink For while the acide or tart salt of Wine corroded the Lee that salt indeed which before was tart and not coagulated remaines tart and is coagulated Neither doth it change the essence of Salt although that salt which before was fluide be constrained or bound fast together In like manner also although the Lee hath supt up the acide spirits and coagulated them into it self yet a solid body remaineth while the spirit of the acide salt is coagulated into the solid body of Tartar of Wine Yea before that it be fully coagulated it affixeth it self to the Vessel For in the Generation of Tartar of Wine the spirit acteth on a body and there is altogether a far different action while two spirits act on each other For in this action even
of the enemy and wine add heat therefore he who proceeds by Wine heals according to the conformity of nature Notwithstanding let us grant that Heat Wine being administred is the greater yea also that the Fever is the sharper For what other thing follows from thence than that the Wine shall increase the vital constitution And that that state is nearer to the constitution of young folks than that which proceeds by cooling things or without the administration of Wine for cooling means are more like to death to cessation from motion and to defect But heat from moderate Wine is a mean like unto life and a means which the Archeus himself useth For the Constitution of heat increased by Wine is nearer to the Vigour State and Crisis than if the strength being weak there shall be the more feeble heat by abstaining therefrom These things concerning the drinking of Wine But concerning the drinking of water Let the decision be that feverish persons desire not hot water nor do they thirst after that which is luke-warm but cold water is to be admitted in a slack degree in the highest heat of the state of the Fever Neither must we be afraid as I have said of a co-mixture of the extreames Because experience hath long since successfully shooke off this fear But in other stations of Fevers neither is cold water as neither is abundance to be drunk yet thirst is never to be endured not indeed under sweat But then let the drink be hot If thirst be urgent and the Fever hath not the fodder of drink the in-bred moisture is wasted But moreover That which they accuse concerning the crudity of water take thou thus Water springing out of sand is simple and the best and it is to be taken from the fountain it self But that which runs thorow Pipes or issues out of a clayie spring is now partaker of a mixt malignity But this water I call not so much crude as infected For water by it self deserves neither to be called crude nor cocted as neither is it ripened by heat nor doth it attain any thing thereby for it is sufficient so that its highest cold be blunted but none may use infected waters as neither any cold drink in the Plague and malignant Fevers But there is a larger reason for an hot remedy But neither do I ever perswade a remedy which may moderate Fevers only by heat but as Wine profits by comforting and by more throughly introducing succours coupled unto it So do remedies by cutting resolving and cleansing and in that respect the more prosperousty because they have the Archeus in operating agreeable to themselves For thus far he co-mingles his own powers with the powers of remedies that the occasional cause may be put to flight and that the more firm health may not presently receive its strength prostrated At length perhaps they will object against these things That since heat in a Fever is the effect of the spirit that maketh the aassult his being wroth It also followes that from the measure of heat the wrothfulness of the Archeus is to be measured and by consequence that whatsoever increaseth a feverish heat doth also increase a Fever I have answered before that there are many branches effects or various Symptomes of one root And that oft-times doating delusions Coma's or sleeping Evils intermittencies of pulses to wit things denoting an increased Fever do happen under the more mild heat Even as from a tender branch of an Acorn there is a greater leaf than from an old Oak There is therefore an Elenchus or fault in the argument to say the Fever is the greater in the man for I abhor that encreased Fever the which mortal increased symptomes do follow But I in no wise fear the Fever to have increased because the Archeus doth the more strongly rise up for the expulsion of the root of the Fever And if they in conclusion call that thing an increased Fever I little dwell upon it For so also the Schools perswade that we are not greatly to be afraid of accidents unexpectedly happening besides reason It is therefore to be noted That the Archeus is never enflamed in his whole For otherwise about the end of the fit the whole Archeus being dissolved or wasted should be the cause of fainting The Archeus therefore is enflamed in much or a little portion of himself And therefore the Archeus being encreased by Wine if more thereof be enflamed yet more of him is not lost and yet he more strongly strained the occasional cause than if the Archeus be not strengthened and encreased and a less part of him be enflamed CHAP. XIII The Essence of a Fever 1. Of what sort an Essential and Natural Definition is 2. Diseases are Beings subsisting by themselves and not accidents 3. Why Diseases inhabite in a strange Inn. 4. A Disease is not only a Travel nor a Motion nor a Distemper nor a Disposition 5. The Essence of a Fever which the Schools are hitherto ignorant of 6. There is therefore another Scope of healing than what hath hitherto been 7. That the occasional Cause alone distinguisheth Fevers 8. The cure of a Physitian is made easie THE definition of a thing is not to be framed from the general kind of the thing defined and from the constitutive difference of the Species's or particular kinds even as I have elsewhere demonstrated in Logicks Because besides rational and irrational if so be they are as yet the constitutive differences of living Creatures no differences of like sort appear in the Schools But a natural definition ought to consist of the material and internal efficient or seminal Causes Because those two are those which constitute the thing it self and that the whole and they remain unseparably essential in it as long as it self is and so they explain a thing by its causes and the properties of these Truly Fevers have a matter and an internal efficient cause after the manner of other Beings subsisting in them although all diseases inhabite in a living body because they are not Beings of the first Creation but begun from the curse of the departure out of the right way And therefore neither have they properly their own seminal Being which constitutes and nourishes them But they have an occasional Being from whence they are stirred up instead of a seed The which ceasing the Disease ceaseth As oft therefore as that which is not vital is inserted into a vital soil the Archeus is angry and becomes wroth that he may exclude that forreign thing out of his Anatomy The which I have perfectly taught in the entrance of this Treatise by a thorn thrust into the finger Therefore a Fever is not only an expulsive endeavour or alterative motion and much less the alteration and disposition it self as the Schools have otherwise thought but a Fever is a material part it self of the Archeus defiled through indignation For a part of the Archeus is defiled through anger
objection from Arts. 17. Why the Water may be reckoned the first-born Element MY sight is carried on a useful good but not on vain reasoning Wherefore seeing the Auncients do call back nature and every of its operations to the account of Elements Qualities and Complexions resulting in mixture and the Schooles do even to this day hand forth this Doctrine to their young beginners in Medicine to the destruction of mankinde I will again and again set upon the dissection of the Elements whereby it may appear that they have erred hitherto in the Causes of Diseases I will every where relate Paradoxes and things unaccustomed to the Schooles and it will be hard for those to cease from the Doctrine drunk in who do believe the whole truth to have flowed into Galen Galen hath delivered in many Volumes and with a tedious boasting of the Greeks that every Body the Earth Water Air and Fire excepted doth consist of the Wedlock of these four united together and so from hence that a Body is to be called mixt Moreover that the whole likeness and diversity of bodies doth arise from the unlike conflux or concurrence and continual fight of four Elements But the Schooles that came after do as yet dispute it as undecided whether the Elements with their forms do remain in the thing mixt or indeed whether in every particular mixture they are deprived of their essential forms and the which by a peculiar indulgence they do re-take from the seperation and general privation of the form of the thing mixed At length from the unlikeness and combate of the Elements they bid all the infirmities and first-born fewels of our mortality to descend Surely it is a wonder to see how much brawling and writing there hath been about these things and it is to be pitied how much these loose dreams of trifles have hitherto circumvented or beset the World they have prostituted destructive vain talkings in the faires of the Schooles instead of the knowledge of Medicine and so so damnable a delusion hath thereby deceived the obedience of the sick in healing Therefore the juggling deceipts of Pagans being cast behinde me I direct my experiences and the light fteely given me according to the Authority of the holy Scriptures at the beholding of which light the night-Birds do fly away Therefore it is chiefly to be grieved at that the light of truth being had darkness is as yet taught in the Schooles of Christians In the beginning therefore the Almighty created the Heaven and the Earth before that the first day had shone forth Afterwards in the first day he created the light and divided it from the darkness Secondly he created the Firmament which should seperate the inferior Waters from the waters that were above it self and named that Heaven Therefore it is hence plainly to be seen that before the first day the waters were already created from the beginning being partakers of a certain heavenly disposition because they were hidden under the Etymologie of the Word Heaven Yet they were a-kinne to these lower waters to which they were once conjoyned before their seperation In the next place that darkness covered the face of the deep and that that deep did point out the Waters because then all the Waters above the Heaven being as yet conjoyned to ours upon the Earth did make an Abysse of incomprehensible deepness upon which the Spirit whose name is Eternall was carried that he might with his blessing replenish his new Creature of water Therefore it is manifest that the Creation of the Heaven the Water and the Earth was before a day neither that it may be numbred with the six dayes Creation afterwards described Because it pleased the Eternall also to rest on the seventh day which in respect of the aforesaid Creation would have been the eighth if it had been a day And therefore it is not reckoned among the number of dayes because the Creation of the Elementary matter was made before a day sprang forth Lastly by this Text the Firmament is not onely the eighth Starry Heaven but and also that which by our Authority we distinguish into seven wandring Orbs or Circles Which the teacher of the Gentiles hath seemed to contain in one But the Chrystalline and first mover for another and at length the huge Heaven of an incomprehensible greatness wherein every righteous man shineth like the Sun for the third although that Empyrean Heaven joyned with its two fellowes being taken for the second perhaps another may remain for the third Which may be the bottomless retiring place of Fountain-light full of Divine Majesty and unsearchable At leastwise the Firmament reacheth from the Moon even to the conjoyning of the Starry Heaven and seperateth the water that is above it from these lower ones and therefore the Heaven with the Hebrews soundeth where there are waters But the Lights and the Stars began on the fourth day and were set in order in the Firmament Therefore in the beginning the Heaven Earth and Water the matter of all Bodies that were afterwards to arise was created But in the Heaven were the Waters contained but not in the Earth hence I think the Waters to be more noble than the Earth yea the Water to be more pure simple indivisible firm or constant neerer to a Principle and more partaking of a heavenly condition than the Earth is Therefore the Eternall would have the Heaven to contain Waters above it and as yet something more by reason whereof it is called Heaven that which we call the Air the Skie or vitall Air. For therefore neither is there mention made of the creating of the Water and Air for that both of them the Etymologie of the Word Heaven did include Therefore I call these two Elements Primigeniall or first-born in respect of the Earth But no where any thing is read of the Creation of the fire neither therefore do I acknowledge it among the Elements and I reject my honour or esteem with Paganisme Neither also may we with Paracelsus acknowledge the fire by the name of Lights and Stars to be a superlunary Element as neither to have been framed from the beginning the which notwithstandig it should needs be if it ought to resemble or partake of the condition of an Element Therefore I deny that God created four Elements because not the fire the fourth And therefore it is vain that the fire doth materially concurre unto the mixture of bodies Therefore the fourfold kinde of Elements Qualities Temperaments or Complexions and also the foundation of Diseases falls to the ground For our handicraft operation hath made manifest to me that every body to wit the Rockie Stone the small Stone the Gemme or pretious Stone the Flint the Sand the Fire-stone the white Clay the Earth cocted or boyled Stones Glasse Lime Sulphur or Brimstone c. is changed into an actual Salt equall in weight to its own body from whence it was made and that that Salt being sometimes
the foundation of nature by which all waters are strained thorow that all of them may keep a Communion among each other from the beginning of the Creation unto the end and from the Superficies or upper part of the Earth even to its Center And moreover the water detained in this Soil of Sand is perhaps actually greater by a thousand fold than the whole heap of Seas and Rivers floating on the Superficies of the Earth And that is easily verified by supposing the whole superficies of the Earth also to be covered with waters to the depth of 600 paces Therefore it followes respect being had to the Diameter of the Earth that there is easily a thousand times more water under than upon the Earth For truly dry Sand drinks up at least about a fourfold quantity of water in the same extension of place yet I will not have it that although the Quellem be the last ground or Soil to the Digger that all subjected grounds are every where to be found by order For the aforesaid Sand which sometimes overwhelms it self perhaps to a thousand paces beneath the Horizon elsewhere boils up with speed under the open Air yea and oft-times in the top of Mountains Of which thing the Schooles with their Aristotle being ignorant do toughly hold that all true springs do owe the cause of their continuance from the Air co-thickned into water when as notwithstanding they cannot maintain that thing because in the tops of the highest Mountains springs do oft-times leap forth where another Mountain of the like height is not neer nor a water-Channel extended on either side to this Therefore they hold their peace with a lofty look and are silent at the unwonted miracle of the thing Surely as long as waters do wander in the living and vitall Soil of the Earth and are detained in the Sand Quellem so long I say they are not constrained to bring forth by the water drawing lawes of Scituations No otherwise than as the bloud while it is nourished with life in the veins so long also it knowes not above and beneath and it is as well in the fore-head as in the feet But at the very moment wherein it once falls out of the veins or the waters do disgorge themselves out of the Quellem they cease not to flow down by obeying the lawes of Scituations Therefore the Sea in its own ground doth sup up the received waters in the sieve of the Virgin-Sand For so according to the wise man however all waters do flow into the Sea yet it never re-gorgeth them again Because by one onely thread there is a continuall passage out of the Virgin-Sand into Springs Streams Rivers and the Sea to moysten the Earth and appointed to enrich it with Mineralls Whither again the waters being driven they are supt up partly by the Quellem and partly do snatch the Air. So indeed doth the Universe distribute its waters and lay them aside for divers fruits And therefore I have meditated with admiration that the Almighty hath set before him the necessities of ungrateful immortal men as the aims of things I return to the Earth I have found for certain that the original Earth doth no where of its own accord concur to the mixtures of fruits slide thereto by chance nor that it is assumed by nature nor is found to have assumed the works of nature or art And therefore the reason of mixtures waxeth lean the number of Elements Qualities and Temperaments ceaseth and so they are lying fopperies which have been hitherto stifly and ignorantly garnished out by the Schooles For of a man Wood c. be it dust or ashes that is left by the fire yet Earth is never drawn out for else our burying places would soon swell Therefore the Earth is at least the remaining wombe but not the Mother Which if it should sometimes have a conflux unto fruits or mixt bodies it would either abide in the same and so by the solution of art or nature would sometimes be found or should return from thence which is false or plainly should be taken to the mixt Body and in it should cease to be Earth being already changed into another thing and so should be elsewhere diminished which I will straightway shew to be alike false or by the death or dissolution of the thing should return again into earth and there should be a daily and repeated returning of one and the same Element from a privation to a habit Or if this should not return into earth it should remain changed into fruits and so the whole Earth had long since gone into fruits and nature had lost her constancy and had mocked the first aims of the Creator or the earth had returned from the dissolved mixt body into another Element the impertinency whereof ceaseth For truly it is not natural to water or air to turn another Element into its own substance From hence I will straightway demonstrate that never one drop of water is turned into air or likewise air changed into water Which changes notwithstanding do appear lesse labour some than of the earth into water or into air And therefore if nature hath not as yet attempted the more easie transmutations after what sort shall it presume on the more difficult ones For otherwise the earth should be â—upt up and brought to nothing by Elements that are so much more large co-touching with it and more active But the Father of the Universe being a lover of Concord hateth discord and brawlings and chiefly in the Elements which that they might be the stable props of nature he hath not created the same fighting ones For he hath also directed the Elements to their appointed ends and lawes of continuance to wit that he may bring forth and nourish his own fruits for his own honour and the use of man Notwithstanding neither the honour of God nor mans necessity did any where or any way require the battels devourings strifes of the Elements their trampling on each other as neither the exchanging or nourishing of one by the other Nor lastly that at the end of an Element to increase it self by covetousness hunger luxury or necessity with the destruction of anomer For neither are they guilty of the fault of coverousness or hatred as neither do they desire to be nourished Last of all neither have the Elements obtained an Archeus a kitchin or properties for that transchanging Therefore the whole Doctrine of the Schooles concerning the elementary War is an old Wives fable Therefore the earth is never taken or of its own accord doth materially run out of it self into the constitution of bodies And there is by right made no mixture in nature which can firmly grow together under the unity of the natural composed form unless it be between juyces and spirits On the contrary no pulverous or powder all co-mixture doth tend to generation but there is onely an apposition or applying presently of its own accord and again
At length the one onely Fountain and Spring of waters which thou hadst placed in the heart and top of the Earth is afterwards spread abroad into a thousand veins which did almost every where pierce thorow the Globe of the earth to far better uses And moreover thou hast also dashed the Sea almost into every Creek of the earth that there might be the greater fellowship of Mortalls thereby Therefore if thy punishment be blessed and happy what shall the free gifts of thy blessings be Oh Lord keep us for the exceeding greatness of thy goodness within that number who shall praise thy great and mighty deeds for ever in the sanctifying of thy name But although that one onely Fountain now ceased neither Lands being now rent asunder one alone was not enough yet perhaps the same entrance of waters remained Because in the sweet Sea between Roest and Loefelt according to the Table of Gothland a Gulf of waters is described by Olaus whereinto Ships Marriners being not aware and their endeavours being in vain are supt up For indeed it is the mouth into which the waters of that Ocean do fall and by one onely passage were before the Floud carried thence unto the aforesaid Fountain But afterwards that passage like the hollow vein was diversly distributed and hedged in by a Rock by some thousands of veins ending upon the face of the Quellem from which afterwards the waters being drunk up do hasten from far unto their appointed offices Moreover that Whirle-poole or Gulf if it ought to be any where and Olaus be a true Writer or if not at leastwise it is fitly in the Sea as well for the sweetness of the Sea as for the long and round figure of the World by me straightway to be proved In the next place if one onely Fountain were for the moystening of the Earth the aforesaid Whirle-poole shall be sufficient especially because the bottom of the Sea hath the Sand Quellem longly and largely laying open which would be sufficient for the drinking up the water And the rather because the Sea doth sometimes wash upon and rince the earth on every side and thorow many middle spaces Therefore the Sea being supt up in the said Whirle-poole it is by little and little brought thorow stony Channels and hence by lesser pipes thorow a great part of the earth Notwithstanding they are scarce over whelmed beneath the Soil Keyberch but as often as the veins of the Whirle-poole do cut or touch at the Quellem rising up thorow middle places and rushing forth into a Fountain indeed the sweet veins do perish and veins of Sea-Salt are produced Otherwise the briny Liquor if there be also any in the Gothick Sea doth through the lively Archeus of the Earth lose by degrees the nature of Salts or if the Ferments of Salts in places do any where exist those very waters do put on the seeds as well of divers Salts as of Stones and Mettalls and are changed into the same fruits For so neat gemme nitre aluminous vitriolated Sea Salts do grow of the water they as it were promising the first birth of the water to themselves And then from hence they do decline or decay into Bur or the first off-spring of Mineralls and degenerate by the guidance of the seeds So some fruits of the water do stop up the passages of their own Fountain and by their last ripeness do attain the perfection of that Minerall whose appointments the seeds did bear before them which were entertained in the Ferments of places Moreover as that Northern Whirlepoole or Gulf doth also sup up Fishes within it so it sups up the same exceeding small ones the greater being detained within the Channels Where oft-times they are either made Rockie or wax filthy through putrifying or also are seasoned with the Balsam of the soils as also that Fishes are oft-times found digged up which the Husband-man and others being amazed at do think they were born in undue places and without a seed Furthermore whether the Conduits have received the water or at length have drunk up that Quellem the waters are at least there endowed with a lively and seminall property For no otherwise than as a vein even in a dead Carease preserveth the bloud contained in it from coagulating or curdling which is a corruption of the first degree truly by a stronger Reason that right agrees to the veins of the earth which is not yet dead Therefore the water is supt and drawn within the lively soil of the Earth whence it having gotten a common life Come let us worship the King by whom all things live it knoweth not the Scituations of places it easily ascendeth unto the tops of Mountains without trouble together with the Quellem that it may from thence send forth fountains without ceasing VVhich things surely being unknown to the Schooles they have left that place of the wise man Coheleth or the Preacher scanty or barren where he saith all Rivers hasten towards the Sea the which notwithstanding doth not therefore re-gorgethem again For truly Rivers do return to the place from whence they came forth that they may flowagain Which words have been corrupted heretofore with divers modellings or qualifications Because springs in the tops of Mountains were not seen to proceed from the Sea whither they at length do rush Therefore Springs have been hitherto falsely judged by the Schooles to take their Beginnings and Causes from Air condensed or co-thickned by the force of cold between the hollow places of Mountains ready to fall upon each other The which I in a little Book concerning the Fountains of the Spaw printed in the year 1624 at Leidon have shewne that they have themselves after the manner now delivered in this place Therefore the true originall of true Springs being manifested it hitherto remains unknown to the Schooles The Scripture-Text entire and cleared But seeing the same Law course and re-course of waters from the Quellem into Fountains and at length from Fountains into the Sea was kept no lesse in dayes wherein it hath not rained for three years and more than when the whole year doth almost wax barren with a continual showre we must know that it is sumcient for the Earth that it doth not send forth such bountiful Springs through its Water-pipes and steep-running Brooks as by the common besprinkling of Dew and Rain Moreover before I shall come to the unchangeable substance of the water wherein the Schooles do promise that Air is easily changed into water and this likewise into it I will first clear up another Paradox To wit that the Globe being composed of Earth and Water is indeed round from the East thorow the West into the East yet not from the North into the South but long and round or of the figure of an Egge Which thing in the first place hath much deceived Saylors Because the Waters do slide with a more swift course from North to South than otherwise
from East to West For very many Waters do alwayes descend by Rivers from the North which do never run back unto the North. So the River Danubius with many others doth slide thorow the Hellespont or Greek Sea into the Archi-pelago or chief Sea the Waters descend neither doth any thing return from the Mediterranean Sea Whatsoever doth once descend into the Mediterranean is never spread into the Ocean For the River Nilus alwayes descending in a right line from the Mountains of the Moon is wholly plunged into the Zebunutican Sea with its dresses neither doth the Mediterranean Sea in the mean time increase nor become the salter Which thing notwithstanding should be altogether needful so to be if in manner of a naked vapour the waters powred into it should exhale out of the Sea But the Eternal wisdom hath in most places made the Mediterranean Sea deeper than the Ocean that the Virgin-Sand might drink up the Waters together with its Salts like a sieve For mans necessities which do seem to have dictated a Law to God out of his goodness did require Springs and Rivers falling down from the highest tops Lastly the waters being turned forth of the Quellem by Fountains do by a continuation draw after them the following waters and therefore also in the bottom do they drink up the sea-Sea-waters by supping Therefore properties are added to places by Divine Providence by reason of necessities The flowing of the North Sea about Kent of England doth prevent or go before the flowing of the West Sea almost for half an houre Whence I conjecture the Earth and Sea to ascend in the Northern Climate or Coast For the whole Northern Earth is named Scandia from Scandendo or climbing And the North Sea should not be frozen to ice if it were salt If it be sweet it points out that the Salt of the Ocean cannot by ascendding be co-mingled with it but that the Northern waters do uncessantly rush into a steep place For it is likely to be true that as well in the first mixture of the deep as in the floud of the generall overflowing all Waters were once again co-mixt and that the co-mingling of these was therefore called Sea Which waters therefore in the beginning were once salt and straight way afterwards were sweeter it is certain that those waters have continually flowen downwards because they are sweet at this day and so Scandia is far higher in Scituation than Aegypt But let us imagine onely earth of ten foot to have framed a banke to the Sea in the shoares on every side and let us keep an equall roundness at least Nilus which is carried head-long in a straight line from the South into the Mediterranean Sea for a thousand Leagues space if besides the roundness of the Sphere which is not any where steep it also hath it self in manner of a plain with relation to its Center it should have onely ten foot fall at the highest from its rise even into the Sea Which is to call Nilus a quiet pool but not a steep running River For when a Ditch was devised at Gaudave Bruges there was found a declining height of 18 foot the dimension being taken by night over the flame of a Candle and that by the withdrawn roundness of the Sphere If therefore by a slow rowling or running there is 18 foot of fall or descent in eight Leagues Nilus flowing alike slowly shall have need of 2230 foot in height at least in its beginning But if it shall flow after the manner of Nilus it shall of necessity have need of four times as much at the least or of nine thousand foot But if Nilus doth measure this height of the Earth by 15 degrees from the Southern Tropick or turning point unto the Mediterranean Sea where the figure of the Globe is as yet Sphericall or round the which altitude therefore is it not lawful to conjecture to be from the Mountains of the Moon even to the South An unwearied fall of the waters from the North promiseth a notable elevation of the Earth so it is But thence it is not granted to collect that all the waters that being supposed do forsake the North because the Lawes of Scituations are silent where the water falls down on every side about the Center of the World And so hath been the necessity of the Universe and the rule of properties For I feign a subiunary place without a palpable body but a flint of an Egge-like form to fall down from Heaven and him to rest in his Center yet shall his length be inclined towards some part of Heaven What if this be towards the Poles it will express to us the figure of the World For it hath not therefore lost its auntient weight yet should it not fall towards Heaven because that is against the nature of every weight neither should it fall crooked-wise seeing that so it should fall into an infinite and should have no bound of motion which is alike absurd Therefore that Stone with its weightiness should be stayed in that place wherein it was laid But since that thing happens not under the Moon it must needes be that besides the weight of things there be some property in place at the sight whereof it be remooved and may make the respects of upper and lower Therefore if that thing above and beneath is not but in respect of Bodies and perhaps onely of sublunary ones those kindes of respects do wholly subsist from the intent of the Creator which is the original cause of all rest and motion Wherefore if his intent hath been to make the figure of the Universe Egg-like because that was the more commodious habitation of Mortalls for the needful nourishments of the heat of the Sun and hath alwayes made that which is far the best in all things he hath also limited an Oyall or Egg-like figure to the waters and the same respect to their Center Or that the Ovall figure should keep almost the same intention to the Center as a round figure hath What if Fountains do ascend to the tops of Mountains the Water of the Pole might also hold the reason of an ovall Scituation no otherwise than of a round one otherwise if the Heaven as the adequate or suitable Husband of the Earth be plainly Spherical or round 1. It would follow that the Sun makes a greater Circle under the Aequinoctials than under the Tropicks 2. The Sun to be so much the swifter moved under the Aequinoctiall than under the Tropick 3. The motion of the Sun to be daily inordinate and unequall to it self 4. Houre-glasses which do measure the motion of the Sun in order to slowness and the pins of Sun-Dialls which measure motion in order to the scituation of the Orbe or Circle of the Sun should not answer to each other 5. If those Instruments should agree under the Aequinoctial lines they should varie at leastwise under the Sol-stices or Sun-steads Also the Heaven which is
water pressed together into the room of one part where Gold is framed of water Wherefore so far is it that the piercing of dimensions becomes impossible seeing that nothing is more natural or home-bred to nature than to co-thicken the body of the water but indeed although there may something appear in the water like to the three first things yet also there is no hope that they should be rent asunder from each other because in the every way simplicity of the water an adequate or suitable Sulphur is after a certain sort hidden which cannot be seperated from the other two but they all do accompany together Those are not the three true Principles which are abstracted or seperated onely by the Imagination The water therefore since it doth on every side vary off-Springs according to the diversity of their seedes thus so many kindes of Earths Mineralls Salts Liquors Stones Plants living Creatures and Meteors do rise up in their particular kindes from the blast or inspiration of the seedes For the water putrifies by continuance in the Earth is made the juyce of the Earth Gums Oyl Rosin Wood Berries c. and that which of late was nothing but water materially now burns and sends forth a fume or smoak Not indeed that that fume is air but is either a vapour or a drie exhalation and a new fruit of the water not yet appointed to be wholly turned by its seed It is proved For the Body of the air cannot make a shadow in the air but whatsoever doth exhale out of a live Coal doth make a shadow in the Sun For since the air hath a limited consistence and thickness and that agreeable to its own simpleness it followes that whatsoever is thicker than the air that is not air Moreover that which being made thin by the heat of the fire doth now exhale is as yet thicker than the air and so for that cause makes a shadow surely that shall become far more thick in the cold and shall be made visible in Clouds Whatsoever exhalations therefore do from the Earth climbe upward and are joyned in Clouds for this cause also those Clouds do stink no otherwise than as water doth under the Aequinoctial line and there the Ferment and Seed of their Concretion or growing together being consumed they are turned into pure water no otherwise than the water is after it hath escaped and overcome the bounds of its putrefaction which it had conceived under the line The dew therefore is a Cloud belonging to the Spring not yet stinking falling down before it can touch the place of cold So a mist or fogg is a stinking Cloud not as yet refined through the putrefaction of its Ferment because as many as have passed over the Alps with me have known how greatly Clouds taken hold of with the hand do stink but the Rain-water collected thence how sweet and without savour it is and almost incorruptible For when any thing doth exhale whether it be in the shew of water or Oil or smoak or mists or of an exhalation although indeed it brings not away with it the seedes of the Concrete or composed Body at leastwise it carries the Ferments upward which that they may be fully abolished from thence and that the remaining matter may return into water it behooves that they be first lifted up into a subtile or fine Gas in the kitchin of the most cold air and that they passe over into another higher Region and do assume a condition in the shape of the least motes or Atomes And that the Ferments do there die as well through the cold of the place as the fineness of the Atomes as it were by choaking and extinguishing For cold is therefore a principle not indeed of life but of extinguishment To wit as it doth sub-divide the parts of the Atomes as yet by more subtilizing them even as I have above taught And so that Woods are also the sooner consumed by fire under cold as if they were driven by a blast From which necessity verily that place was from the beginning alwayes chilled with continuall cold Because the Authour of nature least he might seem to have been wanting to the necessities of his Creature hath every where fitted ordinations according to necessities Therefore cold is naturall and home-bred to that place but not from the succeeding Chymera of an Antiperistasis Indeed the matter of fruits being brought thither must needes return into their first Being and the infections of the Ferments are therefore first to be removed by the mortifications sub-divisions subtilizings piercings choakings and extinguishings of the cold The Air therefore is the place where all things being brought thither are consumed and do return into their former Element of water For in the Earth and water although Bodies sprung up from seedes do by little and little putrifie and depart into a juyce yet they are not so nearly reduced into the off-spring of simple water as neither into a Gas For Bodies that are enfeebled or consumed do straight way in the Earth draw another putrifaction through continuance a ferment and Seed Whence they flee to second Marriages and are again anew increased into succeeding fruits But the fire the death of all things doth want seedes being subjected to the will of the Artificer it consumeth all seminall things but brings over their combustible matters into a Gas. Paracelsus affirms that three Beginnings are so united in all particular principles that one cannot wholly be freed from the other by any help of art But saving the authority of the man our Handicraft-operation containing his secret Samech hath affirmed that which is contrary to his assertion by the Spirit of Wine being turned into an un-savoury water And so neither can that man cover his ignorance Indeed the Spirit of Wine being wholly capable of burning made void of Phlegme or watery moysture and Oil it alwayes for the one half of it passeth into a simple un-savoury and Elementary water by a touching of the Salt of Tartar on it Again the same thing is made by repetition as to the other part For that man was ignorant of the thingliness of a Gas to wit my Invention and next of the properties of cold in the Air yea he thought that the vapour of the water was plainly annihilated which sottishness of that his proper form of speech is least of all to be winked at in so great a Distiller Especially because he would have the Elements to be seperable from feigned Elements rather than the three first things Wherefore from the dissection of the water delivered it now sufficiently appeares that the simple water is not crude or raw and that fire doth not take away the crudity from it which it hath not Because the whole action of the fire is not into the water but into that which is co-mixed with it by accident Galen according to his manner transcribing Diascorides word for word and being willing to measure the Elementary
oftner because the number of Commissionary smitings did contain the number of Victories and repeated turns of the enemy as yet to be beaten Therefore for the keeping of peace with my friend I have explained my self I confess I say willingly that I would not search into Divine Mysteries But the manner and meanes which God useth in the Earth-quake I have attained onely by conjecture But neither at length have I desired to make these things known nor that I might be taken notice of as a brawler but that the fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom may arise from the trembling of the Earth D. Streithagen Cannon of Hemsberg in his Germane Flourish hath writ down a Chronograph or Verse of the time of this Earthly trembling by reason of its unwonted strangeness and largeness of the places Smitten the 4th of April was the Earth with tumult wide From which unwonted slaughter covered Bodies down do slide From the face of the Lord the Earth was moved from the face of the God of Jacob. CHAP. XVIII The fiction of Elementary Complexions and Mixtures 1. Why the Earth hath seemed not to be a primary Element 2. That the fire is neither a substance nor an accident 3. That all visible things are materially of water onely 4. Why the place of the Air which is called the middle Region is cold 5. What the three first things of the Chymists may be 6. Some Bodies are not reduced into the three first things 7. The unconstancie of Paracelsus 8. The errour of the Chymists 9. The reducing of the three first things into the water of a Cloud is demonstrated 10. The swift or volatile Salt of simple Bodies may be fixed by co-melting 11. The three first things were not before but are made in seperating and that indeed a new Creature 12. The Oil of things is nothing but water the seed of the compound Body being abstracted or withdrawn 13. The same thing is proved in a live Coal 14. What the wilde Gas of things is 15. How a Gas is bred in the Grape 16. The Gas of Wines 17. Why much of the Grape may hurt 18. That the Gas of new Wine is not the Spirit of Wine 19. An erroneous opinion of Paracelsus 20. A twofold Sulphur in Tinne from whence the lightness of the same 21. Gun-powder proves Gas 22. Some things do mutually transchange themselves into Gas. 23. The mutuall unsufferableness of some things that are melted together 24. That Gas materially is not Earth or Air. 25. The same thing by a supposition of a falshood and seven absurdities 26. That a mixt Body is not converted into an Element by the force of an Element the Conquerour 27. A Handicraft operation of the Liquor Alkahest 28. Gas is wholly of the Element of Water 29. It is proved by the Handicraft operation of a live Coal 30. By Handicraft operation that every Vegetable is totally and materially of water alone 31. So a stone is wholly of water 32. Fishes and all fatness are wholly of water 33. Every smoak is onely of water 34. All Sulphurs are reduced into a smoak and Gas but these are reduced into water 35. Why fire cannot make Air of Water 36. Ashes and Glasse are of Water alone 37. The Gas of Salts is nothing but an un-savourie Water 38. The Gas of fruits is nothing but water 39. The Comments or devises of Schollars concerning exhalations 40. Naturall Philosophie is in darkness without the Art of the fire 41. The spirit or breath of life is materially the Gas of the Water 42. The sweat before death is not sweat but the melting of a Liquor 43. By an Endemicall or common Gas we are easily snatched away I Have said that there are two primary Elements the Air and the Water because they do not return into each other but that the Earth is as it were born of water because it may be reduced into water But if water be changed into an Earthy Body that happens by the force or virtue of the Seed and so it hath then put of the simpleness of an Element For a flint is of water which is broken asunder into Sand. But surely that Sand doth lesse resist in its reducing into water than the Sand which is the Virgin-Earth Therefore the Sand of Marble of a Gemme or Flint do disclose the presence of the Seed But if the Virgin-earth may at length by much labour be brought into water and if it was in the beginning created as an Element yet it seemes then to have come down to something that is more simple than it selfe and therefore I have called those two Primary ones I have denied the fire to be an Element and Substance but to be death in the hand of the Artificer given for great uses I say an artificial Death for Arts which the Almighty hath created but not a natural one But now I take upon me to demonstrate that Bodies which are believed to be mixt are materially the fruits of water onely neither that they have need of the Wedlock of another Element to wit that Bodies whether they are dark or clear sound or fluide bodies of one and the same kindâ— or those that are unlike Suppose them to be Stones Sulphurs Mettalls Hony wax Oils a Bone the Brain a Grisle Wood Barke Leaves lastly that all things and all particular things are wholly reduced into a water altogether without savour and so that they do consist and are contained in simple water onely For indeed most of those things are destroyed by fire and do straightway of their own accord give their part to the water which part although it after some sort resembles the nature of the composed body at length at least-wise the contagion of that composed Seed being taken away that water or Mercury of things returns into the simple and un-savoury water of rain So Oils and fats being seperated by the fire a little of the Alcali Salt being added to them do at length assume the nature of Soap and depart into Elementary water yea whatsoever things are inflamed by an open fire in the very entertainment of the Clouds are reduced voluntarily into water For such was the necessity of the cold of that place as I have already taught above that whatsoever things should rise up thither from the lower places should forget their seeds by the mortall cold in that place and their sub-division into a Gas of almost infinite Atomes For Salt Sulphur and Mercurie or Salt Liquor and Fat are in the most speciall particular kindes or Species not indeed as certain universall Bodies which are common to all particular kindes but they are similar or like parts in composed bodies being distinguished by a three-fold variety according to the requirance of the seeds Therefore if the seminall properties shall the more toughly remain in the three things now seperated then by things being admixed with them the impressions of those properties are taken away and estranged
From whence they do afterwards passe into the Element of water But some Bodies do refuse to be divided into the three things at length the Liquor Alkahest of Paracelsus being adjoyned they decay into a Salt and that Salt is destroyed by passing over into an un-savory water The Art of the fire being despised hath made these things to be unknown in the Schooles But I have not onely a War with those that are ignorant of nature the despisers of the searching mistress of Philosophy but also with Paracelsus the Standard-defender of the Chymists for whom when it was hard to have declined from the beaten Road he sometimes would have those three things to consist in the co-mingling of the Elements and sometimes he thought the Elements of the World themselves not to be bodies but the empty places or wombes of things But in another place he denieth all of whatsoever is corporeall to be Elementary but the Masse onely of the three first things And again in another place he hath taught that the very Elements yea the flame of the fire do reduce themselves by a Method into the four Elements And so they cease to be naked Elements in the place of three principles But the flame it selfe which is nothing but a kindled smoak being enclosed in a Glasse straightway in the very instant perisheth into nothing So that a Glasse made in a glassen Fornace with a bright burning fire and being shut could never contain any thing besides Air. He being unconstant to himself hath made himself ridiculous and all those particular things in fit places are to be refuted by me For the Chymists have hitherto believed that the Elements do lay hid in the three first things For they had seen Air and Fire in burning Wax to fly away together and thereupon they have thought that the water doth in part challenge to its self its air and fire But they have thought that the Earth flies away with the smoak Which thing they have likewise supposed concerning those things which do leave a Coal and ashes behinde them placing ashes in the room of earth But they have believed that the fruits of the Earth and Mineralls are indeed as it were the allied pledges of the water but they have believed them to be stirred up by the Wedlock of the other three Elements but I come to the hand Let there be Aqua vitae excellently well purified from its dregs which burns Oily bodies through its whole Homogeniety or sameliness of kinde for that Aqua vitae by Salt of Tartar which is near akin to it is presently changed as to its 16th part into Salt and all the rest becomes a simple Elementary water And one onely part is made a Salt although it be of the same kinde with the other and so is equally reducible into water because that in actions of bodies and spirits under their dissolving there are made divers coagulations of the dissolver In like manner also in the operation of the fire Salts which before were volatile or swift of flight may partly be co-melted into a fixed Alcali no otherwise than as Salt-peter and Arsenick being both volatile things may be fixed by co-melting Therefore the three first things are not onely seperated but are sharpened changed do vary the nature of the composed body and so are made by the fire a new creature not indeed being created anew but being brought forth by the fire So a sile is no more the earth of the Potter but now a Stone So ashes and smoak are no more Wood nor an Alcali nor Sand Glasse Because the force of the fire doth not produce seeds but by consuming doth transchange them and by seperating alters all particular bodies Moreover none dares to say that the Salt of Tartar in the case proposed doth produce an Element out of that which is not an Element as if a Salt were the Father of the Element of water but the Sulphur of the Wine the seed being taken away doth leave the matter of the Aqua vitae to be such as it is But the part which may be fixed in the Salt of Tartar which hath taken to it the condition of a Salt was fat it being before wholly capable of burning volatile and of the same condition with its fellowes Immediately therefore after the destruction of the seed of the Sulphur of the Wine it is nothing but an Elementary water So every Oil is materially simple water which a small quantity of seed translates into a combustible Masse and playes the maske of a Sulphur And every seed is according to a Chymicall computation scarce the 8200 part of its body which part if the fire shall change into families it shall not be hard for it also to return into water For the fire burning the fatness into Air it wholly flies up to the Clouds and there doth sometimes grow together through the cold of the place into water For Fishes do by the force or virtue of an inbred seed transchange simple water into fat bones and their own fleshes it s no wonder therefore that Fishes materially are nothing but water transchanged and that they return into water by art I will also shew by Handicraft-demonstration that all Vegetables and fleshes do consist onely of water but all things if not immediately at least-wise with an assistant they do again assume the nature of water Also every small Stone Rockie or great Stone and Clay doth passe into a fixed Alcali of its own accord or by things adjoyned for an Alcali is that which before was not a Salt yet its combustion being finished it is a residing Salt So ashes is by its own proper Alcali made a meer Salt But every Alcali the fatness being added is reduced into a watery Liquor which at length is made a meer and simple water as is to be seen in Soaps the Azure-stone c. as oft as by fixed adjuncts it layes aside the seed of fatness For otherwise it is not proper to the fire to make a water rather a flame but onely to seperate things of a different kinde Therefore if water may be made out of Sulphurs and not by the proper transmutation of fire it must needes be that Sulphurs are begotten of meer water For truly neither is water seperated from Oils but that is truly made of these because the water was not in it by a formall act but onely materially to wit the mask of the seeds being withdrawn Moreover every coal which is made of the co-melting of Sulphur and Salt working among themselves in time of burning although it be roasted even to its last day in a bright burning Furnace the Vessel being shut it is fired indeed but there is true fire in the Vessel no otherwise than in the coal not being shut up yet nothing of it is wasted it not being able to be consumed through the hindering of its eflux Therefore the live coal and generally whatsoever bodies do not immediately depart into
water nor yet are fixed do necessarily belch forth a wild spirit or breath Suppose thou that of 62 pounds of Oaken coal one pound of ashes is composed Therefore the 61 remaining pounds are the wild spirit which also being fired cannot depart the Vessel being shut I call this Spirit unknown hitherto by the new name of Gas which can neither be constrained by Vessels nor reduced into a visible body unless the seed being first extinguished But Bodies do contain this Spirit and do sometimes wholly depart into such a Spirit not indeed because it is actually in those very bodies for truly it could not be detained yea the whole composed body should flie away at once but it is a Spirit grown together coagulated after the manner of a body and is stirred up by an attained ferment as in Wine the juyce of unripe Grapes bread hydromel or water and Honey c. Or by a strange addition as I shall sometime shew concerning Sal Armoniack or at length by some alterative disposition such as is roasting in respect of an Apple For the Grape is kept and dried being unhurt but its skin being once burst and wounded it straightway conceiveth a ferment of boyling up and from hence the beginning of a transmutation Therefore the Wines of Grapes Apples berries Honey and likewise flowers and leaves being pounced a ferment being snatched to them they begin to boyl and be hot whence ariseth a Gas but from Raysins bruised and used for want of a ferment a Gas is not presently granted The Gas of Wines if it be constrained by much force within Hogs-heads makes Wines â—urious mute and hurtfull Wherefore also the Graâ—e being abundantly eaten hath many times brought forth a diseasie Gas For truly the spirit of the ferment is much disturbed and seeing it is disobedient to our digestion it associates it selfe to the vitall spirit by force yea if any thing be prepared to be expelled in manner of a Sweat that thing through the stubborn sharpness or soureness of the ferment waxeth clotty and brings forth notable troubles torments or wringings of the bowels Fluxes and the Bloudy-flux I being sometimes in my young beginnings deluded by the authority of ignorant writers have believed the Gas of Grapes to be the spirit of Wine in new Wine But vain tryalls have taught me that the Gas of Grapes and new Wine are in the way to Wine but not the spirit of Wine For the juyce of Grapes differs from Wine no otherwise than the pulse of water and meal do from Ale or Beer For a fermentall disposition coming between both disposeth the fore-going matter into the transmutation of it self that thereby another Being may be made For truly I will at sometims teach that every formall transmutation doth presuppose a corruptive ferment Other more refined Writers have thought that Gas is a winde or air inclosed in things which had flowen unto that generation for an Elementary co-mixture And so Paracelsus supposed that the air doth invisibly lurk under the three other Elements in every body but in time onely that the Air is visible but his own unconstancy reproveth himself because seeing that he sheweth in many places else-where that bodies are mixed of the three first things but that the Elements are not Bodies but the meer wombs ' of things But he observed not a two-fold Sulphur in Tin and therefore is it lighter than other Mettalls whereof one onely is co-agulable by reason of the strange or forreign property of its Salt whereby Jupiter or Tin maketh every Mettall frangible or capable of breaking and brickle it being but a little defiled with its odour onely but that the other Sulphur is Oily For Gun-powder doth the most neerly express the History of Gas For it consisteth of Salt-peter which they rashly think to be the Nitre of the Antients and the which is at this day plentifully brought to us being dried up from the inundation of Nilus of Sulphur and a Coal because they being joyned if they are enflamed there is not a Vessel in nature which being close shut up doth not burst by reason of the Gas For if the Coal be kindled the Vessel being shut nothing of it perisheth but Sulphur if the Glasse being shut it be sublimed wholly ascends from the bottom without the changing of its Species or kinde Salt-peter also being melted in a shut Vessel as to one part of it gives a sharp Liquor that is watery but as to the other part it is changed into a fixed Alcali Therefore fire sends forth an Air or rather a Gas out of all of them singly which else if the air were within it would â—end forth from the three things being connexed Therefore those things being applied together do mutually convert themselves into Gas through destruction But there is that un-sufferance of Sulphur and Salt-peter not indeed by the wedlock of cold with hot as of powerfull qualities as is believed but by reason of the un-cosufferable â—lowing of boyling Oil and Wine no lesse than of water or of Copper and Tin being melted with Wine For in so great heat when they co-touch each other throughout their least parts they are either turned into a Gas or do leap asunder For so Lead being roasted with Mercury and Sulphur departeth into a sudden flame a small lee or dreg being left almost of no weight yet enlarged to the extension of the Lead VVherefore if the Gas were air all the Gun-powder should be air and the Lead it self should be wholly air But it is not possible for the fire to produce out of the same Elementary fruit sometimes air sometimes water with an ultimate reducement unlesse the fire loose also its uniformity of working that was planted in it by the Creator In the next place it is already above sufficiently manifested that air and water can never be brought over into each other Therefore if Gun-powder or Salt-peter may observably be reduced into an Elementary water by fire or any other mean whatsoever a transmutation thereof into air is not possible to be But some thousands of pounds of Gun-powder being at some time enflamed at once have not yielded any thing but an inflamed Gas which hath growen together in the Clouds and at length returning into water Furthermore a Coal is reduced in some Fountains into a Rockie stone Likewise I have known the meanes whereby the whole of Salt-peter is turned into an Earth and the whole of Sulphur being once dissolved may be fixed into an Earthly Powder What if therefore these three Earths should contain three or four Elements at leastwise the Earth should occupie the greatest part nor that reducible into its former Gas neither is it consonant to Reason that a Body which wholly flies away into an aiery Gas should be converted into Air or into Earth as man listeth Next seeing the three aforesaid Powders are at length made water under the Artificer which afterwards cannot any more through humane cunning return into
or glassen Bell doth shew that a great part of the Sulphur being untouched by the flame ascended upwards the which is again seperated safe from that Liquor by rectifying For Sulphurs or fats although they are many times distilled by any degree of the fire yet they do alwayes remain fats and even do retain their nature as long as they do enjoy or obtain the seed of their composed Body The which when as the flame or artificiall death hath touched they straightway flie over into Gas but not into water For that every Gas doth as yet retain some condition of its composed body For smoaks of the flame do differ by their generall and speciall kindes which surely should not be if they should immediately depart into their first Element The fire indeed destroyeth simply but it generates nothing for why seeing it wants the power of a seed and those things which it cannot destroy those it at leastwise seperateth or leaveth untouched and in this respect they are called fixt bodies But the fire doth not prevail in that as to exchange that which is in it self materially water into Air for otherwise it should have the seed of the Air. It is also sufficiently manifest before that water is made air or air water by no help of art or nature Therefore Wood since it is wholly of water its ashes and likewise Glasse shall be of water But that the Gas of Salts is nothing but water the following Handicraft-operation proveth Take equall parts of Salt-peter Vitriol and Alume all being dried and conjoyned together distill a Water which is nothing else than a meer volatile Salt Of this take four ounces and joyn an ounce of Sal armoniac in a strong Glassen Alembick confirmed by a Cement of Wax Rosin and Powder of Glasse being powred most hotly on it straightway even in the cold a Gas is stirred up and the Vessel how strong soever it be bursteth with a noyse But if indeed thou shalt leave a chap or chink in the juncture of the receiving Vessel and after voluntary boylings up thou shalt distill the residue thou shalt finde a water somewhat sharp the which by a repeated distillation and an additament of Chalke is turned into Rain-water Therefore one part of the Salts yielded into water but the other part into Gas But the Salts that fled away by a Gas are of the same kinde of nature with those that were reduced into water therefore the Gas of Salts is materially nothing but water But the Gas of fruits I have likewise already shewen to be nothing but water as arising immediately out of water So the Raisin of the Sun being distilled is wholly reduced by art into an Elementary water which yet being new and once wounded or bruised much new Wine and Gas is allured or fetched out If therefore the whole Grape before a ferment be turned into a simple water but the ferment being brought a Gas is stirred up this Gas also must needes be water Seeing the disposition of the ferment cannot form air of that which is materially nothing but water Therefore the unrestrainable Gas of the Vessel breaks forth abroad into the air untill it being sufficiently confirmed and by the cold of the place spoiled also of the properties of its composed body passeth over into its first matter and in the air the seperater of the waters it recovereth its antient and full disposition of the Element of water But exhalations which in the account of the Schooles are the daily matter of Windes Mists Comets Mineralls Rockie Stones saltness of the Sea Earth-quakes and of all Meteors seeing they have no pen-case or receptacle in nature nor matter sufficient for so great daily things and those for so great an heap they are wondrous dreams and unskilfully proportioned to their effects And therefore I passe by these unsavourinesses or follies of the Schooles by pittying of them At leastwise it followes that if Rockie Stones if all Mineralls do proceed from exhalations and being now fixed do resist the Agent which should bring them again into an exhalation there shall be in the remaining Earth matter for new exhalations producing effects of so great moment Especially because scarce any thing exhaleth out of the saltness of the Sea and such is the aptness or disposition of heat that it scarce stirs up exhalations unless it hath first lifted up all the water by vapours What matter therefore shall be sufficient even for daily Windes alone Truly it is altogether impossible for the Schooles to have known the nature and likewise the differences causes and properties of Bodies for as many as have set upon Philosophy without the art of the fire have been hitherto deluded with Paganish Institutions At length I have written touching long life that the arteriall Spirit of our life is of the nature of a Gas Which thing is seen in the trembling of the heart swooning and fainting For how much doth it die to a lively colour to a vitall light and to a swollen or full habit of flesh and the countenance it self being the more wrinckled or withered how quickly doth it decay straightway after the aforesaid passions For the Spirit which before did as it were unite all things by a pleasing redness doth straightway fly away and being subdued by a forreign Air is changed For truly seeing the Archeus is in it self a Gas of the nature of a Balsamick Salt if it shall finde the air of another Salt to be against it or in its way even as Sal armoniac when it meetes with the Spirit of Saltpeter it is subject too easily and forthwith to be blown away or dispersed through the pores as having forgotten to perform its duties and office of the Family For neither is it gathered into drops because it is prepared of an arteriall bloudiness If any thing of sweat at the time of faintings and death doth exhale that is the melting of the venall bloud but not of the arteriall bloud Therefore the vitall Gas because it is a light and a Balsam preserving from corruption from the first delineation of generation it began to be made suitable to the light of the Sun But after the aforesaid failings of the Spirit the in-bred Spirits of the other members as it were smoaking are again kindled by the Sun-like light of the heart even as the smoak of a Candle put out touching at the flame of another Candle doth carry this flame to the extinguished Candle by a Mean Seeing that the Spirit of our life since it is a Gas is most mightily and swiftly affected by any other Gas to wit by reason of their immediate co-touchings For neither therefore doth any thing thereupon operate more swiftly on us than a Gas as appeares in the Dogvault or that of the Sicilians in the Plague in burning Coals that are smothered and in persumes for many and oftentimes men are straightway killed in the Burrowes of Mineralls yea in Cellars where strong Ale or
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
each to other by subscribing and I will subjoyn those things which singular experience under divine grace hath taught me Without controversie it belongs to meats and drinks together and in like manner to be dissolved into a Cream plainly transparent in the hollow of the Stomach I add that that is done by vertue of the first Ferment manifestly soure or sharp and borrowed of the Spleen for I have found as many suitable Ferments as there are in us digestions Again neither is it of lesse admiration that that Cream is spoiled wholly of all drawn sourness of the ferment as soon as it slides out of the stomach into the great Bowel or intestine than the power of that ferment in the stomach was wonderful That intestine is called the Duodenum from the measure of 12 fingers and it is immediately under the Pylorus or lower mouth of the stomach Truly Anatomy complains of trouble in this place by reason of the stretching out the offices of the kernels and Vessels to wit in so small a space for Instruments of so great uses and so that in the whole dissection nothing doth offer it self alike difficult For neither are there so many Vessels and Organs in vain although their use hath stood neglected For first of all when I learned that the ferment conceived in the Cream of the stomach was pernicious as well in the intestines themselves as in other parts by reason of many torments or wringings I not sloathfully noted that all particular parts have obtained particular ferments seeing there is an unexcusable necessity of these in transchanging And so I also from hence further concluded that all particular ferments do abhorre strange ones to be their Companions and the commands of strange patrons as if they were forreign thieves and such as thrust their Sickle into another mans Corn And that indeed through no vice of jealousie as though they did envie the activities of others But from an endeavour of executing the office which was enjoyned them by the Lord of things It is a wonder to be spoken that a sour cream in the Duodenum doth straightway attain the savour of Salt and doth so willingly exchange its own sharp Salt into a salt Salt No otherwise almost than as the Vinegar which is most sharp hath forthwith through red Lead put off its former sharpness and doth presently change into an aluminous sweetness Even as also the sharpness of Sulphur is forthwith changed in the Salt of Tartar But by a far more excellent vigour of transmutation that sour Cream is presently made Salt in us For truly that is made without any co-mixture of any Body even as when Vinegar waxing sweet it is constrained by the addition of the Lead or a sharp distillation is drunk up in an Alcali-Salt Because in very deed nothing is any where found which can fully answer to the force of a ferment seeing Ferments are the primitive causes of transmutations and that indeed from a former cause and therefore it must needs be that the similitudes of those drawn onely from a latter effect do very much halt Therefore our sour Cream is made salt only by a fermental and unchangeable disposition wherefore also the volatile sharpness of that Cream doth remain in its antient volatility while it exchangeth its own first obtained soureness with saltness For the volatile stillatitious sharpness of Vinegar doth not thus remain volatile as before while it dissolveth Litharge Minium or Ceruse because in dissolving it is coagulated and doth assume the form of a more fixed Salt now separable from the liquid distillation of the Vinegar which it had lately married but in dissolving it is coagulated and doth assume the form of a more fixed Salt because it is the action of a thing dissolving and dissolved but not of a transchanging Ferment which doth continually tend to a new Form on either side For indeed the Stomachs of some do more easily digest Potherbs Pulses or bread-Corns but those of others do more succesfully digest Fishes abhorre Cheese prefer water before Wine whereas in the mean time the stomach of others is a devourer of flesh or addicted to Apple to wit by reason of a specifical yea and also an appropriated property of that Ferment yea neither is it sufficient to have said that the sour Ferment of the first digestion and totall cause of the melting of the harder meats doth freely inhabit in the stomach unless that very thing be more plainly explained First of all the stomach hath not this Ferment in it self or from its own self For the digestion of the appetite and Family-government of the stomach do sometimes depart and return without extinguishing because they are not of the stomach it self Wherefore I have said that the membrane of the stomach hath all the efficacy of its digestion and government thereof from the Spleen For surely the Spleen together with the stomach doth therefore make in us one onely Duumvirate or Sheriffdom from whence indeed the Poets have erected the Golden and prosperous Kingdoms of Saturn and in pride the liberal Feasts of Saturn The Antients have smelled out some History of antient truth To wit that whatsoever things meats being digested are cast out by vomit are of a soure taste and smell yea although they were seasoned with much Sugar For soure belchings coming upon adust ones in Diseases are reckoned to presage good according to Hypocrates Hence indeed all saltnesses or seasonings and Sauces of meats for sharpening of the Appetite are sharp as the juyce of Citron Orange Pomegranate the unripe Olive Tartar Vinegar Berbery Vine-branch Mustard and likewise Salt of the Sea as it containeth a sharp Spirit in it in which respect also the Liquors of Sulphur Vitriol Salt Sal Niter c. are commended For I will not that the sharpness of any of those be consumed into increase of a specifical and appropriated ferment dwelling in the Spleen Far be it for ferments have nothing besides or out of themselves in nature which may worthily be assimilated to themselves seeing they are specifical gifts of a vital nature For therefore a ferment in what respect it is a ferment is a vital and free Secret yoaked to no other quality for it is sufficient for Sawces that sharp things do prepare meats for a more easie entrance of the ferment of the Spleen In the next place although the ferment of the stomach hath a specifical tartness yet that tartness is not the vital ferment it self but onely the Instrument thereof For the ferment of the stomach hath a sharpness as a singular companion unto it self it being also divided by properties by general kindes and Species but digestion in it self is the work of the life it self whereof sharpness is in this Shop the attaching or guarding Instrument But in the other Shops which are afterwards the life associates to it self a secondary quality on either side as a Minister of its intention to the fermental quality and suited
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
the proportion of the dregs and sharpness But red French Wines unless they shall keep their Lee and the which they therefore say is the Mother or Nurse they dissolve their own Tincture and drink it up together with their own sourness and therefore those of two years old become discoloured unless they are exceeding generous For truly the tincture of Wines is a certain separable Body But generous red Wines because they do more slowly wax sour or sharp they are kept for many years But those bearing a little white unless they are severed from the Lee they presently grow weak For the Lee being taken away when their sourish part doth not finde an object which it may dissolve the Wine remains in its own former State Therefore Tartar is no longer Wine or Lee but a neither thing constituted of them both But that the thing is on this wise it plainly appeareth because more Tartar is dissolved in ten ounces of rain-Rain-water than in two hundred ounces of Wine however it be stirred by boyling To wit by reason of the sharpness of the Wine whereby the Tartar was coagulated Lastly six ounces of Salt of Tartar do dissolve seven ounces of crude Tartar because the Lixivium or lye of that Salt doth drink up the sharpness of the Tartar But that Tartar doth consist of the Lee of Wine and not of Wine onely Printers do prove who do prepare the Lee of Wine or Tartar to be a suitable Ink for them And both of these in distilling do belch forth altogether the like Odour and the like Oyl But Tartar is not dissolved in cold water because the Lee of the Wine doth so compass the Salt in the Tartar that cold water cannot the more fully dissolve it by piercing Therefore seeing the Nativity of Tartar doth not elsewhere consist than in winy juyces actually consisting of Spirit of Wine and lightly waxing soure by reason of the flight of the Spirit inward Let the Schools of Paracelsus from hence know how badly the Speculation of Tartar doth suit even with those Diseases for whose sake it was invented For truly our Stone is by no meanes solved in boyling waters because Tartar is rather to be reckoned among the number of Salts or juyces coagulated with Salt than among Stones CHAP. XXXI The rash invention of Tartar in Diseases 1. No Disease doth arise from Tartar 2. Galen is unsavoury about the matter of the Disease of the Stone 3. Galen was often deceived herein 4. He thought the Stone to be hardened in us by the Element of fire in the middle of the Vrine 5. Some ignorances of the same man 6. A neutral Judge is called for 7. The drowsiness of the Humorists unexcusable 8. An explaining of the thing granted 9. Paracelsus came nearer unto the nature of Stones 10. But he also slid in stumbling 11. Paracelsus recanteth 12. His rashness brake forth from the ambition of a Monarchy 13. Blockishness is the Companion of ambition 14. The nodding unconstancie of Paracelsus 15. He was deceived by the Metaphor of a Microcosme or little World 16. His hidden boasting 17. The like boldness of Aristotle 18. That the Metaphor of a Microcosme differs from the truth 19. Paracelsus hath not sufficiently trusted to his invention of Tartar 20. Two ignorances of the same man are demonstrated 21. The Rise of hereditary Diseases 22. The Schools have erred in both extreams 23. The Phylosophy of Paracelsus concerning Tartar is rustical or rude 24. His errour is proved 25. The incongruities of Paracelsus 26. Paracelsus was ignorant of a formal transmutation of things 27. He blockishly proceeds SEEING that Tartar hath first entred into Medicine for the consideration of the Stone I have finished a Treatise touching the Disease of the Stone and I have shewen in print that Tartar is a stranger unto the nature of the Disease of the Stone Now at length I will make manifest that plainly no Disease doth arise from Tartar but that the meditation thereof in Diseases is vain Galen had known a man to be grieved with Stones and Sands in his Reins and Bladder but he knew not to what cause he might ascribe so great a hardness in us at length I found that not any thing can be condensed or co-thickned except one onely excrement which I call muck or snivel but he names it Phlegm or a waterishness And when he discerned the Stone to grow in the remote and so in the ultimate Coasts of utterance and did think that nothing had access thither besides his own humours he boldly affirmed that the same thing doth happen in the Urine and therefore that the Stone cannot otherwise be constituted than from a watery Phlegm VVhich thing because he marked with the Element of water and watery properties therefore that it ought to grow together at the water-pipes in us The Invention smiled on him especially because a Stone being brought into the Bladder there was a continual voyding of muck together with Urine Therefore he thought that our fire because he believed it to be one of the four Elements which do concur unto the constitution of us was necessary for the hardening of the matter of the Stone and that the Phlegm should dry up even in the middle of the waters seeing he knew no other operators in nature besides heat and cold For he knew not that all things did at sometime arise out of nothing now at length that from a necessitated continuation in nature all things afterwards should flow forth from a certain Genealogy of Seeds but not that from a casual conflux of Elements and by the virtue of supervening heat and cold they are so fitly adorned with vital powers Neither considered he that those first qualities at the most and utmost could not generate or contribute any thing unto a new Being but onely occasionally to promote or fore-flow the vital dispositions of seeds in their own simplicity but not as the Elements should be combined Surely it grieveth me for his pains and that all posterity of sick folks doth hitherto pay the punishment of its own credulity because he never deservedly measured or of himself once desired the Causes of the Disease of the Stone as otherwise he ought before he erected a method of healing So his Soul is made the Chamber-maid of his own desires and he feigneth plausible reasons to himself according to the appetite of disturbance which removed it from its place to a consent of himself Therefore a strange Judge is called unto the Reasons found out by us least being credulous we worship our own fictions and love them as it were Sons and pledge for the same against equity as Parents Therefore let the fire the sieve of Reasons be that Judge But the art of the fire was not yet known in Galens time but it was hidden among privy Counsellers under an Oath in the silence of Pythagoras For Galen never law even the distillation of Roses Therefore in so great a want of knowledge his
of name of the Philosopher despised the contradicters of his own and indeed false beginnings no otherwise than as Necromancers do require to be credited without demonstration Let eternal prayse and glory be to my Lord in all Benediction who hath formed us not after the Image of the most impure VVorld but after the figure of his own divine Image therefore hath he adopted us for the Sons of Election and co-heirs of his glory through grace Surely the condition of that similitude were to be grieved at and too much to be pitied which had hitherto subjected us under the Law of all calamities from our Creation even till now and that before sin we should onely be the engravement of so abjected a thing as if the VVorld had been framed for it self but not for us as the ultimate end but we for the VVorld whose Images indeed onely we should be to wit we ought to be made stony that we may represent Stones and Rocks And so we should all of right be altogether stony leprous c. For indeed seeing we are by Creation that which we are and a Stone should be made in us that we may represent Rocks Now death and a Disease were in us before that we departed out of the right way or fell Let Heresies depart For neither do we all suffer the falling evill neither do they who labour with it have it that sometimes we may represent Thunder or the Earth-quake or an unknown Lorinde of the Air its unconstancy But now if there were at least the least truth hereof verily he who suffers dammages according to Justice ought also to perceive the profits of the Microcosme even so that especially we ought to fly Seeing it is more rational for us sooner to shew our selves Birds than great Stones or storms of the Air or water Therefore let allegorical and moral senses depart out of nature Nature throughly handles Beings as they do in very deed and act subsist in a substantial entity and do flow forth from the root of a seed even unto the conclusion of the Tragedy neither doth it admit of any other interpretation than by being made and being in essence from ordained causes I observe also that Paracelsus Tartar being invented and introduced into Diseases hath not yet stood secure enough for truly he immingles Tartar also in the first Beginnings of our constitution and so neither doth he require the Seeds of things themselves out of Tartar but he will have Tartar to be radically intimately and most thorowly immirgled with the Seeds whereby he may finde out the Seminary of Hereditary Diseases Of which mixture he being at length forgetful calleth it ridiculous He saith that a VVoman having conceived by the Seed of man it doth separate snatch lay up Tartar into it self and that the Seed being as it were anatomized doth constitute it self the flattering Heir of that Tartar On the contrary that the Spirit of Wine is never so refined by possible circulations as that it doth not as yet contain its own Tartar in it As if Tartar were the chief Root of the Universe or an immediate Companion thereunto But I know if any forreign thing be materially in the Seed generation doth never follow Next that the Seed of Adam being materially prepared in Paradise had not generated a more perfect off-spring than that which afterwards after the fall was made in him Cain and Abel do especially prove that thing At length if Tartar should so intimately grow in Seeds that after many years from generation it should cause hereditary Diseases by materially separating it self from the whole surely that Tartar should not so soon be separable by the Magnet or attraction of a VVoman seeing if any thing be separated from the seed it is a Gas diametrically opposite unto Tartar For if the womb should separate any thing from the seed that should happen by drawing but such is the condition of drawing things that they draw for themselves and unto themselves and then cease but if the womb shall extract for separation sake there shall now be no fear of an hereditary evill because the womb hath a power of serving that which is hurtfull Lastly although Diseases shall come by degrees into the place of exercise yet they were never materially thorowly mixed with the Seed after the manner of Tartar that not Tartar not a gowty Chalk fore-existed in the Seed but that Diseases derived from the Parents do lay hid in manner of a Character in the middle life of the Archeus whose Seal doth at length under its own maturity of dayes break forth and frameth a Body fit for it self and so is made the Archeus of a Disease together with every requisite property of the Seeds For a Disease also is a natural constitution proceeding from the Seed consisting of an Archeus as the efficient cause It hath otherwise rustically been thought in the Schools that Diseasie Bodies do materially conflux unto the Generation of hereditary defects It also contains an Idiotism to exclude a Disease out of the number of natural Agents and corporal Beings seeing the matter also which they say is diseasifying is now and then obvious to the finger if it be thorowly viewed by the eyes If therefore a Disease be now reckoned among the Beings of Nature why should it not be established by a necessity of its own seed It is rude Phylosophy that Tartar had been from the beginning in the seed and that after thirty whole years it should begin the first principles of a Cream and should meditate of an Increase and as it were a particular Republique for it self and that wholly without the direction of the seed God made not death nor therefore hath he connexed Tartar unto seeds as the matter of Diseases For if so stupid errours should happen unto the seminal Archeus the Ruler of Nature hath already forsaken the Rains of the same and mankinde shall shortly go to ruine Also that saying of Paracelsus is absurd that not so much as the Spirit of Wine doth want its own Tartar For although it should be circulated for the space of an Age yet it shall never in very deed separate any Tartar For Paracelsus who never saw or found that Tartar of the Spirit of VVine will therefore be credited in his own good belief no otherwise than as elsewhere where he thinketh that water as oft as it hath ceased to be seen doth wholly depart into nothing and that something is created anew For it doth not follow a Salt is made out of the Spirit of vvine it receives a coagulation in the Salt of Tartar therefore the Spirit of vvine doth contain Tartar Because although every coagulated thing should be Tartar which it is not yet those Bodies do not contain those things which at length are made of them To wit Milk is made of Grasse of Milk Arterial Bloud and from hence the seed of man yet Grasse doth not contain a man in it self as neither
free from the Stone because his drink hath nothing but a meaty matter but not the Tartar of drinks VVherefore if Paracelsus hath not dictated Fables that Ale or Beer could never supply matter for a Stone yea the Tartar which he feigneth in comgrain should lose its meatie property of coagulating it self afar off and should assume the property of the Tartar of drink by the onely coction of it self and by consequence that the same thing should happen unto bread baked with fire as also to other meats and the aforesaid rule of Paracelsus should be onely for raw meats So that he which eats onely boiled things should not be apt for a Stone of the tooth As if he who drinks pure distilled water should not be subject to the Stone which thing Paracelsus himself denieth concerning Frederick the Emperour abhorring Tartar and he will also have drinkers to be subject to Tartarers by pure water and boyled because water once boyled easily putrisieth therefore putrefaction in respect whereof Tartars do decay shall now be made the Mother of Tartar which one onely thing otherwise is wont to be the enemy of coagulated things As if indeed decoctions or the broths of fleshes should either not be subject to putrifying or unwholesome as being boyled or that Tartar in waters not boyled were instead of a Balsam why therefore doth Paracelsus prescribe preservatives to be chewed with every food least the drink wax Tartary if this hath lost its Tartar by boyling or if water shall suffer nothing by boyling why doth he say that it is unwholesom soon putrifiable and the cause of a stinking breath But if Urine be made of Drink through a sufficient mixture of meats how therefore will it make the Stones of the reins and bladder out of the Tartar of drinks alone and not likewise out of a promiscuous meaty Tartar Doth he perhaps intend to say that none doth pisse solid meats But that is a folly if it be spoken in earnest But if he will have that to be a property to drink that it makes Tartar so much the harder by how much the father it shall be brought down yet then likewise he shall badly distinguish the Tartar of drinks against the Tartars of meats seeing if there were any the Tartar of the meat should be as alike well immingled as the Tartars bred in drinks For what journey or delay should drink give to Tartar or what shall this obtain for its hardning by running down for truly the Stone is not coagulated by heat course or digestion as shall be made manifest in its own place but from the seminal root of its own internal coagulation Therefore it must needs be that Tartar should lesse exactly inhere in meats than in drink First of all Ale or Beer contradicteth this which although it consist of a water not Tartarous yet it begets Stones and the stone of the teeth no lesse than simple water Secondly waters do contradict which in falling do at any obvious thing presently wax stony and so much the less by how much the farther they shall decline from their Spring-head VVherefore seeing at the time of digestion separations of superfluities do happen which digestion doth want a flowing water Surely the drink should under the first narrow examination of digestion put off every stone and that which is most exceeding hard and sincere and the Tartar should hang too loosely in meats which by chewing onely as soon as may be should fasten it self to the teeth and should separate it self from the meats wherein-it had lurked before through so many circles of years and metamorphoses of forms in plants beasts milk c. But I pray what separating faculty is there in the teeth which through a naked mill-like bruising of the meats should not onely draw the Tartar out of meats in healthy persons but also may be for the severing of the grosse from the fine and the hard from that which is less soundly durable But if this do not happen by the severing and election of the Tartarous parts then the whole meat should be of the same condition and whatsoever is of the meats all that should be suitably Tartarous Thus far therefore God made death and all things whatsoever he saw were not good If all meats are Tartars and excrements why likewise do not earthen pots of the Kitchin affix to the Tartar of the teeth unto the thicknesse of some fingers and while it is stinking and smelling after the manner of the teeth For how shall the Tartar of meats being separated from the meats by biting be able to be affixed in biting if the teeth do cleanse and moisten themselves by biting yea that Tartar should equally grow to all the teeth without exception because all things do equally concur to wit the teeth meat and chewing But many have their teeth free from being invaded by that stone for besides the Ethiopians whose gums do end into a sharp point upon their tooth these especially do not easily fasten a stone to then teeth But on the contrary whose bloody gums do swell do end into an obtuse or blunt one and are badly joyned to the teeth such a stone is often co-heaped on them Prince Radzvil tells that he hath observed a thousand jaw-bones of dead Carcasses in Egypt seasoned now for two thousand years with a mumial balsam And that he found none whereunto a tooth was wanting that was rotten or lastly black For such is the goodnesse of the Climate for the teeth and their brightnesse which surely it punisheth another way because there is scarce a third man in the same place without bleareydnesse or a notable vice of the eyes Lastly if such should be the property of the teeth that it should separate such a Tartar from meats now the teeth of all should be altogether equally beset with stinking Tartar And likewise if any co-chained order or row of teeth and that deteined with the hand should be led or held by bruised meats even the meats with that order should be bruised as it were with a pest and the row should be so much cleansed by washing as one onely draught being profesly taken doth rince our teeth for us yet never any stone should grow to those teeth and much lesse that which should stink like a stone of the teeth because it is that which makes the breath to stink And then to him that hath a Fever who eateth or cheweth nothing for four dayes space a muscilage is not therefore wanting to his teeth which at length becomes a stone yea he hath it more plentifully than one that is well in health Therefore it is manifest after what manner the muscilage becomming a stone first about the roots of the teeth where they do appear without the gumme can be the Tartar of meats and then that meer drink should readily cause the same hardnesse which he feigneth to be proper to the Tartar of meats Next another who eareth nothing and that drinketh by
principiating material cause from a formal effect So I have sufficiently and over-proved that neither of them is true For it hath hitherto been unknown that all Bodies are materially of water onely Indeed Paracelsus had seen Mettals and Wood to stonifie and to be immediately reduced into a Salt yet he knew not that the hardness of things as also their solidity compactedness and weight is not from the nature of his thorowly taught principles because they are those things which are demonstrated to be non-beings in the nature of principiating as neither from a material virtue elementarily but onely from the appointment of the Seeds Therefore I collect two things one is that Paracelsus is unconstant to himself touching the Coagulum or curd of Bodies and concerning Tartars But the other is that the Maxim of Aristotle falls to the ground That for which every thing is such that thing it self is more such For although hardness do proceed from the Seed and its appointments the Seeds ought not therefore to be harder than the things constituted For the Archeus which disposeth the bones to their hardness is not therefore harder than the bones yea neither are the means directed to the end more hard solid or compacted than the things constituted For Aristotle being readily inclined unto Maxims brought over his experiences from artificial things into nature therefore hath he every where slid in nature because he being wholly ignorant of nature doth miserably quarrel CHAP. XXXIII Tartar is not in drink 1. Some suppositions proved before 2. That Tartarers are not in things constituted 3. Three Monarchies of things whence a threefold stone 4. It far differs from the Tartar of Wine 5. The Stone in man is made from errour but not from the intention of Nature 6. An Argument from the like is not of value 7. Some Arguments taking away Tartar out of drink 8. An opposite Argument 9. The rashness or heedlesness of the Schools 10. Two Histories 11. The boastings of Paracelsus 12. The swellings in the neck or Kings-Evill are not from Tartar 13. Wine is innocent of humane Tartar 14. Whether stony or Rockie waters do contain Tartar 15. Whence there are Strumaes or swellings in mans neck and not in that of Bruits 16. A Remedy against those swellings 17. A Remedy against Scirrus's and swelling pimples in the face 18. A preoccupation or prevention 19. A distinction by a Maxim VVHatsoever Arguments do take away Tartar out of Meats are like premises in this place But seeing waters do immediately wax stony the proposition is to be confirmed by a stronger Engine In the first place I have taught that every Stone is immediately the Son of water but not of Tartar And then that the concretion or growing together of every Body is from the Seed but not from the Law of Tartar Thirdly that the concretion appointed by the Seed is from the integrity of nature and so from the gift of Creation but not from Tartar which according to Paracelsus is nothing but the excrement of a thing But a natural product is of its Mother matter but not of a step-mother and moreover of a seminal or efficient beginning in which all the figures Idea's and knowledges of things to be done are At length the Types or figures of Tartars are not in things by Creation framed for our destruction as neither a Medicine of destruction in the Earth what therefore doth it make to the introducing of the nature of Tartat into Diseases that a stone is the fruit of water if the condition of Tartar be not in a stone Or that Tartar is the fruit of Wine if there be no such thing in other things For what doth it prejudice nature if the phantasie deluding a Stone external or the Stone internal with a name shall call it Tartar And he weakly enough and without proof affirmeth that Stones and every solid Body do mutually agree with Tartar of Wine in every property For truly that his own assertion is free without truth and probability For the Stone in us is generated by another seed mean and progress than Tartar out of Wine or a Stone out of water are To wit there are three Monarchies of Bodies in the Universe the Animal Vegetable and Mineral therefore there is a threefold Stone and that distinct in the whole Monarchy For a Mineral Stone differs from the Case of the Kernel of Medlers Peachies c. and both these again from the Stone of Crabs Bezoar Snall-shels Fish-stones the Stone of Man c. Again those three Stones do also far differ from the Tartar of Wine which is not to be reckoned among Stones seeing it is the concreted Liquor of a Salt For a Mineral is either a Rockie Stone which may be turned into Lime or a small Stone which is not calcined as Gems Marbles Flints But both are now concluded in one onely name of Petra or a Rock But a Vegetable Stone seeing it is burnable as the Jeat or Agath otherwise also Mineral Sulphurous Stones it is rather a knotty Wood than a Rockie Stone But an Animal Stone is rather a stony bone because it is partly burnt than a Rockie Stone Also for distinction of the stone of man from other stones that is by Paracelsus called Duelech Because rockie stones as well the mineral as vegetable ones are fruits natural necessary and of the first intention in creating But Duelech is onely a Disease and like to a monster But in other enliâ—ened Creatures the stone hath obtained a profitable appointment Whence it is made manifest that although waters do beget a Rockie stone yet that they do not therefore follow the essence seed and manner of generation out of the Tartar of Wine For Duelech after sin doth from a diseasie excrement but not from the intention of nature nor from a Rockie or tartarous matter but by accident to wit through the errour of the faculty breed a diseasie seed through the necessity of a connexed agent wherefore I do not admit of Tartar rather in drink than in meat but if it be potentially in Wine that comes to passe by the necessity of a connexed agent and by accident neither can it have place of exercising forces or actuating in us to wit that by a power a potential Tartar may be actuated in us and therefore I do not admit of a tartarous generation in drink appointed by God for our destruction for what if bones are found in the flesh and the seeds of a Mineral Rock are stablished in the waters shall therefore the seed and immediate matter of bones be in Fountains or the seed of a Mineral Rock and its immediate matter be in the flesh or venal bloud If not in the venal bloud then neither therefore in drink and meat For death is not the handy-work of God And God saw that whatsoever things he had made they were good as well in his own intention of goodness as in the essence of the Creature Therefore there is
meats and drinks than of those lesse exact if the middle life do badly season the Archeus And then which way is it convenient to render meats and drinks which the Lord hath judged good infamous through a tartatous treachery I suppose indeed that it was invented by Tartar Hell or the Infernal when Satan did now conjecture that there would speedily be a banishment of Humours out of the Schools of Medicine And indeed seeing every thing is dissolved by the bursting of the bonds which tie the same it helpeth to have admonished that coagulated things are not made in us by drying up the gowty Chalk excepted neither by Tartar privily existing in us surely much lesse from a stony and limy condition of the Microcosme For that Chalk after the attained thickness of the Sunovie or degenerated spermatick Muscilage is afterwards by degrees dried up Even as elsewhere concerning the Gout After another manner even as any Schirrhous thing and likewise a bole clay muckinesse sand and Duelech are in their beginning coagulated and resolved by seminal beginnings and are far otherwise solved and coagulated than if a stubborn and unchangeable Tartar of any kind of things had of its own free accord yielded a foreign curd in us It is a Sophistication to have accused not the cause for a cause or to have neglected the cause as not the cause which Sophistry if it be wont any where to bring on great straights surely in healing as great as may be full of dangers of life and damnation as also of dammages For one doth well digest and difficulty separate but another doth successfully expell and troublesomely digest Lastly a third doth briefly digest and cause meking but doth vitiously transchange for himself under the command of a foreign seed Therefore it is one thing to chastize a forreign impression of the middle life which consisteth in the concretion or growing together of the thing digested it is another thing to expel or separate that which else being retained would hurt And that is contained by dissolving and expelling Finally if there should be any Tartar in things taken into the body ending at length into a stubborn coagulation which it had treacheroufly brought inward with it it should every where even contain a desperation of healing And in this respect a medicine of destruction in the earth had been framed in nature from the beginning by the Lord of things Last of all Tartar is not in meats as neither in meaty drinks but in the water there is indeed a seed of small stones but that Stone is no more Tartar than a rocky stone is bread wherefore also from a stonifying Seed the presence or power of Tartar can in no wise be concluded Likewise although in superfluities or degenerated venal blood there be a power unto a Duelech or Schirrhus yet not unto Tartar and much lesse that there is Tartar naturally as well in the blood as in superfluous excrements For whatsoever is bred by accident from a foreign and estranged seed and by a Metaphor by reason of its coagulation is likened unto Salt coagulated in wines is onely by an abusive alienation called back unto Tartar For Nature hateth metaphorical and poetical liberties Therefore Tartar is not the internal occasional matter of diseases CHAP. XLIV An erring watchman or a wandering keeper 1. The Schools nod or doubt concerning the four humours 2. The Authours repentance 3. A Position with proofs 4. What muck or snivel is and in what sheath it is generated 5. Who the keeper in the terms proposed may be 6. The unexcusable necessities of the keeper hitherto unknown 7. It is proved that snivel is not the excrement of the Brain 8. The brain is from thence concluded to be most miserable 9. The vanity of Diseases dedicated to a Catarrhe or Rheume 10. Snivel is not made of venal blood 11. An argument from a like suitable thing 12. From the Pose or distillation of the head 13. From the likenesse of the other Bowels 14. From the supposed doctrine of the Schools 15. From the identity or samelinesse of the Archeus 16. From Anatomy 17. From an absurdity 18. From the necessity of stoppage 19. From the constitution of the brain 20. From its scope or aime 21. From experience 22. The rashnesse or heedlessnesse of the Schools in a matter of so great moment and so plain is taken notice of 23. That the excrement of the Ears is brought forth by a vapour 24. A necessity of watchmen or keepers 25. It is proved by the Pose 26. By Hoarsnesse 27. By Coughs 28. The Keeper is an unheard of power 29. The Schools thought both powers to be a certain distemper even in healthy persons 30. A diversity from other powers is proved 31. The testimonies of the keepers 32. A stuffing in the head or descending Rheume is never healthy 33. The Cough is examined 34. A wandring keeper 35. A dry Cough 36. The difficulty of curing from whence it is 37. The Remedies are taken notice of 38. The rashnesse of the Schools 39. Remedies out of Sulphur 40. A twofold Asthma or difficulty of breathing 41. The difficulties of healing 42. The use of the Keeper 43. The erring Watchman of the wind-pipe is the more destructive one 44. Snivel differs from a spitting by reaching 45. That the Keeper differs from the other Faculties in the brain 46. That the Diaphragma or Midriff is pory THe Schools pointing with the finger at the muck or snivel from the Brain and the spittle of Coughs have said Behold Phlegm is one of the four constitutive humours of us And afterwards they alwayes subscribed to themselves That boldnesse in wantonizing increased being confirmed by the prescriptions of so many ages and subscribed authorities of Schools As if the brain had consumed the three other supposed and feigned humours for the nourishment of it self Phlegm onely being excluded although most like to it self and otherwise according to the minde of Galen most fit to be totally transchanged into venal blood Also sometimes the Doctrines of the four Humours being forgotten they have sent away the same muck or snivel no longer as a Phlegm or a snivelly Phlegm but as a superfluity of the brain being as it were a banished enemy a superfluity resulting from digestion It hath deservedly shamed them of that their own Doctrine because they have acknowledged snivel to be an excrement of the last digestion but not any longer a humour produced in the Liver as it were one part of four of venal blood For an excrement resisteth a vital humour Therefore they do oftentimes nod and stagger and doubt again while they do promiscuously point out a snivelly man to wit from that dung and diseasie affect to be Phlegmatick and afterwards they thereby measure and divine of his strength wit manners and fortunes In the mean time the Beginnings of the Schools are unfortunate which from an excrement known to themselves do denominate the essence existence properties of
and together also the pulse to fâ—il and so that it climbs suddenly out of the stomach from the functions which are ascribed to the 〈◊〉 and the heart together yet without a deeper diligent search they have attributed the 〈◊〉 constitutive temperature of the life understanding and soul unto the head not being able to conceive that the beginnings of life do belong to the Duumvirate although they should be put in execution by subservient Organs or Instruments As if the beginning of motion were in the muscles and bones because they are moved A certain Lawyer had taken two drams of Henbane seed bruised instead of Dill-seed which had been prescribed to him in the Colick but he presently became so mad thereby that he could not utter an intelligible word and so mad that I have not seen any thing more blockish and foolish He sate indeed nigh the hearth upright but wholly an unsound and mad blockish man Therefore by that which provoked vomit he recovered within lesse than half an hour and there had been medicines snuffed up to purge the Brain sneezing-medicines and a cap to the head and also Epithemes or things laid on the heart in vain And moreover whatsoever of that seed he had drunk through the errour of the Apothecary which was as yet in his stomach and wholly involved in a muscilage that he presently cast back by vomit neither could any thing of it fume up from thence unto the head in manner of a vapour Yet he was wholly without hurt and raging mad because he understood nothing yet the motive functions of his head stood strong From whence I collected that the intellectual powers were dashed together in the Duumvirate But I had him a guest with my self in a dinner For those that faint do affirm that they feel the fainting to be threatned in the midriffs more swiftly than by all the activity of vapours and that every conception is suspended without sleep whence every one that is not stubborn will cleerly see the first conceipts of the soul to be formed in the Midriâ—fs and those being taken away that the light of understanding doth also presently fail or die So also a timorous person in a sudden terrour feels the token of fear in the mouth of his stomach if any great noise suppose the nigh stroak of a gun be suddenly and unthought-of awakened which doth prevent and cut off all action of discourse Therefore if the maxim of the Schools be true that from the hurting of the actions the part hurt may be made known also the seat as well of madnesse as of swooning and of every defect may be found under the Diaphragma or midriff For therefore mad-folks are most able to endure hunger and thirst For I have seen in the year 1615. at Alost a Girle of nine years old wanton enough the little daughter of a Steward to an Hospital which now for three years space had eaten nothing at all unlesse that perhaps every eighth day or above she drank about four spoonfuls of pure water For she being at first notably affrighted by thunder had ceased to eat For it is without controversie that affrightment sorrowful things c. do in the first place or chiefly affect the midriffs and presently take away all hunger Indeed they do sensibly reflect themselves on the stomach neither can they therefore be referred to the head because none of those perturbations is felt to aim at or smite the head and heart unlesse the mouth of the stomach be taken for the heart Neither is it also likely to be true that if the head should first apprehend and feel sorrowful things and sudden fears that it should presently dismiss them into the stomach and not rather unto the sinews over which it is more intimately chief For besides an absurdity it would also be a cruelty to vex the part not subjected to it self and to leave the subjected part safe For a greater authority of the stomach over the head is beheld than of the head over the stomach which I have above already demonstrated by many arguments For truly drowsiness sleep watching doatages and whatsoever sumptoms are wont to be attributed to the head are abolished by Stomatical remedies but are not mitigated by Cephalical ones or head-remedies For hence is the Proverb Oh head that art worthy of Hellebor For although manifold vomitive medicines are not wanting yet a peculiar virtue is attributed to Hellebor for a mad brain Not indeed that the poisonous and hurtful quality doth reach into the head For truly Hellebor being present within the stomach and that being afterwards cast up Convulsions do happen thereupon such as I have noted above from frettings or wringing in the guts Therefore black Hellebor easeth madnesses before other vomitive medicines commonly known because it unloads the antient fevers of the midriffs and unloads the Spleen For that nothing strikes the head by arteries or vapours hath been already fully and by many arguments demonstrated above Therefore the aforesaid diseases and their remedies have regard unto the Duumvirate neither do they affect the brain unlesse by government or by a secondary passion For Students do inordinately feel a fulnesse within composed of giddiness and anguish with sighs and they point at the mouth of their stomach with 〈…〉 But from thence they accuse the pains of the head But if at length they are 〈◊〉 through continuance they perceive about the mouth of the stomach a certain swooning and afterwards their imagination to be disordered or turned upside down And therefore unlesse they do speedily desist from studying they keep a foolish madness returning by intervals all their life long Therefore where the hurt is felt there is the blemish of the understanding and the soul doth principally reside The Schools on the contrary do contend that the Spleen is the sink of black choler and that it unloads it self of its own dungs into the Stomach and that which I call the ferment of digestion inspired into the Stomach that the Universities will have to be the excrement of a pernicious humour and so the digestion of the Stomach to be stirred up from such dross But after that I certainly knew that there was no black choler in nature it was easie for me to depart as well from the humours as from the use of parts delivered by Galen and to forsake the black cholery Schools concluding by their own Maxim If the cause of madnesse be in the Spâ—en therefore the Inn of the judicious understanding is due to the same place If there be a hurt action of the same faculty function and organ whereof there is a sound one and to the contrary Whence also I further concluded with my self That the somniferous or sleepifying power is to be placed in that part whose office it was first to frame watchings and vain dreams where also phantastical apparitions are stirred up in watching from hence indeed a hungry man dreams of feasts And Fevers before
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
drunk by them from whence they do increase and sustain their own little body so that to other Fishes which eat these small living creatures a Seed is granted to be ingendred in the waters which is passed over into life and is derived into the middle participated life But small living creatures which do immediately make bloud to themselves and their whole substance of water alone have an example almost in every vegetable especially in stony and sandy Mountains which are far seperated from the dung of men wherein perhaps 60 particular kind of Rosinous trees are taken notice of are fully nourished only of rain water and of snow or the Leffas or planty juyce of a stony odour and do grow unto the greatest height being trees so fat that they would be choaked unless they pour forth the same on every side The ferment of the stomack in man doth more easily transchange the meats into chyle than their fatnesses because fatness is more remote from the Latex or the first matter than the meat is Which digestion of transmutation into watery juyces is brought hither to this end that it may be manifest that the Latex a forreign seed and ferment of the members being easily conceived in us is transchanged into a strange off spring And so that out of the Latex I have already shewn above there is next of all a transplanting into an excrementous Snivel where I remember that after drink being abundantly taken in Summer time a muscilaginous spittle which at the time of dry thirst failed was presently after spit out by reaching This is the new History of the humor Latex to be referred unto the treatise of Catarrhs or rheums because the ignorance of that Latex hath given a singular confirmation to conceived Catarrhs as also hath offered rashnesses for things to be conceived CHAP. L. A Cautery or Searing Remedy 1. A Cautery is nothing but a remaining Wound 2. No prerogative of a Cantery made by fire 3. The name of an Issue or little fountain is a Iuggle 4. What things God hath seen entirely good are praised by the Schools as rent or toren 5. The promises of a Cautery are childish 6. The denyal of a Catarrh denyeth the use of a Cautery 7. Ridiculous necessaries for defending Cauteries 8. The position of the Schools is shewn to be absurd and impossible 9. What may be purged by a Cautery 10. Nine conclusions against the appointments of Cauteries 11. Foolish desires or delights in a Cautery 12. Cauteries whom they hurt 13. The undstinction of the Schools 14. The scope or end of a Cautery ceaseth 15. They have circumvented the World by Cauteries 16. That there is no communion of a Cautery with the brain 17. Absurdities following upon the doctrine of Cauteries 18. The one only refuge of the Schools 19. Answers 20. Cauteries are driven against the Rocks 21. What the Schools may answer in the difficulties proposed 22. The multiplying and choosing of a Cautery by what boldness it hath arose 23. Some Stage-play trifles of the Schools 24. The Gowt of Physitians is a mockery 25. Cauteries are foolish 26. They are vain in their own desperate cases 27. It is not yet determined by the Schools in what cases Cauteries can help 28. A case wherein a Cautery profiteth 29. How the cruel and stinking remedy of a Cautery may be prevented 30. A Cautery is unworthy a Physitian CAtarrhs or Rheums have found out Cauteries those therefore being taken out of the way the treatise of these might seem to be in vain unless I should write these things for young beginners I distrusting that my studies will any thing profit the learned or skilful Wherefore I have determined to declare the ends and effect of a Cautery Cauteries therefore are first of all made of fire bright burning Iron a corrosive caustick Medicine yea with the rasour or penknife it self or scissers by cutting off something It is sufficient so the fleshy membrans are broken or pierced with a wound But others do prefer a wound prepared by fire or a caustick Medicine before that which was laid open by cutting Because they think that by actual heat and dryness a flux of humors is the better stopped As if at one only moment the fire should burn any thing besides the escharre it self or should dry up an other thing which they seign is afterwards to flow to the wound Indeed dreams are on both sides greatly esteemed by the Schools For an issue or small fountain for so they call a Cauterized wound that the vulgar may believe diseases to be drawn out as it were by a fountain profits nothing before the escharre be taken away and the footstep of heat and dryness be withdrawn Because the institution of a Cautery hath the avoyding of excrements or superfluities for its object which doth not begin before the decay of the escharre and because it is alway less able to exhale thorow the escharre than otherwise thorow the sound skin therefore successours have accounted it to be all one after what sort soever an issue shall be made so they shall divide that which holds together and keep it divided For that which God hath made whole and entire that it might be very good seems to the Schools that it should be better if it be kept wounded Therefore to be oftentimes wounded and to have kept the wounds open doth conduce to the health of the Schools Surely it s a wonder that they have not transferred to be wounded unto the precepts of defending health even as indeed Cauteriet or constant wounds have been referred thither But in the time of wounding or burning letting out or shedding of blood only doth interpose which ought to excel by that title in the Schools unless the deceit of Phlebotomy or cutting of a vein did manifest it self For they presume and decree that a Cautery is a new emunctory or exspunging place whereby Physitians are able to restrain nature according to their pleasure to unload her self whereby they seign that she doth not indeed otherwise flow down by Catarrhs and unload her self or on every side so doth but only by a hole made That is they cite rheums to appear personally in a place as the Physitian listeth Handsomely indeed if alike truly Notwithstanding these marvels have been so profitable that now Cauteries are also made in Children before the age of three yeers But I first of all have alwaies beheld an implicite blasphemy in a Cautery whereby they openly accuse the Creator of insufficiency in framing the emunctories For I have hidden above a thousand issues to be filled up with flesh whereof it hath not hitherto as I know of repented any In the next place I have considered a Childish presumption of Physitians because they seriously perswade themselves that nature will hearken to their own commands also that a defluxion and falling down of humors which they command being supposed is a most exceeding absurdity But let it be sufficient for
It is made I say in Vegetables through the art of the Spirit of Wine which before was not in them from a disposition of the matter of a putrifiable juyce and agreeing resemblance of a winie Ferment For therefore the Spirit of Wine shall not be the Principle of Vegetables as all Vegetables divers in themselves do agree in this Spirit and might be drawn out of every one of them but the Spirit of Wine bears the reason of an Effect and Product In like manner therefore those three things are principated but not principles For shall the Blood want a Salt in distilling because it hath severed the Urine which Paracelsus calls The Salt of the Blood And If Salt be one of the Principles surely the venal Blood shall in supposition be Eternal if it wants a beginning or something shall be able to subsist of Mercury and Sulphur without the Principle of Salt which thing hath not seemed strange to Paracellus striving with his own Doctrine of the Three first Things when as he teacheth That the venal blood and flesh of Leprous persons is deprived of all Salt And from hence again his own History of Ulcers falls to the ground if the Ulcers of Leprous persons being without Salt are voluntary and not to be despised For he hath badly distinguished the Salt of the drink from the Salt of the Venal blood Neither hath he known the difference of the Salt in the external humour Latex from the Salt which is wiped out of the venal blood by distillation in the torture of the fire He being wholly ignorant from whence there was Salt in the Urine Salt being not frequently eaten Because the rank of digestions being unknown natural knowledge in Paracelsus was overshadowed with darkness and through the ignorance of Physitians the dayes of Mortals are cut short and burying places do become bossie Concerning a Quintessence or Fifth Essence also it hath been soberly enquired into hitherto as if it were a glorious thing through sluggishnesse to have subscribed unto others devises and to have stuck in fabulous Principles An Essence therefore is called by divers names For it is most principally understood of the most Great and Excellent God who is the True Immediate and the most Very Essence it self of all things from which the Being of things doth issue and depend unseparably in nature But an Essence for the actual being of things in the Abstract is the Life in living Creatures or in the Soul Otherwise it is a Form by reason whereof every thing is that which it is But the Life or Form is not by Chymists taken into the Essence because the thing being dead it doth return into nothing therefore have they considered of a certain most famous substance wherein the whole Crasis or constitutive temperature or mixture and perfection of a thing doth inhere as in Spices there is somewhat like Oyle which being withdrawn the body of the Spice remaineth as it were ungrateful to wit Cynamon its Oyle being withdrawn favours of the Bark of an Oak in its astriction or binding quality But in things tinged the Essence is a coloured liquor extracted from things which substances as they are more active so they have themselves by way of a Life or Form as to the residue of the Lump So that the name of Essence is plainly Metaphorical Wherefore very many things have not an Essence even as I have demonstrated concerning Mercury Chrystal great Stones and things Homogeneal or of one and the same kind Then in the next place a greater power and efficacy is oft-times in a thing being entire than in its separated Essence As is manifest in the Load-stone Carabe or Amber c. For very many Simples do loose their specifical property by preparing and more by separating and the fire In the Elkes Hoofe and Bezoardical things there is a certain thing which had rather be proper unto crude Simples But the Forms or Essences of Herbs will not be subject to the Artificer For many things do alike prevaile whether their Vegetative power they call it a Soul shall die or as yet exist in them But after that they have plainly withered or been dried up some Herbs do produce their Essence but many Herbs especially Water-Pepper do loose the same However therefore an Essence be taken it is an improper Name and a Fifth Essence is an unsavoury Epithite For truly what Essence they do promise either it is not equally in all neither doth it obey the Artificer or it is not drawn from any place whatsoever But under other things in the crudity of things it laughs at painful or diligent Labours Neither doth every sweet smelling thing sit in the middle but in the last Life For the Flowers of Jasmine of the Lilly of the Valleys c. by putrifying do loose their grateful Odour and Medicinal Virtues they wax sharp neither do they ever re-take their former Fragrancy But elsewhere the sweet smell sits under the middle Life which Odours indeed do keep their sweet smell in time of putrifying the which they send forth in Distilling as Roses This thing hath deceived Paracelsus and hath made him to think that the Essences of things do thus putrify and so he was ignorant that in Dung and dunged-Fields he dictated safe Mansions for ever Not knowing that the Offices of Seeds being loosed and dead all things do yield themselves to rest and at length do require their first Inne of Water or at least wise obeying a stronger seed coming over them they againe suffer themselves to be led into new Colonies and themselves to be brought into new Tragedies Yea there are many Simples which do find a fragrancy in the bosome of putrifactions which before they had not in their own Species Such as are Mosch Ziver Amber certain Dungs of bruit Beasts and putrifying Woods For a various putrifying by continuance ariseth in them whence their Seeds do draw a fragrancy to themselves and do transplant them into a new generation Therefore the Spicinesse if it be fast tied to the Balsame of the middle life is not overcome in putrifaction by a separation of parts and is the more fitly sequestred from corrupt things A Chymical Essence therefore is not properly a Fifth Essence seeing there are not Four others in a concrete Body neither is it extracted out of the Three things but is the Seminal part of the Sulphur of the composed Body Of the Sulphur I say Because the Sulphur is the off-spring of the efficient Cause and so more formal For Cynamon while it is without a spiciness is indeed as yet Cynamon even as the young or a foolish person are men I therefore name the best part of a thing the Crasis thereof whether the Spice or sweet smel do sent or not But in Herbs which are not fragrant I call the seminal or seedy Liquor their Crasis To wit I know that from every plant or seed and likewise from the trunk or stemme of some Plants
the brain being well constituted but the powers of the same being diverted and ill affected the snivel is watery sharp salt harsh yellow tough c. and runs down by a way which is the more fit for it out of the basin or it appeareth in its brain-funnel For that which in the beginning of a Pose drops down in the form of water is not meer snivel but a salt latex whereby nature endeavours to wash off that which sits on the spungy bone which is next the brain as a forreign enemy even as I have said And then that which flows down yellow and slimy at the declining of the Pose is not the same which the latex at first was nor is it there so long detained and thickned as nevertheless the Schools do teach when as otherwise the whole scull although it were empty of brain should scarce be sufficient for a Case for so great a quantity of excrement For such new snivel is created every moment being far different from a healthy one in colour stink slyminess and sharpness Moreover it is a ridiculous thing that this stinking snivel should be said to be now cocted and thickned by the former latex the which doth again grow by a strange vice But that it is the latex in the beginning of a Pose is manifest for presently after two dayes the belly is dryer and the urine more sparing In the next place that latex being by a luke-warmth evaporated hath scarce any thing whence it may wax snivelly as much snivel soever as the latex bringeth down with it so much muscilage or slyminess it hath and no more However it is and whatsoever that is which flows downwards from the brain unto the jaws not so much as one only drop thereof enters unto the Lungs but first it should at every drop stir up a peril of choaking For truly if one only drop of water by an unwary swallowing falling down into the winde-pipe doth incur a fear of choaking unto him that drinketh what should not so great a plenty of snivel do which doth now and then in a small space fill basins For it is far out of the way that a few hours sleep doth bring down whole basins of snivel into the Lungs without feeling and that they do enter them without the fear of choaking For I being long since in the time of my young beginning deluded by the Schools have placed these kind of sick folks in such a manner that they might sleep between pillows on their face hoping that the mucky snivel would slide down thorow the nostrils which else should slide into the Lungs and thus far I hoped for a freedom from the effect of the Catarrhe But the following morning derided through spittings out by reaching my ignorance For then I diligently searched into the Orthopnea which placeth such as breath with a straight neck that it did a little stop the doctrine of a Catarrhe and convince it as frivolous Seeing they should be strangled by a laying with their face upward and Astronomer like whereby notwithstanding the fore-going matter of a Catarrhe should be cut off Wherefore I began to take good notice that every member which is badly affected doth frame not only very much of its own excrement but also of an adverse or contrary one For so the eye being diversly affected very much liquid corruption and of a sharp tear doth issue forth the jaws also being stopt up by a squinancy a slymie thread doth continually hang down on the fore-part of the tongue Hence therefore I have believed that the Lungs were held by the Law of other members so that as oft as it was provoked hurt pricked slain oppressed or affected through the injury of the Air or by an Endemical Gas it did bring forth through an error proper to it divers testimonies of its weariness or grief not that therefore those so guilty excrements do unsensibly slide from the brain for the most part sound between the slender conduits of the rough Artery Then at length I began to wonder that the Schools in the Pose did see indeed a proper member to degenerate and to imitate the excrement of the Head and in the mean time that they have not supposed the same thing could happen alike to the Lungs as to the rest of the members So whatsoever is brought forth of the Lungs that is wholly to be attributed to the brain and that that falls down a ridiculous thing into the rough Artery without feeling and is by degrees decocted in the banishment of its race for the most part there to be detained without difficulty of breathing even until a ripeness When as now and then more is cast forth by cough in one moneth than the whole capacity of the breast is large Therefore the yellow and ashie spittings of persons in a Consumption are the errors of the vegetative or flourishing faculty in the Lungs and the venal blood there degenerated the which therefore a wasting leanness of the whole body follows Wherefore vain and deplorable Remedies Cephalical or for the Head are administred vain are the drinks of cooling Barley-broath or Cream Lohochs Syrupes and whatsoever by swallowing descends into the stomack Because it is that which is oftentimes formally changed in its journey before it come unto the part affected For what is more foolish than to give Indian roots to drink for the drying up of Rheumes for what shall China Sarsaparilla Guaiacum dry up being drunk in the form of water for what shall they dry up which thing dryed up should not be more hurtful or pernicious than the liquid thing it self why do they call for drying up those things which that they might not be made have need only of a restraining Remedy and the which when they are made do require not to be dryed up but to be cast forth why have the Schools every where regard unto the effects and not unto the roots what if those forreign and barbarous Remedies do provoke sweat and diminish the latex with the dammage of the sick do they therefore come unto the root for truly by a sparing nourishment and plenteous sweat they do primarily lessen the venal blood and secondarily cause a leanness together with weakness Which thing the Schools have falsly brought over into the drying up of superfluous humours thinking to comprehend a competent quantity of venal blood and the degenerating of a diseasie excrement and the expulsion thereof in one and the same name of drying up For shall therefore the indisposition and changing Vulcan which of good venal blood brings forth consumptional spittings in the Lungs be overcome sleep diminished wax mild and desist which Vulcan in the mean time under an extream leanness of the Consumption doth never slacken from his fury Good God turn thou away the slaughter which the School and root of Pagans gaping after a little advantage doth commit The diseasie erroneous impression only is to be taken away which I call the inward
anxious difficulty of breathing for his life time But a diet after a Disease or in time of recovery is also wonderful troublesome if not also in vain seeing now nature shall have enough to do of her own accord For truly the prescription of a diet cannot but accuse a defect of a sufficient remedy and so of an implicite confession of an unfaithful cure For let a Physitian cure as he ought and Nature promiseth for a sure performance of Restauration Truly the Almighty hath seen and judged that whatsoever things he had made were good That is whatsoever he had appointed for food was good or whatsoever he had ordained for poyson was a good poyson For else the poor man might from much right complain that God had dealt lesse fatherly with him because he had denied means whereby a poor man by answering the dainty rules of diet might be able to recover his health but unto the rich together with wealth that he had also bestowed health because bestowing meanes upon him whereby he might pay the price of his diet For I have now experience with my self for fifty years space that I cured more even those not seen and the rules of diet being despised than many Physitians together who wander to and fro in our City I have experience I say that I do cure all continued and intermitting Fevers in few dayes yea and for the most part in few houres blood-letting being not admitted of but wine being permitted For truly the chief part of the diet of Physitians is sumptuous in the flattery of the sick being gotten at the favourable pleasure of the Physitian except wine for the most part Also every Physitian declareth those things to be healthful which are the most pleasing unto themselves But least that should be understood to be a kind of assenting they enjoyn a strict obedience that by that way of severity of Lawes they may be thought to restrain the Bridles of Life Bread in the first place is accounted the primary or chief food but other nourishments are onely co-meats or victuals in general But I on the opposite part call other nourishments true meats but bread alone the Universal victual For many are found to have lived long with milk onely The Irish also being men swift and of a most ready strength do in some place use Chambroch or three leaved-grass only for bread And some Northern people do live a long time only with fish without bread and do remain stubborn against colds and diseases A filling with bread in the Proverb is worst of all not onely because it is a token of poverty but in very deed because it is the most burthensome in a weak stomack For why bread by reason of the received leaven for else it is nothing but paste or dough melting into a cream constraines the hearbs and meats with which it is chewed to co-melt which thing we daily experience in the digestion of dung and this is rather onely to be called by the name of Apsonium or general victual then Cibus or meat But I may not long be conversant in Nominals for it is sufficient for me after whatsoever manner it be called so that the use and necessity of bread be known to prevail most especially unto the melting or dissolving of meats Furthermore I have alwayes had Sobriety in great esteem as it were the hinge of all Diet. Then also if the Appetite was carried about any Object I have willingly admitted it yet with the moderation of a mean Yet I am not he who am ignorant that one meal is better is more convenient for a sick person than another But I am little troubled or grieved whether of them both the sick might take if so be that he had also obtained some good remedy I supposing if a Remedy be not able to withstand a Maladie or Evil by a less convenient food far less also shall it be able to overcome or expell diseases Therefore I have held those Remedies which are hoped for from the prescription of Diet to be unconstant and feeble Because as is wont to be said it is easier not to admit of than to expel a Guest And from a Correlative Whosoever presumeth to overcome a Disease by virtue of a Remedy let him be sure that he shall by the same Remedy far more easily vanquish things accidentally happening from the disagreements of meats I have therefore reckoned it a sign of weakness and distrust in a Physitian as oft as he is disquieted with the shameful care of the Kitchin for he wanting a meet Medicine that in the mean time he may seem to do something or least he should take his Fee in vain layes up his hope against a Critical day and prescribeth a choice of meats For by this my perswasion I have learned 1. First That Nature in us is wiser than any Physitian and more skilful of her own profit and loss than all the Wits of all the Schooles 2. That Nature doth therefore choose to her self and wish for the most convenient things 3. That Cattel have never died because they had satisfied their thirst unless perhaps they had swallowed Poyson and did faint through too much devouring because drink in Feavers doth subvert very many discommodities of Dryness 4. That to drink in thirst should be no less natural than for one that hath need to piss to have made water 5. And therefore seeing this doth not require the consent of a Physitian that also should not want Consultation 6. That I did administer some drops together with the drink with the which easily piercing especially in thirst I have many times quenched most Feavers together with the thirst with a delightful pleasure of the sick 7. That a great appetite towards a thing apparently hurtful in the Rules of Diet is for the most part dictated by nature it selfe to whom her own Remedy hath been made known but not to the Books of the Schooles 8. That therefore we ought to be little careful about things desired which are but little hurtful and less accustomed 9. That if a Remedy ought to prevail over a Disease Meats and Drinks cannot in their own latitude contain the strength of a Medicinal Being 10. That Meats if they do not contain a Remedy therefore also scarce hurt in speaking of meats as such that is of indifferent things I have thus perswaded my self of these things thus have I prescribed these things to others To wit That abstinence and sparingness are the best meanes in the Dietary part And the rather where any thing is eaten for pleasure and delight according to the Proverb That which Savoureth Nourisheth 1. For it sufficeth the Appetite by quality but not by quantity Otherwise if fullness grieves or burdens healthy persons much more sick and weak folks 2. To wit Let them eat not indeed to the filling up of the hollowness of the stomack neither at the dictate of pleasure and taste but as much as easily sufficeth for
curing neither that he would that wares should be expected to be brought from the Indian shore as neither that God was less favourable unto mortals before the Indies were known Therefore the Divine Goodness hath perswaded me that for Diseases Inhabiting us their own Remedies are to be found at home And Alchymical speculations have taught me that a small liquor may be prepared which keeps the Crasis of Simples uncorrupted without a forreign or hurtful seasoning Therefore they boyle Herbs in water wine or a distilled liquor unto a third part half also co-heaped in a double vessel as they say and under a Diploma Wherein the chief virtues if they do not perish at least wise none but the burdensome and ungrateful muck of the Herbes to be digested by the stomack is drawn out however the decoctions and juices may be refined with whites of egges and may be masked with sugar Because they are drunk without a separation of the pure from the invalid or weak part without an unlocking of the shut-up virtues without the root and participation of life an amending of defects crudities excrements and violent powers whose activities our nature cannot bear without a grievous dammage And then Electuaries Confections or Pills whether to comfort or to loosen the Body do as yet abound with greater miseries than Syrupes for they are ridiculously ignorantly and unconsiderately co-knit of many Simples without boyling only by bruising or poudering the which are for the most part cross to each other do hurt one another and themselves are hindered from joyning in a mutual endeavour for us as they ought For that is not in nature which the Schools have expected in numbers wherein forces do agree together in one because they consent by unities For truly in nature every thing is singular lives in its own Family-administration nor rejoyceth it in Wedlock Thus far also the operation of healing proceeds into the middle life of the Archeus the which by connexions and confoundings if it doth not plainly perish at leastwise it is manifestly weakened For the vain successes by the mutual embracing of many seeds ought to have admonished the Schools to abstain from the confounding of so many and so divers Simples By how much the rather because under that multitude many supposites or things put in the place of others opposites vain things but besides most of them ponderous impertinent unfit improper and therefore weak barren evil and dead things do run together or at least wise are made For although the worthinesses and adulteries of Simples belong more to the Merchants than Apothecaries yet not to have distinguished of those Simples is the part only of a sluggish ignorant or covetous Apothecary In the mean time it is certain that for the most part all things are at length taken crude hard unripe shut up poysonsom impure bound and unfit for the communicating of their virtues and to be the more depraved by co-mingling And because the stomack of sick folks is in the entry of the House and therefore also first offended because it is weak and unfit to extract the middle life being beset with so many difficulties Therefore it was by all manner of labours and singular care to be prevented that we may prepare all things for a weak stomack if we hope sweetly to reach unto our conceived and desired ends The use therefore of all Confections is horride nauseous and tiresom And therefore from hence is the Proverb Take away that for the Shops have a smell Also if thou takest way from loosening Medicines Scammony and Coloquintida the whole fabrick of the Shops in loosening Medicines will fall to the ground For purgative Medicines besides Scammony Coloquintida Euphorbium Elaterium Esula and so manifest poysons and those moreover adulterated sorbid and horrid the heads of diminishing of our faculties and strength do contain plainly nothing unless we suppose the same poysons to be mitigated in Aloes Rhubarbe Senna Agarick Manna and the like and to be so much the more obvious or easie for deceit Therefore I have hated the preparations of Simples as oft as washing boyling burning or scorching adjoyning or calcining makes havock of their faculties For Aloes looseth its juice by washing and the residue remaines a meer Rosin the which by its adhering unto the bowels is a stirrer up of wringings and the piles In the next place seeing the proper and chief virtue of Spices is in that which is odourable if this doth of its own accord vanish away and voluntarily cease from the Body perfumed what shall at length be done by boyling and roasting especially where a degree shall happen thereunto which thing our distillings of odoriferous things do teach At length what can be said to be more foolish in the Schools than to have reduced Harts-horn into an un-savoury ashes and that deprived of all virtue for great uses and to have substituted a gelding or rather a privation in the stead of preparation For I have learned that that or most Remedies do by their odour savour as well within as without help our infirmities and therefore I have detested the co-mixtures of many Simples because if unto a healing odour thou shalt moreover adjoyn another which may suppress cloak convert the former into its self or also raise up a neutrality from them both I have known that from thenceforth the specifical healing virtue would be abolished and the effect desired by the sick made void Therefore the joyning of Spicy odours and sweet tasted savours are suspected by me Furthermore I have hated many other Confections of the Shops because foolish ones whereby they endeavour to cloak and blunt the supereminent and violent power of things by some ridiculous things Yea in the mean time they declare abroad that the in-bred savour of such a Medicine is by so much promoted by how much they do withdraw its powers by virtues adjoyned thereunto For in most of them they admix some grains of Cinnamon or other fopperies that they may subdue the furies of the more violent things as if the furies of laxative Medicines are tamed by some grains of Spices For who that is but even slenderly instructed in Chymical preparations knows not that in Spicy Confections there is in the first place the offence of plurality and then that most of those things also do vainly offend in the crudity hardness shuting up or closness choice and substituting of Simples In the next place that those Simples do moreover flow thither in an uncertain Dose whence indeed the hoped for effect is prevented And indeed by the error of every one of them And that I may resolve this thing by one example what is there I pray you in Lithontribon or the Confection for wasting or breaking of the Stone which may satisfie the promises of its Etymology For to what end is there in it Cinnamon Cloves the three Peppers Acorns or Galengal Costus Rhubarb Cassia Bdellium Mastick Amomum Peucedanum or Dog-fennel Spikenard Ginger
have ascended into a poysonsomnesse by addittaments But these seeing they are not admitted within the root of the Mercury do operate onely without about the Sulphur and are there variously disposed according to the manner of the receiver At length I perceived That there was a sixfold difference of Digestions in us and that the three former of them were busied about the disposing of the matter appointed for to nourish the which although they do truly transmute yet they are sent before rather for a preparatory disposing than for a vital espousing thereof For truly in the Fourth Digestion a vital power is communicated to the venal blood and so the Controversie is decided whether the arterial blood be quickned For the venal blood is not truly enlivened until it be made arterial blood The which is drawn through the partition of the Heart into the Arterie Aorta for no other end but that in that Buttery it may be endowed with Life and informed with a mind But we are nourished by both bloods even as we have our original of the seed of a twofold Sex For perhaps the Mysterie of the Lyturgie is hence known why a little Water is mixed with much Wine That the Water may pass into venal blood and the Wine into arterial blood I perceived therefore That the Fifth Digestion was plainly occupied about the participative communion of Life But Lastly That the sixth did operate by a dispositive quality but did rejoyce in an assimilating ferment and that inducing humanity Therefore external aides are stirred up and do operate by another quality than internal ones Fat or gross persons are taken with Paines or Crampes or Convulsions of the Tendons the which notwithstanding the grease of man being outwardly over-smeared doth alay For the Sixth Digestion is wholly assimilative therefore it indeavours to change the grease brought on it into its own vital aire But the internal grease of fat things being now subdued by an assimilating ferment is kept without action But the Sixth Digestion enters into the middle Life of the external anointed grease the which our Archeus doth therefore appropriate to himself which Life and its properties are hidden in the last Life of the internal grease Moreover I perceived after what manner a Cantharides doth embladder in living People but not in a dead carcase as neither doth it raise up a burnt Escharre in the dead carcase although it dissolves the dead carcase no otherwise than as Calx vive poudered doth resolve Cheese For the Cantharides as long as it remains dry doth not act but is moistened by an unsensible eflux of our dew then first it begins to itch whence the Archeus under the Epidermis or outward skin is furiously inflamed not much otherwise than as under an Erisipelas the burning Coal or burning Fever and so the Cantharides begins in the Epidermis and an Escharotick in the skin the same which a Gangreen doth at length finish in the habit of the Body For Causticks do at first crisp the skin the which afterwards they resolve into a muscilage after they have fully moistened For then they do not onely sharpen our heat but also they assume the strength of a proper corroding Then I say they do not onely make an Escharrhe which ariseth from an inflaming of the Archeus but do melt the whole Lastly I perceived also that Amulets or preservative Pomanders things bound about the Head and hung about the Body do act by the virtue of influence and that directive without the evaporation of those things which indeed do reside in the more fixed Bodies Although there are other things hung on the Body which are by little and little diminished of their Virtues because they dismiss a Vapour out of them But things tied to the Head or Body are Bony Horney Animals and Plants but others are Mettallick Stony Salts Transparent things or Thick or Dark things But Mettals are seldome Amulets unless they are as yet opened or exalted by an external adjunct Because they have a dividable Sulphur in them But in Stones there is great virtue but of Stones some are transparent Looking-glasses but some are thick or dark ones As Corral Coraline the Turcois the Jasper But in clear Stones the Evestrum or Ghost of Life being well or ill affected doth reverberate To wit the life rejoyceth to be reflexed in a clear glass whereby it is then made like to the Understanding which in its own light is altered after the manner of a Chamelion at the assimilation of Objects Neither also have I in vain perceived Gemms to be as it were thick Glasses well polished Because the native and natural Endowment that is in them from the nature of the Glasse doth more powerfully reflect the vital beam communicated unto it For something is continually and necessarily discussed or blown out of us which is not yet plainly destitute of the participation of Life That very thing doth keep the activity of its own sphear about us the which while it findeth in the polished Glass it easily reflecteth on the whole Body from whence it issued for thereby sympathetical Remedies or Things were first made known But afterwards when it was known that things tied about the Body were applied in operating by virtue of a Glasse there were thereupon boughtie or convex concavous c. figures of Looking-glasses presently bethought of whereunto Gentilisme joyned Hieroglyphicks that by a figure they might denote the sign of a hidden virtue Superstition in posterity thereby encreased who anointed Gamahen Talismanicks and devilish Scurrilities of that sort Thinking that Figures had not indeed the virtues of a Sign but of a Cause But transparent Glasses do receive an Evestral or Ghostlike faculty the which although they do not reflect as otherwise dark ones do yet they approach nearer unto the nature of life or the shining glasse Finally I perceived that the diversity of Effects the end and appropriation of Medidines did not proceed from the fourfold fiction of Complexions but from the very powers of Simples themselves whose Election dose and preparation have therefore stood neglected because they have not been hitherto searched into in their root and manner After the perceivances of all these things at length another Spirit took from me the bottle which the other had given me And with great grief I then perceived all the necessities of Death in me unfit to be declared Whereby I presently returned unto my self neither could I receive comfort but when I truly knew that all things were acted onely by a Dream and because that if I ought to rehearse the virtues of things I could not better performe it than if I had as it were felt all those things within This one thing at least I did moreover remember that Chymical things did rather act by the force of Art than by the native power of Nature because their beginnings were brought forth and changed by the Fire To wit Chymistry separates fixed things from things not fixed
of the Stomack But as a defect of Blood is restored by the more meer or pure meats and drinks So the defect of the Latex is recompenced by watery things it being that which experience teacheth Thirst therefore proceedeth from the governour of the Latex and not from the Bowel of sanguification for there is as much necessity of the Latex as there hath been hitherto dulness in the passing it by Some Authors do commend live Toads being fast bound to both Kidneys to lose the Dropsie by the Urine At leastwise I have seen a Country-man that had a Dropsie cured by an Adder tyed about his Belly and Reins For an Idea of fear is brought on the Reins whereby they loose their indignation Indeed by the same title thirst doth stir up an Idea of sorrow or of a denyed appetite whence the Kidney forgets its wroth From what therefore hath been said before the ignorance of Causes in the Dropsie is sufficient manifest and next with what great obscurity they have laboured about the distemperature of the Liver and emptying of waters how vainly they have thought of provokers of Urine of Vesicatories and of solutive Medicines and it is to be observed in this place that purgative Cholagogals or movers of Cholar have been wickedly given to drink to Dropsical People because they are such things which trans-change the Flesh and venal Blood into a stinking and yellow ballast without the help of a Dropsie But with the destruction of the a Hydropsical person But a hydragogal or mover of water differs from a Cholagogal because that being drunk down the Belly asswageth neither doth it expurge stinking things or excrements unless the force of a Cholagogal be adjoyned to an Hydragogall Therefore Mercury precipitated according to the prescription of Paracelsus cures every Dropsie not as it purgeth but forasmuch as it material passing through the Bowels dissolues the out-hunted Blood But if it together with that do provoke Vomit or Stool that is to the Dropsie by accident Take notice therefore of this that white Briony or white Vine being scraped or filed and laid on a bruise wherein the blood looketh black under the skin doth in few hours resolve that blood into water the which it likewise fetcheth through the skin Wherefore take notice that there is the profitable virtue of an Hydragogal or mover of water in Briony if thou shalt take away the solutive poyson from the same But surely I have observed if Antimony be turned into a liquor and afterwards into a pouder which purgeth only by sweat a remedy is procured which modestly takes away every Dropsie whithout fear of a relaps for truly it removeth as well the occasional Cause as the distemper of the raging Archeus it self For such remedies as are carried through the intestines their natural endowment remaining and being secure and the which are therefore apt to resolve the occasional Cause do free Nature of her impediments whence the Archeus of the Kidney percieving the proper madness of his fore-past fury doth open the veines suck to him and strain the water through according to his due and wonted manner and recompenceth with diligence the stubbornness of his fore-past fury by an excentrical and opposite motion of the Latex grieving that through disorder he intended his own destruction whence it is plain to be seen that the government of the Kidney over the Abdomen and Veins hath hitherto been unknown The Dropsie therefore is a Disease occasionally arisen from a bloody depraved matter as it were from a fermental Beginning at whose incitements the Archeus of the Reins formeth an Idea of indignation through the power whereof he shuts up the Urine-pipes and Veins corrupts and diverts the abounding Latex and transmits this Latex into the compass of the Abdomen or nether part of the Belly in the mean time he so straitens the pores of these Membranes of the Abdomen that they can let nothing of all thorow them even until Death But the Tympany doth very much differ from the Dropsie For there is unto it a different occasional Cause a different manner of making in the next place a different matter and also a different efficient Cause Therefore a different Disposition and a different Product For Water is not generated but Wind And then neither is a Tympany made through the Arbitration of the Kidney but onely by a poysonsom ferment of the spermatick or seedie nourishment sticking and defiled in the crooked bought of the Intestine sitting as President Neither also hath Anatomy hitherto viewed the veines to be swollen with wind neither ought the Liver to suffer punishment by reason of the wringings of the Bowels although aswel the Dropsie as Tympany may follow wringings or gripings Also if the Flatus's of the Intestine should be made by the Liver a Remedy is to be applied to the Liver but not a carminative Medicine to the Intestine or the Schooles make themselves guilty through a different manner of curing For if they were mindfull of their own Theorem that of the same faculty there is a found and infirm Action they had known that Belching and Flatus's are generated by the Bowels and Stomack And so that the crooked bought of the Intestine is no lesse apt for generating of Flatus's than the concave or hollowness thereof A Tympany molesteth from Liquors which were to be assimilated but are become degenerate For a Windinesse or Flatus is made in the Intestine from a certain indisposition of the Archeus of the place who then doth forthwith change meats which are nothing flatulent into a flatus Seeing therefore in the Tympany it is in the out-side or in the crooked bought of the Intestine the same flatulent indisposition is to be considered to be with-out-side as is within in the Intestine To wit it is made from a similar nourishment degenerating whereby a dungy ferment happening the very Archeus of the place being wroth and ill affected doth turn not indeed the aforesaid occasional Cause but the proper nourishment of the Membranes into Flatus's But for this purpose a part of the dungy-ferment doth passe from the inward cavity unto the outward bought of the Intestine And therefore that is not the unsavoury or four flatus of Belchings as neither doth it smel of dung because it is not of a dungy-matter but of a degenerated and cadaverous or mortified nourishment A certain man by the perswasion of Physitians sustaining an Incision on the side of his Navel who was judged to have the Dropsie and that they might draw out the water I being a Young Man and looking on the Chyrurgions Lancet or Fleam being drawn out his Abdomen presently pitched and he by and by died But a Flatus which hugely stank uttered it self and his dead Carcass smelt It is manifest therefore that the occasional matter and next the true matter and inward effecter with all the knowledge which credits a Physitian have remained unknown The vanity also of Remedies appeareth and
be not resolved into its first Being neither also doth it return into the substance of Milke But the sharpness of the Stomach and its native ferment dissolves as much as it can of the injected Stones not indeed by a retrograde resolution towards its first Being But only after the manner of soure things it dissolves those Stones that is into Powder Even as in the Book of Fevers I have profesly by handicraft operation demonstrated For from hence it is that if they are first dissolved in Vinegar they do more powerfully afford their aide than if they are first boyled in Wine also because they are more dissolved in sharpish Wine than in Water or Ale Therefore also they do more powerfully succour than if they are drunk in the broath of Fleshes or Water because sharp things do break those Stones into the most subtil atomes and seeing they have as yet a native cream in them tameable by the Stomach Therefore also by how much the more subtilly they are broken or prepared by so much also the ferment of the Stomach doth obtain the more of that Cream Likewise although Mace Terpentine c. are taken and shall change the odour of the Urine Yet their aides are but weak in the Disury and suppression of Urine For in very deed all the Testimonies of the former Life of Simples is annihilated within the Stomach and none but the flaggy footsteps of tasts do remain so that the Nutmeg and Terpentine which do very much differ in their savours yet they do breath one only and alike Odour in the Urine which is a manifest sign that in the first shop of the Stomach the primitive Crases's of things taken do perish but that new ones do arise being gotten by cocting For otherwise of Terpentine and its Oyle and Mace a sameliness of Odour could not result in the Urine as neither an acceptable Odour of Violets from thence So Asparagus stinks in the Urin as a certain putrifaction being adjoyned unto it doth hasten the same into banishment But vulnerary or wound-drinks do no otherwise succour a wound than as they do so diminish the unjust sharpness in the Stomach that they do also restrain and expel sharpness out of the wound all which out of the Stomach is hurtful Diseasie and a Companion of putrifaction as I have elsewhere demonstrated concerning digestions For truly the general digestion of the Stomach is chief over every Kitchin of all the digestions Yea indeed Birds are throughout their whole Body actually and notably hot and so they do somewhat long sustain the night rigours of Winter But they piss not because they want Reins and Bladder Therefore whatsoever a drinking Pigeon drinketh doth wholly depart by unsensible transpiration Hence therefore it is manifest that the Kidneys only do make Urine which else would be sweat And Urine in Man differs not indeed in the matter of the first Latex but in the efficient ferment of the Reins alone And it is also manifest that Birds do unsensibly eject every superfluous excrement without sweat Therefore Urine differs from sweat more than in matter only besides the proper Essence of Urin not formally received from the Kidney it doth receive a liquid and tinging dung into it self which is not attracted upwards unto the veins in a Bird neither do they sweat although they are wearied Therefore because sweat in a Man is not unsensibly blown away even as otherwise in a Swine the Kidney of Man hath the blame Even as also that the liquid dung is separated and drawn from the Bowels upwards within the veins the Kidney hath the blame But the use of that drawing for the Stone is shewn elsewhere But the Urine is not tinged that it may the more readily be ejected for the Urin is sharper and doth more prick as oft as it is without tinging dross As the Kidney therefore is the cause of the Urin and of the aforesaid things so also it is the cause of the Dropsie as the Kidney closeth it self through the indignation of its own Archeus whose indignation if it be restrained by a due remedy of the Stomach forasmuch as its Duumvirate sits president over the Kidney the Dropsie is for certaine soon holpen For the wheyinesses of the Dropsie are oftentimes expelled out of a swollen and extended Abdomen by purgers of water the solutive Medicines themselves having as yet stayed but a little while within the Stomach But the Dropsie doth soon repeat the same because the Kidney being wroth as before doth persevere in the closure and diversion of the Urin For the water which the Kidney hath laid up in the Abdomen the Stomach fetcheth from thence and dejects through the Paunch and so sheweth that it can command the follies or trifles and indignations of the Reins as also reduce the wheyinesses unto the intestines by unknown wayes Not indeed that such solutives are materially and presentially present even unto the Abdomen and that by a purgative poysonous faculty they do reduce the deposited fardle of the Dropsie with them Nay but these are the Atchievements of the one Stomach and the priviledges of the Life and vital Duumvirate The Pipes or Channels indeed are unknown to us but the Life the directress and mistris of these reflects it self unto its own seat or center that is unto the Soul And therefore from the very Life it self of the Soul the Functions Offices Vigours Valours of Powers and all the defects of these are to be fetched for the Soul doth distribute all its Offices unto the parts and doth govern them by the Life neither only doth it distinguish the Offices by the parts so that it hath seperated diversities in the very vessel of the Stomach as well in its Orifice as in the Pylorus but also it hath co-knit the powers themselves unto a beginning alike in parts indeed but those which do every one of them perform their own tragedies Which thing surely is no where more manifestly seen than in Diseases and so in the defects of the faculties because that they strow the way unto disorder and a dis-joynted discord of unity Seeing that the mortal mind is believed to be of an univocal or simple identity therefore also conditions inclinations cruelties c. come to be ascribed unto the mortal Soul The which indeed follows a material variety of dispositions from hence therefore is blockishness barbarousness furies madnesses as also provocations to leachery quicksightednesses or sharpnesses of wit and lastly the ruin of sciences and extinguishments of memory c. CHAP. LXXIII The Seat of Diseases in the sensitive Soul is Confirmed 1. Ten Paragraphs or Positions elsewhere proved are supposed 2. The twelve Properties of the Stomack are rehearsed 3. That some Diseases do inhabit in the Life of the Stomack 4. An Objection is Solved 5. The Life of the Muscles 6. A consideration of the Apoplexie 7. The incomprehensibleness of the Vital Powers 8. Sleep is the last of Faculties 9.
steeped in a great quantity of common Water for this Water although it doth not sup up any the least quantity of the Quick-silver into it self or is not able to convert it unto its own Nature Yet it borrows a property not likewise a substance from the Quick-silver so as that such Water being drunk doth kill all Wormes and Ascarides also those which exist where that Drink never comes Because it is that which is soon wholly snatched into urin and that Water becomes stronger against Worms if it shall once boyle with the Quick-silver or Argent-vive So one only ounce of Quick-silver shall be able a thousand times to infect a measure of Water and yet remain in its antient weight and property For so the Schools also do do against their wills perfectly learn that some Agents do freely alwayes and with unwearied forces act without a passion or re-action of their Patients and the same weight of themselves alwayes remaining For Argent-vive doth act on the Water and imprints its own Character in it yet it doth not likewise re-suffer any thing from the Water It is manifest therefore that a certain Medicinal virtue is transferred and doth change its natural subject and departeth into a forreign object as it were only by its Beam or Aspect Yet so that although the forreign object doth attain a forreign faculty or virtue for it self yet the acting and in-spiring principle doth not loose or slacken any thing of its former strength or weight Indeed that is done without any Suffering Diminishing Changing Weakening or Interchangable course of the Argent-vive Surely the example produced in this place serves for the celebration of an argument concerning almost an infinite virtue of Remedies for the future which thing after that it had been often and diversly drawn under experience in Minerals it at length perfectly taught me that perhaps no Mortals heretofore had as yet clearly and inwardly beheld in what manner the more abstruse or secret Remedies might operate and that indeed without their dissolution or destruction without their penetration inward admission co-mixture and changing they do also freely act aloof of on the stupified or enraged Archeus as if it were only by their aspect in beaming or darting forth of their virtues produced in a mean their former weight and properties being as yet retained and unchanged And so those Arcanums do testifie that they are akin to the infinite Goodness while as they do by degrees disperse their almost and as it were infinite virtues Wherefore Physitians shall not remain unpunished while as the poor shall at some time mournfully complain at the last Judgement that they were neglected who might easily and by the way have been cured without any charges Therefore Arcanums can never depart into nourishment because they keep their own ends as those things which were not ordained for Meats but for Medicines and which do remain Medicines although taken within the Body For they begin in the Stomack the which I have profesly elsewhere demonstrated to be the seat of the Soul to unfold or expose the direct Beam of their own Faculties and their endowed Virtue and to which end they were ordained of God Whence at length the bedewed beaming virtue being drawn in by the Archeus is dispersed into the whole Body and health thereupon succeeding is greedily received So indeed these more universal Remedies being administred cures do happen such as I have delivered to happen in the Fountain of Nature and to be due to the same and such as Paracelsus hath promised and afterwards Butler put in execution I being a beholder to wit with the least application of a co-fermenting Surely after that this speculation attracted me under it self by a more piercing or inward contemplation I as it were knew most clearly and visually that in occasional Causes and in excrementitious Products filths indeed did stick they being the awakeners of peculiar Diseases Yet I consider the whole Disease it self and its Remedies to be in the Archeus to wit altered or appeased And so that with the least touching at shaking darting yea only by radiation or beaming or illumination so that they shall in the seat of the Soul touch at the sensitive Life Cures are perfected and compleated no regard being had unto occasional Causes And that thing I do more powerfully behold in the Sulphurous Remedies of Minerals to wit in the Sulphur of Venus or Copper of Stibium and especially in the Sulphur of Glaura Augurellus which Nymph doth hitherto want any other proper name For these sort of Sulphurs because they are at a farther distance from mans Nature than the whole band of Vegetables and do in the mean time obtain famous natural Endowments from the Giver So also they do most fully and stubbornly resist that they may not decline by the digestive Faculty into the Common-wealth of nourishments and therefore they keep their natural Powers free and unbroken to wit the Crasis or constitutive temperature of Minerals remaineth entire and is the more fit to disperse its own Beam into the Duumvirate the seat of the Soul For so Mercurius Diaphoreticus doth attain the ultimate scope of its perfect act by the redness of an ascending Sulphur whereunto the Sulphur of the Mercury is joined by an undissolvable Union For in this respect the Sulphurs of Minerals do under the Vulcan obtain the utmost compleating of the intent of Physitians I therefore exhort Young Beginners that they perfectly learn to spoile Sulphurs of their forreign and poysonous Faculty To wit under the custody whereof a vital fire is hidden most pleasingly bringing the Archeus into the desired aims Indeed there are some Sulphurs unto whom they being corrected and perfected the whole band of Diseases doth hearken because they are those whose Plurality is contracted into the unity of the Archeus as it were into a fighting or clutched Fist By this means we have seen Madnesses Apoplexies Falling-sicknesses Palseys giddinesses of the Head Asthma's Dropsies Atrophia's and cruel Defects to be annihilated in the very seat of the Soul and combined Duumvirate indeed to the amazement of Nature her self In Stones therefore a great virtue is declared to be by the holy Scriptures which is hitherto hidden as well in the University as in the Chymical Schools until that Kings and Common-wealths shall look into the reformation of Schools it repenteth them of their labour who hope craftily to get gain by an abuse They know not nor desire not nor will not labour who deride those that are studious of Virtues for if ever heretofore now at least-wise the whole World being placed in malignity hath deterred my Pen least I should scatter Pearls before Swine I will shew to our Sons as the Lyon by his Paw Extract thou the Sulphur of Antimony which scarce differs from the common sight but that it inclines a little unto greenness Make this Cinnabar as yet six times thou shalt sublime it by it self that the sublimation may serve for
that labour with the astonished Disease Convulsion and Palsie and Leprous Persons to be Cured Fie fie Miracles are manifested by an Unimitable finger Besides it behooveth rightly to distinguish effects by Accident from those which are due unto their Causes by themselves As if a Virgin through the failing of her Menstrues doth labour with a strangling Epilepsie or affect of the Palsie but her Courses bewraying themselves upon the drinking of the Water of the Spaw she be freed from the annexed disposition there is not cause that therefore we should commend the true Apoplexie Asthma falling Evil or Palsie to have been Cured by the Fountains of the Spaw For Diseases which proceed from the Womb are Uniuersally the Client of another Monarchy and do consist of another Root than those which break forth from the Condition of the Microcosme as well in the one as in the other Sex The which indeed if any one shall not distinguish of he procures loud laughter to himself from the more discreet Person But besides it hath already been spoken how much a hungry Salt may profit in Fountains but hereafter we must shew what the Coâ—roded and dissolved Mine of Iron may act That therefore first of all doth manifestly binde and therefore it strengthens the Stomach and any of its neighbouring parts In loose therefore and dissolute Diseases the Waters of the Spaw do agree or are serviceable to wit in those of the Lientery Flux Caeliacke Passion and Dysentery or bloody Flux c. Whereunto I exspect that it will be objected that whatsoever Irony matter is offered it provokes the mouth Issues and alwayes the breaches or enfeeblements of the Liver and Slpeen and so that from hence it is agreeable to truth that the Waters of the Spaw are rather opening than Astringent By reason of which difficulties some perhaps doubting do rather flie for refuge unto the unlike parts in Mars I answer from the Adeptists That there doth oft-times wander up and down in us a certain resolved Salt and Mineral one plainly Excrementitious a resolved Tartar I say existing either in the first or in the last matter whereof whether the Womb Liver Slpeen Kidney the Mesentery or Stomach be the Mine we now reckon it all one So that it be manifest that it brings forth remarkable troubles unto that labour with it Stomoma therefore that is Steel or Iron Administred in Powder being drunk down assoon as may be that hurtful Salt which hearkens not to the commands of purging things runs headlong unto the Iron and adheres unto it that it may dissolve that and display its own Faculty and so is Coagulated nigh that and together with the Iron goes forth But if the Iron or Steel be drunk being dissolved in a sharp Liquour yet not hostile unto us to wit the Spaw waters Nature the same liquours being wasted and more inwardly admitted within presently separates the Iron because it is unapt for nourishment from that which was co-mixed with it and sends it forth thorow the Bowels As may be seen in the blackness of the dungs of the Fountains of the Spaw In which Sequestration of the Iron there is straightway made a Con-flux of Mineral Salts no otherwise than as Silver dissolved in Chrysulca or Aqua Fortis doth flie unto applyed Brasse and dissolved Brasse unto Iron The received Iron therefore freeth from obstruction and openeth by accident to wit the vanquished obstructing matter being taken away with it yet not that it therefore ceaseth by it self to be constrictive It opens I say by a specifical and appropriated power but it constrains or binds by a second quality Now moreover seeing the drinking of the water hath increased a courage and hope in the miserable sick especially in those that have the Stone I will declare my judgement It is certain that the Waters of the Spaw do wash or rince the region of the Urine both because they do easily pass thorow and also because they being many and abundantly drunk and Mineral their hungry Salt hinders whereby the Spirit of the Urin the onely Architect of Stones in us may by a property inbred in it the less Stonifie any thing Because another more potent Salt doth now derive the same Spirit being as it were bound into its own Jurisdiction But because that is onely a Cloakative or dissembled Cure although the made Stones and Sands are expelled as it were by the cleansing of the sliding water yea as long as the waters shall be drunk they hinder new Collections of the Stone Yet because they do soon after grow again we judge them to be unfaithful or untrusty Remedies for those that have the Stone For by so much the more readily indeed the Stone hastens to grow by how much that womb the other parent of the Stone shall be the cleaner For shall not the Urine more easily glew a Stone unto a clean Urinal or Chamber-pot than unto one that is besmeared with Oyl For from hence perhaps the Kidneys of Bruit Beasts do abound with very much grease We therefore know a perfect Cure of the Stone and the desired rest to be a far different thing wherein the lesser Stones being sweetly expelled which is the least thing the greater indeed may return into their former Juice by a Retrograde resolving of their Concretion or Composure But neither shall that be sufficient unless the Stonifying inclination be taken away by restorers to wit by the Collected harvest of a few remedies nor is any one able to hope for an entire and wished for health from the Stone no less than from a Fever concerning which we have written in other places and afforded Remedies For the Virtue of healing stands right under every weight that is all Diseases are with it of one value or esteem and it can be diminished by no Disease The more noble powers of remedies onely are desired which cry unto Heaven to the Creator that they have come as it were in vain neither that there is any one almost who can loosen their bands We must timely abstain from complaints in an Ulcerous or corrupt age Therefore as to what belongs unto the first qualities of the Fountains of the Spaw although we are very little careful of those because they are Momentary and those which have not a Vital Anatomy as often as they are not infamous in a very incensed degree yet we Decree that their hungry Salt is in the first Degree of heat and dryth but that the dissolved Vein of Iron hath reached to the second Degree of Cold and Dryth But it hath been shewn with an indulgence of Aristotle and by the above-said Inferences that the water it self is moist in the highest degree but remisly Cold. But because those qualities as well of the water as of the Minerals are Relosteous ones or those which have not a Seminal Being in them they have not any thing of a Cure in them but they Preposterously or over-thwartly happen unto constituted things like
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
the stonifying seed from whence Herbs Birds a nest Leather c. do become a rocky stone is of a greater efficacy than otherwise the seeds of Vegetables are which do fore-require a matter disposed by the Generater Therefore every Land doth not bring forth all things But a rocky seed snatcheth to it any bodies even those that are far estranged from it self And then the other seeds require that the matter subjected unto them be reduced unto a tough or slimy Liquor and such as is for receiving of the seed which Liquor they have called the first matter of Generation and they require that every figure and comelinesse of the foregoing composed Body be also destroyed But a stonifying seed doth with a Reservation of the humane figure stonifie the man wholly throughout the whole to wit as well his bones as his skin without an intermediating putrefaction or dissolution of the matter 5. That a stonifying seed consists in a stony odour alone which is an incorporeal and invisible Ferment 6. That the matter of a Tooth is not meerly bony but a middle or neutral matter between a Bone and a Rocky stone And therefore also a Tooth doth by its co-touching at length stonifie whatsoever shall the more stubbornly adhere unto it whether that pulse shall be of that which is made of Bread Flesh Potherbs Fish Apple or Pease c. That is although in it self nor of it self it hath not any disposition unto the making of a rocky stone This seed I say hath notably deceived Paracelsus and his followers with the name of Tartar For the stone of a Tooth is not dissolved in boyling water like Tartar Neither is the Generation thereof of most near akinne unto the Tartar of Wine but it is a neutral Animal stonification made indeed from a stone-like odour and seed which the pulse adhering to the Tooth drawes to it by touching 7. Hitherto hath the speculation of Hornes regard For the horne of a Cow as also the pantafles or hoofes of Herds and of the flock of lesser Cattel are by a proper and simple name of an horny matter But the horne of a Stag is partly of a bony matter and partly of a wooden matter and so that also therefore it intimates Thornes and Branches and falls off yearly by reason of a retained property of leaves and of a wooden part Ivory also hath a great part of bone and another of a stone or of a Tooth-like form 8. That although many Bodies do become rocky stones in Fountains yet that comes not to passe without a remarkable stonifying odour For therefore as many things as are stonified are transchanged by the odour of the place But not that the rocky stone sends forth from it self a seed like a Generater 9. And that therefore the original seed of the rocky stone was immediately sown by the Creator and constituted in places being sufficient for a sufficiency unto the end of the World 10. That if stonifying stands not in need of the device of Tartar much lesse surely doth the Generations of Diseases 11. That some Insects especially the Toade although they are bred in rocky stones themselves yet they do not become a rocky stone even as otherwise almost all other things do For that they have received a viral Archeus by way of a separation from the stones themselves no otherwise than as the Fire-stone or mettal is separated from the stony veines wherein they are bred and do keep their unspotted matter dissolveable Therefore that separated Archeus remaines unconquerable by a rocky seed 12. That it is a false Maxime that there is not made an introducing of any form unlesse from a fore-existing disposition of the matter For truly a rocky stone is immediately made of subjects even diuers in kind without a co-melting of the matter For indeed the Magitians of Pharaoh when they had seen the Gnats to proceed immediately from the dust of the earth which they had known to be the immediate Ofsprings of the water they cryed out Here is the finger of God because they could not imitate this effect For since there is a most difficult return of earth into water they knew that it was a far more famous thing for Gnats to be made of the dust of the earth than for a Serpent to be made of the Rod and this of that or for Frogs and Blood to be made of water Which difficulty Satan well knowing said not Say or command thou that bread be made a stone for this happens in Nature immediately but that those stones be made bread From whence indeed he had divined of the Omnipotency of Christ. For as through a stonifying seed having arisen from an hoary putrifaction of the bottome shell-fishes are fenced with a stony crust whose seed is not so much propagated by a sexual wedlock as by the very fermental putrefaction it self of the bottome and therefore a posterity growes to their shells from without So also there are other Insects whose Archeus could not be incrusted nor vanquished by a stony seed From a like cause as the Toad drives away from him all troublesome stonification from without Yet such kind of wormes are not sufficient for curing of the Stone Because the last Life of these under which a resistance against the rocky seed layes hid hath vanished away before it be received into the use of Medicine Also a hoary putrified stony odour if it shall light on the vegetal juyce of the earth which Paracelsus calls Leffas stony Pavements arise under the earth A man also being shut up in a fermental putrified place is first choaked with a stony odour which odour afterwards passing through his Arteries and solid parts transchangeth the dead Carkase before it can putrifie into a rocky stone For so the earth pierceth the vegetal juyce with a rocky odour and a stony plant ariseth as it were out of a transplanted vegetable seed As is manifest in Coral and the mosse thereof But from whence had the Young according to Pareus drawn the odour of a stony seed but that happened not at first by vertue of a rocky seed but there was made a transplantation through the force of the teeming Mother who the more attentively admited a stony Engravement otherwise the Young being framed and transchanged into a rocky stone a stony odour afterwards issued from thence whereby it came to passe that almost the whole womb of the Mother together with that Young became stonified For as smoak pierceth and tingeth fleshes that are moist and compacted with Salt from their Circumference even to their Center so also doth a stony Odour Flesh To wit that of a dead Carkase there may be made a true mineral Rock having nothing common with the stone of man and the which therefore I will hereafter with Paracelsus name Duelech by reason of its singular nature and properties from all other rocky stones But fume or smoak although it may tinge fleshes yet it transchangeth them not
that which was for coagulating of Aqua vitae 2. That in coagulating it had separated the sluggish and watery part which swum upon the aforesaid white lump perhaps no otherwise than as in coagulation of Duelech from the rest of the body of the urine and so that it perfected its coagulation in the middle of the waters 3. That the curdy Runnet or spirit of Urine had undissolveably knit it self to the spirit of Wine 4. That it is not a perpetual truth the which notwithstanding the Schooles hand forth instead of a Chymicall Maxime that every sharp coagulating Body did by the same endeavour dissolve its own Compeere 5. That the spirit of Urine had not coagulated it self in the Glass according to the powder of a beaten Duelech but onely that it had mingled and coagulated it self together with another thing namely with the spirit of Wine 6. That if therefore it had met with an earthly spirit it had also contracted wedlock with the same so as that of both spirits it had made a stony Body 7. I likewise learned after what manner the spirit of urine might coagulate another spirit within the urine 8. That such an association is not a certain naked co-mixture of parts but an undissolvable wedlock of unity a certain substantial transmutation a production of a new Being by an Agent and a Patient into a neither Body This experiment gave me an entrance for a diligent search into the Disease of the Stone Yet I as yet remained wandring about For after giving of thanks I transferr'd my self into a meditation how many ways a thing might be condensed or coagulated in the Universe For Ice first presently offered it self unto me wherein the water incrusts it self for fear of cold and from a primitive action but is not actively congealed by cold Even as elsewhere concerning the Elements But other Bodies which are believed to be mixt as they bewray themselves to be the true Fruits of water by the same Zeal and Tenour are they congealed by cold occasionally For so Bones and a Sword are more easily broken in time of cold Seasons than in time of heat or Summer 2. Any kind of Salts according to their Species and inbred property while their brine being not sufficientts dryed up is left in the cold are separated from their water and become corny 3. If Salts shall subdue any thing by gnawing it they pass over from their native condition into a neither Body and are coagulated For so the Tartar of Wine Sope Borace c. are coagulated 4. And then Muscilages being thickned by the wedlock of their seeds and resolved from their own Body become Glews Gums Solder c. 5. But if a muscilage or slimy juyce carries a co-mixed fat with it it is coagulated in both respects So are Aloes a Chibal Pitch Rosin Gum Ammoniacum Frankinsence Myrrh Mastich the Gum Opopanax Sarcocolla Assa Elemi c. 6. Earth converting into a salt or muscilage if it be dryed is condensed and waxeth hard 7. A mineral Salt that was bred in the earth by burning stonifies into stones shells or sheards and earthen Pots 8. The which if they are urged by a stronger degree of heat they at length vitrifie or become Glass 9. The watery Leffas or planty juyce of the Earth by vertue of the seeds is hatdened into Woods Herbs c. 10. So Water by vertue of a seed is made a rocky stone 11. A muscilage being joyned to a powder or dust makes sand-stones but with dust and lime it now dissembles divers Marbles 12. Whatsoever lime dissolved comprehends or encloseth in it self that thing coagulates with it Because there are in Lime two salts the one a lixivial Alcali salt and the other an acide or sharp one which two salts while they demolish each other are coagulated together 13. Mettals Fire-stones Sulphurs etc. do by vertue of their seeds obtain their own and proper coagulations 14. Also most things through an inbred Glew do voluntarily grow together which afterwards by drying do harden As Blood Cheese the white of an Egg Varnish c. 15. Glass is an earthen stone consisting of an Alcali salt The which while being fired it is dissolved makes the sand or powder of stone that is not calcinable nor otherwise capable of powring abroad to melt by corroding and so they are both together turned into a transparent lump Therefore the Lime-stone or rocky stone by reason of its sharp salt is unfit for Glass because the lime thereof destroyes the Glassifying Alcali and there is made a certain neutral thick or dark Body Lime therefore against the will of Galen very much differs from ashes To wit because this separates the Lixivium or lye from it self but the other containes a sharpnesse that is not separable from the whole Whereby it being at length burnt by too much fire is Glassified throughout its Lixivial part being unfit for Building According to Geber Because all fixed Bodies are at length Glassified with Glassifying things Cheese also as it is curdled by moderate sharpnesse so it is resolved with an eminent sharpness For the pating of Cheese dissolves with dry Calx vive or quick-Lime but not with the Alcali or Lixivial salt of Ashes From all the aforesaid particulars I have collected that the coagulation of Duelech is singular and irregular Lime also doth by degrees stonifie in the middle of the waters as its aforesaid salts do coagulate each other But the body of Man as it doth not coagulate a rocky stone so neither doth it endure a Calx or Lime-stone in the Bladder For indeed that admirable Coagulum or Runnet alwayes stuck before mine eyes whereby more swiftly than in the twinkling of an Eye the spirit of urine had condensed the spirit of Wine into a lump Therefore I discerned that all other Coagulations had nothing common with Duelech Wherefore I determined to examine Spirits Therefore first I distilled Horse-pisse But surely the spirit thereof wanted that Runnet Wherefore I noted with the highest admiration the singularity of mans Urine Afterwards I observed that the spirit of Sulphurs or of Salts being sharp would with an Alcalized body be made earthly For so with Iron is made drosse rust a cankered rust Ceruss c. And these Paracelsus rashly judgeth to be Tartars or the separated impurities of things over-covered with their own and that an inward Runnet when as otherwise they are nothing else but the astonishment of two mutual Agents to wit when both their strengths are spent Afterwards I long examined Salts throughout every of their Analysis or Re-solution and I discerned that the spirits of all salts were sharp except Alcalized ones and those of essential Sulphurs in Vegetables Whose saltish tartnesses indeed are fat and sulphurous neither readily reducible into a salt unlesse by a tedious inversion or turning in and out of the principles which salts being then as it were elixirated do represent the true and highest Crasis or constitutive
as in the water of the Spaw in Duelech c. a new and neutral Being is constituted such as is Oker of the spirit of Sulphur and the volatile vein of Iron But in the Tartar of Wine onely the tart spirit or sour liquor of the Wine is changed into a Salt and the Lee remaineth such as it was before And therefore the matter constituted thereby is again dissolvable For a metal stone or solid Body is not unbodyed changed or volatilized by reason of the corroding of spirits That is manifest For Silver Pearls Corâ—als Spongy-stones Crabstones Snails-stones c. although by Aqua fortis and other sharp Liquors they vanish out of our fight yet they are stones as before even as concerning Fevers indeed the spirit did what it could but it operated as it wore in vain upon the body while in corroding that body it coagulated it self For indeed there is in the whole nature of the Universe one onely fire the burning Vulcan So also there is none but one onely Liquor which dissolveth all solid bodyes into their first matter without any changing or diminishment of their faculties which thing Adeptists have known and will testifie but in all other faculties of Liquors a body can never radically co-mingle it self with the solving Liquor And therefore it is corroded indeed but is not intimately solved or loosened even as otherwise is required for a formal transmutation For every sharp gnawing spirit in gnawing of another body is coagulated and well nigh fixed and passeth over into the form of a thickned salt yet the body that hath suffered the wil of the gnawing spirit to be done upon it doth not act any thing on that spirit which in gnawing by its own proper action coagulated it self the which indeed comes to passe while two active spirits run together on each other For then there is a double action whereby both of them do mutually act on both For therefore such an action of theirs is made with a thorow radical mixture and there is constituted of them both an of-spring of unseparable mixture and this transchanged body is a neutral product from them both But if Paracelsus bad timely of fitly contemplated instead of his Tartar of Wine he had taken the Oker of the water of the Spaw and had spoken something more probable than that there were Liquors in all things which were coagulated after the manner of Tartar in Wine and that they were the common mother and matter of any Diseases whatsoever Oker indeed the daughter of the Spaw is not again resolved like as Tartar of Wine is and yet it differs from Duelech as much as a Mineral stonifying doth from the stone in man For in this the Spirit the Coagulater existing in the urine operates by vertue of its own and of a different salt upon a hoary and putrifying spirit of earth without the boyling up or belching forth of a wild Gas and so it finisheth its operation and coagulates it self with the spirit of Wine that is proper to the urine in a moment even as I have above declared in the handicraft Operation of the spirit of urine and Wine or of a burning water But the acide spirit of the water of the Spaw having sprung up from an Embryonated or non-shaped Sulphur do operate first in a long Tract do stir up bubbles and a wild Gas and at length affix themselves to the Vessel For otherwise if that Gas cannot be belched forth the waters of the Spaw remain safe being fit for healing For if the Gas be hindered from going forth it hinders whereby the subsequent effect cannot follow and the spirits are rendred feeble and barren in acting But the lee of Wine seeing it hath its own coagulation and that which is proper to it self it hath no need to attain it from elsewhere But since the sharpish spirit of Wine hath gnawn the lee there is no reason that it should give that in gnawing which it self hath not in it self Therefore in the generation of the Tartar of Wine that sharpish saltish spirit shall be coagulated indeed by reason of the earth of dreg but it shall remain in the shape of a dissolvable salt and not in the form of a rocky stone By reason of that Rule that a transmutation of the essence presupposeth a transmutation of the matter Therefore the earthy body whether it be dissolved by a Corrosive or not keeps its own antient Being Because that Dissolver doth not pierce the matter dissolved in the radical bond of connexion The which notwithstanding in things that are essentially to be transchanged is exceeding necessary to be done Therefore let the young beginners in Chymistry learn that bodies are not resolved by the calcinations of Corrosives although they are also often repeated unlesse a fermental impression through putrifaction whichgoes before every radical dissolution doth interpose Camphor indeed in Aqua fortis assumeth the nature of a swimming Oyl but that Corrosive being washed away by common water the Camphor is presently what it was before whether that be once done or lastly a thousand times For in my young beginnings I rejoyced that by a Retort at the seventh Repetition I had dispatched Gold into the shape of a Pomegranate-coloured Oyle As being mindfull that he who knew how to destroy Gold hath known likewise how to make or build it up But the Corrosive its Companion being taken away the Gold returned into its self and my vain joy ceased He labouring in vain to extract that which is not in it They also labour in vain who do not operate by due meanes The generation of Duelech therefore is not the imaginary stonifying of a cocted muscilage or of a feigned phlegme dryed by the heat of the place or confirmed or hardened by drying for so a Bole or clod onely should be resolvable but not Duelech but there is a passing over of three spirits at once into Duelech by a true essential transmutation Truly Bodyes do not act on Bodyes by a natural action of Composition but whatsoever Bodyes do perform on each other that is done by reason of weight greatnesse or magnitude hardnesse figures and motions And truly those are serviceable for Science Mathematical but scarce for Science Natural But if corporeal salts do operate it comes to pass either because they after some sort contain a volatile spirit or do find that spirit in a Body Let young Beginners at least remember that Bodyes after whatsoever manner they shall be once intermingled by co-melting do notwithstanding remain in their antient essence unlesse they are transchanged by the fire or a ferment Lastly that Bodies do operate nothing on Spirits but do onely limit these by suffering Which operation of Bodyes therefore is not a true re-acting but father a meet effect of spirits resulting from the proper activity of the same For therefore Spirits when their faculties are woren out and exhausted do voluntarily decay in the end of their motion And
Bloud putrifies yellow Choler is made and that it is false that a Cholagogal or Extracter of Choler for examples sake cures Cholerick Diseases and that it is a deceit in those who say Choler is drawn out if the other three also being first corrupted are ejected together with it Certainly there is none studious of the Truth who may not from hence presently understand That the Foundation of Healing of the Antients goes to ruine as well in respect of Humours as of the Selection of solutive Medicines Truly I admire even to amazement That the World hath not yet taken notice of the destructive danger of Laxative things The which otherwise so suddenly well perceives any wiles or subtle crafts extended over their purse For truly it is not to be doubted but that Laxative Medicines do carry a hidden poyson in them which hath made so many thousands of Widowes and Orphans For neither do they draw forth a singular Humour after them The which I have demonstrated in a singular Treatise never to have been in Nature except in the Books of Physitians For increase thou the Dose of a Laxative Remedy and a deady poyson will bewray it self Come on then Why doth that your Choler following with so swift an efflux stink so horribly which but for one quarter of an hour before did not stink For the speedinesse of flowing forth takes away the occasion of putrefaction as also of stink For it smells of a dead Carcase and not of Dung. Neither also should it so suddenly borrow such a smell of stinking dung from the Intestines Therefore the stink shewes an efficient poyson and a mortified matter drawn out of the live Body The which I prove by way of Handicraft-Operation If any one shall drink a dram of white Vitriol dissolved in Wine it presently provokes Vomit But if presently after drinking it he shall drink thereupon a draught of Ale or Beer Water c. he indeed shall suffer many stools yet wholly without stink Scammony therefore and Vitriol do alike dissolve the bloud of the Meseraick veines This indeed by its violent brackishnesse But that by the putrefactive and strong smelling poyson of Laxatives From the consideration whereof alone purging ought to be suspected by every one as a cruell and stupide Invention For if according to Galen the bloud when it putrifies is made yellow Choler therefore the stinking and yellow Liquor that is cast out by Laxative Medicines and which dissembles Choler is generated of putrefied bloud And by consequence that Laxative Medicines themselves are the putrefactives of the Bloud The which is easily collected out of Galen against the will of the Schooles For he chiefly commends Triacle because it most especially resisteth poysons He also affirms also a discernable sign of the best Triacle to be that if together with Laxative Medicines Triacle be taken undoubtedly stools shall not follow Do not these words of Galen convince that Laxatives are meer poysons To wit all the operation whereof is evaded by Triacle the Tamer of poysons unto which suspition the effects do agree Because a Purging Medicine being taken the sick and healthy do equally cast forth Liquors of the same colour odour and condition Wherefore it requires not a offending Humour before an unoffensive one but it indifferently defiles whatsoever it toucheth upon Moreover the Schooles also oppose the selective Liberty which they attribute unto solutive Medicines For if any humour of the four be putrified in Fevers and naturally betokeneth a removall of it self But if Laxatives do selectively draw out a humour from the Bloud yea in healthy persons as they will have it do cause sound flesh to melt that they may thereby obtain their scope which is to pour forth a putrified ot stinking Liquor which the paunch casts out At leastwise Laxatives shall not have the like Liberty in Fevers for drawing forth of the offending and putrified excrement For that which is corrupted hath no longer the former essence and properties which it had before its putrefaction For if the Loadstone attracteth Iron it shall not therefore draw rust unto it And therefore if a purging Medicine resolves the flesh and bloud that it may thereby extract Choler which it drawes bound unto it self by a specifical property it doth not therefore likewise draw stinking and putrified excrements included in the veines which should be the cause of Fevers Surely none should ever dye by Fevers if the two Maxims of the Schooles were supported with Truth To wit if putrified humours are the cause of Fevers And likewise if they depart selectively through purging things Besides it should be a mad Caution That purging Medicines be not given in the beginning of Fevers before the matter be troubled or rise high To wit before the maturity and Coction of the peccant matter From whence it is sufficiently manifest that loosening things should otherwise be hurtfull But if they are given after that the matter of the Disease be now well subdued the aforesaid Caution conteines a Deceit Because it attributes the effect procured voluntarily and by the benefit of Nature unto the loosening Medicine From which surely an honest Physitian doth then also more justly abstain Because it then disturbs the Crisis induceth the danger of confusion and of a Relapse For a loosening Medicine doth alwayes and by it self draw out things not cocted no otherwise than those which are afterwards called cocted ones because it is on both sides alike cruel and poy sonsome But after that Nature hath overcome the Disease it brings on lesse dammage neither is the deceit of a Laxative Medicine then so apparently manifest And so if then a loosening Medicine be given the Physitian shall seem to have conquered the Disease by his own Art But besides if all particular Laxatives should extract their own Humours by a Choyce they should of necessity also be of concernment at every station of the Disease because they are those which alwayes draw out the same Liquor and that alike stinking but they disturb as much as may be as long as Nature shall not become the Superiour Which victory of that Disease the Schooles have called Concoction Not indeed that Nature attempts to digest or Coct any thing which is vitious orwhich fals not out for her own use or profit because she is that which is governed by an un-erring Intelligence Let these Admonitions suffice concerning both the Universal Succours in Fevers I concluding with Hippocrates unto Democritus That every Solutive Medicine robs us of the strength and substance of our Body CHAP. VI. The Consideration of a Quartane Ague 1. A Quartane hath deluded the Rules of the Schooles 2. Why they know not how to cure a Quartane 3. That the wonted excuses in other events of Diseases do fail 4. A presage from a Quartane in other Fevers 5. The examination of a Quartane according to the account of the Schooles 6. The weaknesses of Galen himself 7. Failings noted in Physitians 8. Constrained
coct neither doth coct any thing but for a single end and after a single manner to wit that she may reduce it into her own noruishment and for no other end but the ferments to whom only it belongs to transchange things being now restored will subdue the matter of the disease under the Ferule in the Inns of digestion and root it out at pleasure For I have taught concerning digestions that sharpnesse in the stomach is not from the brackishnesse of things being recieved into the body but from the sharp or sout specifical ferment of the stomach it self But even as it is the property of sharpnesse to coagulate milky substances therefore whatsoever of the Cream of the stomach is in it self milky cannot be so exactly seperated in the Liver as that a smal quantity thereof is not snatched with the urine and there doth not make a little cloud The little cloud therefore is a signe of the ferment its returning into the stomach For neither is that swim in the urine from the nature or matter of the Fever neither doth it accuse or excuse the same Neither at length is that little cloud a sign of the proper Ferment of the Gaul for this is not sharp but salt and of the tast of the vital spirit even as elsewhere concerning long life but of the Ferment of the spleen to wit that which the spleen breaths into the stomach the patronage whereof it undertaketh For therefore in a Quartan ague that smal cloud oft-times appeareth and again oft-times dispesreth while as the appetite and digestion are restored and again departeth the same Quartan in the mean time always remayning otherwise if that little cloud should signify the mater of the disease as its object or efficient certainly it should constantly persevcte being once bred Since the matter being once cocted doth not regularly wax crude again Therefore for its own family-administration and the proper digestion of that bowel the spleen hath obtained a vital ferment from a spirit implanted in and proper to it self For therefore it is of the property odour and cast of the vital spirit The which seeing it is saltish and balsamical even as concerning long life it ought also to subdue and overcome the matter of a Quartan But a care of the stomach is committed to this bowel and for this cause it sits president over the digestion thereof and therefore it hath obtained another acide Ferment to this end the which unlesse it be inspired into the stomach in a due dose lack of appetites crudities yea and an inordinate hunger or appetite it self do arise Therefore if this comely ferment of the defence of the stomach be exorbitant in the spleen there are made bloody and black spittings out into the stomach which the Schools have judged to be black Choler when as otherwise it is nothing but an expurging and renewing of nourishable blood from the spleen it self Therefore the sharp ferment of the stomach although it be the cause of the little cloud and the whole soure cream be ordinarily turned into salt under the dominion of the Gaul as concerning digestions elsewhere yet the little cloud remayneth being bred from sharpnesse By reason whereof we must note that the cause being removed the effect is taken away for time to come but not for the time past Because the effect for the time past is a product now subsisting by it self oftentimes also having no longer need of the accompanying of former causes It being that which hath never been hitherto considered as neither distinguished of in the Schools Therefore a confused urine is oftentimes pissed forth by those that have the stone and likewise in the beating of the heart and otherwise But another urine although it be cleer yet it is of its own accord voluntarily disturbed in the air And indeed every troubled urine conteineth an hidden sharpnesse and the lesse thereof if it hath been once cleered at the fire and is not troubled afterwards At leastwise it betokeneth a defect of the ferment of the Gaul Because there is denoted that a very smal quantity of lukewarmth shall coct and overcome the sharpnesse that is left For so apples not yet ripe wax sweet with the Sun As oft also as the ferment of the little bag or bowel of the Gawl tramples one the ferment of the stomach and vitiateth the Pylorus so often there is a crudity of digestion and so also the urine is without a swim In the stomach also there is now and then a bitternesse from its digestion erring which brings forth such a superfluity But if the ferment of that bowel be supplanted there is a grosse and white sediment of the urine nor ever without the strangury or pissing by drops the which therefore in old people is difficult to be cured But that sharpnesse of the urine in stranguries although it be not manifest to the tast yet in how smal a quantity soever it be it is sufficient for the aforesaid effects of pain which is manifest in the urine of new Ale as yet unpercieveably participating of the brackishnesse of its Ale But while the ferment of the Liver doth too much exceed the activities of the stomach and Gaul there is a Bolar orlump-like sediment in a troubled and red-yellow urine As if that did wish to be made blood which is unfit for that appoyntment But a red sediment in a yellow urine and that which easily melteth through the heat of the fire denots the ferment of the Liver to be exasperated by a forreign impediment Which historie of ferments is inserted in the treatise of digestions There are also last of all manifold errours sluggishnesses about the original contents which in the treatise concerning the disease of the stone I have profesly weighed There is in the mean time a safe method of examining urines by their weight To wit anounce weigheth 600. grains But I had a glassen vessel of a narow neck weighing 1354. grains But it was filled with rain water weighing besides 4670. grains the urine of an old man was found to weigh in the same vessel 4720. grains or to exceed the weight of the rain water 50. grains But the urine of an healthy woman of 55. years old weighed 4745. grains The urine of an healthy young man of 19. years old weighed 4766. grains But that of another young man of a like age being abstinentious from drink weighed 4800. grains The urine a young man of 36. years old undergoing a tertian ague with a cough weighed 4763. grains But the aforesaid youth of 19. years old with a double Tertian had drunk little in the night aforegoing but his urine weighed 4848. grains which was 82. grains more than while he was healthy A maid having suffered the beating or passion of the heart made a water like unto rain water and the which therefore was of equal weight with rain water A luke-warm urine is alwayes a few graines lighter as also more extended than
incorporeal Gas which is therefore straightway comixable with our Archeus Therefore that Gas refresheth those that are affected in their womb with its smell but not the oyl not the tincture milk or floure of Sulphur But after what sort thou mayest know that Gas of Sulphur to be distinct from the watery vapour thereof kindle a sulphurated torch or candle in a glass bottle thou shalt forthwith see the whole bottle to be filled with a white fume and at length the flame to be stifled by the fume Afterwards keep thou the bottle most exactly stopt with a cork and thou shalt see a sulphur to be affixed unto the sides of the vessel and in the superficies of the water if there were any in the bottom But if indeed after some daies thou shalt put the same enflamed torch or bottle into the neck of the candle the flame is forthwith extinguished by reason of the condensable Gas of the Sulphur no otherwise than as the odour of an Hogshead putrified through continuance stifles the flame of a sulphurated candle But Hippocrates perfumed all the wine which he gave in the plague after this manner He perfumed the pot or cup of a narrow neck with a candle of burning sulphur he powred in wine to the filling of the pot a third part full and stirred the pot being exactly shut by shaking it a good while together upwards and downwards until the wine had drunk up all the Gas of the sulphur into it self For medicines to be hung on the body and Amulets or preservative Pomanders had not yet been made known But he supplyed external medicines that take away weariness or faintness in the room thereof by anointing the body with Greek Wine wherein he had boiled the most fine powder of Sulphur But he besprinkled the same fine powder being dryed in the Sun on those that were in a sweat and commanded it to be applyed with rubbings But the Pest since it never wants a Fever and that the Grecans saw the remedies of Hippocrates they began first to call the Pest and then every Fever 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or a fire Not indeed by reason of a remarkable and necessary burning heat of Fevers although it so pleased Galen For truly they called the beginning cold rigours and horrours Pyâ— or a fire as well as a burning Causon For Hippâ—crates lightly ground Sulphur with water on a Grind-stone and being again dried he kept it for his uses But he gave twenty four grains of Sulphur with salted and hot wine that he might provoke sweats But he first made the salt to crack in a glassen pot and presently afterwards he melted it by increasing the fire for else salt containeth in it excrementitious filths which at the first cracking fly away the salt cleaving asunder and leaping a little These Spirits do easily putrifie through continuance and subject the salt to a fear of contagion for they are very forraign to the salt the which although they fled away a good while before the fusion of the salt yet he made a melting of the salt that whatsoever forreign thing was contained in the salt might be consumed by the fire For indeed he saw that presently after the invasion of the Pest the appetite was prostrated and then also that fermentally putrified and burntish impurities grew in the stomach from whence arose the headach vomitings loathings doatage the drowsie evil c. which would hinder the cure of the plague Therefore he took the common balsam of the salt of fleshes which might overthrow the fermental putrified poyson and putrefactions by cleansing them away together with a conâ—â—â—ing of the strength and he gave the wine being salted hot but not luke-warm 〈…〉 restrain the loathings of the stomach and mightily provoke sweats and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sulphur that it might kill the plague as it were with its odour because salt cleanâ—â—â—h preserveth from corruption and Sulphur restrains poyson But he prescribed this sweat for three daies space at least yet oft-times he extended it unto a weeks space but they did sweat twice every day and at every turâ— for the sixth part of a day if they were able on the first daies more and on the after succeeding daies less For in time of sweating he took away all drink but the term of sweating being finished he fed them with Barley-Cream and for drink they had Greek Wine pitcht wherein were a few grains of the aforesaid salt and Sulphur But he laid the leaves of Assara Bacca being steeped in vinegar upon the Bubo unto the soals of the feet and palms of the hands which after every twelve hours he commanded to be buried because they stink greatly It came to pass afterwards that Greece be sprinkled their grapes divers times with the Brine of the Sea before they were carried to the Press For Hippocrates perswaded that thing that so together with it Inâ—ects might be driven from the grapes Hence it is that the Wines of Greece are salted even unto this day the reason of this use being unknown Unto great Buboes in the groyn and marks he applyed hot Towels tinged in rich wine wherein as I have said he had boiled Sulphur Furthermore he reserved a secret to himself through the sight whereof he attained to himself divine honours But it was the flesh of a Viper or or Snake which he cleansed for the utmost part of the tail and the head being cut off he stript off their skin casting away the bowels together with the gawl he reserved only the Heart and Liver but he drew out all their blood with the vein running down the back-bone But he boiled not their flesh after the manner wherein it is put into Triacle but he exactly bruised the same together with the bones and aforesaid bowels and dryed them in a warm Oven until they could be powdered which powder he sprinkled on hony being sufficiently clarified and boiled until he knew that fleshes in boiling had laid aside their virtue as well in the broath as in the vapours But he added unto this Electuary the Spice of his Country for to cloak the secret and therefore neither was it made manifest by the Angel But the cure contains a mystery that as Death crept in by the Serpent it self also ought to be vindicated by the death of the Serpent For Adam being skilful in the properties of all Beasts was not ignorant also that the Serpent was more crafty than the other living Creatures and that the aforesaid balsam the remedy of death lay hid in the Serpent Wherefore the Spirit of Darkness could not more safely deceive our first parents than under the Serpents skin For perhaps they hoped that they should escape the death sorely threatned by God by the aid of the Serpent Hippocrates used also wine that was pitched Wherefore it is worthy our consideration that Spain is seldom afflicted with the plague not because sins or filths are wanting where there are almost no Jakes's It s a
Country I say raging with heats imitating of and co-bordering on Africa Nor also because their great men do cool their drink with snow because at least the Rusticks and Citizens should pay the punishment of their own sins with the plague But Aegypt useth waters and fruits from whence there is a fermental putrefaction in their flesh but Spain useth wine and indeed that which is pitcht because seeing for the most part they want Hogsheads they keep their wines in pitched Hides or Leathern Jacks Italy hath wooden vessels therefore it doth not as constrained make use of pitch and it is more frequently violently taken with the Pest For pitch being applyed to Carbuncles is for an ease or comfort and they are quickly opened for pitch imitates the blackness of an Eschar Among known trees the pitch-tree alone is made a torch and by reason of its fatness it presently dies if but a little earth be added to its Trunk for God is liberal in his remedies and that is proper to his goodness For death happening by a tree it hath seemed to be ordained for a remedy against death unto man that was made mortal by a tree The smell of pitch is familiar for a suffumigation unto very many Provinces infected with the Plague For so Petus affirmeth that Hippocrates had not one only remedy against the Pest and that he was sacrificed unto by the Athenians as it were unto a protecting starry God When as therefore the Greeks saw Hipocrates to use a remedy known only to himself unto whom therefore they attributed their life health and whole preservation they by degrees despairing the use of salt and sulphur went more and more into oblivion especially if some years that were free from the plague interposed And afterwards every Physitian began to select divers medicines hoping that his own was the Antidote of Hippocrates From whence there was afterwards a standing crop of remedies collected without number for the most part with empty ears At length from a slender senting of the praise of the Viper the composition of Triacle arose it being partly loaded with a confounding of simples and their odours being partly dispersed in time of preparation and they cast away the better properties of the Viper in the broaths At this day the Antidote of Orvietanus is made of great account for thplague because he first dated to swallow any poyson unknown unto him in the open market place which thing the Germans at this day perform only by the use of the Snake For they little distinguish the Pest from other poysons and have â—aken little notice that against the will of the Electuary of Orvictaâ—â—s the plague notwithstanding hath lately raged throughout all Lumbardy For I omit that the Pest doth radically differ from other poysons Quercetanus and the Writers of this sort in their Caco-Alexiteries or bad medicines against poyson and in their young beginnings do dictaâ—e very many remedies whether boldly or sottishly let others judge from the roots of the Pest supposed every one whereof is framed not indeed from knowledge but from thinking alone and the Author of them is worthy of pity if not of punishment For Ranzovius concerning defending health describes a Saxenian Antidote for his Son it being tryed divers times by me but always in vain because the poyson consisting in a spiritual image of terrour hath nothing in the aforesaid Antidote which can radically overcome the same image and therefore by reason of the ignorance of the causes of the Pestâ— any one hath devised many remedies and also hath connexed many things unharmoniously together against the poyson forreignly entring Indeed all of them confused without a method experience reason and knowledge of the causes And nothing having been at all devised against the Pest arisen from the foolish image of terrour and the perswaâ—ion of fearâ—ulness afterwards from the age of Hipocrates every Physitian began at pleasure to select divers remedies and to connex many things together and much more than many hoping that his own invention was that of Hippocrates In the mean time the number of compositions increased and by degrees uncertainty supplanted the antient truth And although an Antidote which operateth about the effects of the poyson produced in the body be to be greatly esteemed yet while it operateth not on the terrours of the Archeus and the image produced from thence truly neither can it bring help to the pestilent contagion or if any one do revive from the plague with those Antidotes that is not done but with an unfaithful succour For in the plague the Archeus himself is well nigh bewiâ—ched with terrour and grief and stamps a pernicious image on himself which is the true Pest from which neither doth he voluntarily re-arise unless by a singular power of nature and divine grace Moreover as I have elsewhere demonstrated in a particular Treatise that the first assaults of conceptions do not stand in a free disposition of the will but that they are framed in the midriffs So by arguments drawn from thence I have fitly or exactly beheld that the image of terrour and indeed the plague it self is formed about the Jurisdiction of the stomach and spleen and that thing I seriously and by long leisure discerned and have exactly confirmed from observation by very many histories one or two whereof to have repeated shall not be besides our purpose A certain young man beholding his little Sister to be be-spotted with a black mark and to be dead being sore smitten with terrour presently felt a load about the mouth of his stomach the admonitress of continual sighing He daily used Triacle Myrrhe and the root of Butterbur being adjoyned thereunto he ate and drank even unto merriment At length on the twelfth day after the death of his Sister a Fever and deep drowsiness laid hold on him and on the third day after he died A Noble Virgin having suffered a colike burden and anguish of terrour at length passed over restless nights with a dejected appetite with sighs and oppressions of her stomach and a panting heart a slow and continual Fever took hold on her with an uncessant strugling of fear and hope For as many deliberations of animosity or courage and of free resignation as she could make with her self were in vain Meats also being despised there at length remained place foâ— strong wine and that also she soon disdained neither also was she so greatly afraid of death as of future doating delusions In the mean time she laughed at her foolish perplexities or mournful vanities and it grieved her self of her own â—olly But the Physitians had sent their own Antidotes unto her under which the Duel of her mind increased no otherwise than as in those that are bitten by a mad dog with their disease of the fear of water and at length through the mortal â—orrow of the pestiferous terrour she now plainly despaired in mind because she was she who for three weeks space had admitted
Ferment of the Plague 11 22 There are double Ferments in nature 112 8 Ferments the causes of transmutation 207 8 The Ferment of the Stomach not from it self ibid. Ferment of thâ— Spleen turns the Spirit of wine wholly into a Salt 733 Fishes made of water proved 115 29 Fishes helpful to Chastity 667 38 Fishes why long lived 684 93 Fishes bring forth without pain 685 95 Fire no Element 48 9 50 1 134 24 138 35 It receives not its nourishment from the Air. 84 16 134 24 It generates nothing 109 34 VVhat its appointed ends are 129 26 Its divers Inclinations taught by Positions 136 31 Its being no substantial Body proved by demonstration 137 33 It is the Vulcan of Arts. 138 38 Actual fire cannot subsist in a mixt Body without consuming it 1049 18 What a Flatus is and its kind 421 34. c. Two irregular ones in us 424. 50 Whence they arise 425 61 Where made 428. 78 A Flint capable of retaining the solar light 147 95 155 35 The Bloody Flux how cured 475 29 The quality of food doth not hurt except where medicines are wanting 702 What a Fog is 68 24 VVhat a Form is and whence 130 2â—3 c. The distinction 'twixt an Essential and substantial form 130 7 133 22 143 67 A four-fold form 143 67 Fox lungs censured 260 38 Of the original of Fountains 6â—â— Fountains dispense the seeds of Minerals and Metals 690 19 Fountains not thickned by the air 691 From whence the best fountains do arise 694 Of the Keeper of Fountains ibid VVhy they are called sharp ibid VVhat the sharpness of Fountains proceeds from 695 22 Of the fountains of the Spaw 696 1 VVhat they contain 697 5 VVhy a vein of Iron is invisible in fountains 698 8. VVhy fountains are different in strength 698 14 Of the virtues of the hungry salt of the Fountains and how far they act 699. VVhom they do not hâ—lp ibid How they profit in the stone 700 12 The qualities of fountains are Relolleous and Cherionial â—01 19 Advice to those that drink of Spaw waters 702 How the waters may pass to the midriff quickly ibid How much he ought to drink and what he is to take with it 703 10 A Frog how reducible to its first matter 141 56 G. GAs what it is 69 29 71 10 106 14 VVhat it retains 109 34 Galen ignorant of the causes of Ulcers 321 25 Galen no Anatomist 423 43 303 3â— Galen never knew Rose-water Aqua vitae nor Quick-silver 10â—â— Galens errors about Ulcers 319 14 1â— Galen ignorant of the Latax 378 33 VVhat the Gaâ—l's use is in the body 427 74 The Gaul a vital Bowel 211 34 1061 It performs its digestion by a fermental Blas 214 46 The Gaul hath the nature of a Balsam 216 53 It is taken so in Scripture ibid. 1041 24 From what the Gaul receives a ferment 1048 14 The Generation of Fauns Satyrs Nymphs c. 681 81 Generation of Troâ—ts 684 91 Generation of man described 736 737 738. Ginger produceth sweat 250 â— Glas turns into water under the earth c. 116 33 151 15 The Globe is Oval 35 â—2 The best manner of drawing forth Goats blood 210 75 Its wonderful virtue ibid God made not Death 337 572 157 58 649 How it came to be 649 â— 650 651 The Essential Image of God is in the mind 718 Gold distilled over the Helm 64 6 Its ponderosity is from its seminality compressing the water 67 18 Though reduced into the form of Butter Râ—zin or vitriol yet useless 478 42 VVhat it is rendred efficacious by ibid Gold and precious stones examined 970 Purging medicines hurtful in the Goâ—errhea Of the original of the Gout 291 9 842 292 The Gout sometimes driven away by fear 293 15 Gout not from a defluxing Catarrh nor helped by Cauteries 385 23 386 1 Gout distinguished not by heat or cold but by a seminal Essence â—87 8 The original of the Gout and its progress 388 13 The Seat of the Gout 389 Of the curt with an Epitomâ— of the Gout 390 25 Caâ—teries and drying drinks â—ain in the Gout 391 32 35 The action of Government unknown produceth many errours 333 36 Grapes immediately eaten hurtful 107 16 Grass roots cannot cool the Liver 319 1 Of Gunpowder 107 21 H. HAres fat puls out a â—horn 521. 1160 Being dryed cures the bloody flux 4â—3 To what end the motion of the heart is 179 24 Herbs and â—â—rbarists why disesteemed 1â— 10 The Schoolmen's way of judging of the elementary degrees of herbs erroneous 69. 28 459 1â— Their sloath and errour in the search of their virtues 15â— 3. c. Why their preparation requirs much wariness 458. 11 1â— c. Their properties distinguishable by their specifick savour 460. 17 472 12 Their time of gathering when 460. 17 468 19 142 60 The Heaven gives neither life nor form 129 1 132 14 108â— It doth not cause diseases 1084 1086 1087 1091 What is required for healing 17â— 44 Heat not the first 〈◊〉 of life 196. 26 Heat not the proper 〈◊〉 of digesâ—ion 199. â—â—2 Heat consumes not radic at moisture â—17 Heat is not the life 718 Heat fails not for want of moisture 744 Hâ—â—â—rhoids 943 Their cure 944 From whence the pain in the head may arise 339. 1â— What ought to be minded in applying remedies to the head 276. 20 Of the effect of Remedies applied to the head 292. 12 Hellebor commended for the heal 368. 63 Also for madnesse 302. 26 The defects that manifest themselves in the head cured by stomack Remedies 302. 26 Memory placed in the head 304. 3â— A History of a woman infected with the pox 34 40 Of Count Destaires being opened 509 Of Cardinal Ferdinand 951 Of a Hydropical man 406. 33 510 520 Of a boy troubled with the Iliack passion 422 38 Of a Gas stird up by Sal Armoniack and Aqua â—ortis 426 62. Of a bursten man 428. 75 Of a noble woman strangled by affects of the womb 428. 76 Of a Sonatours wife in child birth 443. Of a merchant's ascending the high mountain of the Canaries 73. â—â— Of an earth-quake at Faâ—â—agusts 79. 13 Of thunder 91. 20 Of an earth-quakâ— 93. 3 Of predictions deciphered in the Stars 122. 27 Of the Authors Chamber-fellows walking by night 141. 53 Of Butler 563 Of several wonderful things 597 Of the Author 958 Of a man with a Quart an Ague 91â— History of Crabs 886 Of a preacher in England 846 Of a Duke being diffected 627 Of a woman whose Liver weighed 21. pounds Ibid. Of a boy that aâ—e this own dung 211. 36â— Of a Printer of Bruâ—els that lived 23. days of his own dung 212 Of a Chymist that made viâ—â—gar yearly by the odour of the vessel 217 Several Histories of the distasted 〈◊〉 228 28 History of Paracelâ—us his Birth and life 230 28 History of Groynland fishing 232 History of a speaking Satyr 683. 685 88 Of the bignesse and
ibid How the Antients remedies may profit though not cure the stone 708 Why an expulsion of the stone is not to be intended 709 The quality of a remedy resolving the stone 710 56 Why stones are sometimes white 248 28 Whence a three-fold stone is made 249 3 Of the Stone 828 The flux of seeds for a stone 829 706 20 After what manner a man is made a stone 833 Of the Coagulum and Runnet of the stone by handicraft operation 840 Salt profitable in the stone 843 Of the occasion of the stone 857 Of the womb of the stone 866 Its Scituation 867 The pain of the stone from a contracture 86 Of the intention to cure the stone 701 15 874 Its cure 878 879 With testimonies thereof ibid. Of the manner of ministring a remedy for the stone 883 Of the stone that maketh gold its projection 674 58 751 807 The stone that maketh gold hath not the blessings of the tree of life 807 Sulphur only resists a fermental poyson 1158 In Sulphur is the life and death of bodies 66 14 Sulphur boiled in Linseed oyl 427 70 In oyl of Turpentine 515 The whole band of diseases hearken to some Sulphurs 577 260 39 The Sulphur of Copper hot stupefactive yet sweeter then honey 304 39 How floures of Sulphur profit those that have a Cough 309 94 Sulphur commended against the Plague 1154 Of the Gas of Sulphur 1155 The Sun scorcheth without pain 72 14 Is hot 74 23 139 41 794 The gifts of the Almighty are placed in the Sun 796 Sugar hurtful in most diseases 462 30 Loaf-Sugar not so good as the common 467 57 Swooning from the Stomack 302 303 27 What that Sweat is that accompanies death and Swoonings 42 What the Synovia is 842 389 20 Of Sympathetical Mediums 616 The cause of Sympathy 775 68 Of the Sympathy and Antipathy of things 1114 T. TAst in the midriff 909 Tartar its distillation 412 68 427 68 183 39 Why salt of Tartar dissolves crude Tartar 234 19 How Tartar is made 233 No disease ariseth from Tartar 235 1 Tartar not in foods 241 8 Tartar afâ—â—â— digestion in the stomach ceaseth to be a Tartar 242 243 Tartar not in drinks 250 7 Of the Tartar of the blood 1103 Of the original of the Tarantual 1509 The poyson of the Tarantula 787 148 What thirst is and whence 471 8 Thorn in the flesh how cured 521 Of thunder 90 17 A preservation against its effects on Beer c. 91 21 The seat of the Timpany and by what it is made 520 Why Tin is lighter than other Metals 107 20 The Toad commended against the Plague 1149 How prepared for that use 1150 How it kils the Ferment of the Plague 1151 How quickly he dies with fear Ibid. The Toad given by God as a Remedy for the poor against the Plague 1152 The bone of a Toad cures the tooth ach Tooth-ach whence caused 438. 30 247 Of the original of the tooth-stone 246 Of the flourishing and decaying of teeth 247 25 How the Transmutation of bodies is effected 115. 23 The tree of good and evil why forbidden 656 664 665 666 680 Of the tree of life 745 753 754 755 Tree of life what qualities it ought to have 808 The Cedar tree doth signifie the tree of life in this world 810 Of the preparation of the Cedar tree 811 V. VAlerian good against Inchantments 605 All Vegetables not woody contain a winie spirit 413. 73 Their Archeus hath no anatomical affinity with man 458 5 Their whole property from their seed and not from the heaven Ibid. 7 Their degrees whence different 146 88 Why vegetables unprofitable to the sick 578 Vervain commended 605 Venal blood wholly turned into nourishment 257 13 Venal blood never putrifies in its place 941 The natural endowment of the veins 942 An example Ibid. Vesicatories more hurtful then Phlebotomy 968 Vital spirit is salt 195. 19 733 734 Made of Arterial blood 196 24 732 By the ferment of the heart 733 Actuated by a vital light 734 The virgin earth 689 The Author instructed by visions 22 42 His vision of the soul 726 A vision of a Layick concerning the Lues venerea 1904 The spirit of vitriol reduced into an Alum by its dissolution of Mercury 473. 21 The dignity of the sulphur of venus and the nativity of vitriol 889 The best vitriol where to be had 891. 695 15 How vitriol may be made Ibid. The preparation of the Sulphur of vitriol 339. 9 Unguents how applicable 47 58 Ulcers their principal vice where seated 〈◊〉 18 21 23 Of the Difference of Ulcers 321. 29 The cure of Ulcers 322. 31 323 35 Volatile things fixed by fixed things  Volatiolation caused by ferments 117. 33 To provoke Urine in lingring fevers 465. 46 VVhat true provokers are 473. 19 476 31 Urinary salt made by the kidnyes 473. 19 Observations on distilled urine 847 Of the various actions of the spirit of urine 864 Urine-vessels not enlarged by drink but by the stone 708. 41 42 Urine not an excrement of the Kidneys 257 11 Of the division of vrines 1051. 1 Of the errours in the circle of urine 1052. 4 What the circle in the urine is demonstrated 1052. 5 What the yellownesse in urine may signifie 1053. 9 Watery urines after yellow ones signifie dotages 1054 VVhat a troubled urine signifies 1056. 26 VVhat the litle cloud in the urine may signifie 1054. 20 Of the several sediments of urine 1056 Examinations of urine by weight Ibid W. WArts how cured 141 55 154 VVater the material cause of things 32. 31 105 3. Proved so by an experiment 48. 11 109 30 Likened to the internal Mercury of Metals 65. 8 Never radically conjoyned with the earth 10 c. The parts of the water 71 8 410 54 What its unrestable appointment is 74. 28 Easily putrefiable under the Equinoctial 116 30 All bodies thereinto reducible 116. 33 The great use of that which comes from the Quellem 117 33 Water doth not always fal in a circular Figure 684. 50 When waters loose their life 689. 9 Waters the womb of seeds 693. 1 Why some waters hurt those that have the stone 251 Wheat changed into mice c. 113. 9 Winds whence generated 730 18 80 14 771 59 What the wind is 78 4 The vanity of the Schools defining it 85. 23 Violent ones how allayed 79. 13 Remedies for windinesse 4â—0 28 What causeth it 422. 41 Only in defective persons 424. 54 Some wind in the Ilcon c. Natural and necessary c. 428. 76 Spirit of Wine how reducible into water 69 27 105 9 106 11 VVines hurt by keeping in their Gas 107. 16 Wines profitable to our natures 966 Spirit of wine passeth into the Arteries without digestion 194. 12 731 Cold preserveth wines 232 VVhy wines wax soure 234 15 21 How wines become troubled 773 62 The labor of wisdome 184. 45 Of witches and witchcraft 568 The Devil how concerned therein 569. 1
and inclination of the material beginning And that is thus ordained by the profession or study of Nature that by reason of the watrie Principle being as yet not fully changed a growth out of its element and a co-placing with its mother may by an agreeing resemblance be the more fitly granted Therefore I do not admit of the Three first Things to be the constitutives of Bodies as niether universal things Which thing indeed is proper to my austereness who am not wont to frame universal Maxims from any particular thing But let him do that that will I had rather be distinct that I may the more distinctly understand For I have found for the most part that those Three Things do not proceed from Bodies out of which they are thought to be drawn unless a third trans-mutative thing being adjoyned or by composition which is rather to be attributed to the happening or supervening seed and to the trans-mutation thereby bred but not unto the first things existing within as the necessary immediate and universal Principles of Nature out of which and into which Bodies may be again resolved For they cannot give us sure credit that they are in a Body before their separation even as they are pressed out by the fire and much lesse that they fore-existed before a Body whose parts they seem to have been It is also manifest that many things are changed by Distilling neither that they are so and as much in their composed diversity of kind even as while they are made by the Fire Which thing is manifestly the one onely Example of Tartar For truly in destilling sixteen ounces of the best Tartar scarce one onely ounce of Water is drawn forth but of Salt at the most two ounces and a half the rest is wholly Oyle that is of sixteen there are almost thirteen oylie parts Yet Tartar is not crude neither doth it act as an oylie Being neither doth it burn as the bark of the Birch-tree but hath the nature of a sharp Salt wherefore by distillation the nature of a sharp Salt is changed into Oyle And then again if the Salt of Tartar be of its own accord made a Lixivium and Oyl be joyned to it indeed a Wash-ball will be thereby made which being distilled shall be accounted for the most part Water and shall cease to be the former Oyle and shall be changed into another thing For what is more clear than this handy-craft operation whereby it plainly appears that the Fire is the maker of the first Things and so that they neither are in themselves the first Things neither that they do fore-exist such is the composed Body as they are separated from thence by the Fire For truly there is not a naked separation of unlike things but a transchanging of the concrete Body by the Fire according to the activity which the Heterogeneal parts do finish among themselves But surely if those Three Things should be in all particular Bodies so that no Body could be void of them yea if all of those Three should keep their ancient disposition the Salt I say should never be made Mercury neither this likewise be made Sulphur c. Then indeed Paracelsus had apparently thought that every Body is originally composed of Salt Sulphur and Mercury But seeing there is an undoubted successive change of things through things and the least parts of Things even as also through the passages of a threefold Life those successive changes cannot denote a same linesse of the three nor of constant things whose very race it self is altogether unconstant and the perseverance thereof unstable For forthwith after Paracelsus every one almost hath subscribed to his Invention and none durst to pierce into the condition of those three things they were astonished at the sight of Heterogeneal things which are often extracted by the fire whence they being as it were fed with Lotus or a feigned Tree they suffered themselves to be misled whither Paracelsus called them But let Paracelsus learn that while Venal blood is made of Food there doth happen indeed a separation of the pure from the impure but none of the three things For as oft as a Being passeth through the last Life into a new Life the lump indeed is changed into a juyce with a dividing of the Heterogeneal parts by an extinguishment of the form and properties of the middle Life yet not into or unto the three first things but there is a proceeding unto a radical destruction with an ultimate or utmost annihilating of the former Life under which at length they draw a new Seed for a new generation For that is the way of the recourse or going back of the Night of Hippocrates unto the Day of Orpheus At leastwise it is perpetually true that those three things are never separated without the Fire and so before the art of the Fire flourished abroad those things were unknown to the Ancients And seeing that Fire and a degree thereof is wanting which is the Separator in us and whatsoever through a degree of our heat is blown away out of us doth tend unto a Dead Head or Caput Mortuum unless it be prevented by a Blas and Ferment even as I have taught above concerning the Blas of man surely the original of Diseases cannot any way be imputed unto any one or more of those Three Things I deny in the next place that Salt Sulphur and Mercury are the universal Principles of Bodies Because they neither existed before the composition of Bodies nor flowed together to the making of a mixture neither lastly by a natural resolving of Bodies into the Term of their last Life have they ever appeared in Nature but onely are brought by the Art of the fire and that onely out of some Bodies as the Seeds of things are cloathed with a material Principle of Water and are strengthened by the efficacy of their own Efficient they assume the properties partly of Salt and partly of Oyle but the Mercury of Bodies is nothing but a part of the Water being not yet great with Child by a sufficient ripeness of the Efficient Seed Therefore they do no where exist by themselves do no where obtain the Virtues of principiating Because they have not their own Natures Conditions Properties from an interchangable course whereby they might fore-exist but partly from a disposition of the Seeds flowing down into the properties of the concrete Body and partly from the digestion of the Fire and burning obtained in time of their separation For truly it is manifest that they are made reciprocally of each other by a mutual transmutation They are therefore the Last things but not the First however they may be taken For all Vegetables as long as they are not wooddy do contain a spirit of Wine as a spirit of Wine is drawn out of them they being opened by their Ferment But out of the same matter now made Wood an Aqua Vitae or Water of Life is no longer extracted