so that the first part live substantially or by virtue of its Essence the other only by participation of that essential Life Certain therefore it is and evident that the Life of a Man comes immediately from and depends upon the Presence of his rational Soul in his Body Which is the Truth we sought after I say immediately because the Life of the Soul is originally from God who created it a living Substance Of the Souls of Brute Animals the same may not be affirmed For though it be true indeed that their Souls also are the Principle or Fountain whence Life is communicated to the Bodies they inform yet 't is equally true that these Souls being Material or Corporeal their Life cannot be essential to the matter of which they are composed but flows from and depends upon the determinate Modification of that matter from which their Souls Result So that in Brutes as it is the Mode or manner of the disposition of the Matter not simply the matter it self that constitutes the Soul So it is the Hypostasis or subsistence of the same Mode upon which alone the Life that is the Act Energy and Vigor of the Soul depends No wonder then if we believe the Souls of all Brutes to be by their nature Mortal and to be actually dissolved together with their Bodies by Death That I may explain what I understand by the Modification of the matter which is here supposed to constitute the Soul of a Brute give me leave in this place to make a short halt for it is not a digression while I briefly declare what my sentiments are concerning the Souls of Brutes I humbly and with Submission to wiser Heads conceive 1 That the diversity of kinds observed among Brutes proceeds immediately from the divers Modifications of the common matter of their Souls and the respectively divers Organizations of their Bodies from both which by admirable artifice conjoyned and united into one complex System or Machine various faculties and proprieties must of necessity result by which those several kinds are among themselves distinguished 2 That the Specific or determinate Modification of the Soul and respective Organization of the Body in every distinct kind is to be wholly attributed to the Plastic virtue or formative Power innate and affixed to the Seed of the Generants 3 That this Plastic virtue is originally founded in the still efficacious Fiat pronounced in the act of Creation by the Divine Architect of all things who commanding all Animals to increase and multiply gave them at the same time power to fulfill that Command by endowing their Seed with an active Principle to form and impressing upon that Agent a certain idea or exemplar according to which it is obliged and directed how to form and not otherwise provided the Matter upon which it operates be obedient and susceptible of that Idea So that the Idea first conceived in the Divine Intellect and then prescribed as a Pattern to the Plastic Spirit with which the genital matter is impregnated being not in all kinds nay not in any two kinds of Animals one and the same but a peculiar Idea assigned to each kind it comes to pass that the Plastic Spirit thus directed regulated and confined by the Law of Nature doth out of that genital matter form the Soul and Organize the Body of every Brute Animal of any one of those numerous kinds exactly according to the prototype of that kind And by this means I conceive all Brutes to be generated both Soul and Body and their distinct Species without confusion or innovation conserved throughout all ages If I conceive amiss be pleased to consider that many excellent Wits treating of the same Subject have done so before me and that the Theorem it self is so abstruse that as Cicero 2. Tusculan said of the various Opinions of Philosophers about the nature of a Soul Harum Sententiarum quae verasit Deus aliquis viderit quae verisimillima magna quaestio est so may I say Man may dispute what is most probable but God alone knows what is true concerning the Souls of Beasts and their production Notwithstanding this darkness of my way I must adventure to go a little farther in it and endevor to explain 1 What the Substance of a Sensitive Soul is or of what Particles it is contexed 2 In what the Life or Act and Vigor of it consisteth and 3 What are the primary Functions and Operations of it As to the First then it seems highly probable that a Sensitive Soul is not a pure Spirit such as the rational Soul of Man is but a meer Body yet a most subtile and extremely thin one as being context of most minute and most subtile Corpuscules or Particles For if it were Incorporeal it could neither act nor suffer in the Body which it animate's or informs not Act because it could not touch any part not Suffer because it could not be touch't by any part of the Body But that it doth both act and suffer in the Body is most evident from its Sensations of external Objects from its affects or Passions consequent to those Sensations from the motions it causeth in the Members respective to those Passions and from its Union and consension with the Body in all things I call it therefore a Body and say that it is composed or by an admirable contexture made up of most thin and most subtile Particles such perhaps as are most smooth and most round like those of Flame or Heat because otherwise it could not diffuse it self so swiftly through nor cohere within with the whole Body and all parts of it and because when it departs out of the Body the Body is not perceived to lose any the least thing of its former Bulk Figure or Weight no more than a Vessel of Wine loses by the exhalation of its Spirits or a piece of Amber-Grise loses by emission of its Odor So that we may imagine that if the whole sensitive Soul of an Elephant were conglomerated or condensed it might be contained in a place no bigger than a Cherry-stone These constituent particles or Elements of a Sensitive Soul I suppose to be for the most part analogous to the nature of Fire because the natural heat of all Animals comes from the Soul and their Life consisteth in that Heat I also suppose them to be at first conteined in the genital matter the most spirituose or active particles of which are in the act of formation by the Plastic Virtue Selected Disposed Formed and as it were contexed into a little Soul and the grosser or less agil framed by degrees into an organical Body of competent dimensions and of Figure answerable to the Specific Idea by the Divine Creator pre-ordained and assigned to that Species to which the Generants belong And this I suppose because the brisk vigorous and swift motions of the Soul in the Body require it to be composed of particles most subtile and active and because as well
not conjoyned and united into one Compositum we shall have a hard task of it to find in either of them or indeed in any other material Subject whatsoever any thing to which we may reasonably attribute such a Power of perceiving and self-moving But if we consider the whole Brute as a Body animated and by Divine Art of an infinite Wisdom designed framed and qualified for certain actions Uses and ends then we may safely conclude that a Brute is by the law of the Creation or institute of Almighty God so made and comparated as that from such a Soul and Body united such a confluence of Faculties should result as are necessary and convenient to the uses and ends for which it was designed Do but convert your thoughts awhile upon Mechanic Engines and seriously contemplate the motions powers and effects of them Composed they are all indeed of gross solid and ponderose Materials and yet such is the designe contrivance and artifice of their various parts as that merely from their Figures positions and motions of them conjoyn'd into one complex Machine there do necessarily result certain and constant operations answerable to the intent and scope of the Artists and far transcending the forces of their divided ingredients Before the invention of Clocks and Watches who could expect that of Iron and Brass dul and heavy Metalls a Machine should be framed which consisting of a few Wheels indented in the circumference and a Spring commodiously disposed should in its motions rival the Celestial Orbs and without the help or direction of any external mover by repeted revolutions measure the successive spaces of Time even to Minutes and Seconds as exactly almost as the revolutions of the Terrestial Globe it self And yet now such Machines are commonly made even by some Black-Smiths and Mens admiration of their pretty artifice long since ceased If then in vulgar Mechanics the contrivance and advantagious dispositions of matter be more noble and efficacious than matter it self certainly in a living Automaton or Animal consisting of an active Soul and organic Body intimately united the Powers emergent from the force of such a Soul and from a conspiracy and cooperation of so many and so various Organs all so admirably formed ought to be esteemed incomparably more noble more Energetic If the art of Man weak and ignorant Man can give to Bodies of themselves weighty sluggish and unactive figure order connexion and motion fit to produce effects above the capacity of their single Natures What ought we to think of the Divine art of the Creator whose Power is infinite because his Wisdom is so Cùm magnes cui Thales propterea animam attribuit ferrum ad se attrahit domitrixque illa rerum omnium materia ut ait Plinius l. 36. c. 16. ad inane nescio quid currit acus ferrea eidem affricta mundi cardines perpetuò respicit cùm horologia nostra singulos diei noctisque hor as constanter indicant an non corpus aliud praeter elementa idque divinius participare videntur Quòd si ex artis ' dominio gubernatione tam praeclara quotidie supra rerum ipsarum vires efficiantur quid ex Naturae praecepto ac regimine fieri putabimus cujus ars solùm imitatrix est Et si hominibus serviendo tam admiranda perficiant quid quaeso ab iis expectabimus ubi instrumenta fuerint in manu Dei Harv in lib. de generat Animal exercit 70. Could not He think ye who by the voice of his Will call'd the World out of Chaos and made so many myriads of distinct beings out of one and the same universal Matter could not He I say when he created Brutes so fashion and organize the various Parts and Members of their Bodies thereto adjust the finer and more active contexture of their Souls and impress such motions upon them as that from the union and cooperation of both a syndrome or confederacy of Faculties should arise by which they might be qualified and inabled to live to perceive to know their perceptions to move and act respectively to the proper ends and uses of their Creation Undoubtedly He could and 't is an Article of my belief that He did When ye hear a Church Organ is it not as delightful to your Mind as the Musick is to your Ear to consider how so many grateful Notes and Consonances that compose the charming Harmony do all arise only from Wind blown into a set of Pipes gradually different in length and bore and successively let into them by the apertures of their Valves and do ye not then observe the effect of this artificial instrument highly to excell both the Materials of it and the Hand of the Organist that play 's upon it The like Harmony perhaps ye have sometimes heard from a musical Water-Work that plaid of its self without the Fingers of a Musician to press down the Jacks merely by the force of a Stream of Water opening and shutting the Valves by turns and in an order predesign'd to produce the harmonical Sounds Consonances and Modes requisite to the composition to which it had been set Now to this Hydraulic Organ ye may compare a Beast whose Soul being indeed by reason of a certain modification of her matter qualified to perceive the various impressions made by objects upon the Nerves of the instruments of the Senses and to perform many trains of Actions thereupon is yet so limited in her Energy that she can perform no other actions but such as are like the various parts of an harmonical Composition regularly prescribed as the Notes of a Tune are prict down on the tumbrell of our Instrument by the Law of her Nature and determined for the most part to the same scope the Conservation of herself and the Body she animates So that she seems qualified only to produce a Harmony of Life Sense and Motion and this only from a certain contexture of the spirituose Particles of the matter of which she is made and from the respective Organization of the Body in which she acts But from what kind of texture or modification of the supposed Particles doth the faculty of Perceiving or discerning Objects arise For what I have hitherto said is too general to explain the particular reason of the thing here inquired viz. qua ratione fiat ut res sentiens creetur ex rebus insensilibus whence it is that a corporeal Soul composed of matter in it self wholly void of Sense acquires the power of Sensation I say therefore that this is indeed the difficulty that remain's here to be solved but such a difficulty that I dare not attempt to solve having much more reason to believe that it will to the end of the World remain indissoluble For to comprehend what particular Mode of composition or contexture of insensil Matter that is that gives to it the nature of essence and faculties of a sensitive Soul seems to me far to transcend the capacity of
oblivio obruet CUTLERUS posteritati narratus traditus aeternum superstes erit ¶ Would I were equally secure of Your good acceptance I dare not say Approbation of the mite I am about to contribute toward the accomplishment of his so gloriose Design But alas this is a wish without hope so destitute I know my self to be of all the Faculties of Mind requisite to so difficult an Atchievement my Zeal for the promotion of Anatomy only excepted and much more reason there is why I should apologize for my insufficiency before I farther expose it Notwithstanding this discouragement considering with my self that profound Erudition and great Humanity are like Love and Compassion inseparable I think it much safer to confide in Your Candor and Benignity for pardon of my Defects than to attempt to palliate them by Excuses however just and evident Not to be conscious of my faileurs and lapses in my following Lectures would argue me of invincible ignorance not freely to acknowledge them would be tacitly to defend them to seek by speciose praetences of hast of frequent diversions of natural impatience of long meditation of bodily indispositions intervenient and other the like vulgarly alleged impediments to extenuate them were the most certain way to aggravate them and to conceal them from your sight is in this place and occasion impossible Having then no other Refuge but in Your Grace and Favor I fly to that alone to secure me from the danger of malignant Censures which I am more than likely to incurr nor will I fore-arm my self with any other defense but this If the Matters of my subsequent discourses shall appear to be neither Select nor of importance enough to compensate Your time and patience be pleas'd to remember that saying of Aristotle Metaphys lib. 2. cap. 1. Non solùm illis agendae sunt gratiae quorum opinionibus quis acquiescet sed iis etiam qui superficie tenus dixerunt Conferunt enim aliquid etiam isti habitum namque nostrum exercuorunt Si enim Timotheus non fuisset multum melodiae nequaquam habuissemus Si tamen Phrynis non fuisset nè Timotheus quidem extitisset c. If my Stile shall sound somewhat harsh and ungrateful many times to Ears unatcustomed to any but their Mother tongue as coming too near to the Latin I intreat you to consider this is either no indecency in this place or such a one at worst which I could not otherwise avoid than by involving my sense in the obscurity of words less proper and significant the nature and quality of the Subjects treated of being such as cannot be fully expressed in our yet imperfect Language So that I have a clear right to that honest plea of Lucretius Abstrahit invitum patrii sermonis egestas ¶ PRAELECTIO I. Of Nutrition MAN being consider'd ut Animal Rationale as a living Creature naturally endow'd with Reason and compos'd of two principal parts a Soul and a Body each of which hath various Faculties or Powers the summe of Human Nature must be comprehended in those Powers conjoyn'd Of these Powers some are peculiar to the Soul or Mind others belong to the Body as Organical and animated by the Soul To the Former sort are referr'd the Faculties of thinking knowing judging reasoning or inferring concluding electing and willing all commonly signified by Understanding and Will All which being remote from the Province of Anatomists I leave them to be handled by Philosophers inquiring into the nature of the Soul Of the Later some are requisite to the complement of Man as single or individual viz. the Faculties of Nutrition of Life of Sense and of Voluntary Motion and there is one that respects the Procreation of Mankind namely the Power Generative And these are the natural Faculties to which as principal Heads the Learned Anatomist is to referr all his Disquisitions that at length he may if it be possible attain to more certain knowledge of the Mechanic frame of the Organs in which they are founded But being more than can be tho' but perfunctorily enquir'd into in so few hours as are assign'd to this publick Exercise I have therefore chosen to treat of only some of them at this time viz. Nutrition Life and voluntary Motion not as more worthy to be explain'd than the rest but as more comprehensive or of larger extent I have chose also to begin from NUTRITION not only because the Stomach Gutts and other parts principally inservient thereto being by reason of impurities contain'd in them more prone to putrefaction ought therefore first to be taken out of the cavity of the Abdomen to prevent noisomnes but because Nutrition seems to be if not one and the same thing with yet at least equal or contemporany to Generation it self and that both 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in respect of Time and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in respect of Nature For tho' the operation of the Power Gen rative or Formative Virtue may seem to precede that of the Nutritive yet in truth the Stamina or first rudiments of an Embryo are scarcely delineated when they begin to be augmented also by nutrition so that 't is consentaneous as well to the observions of Dr. Harvey and others since as to reason that Formation and Nutrition are but different names of one and the same act of the Plastic power Again Generation and Accretion are not perform'd without Nutrition nor Nutrition or Augmentation without Generation To nourish what is it but to substitute such and so much of matter as is by reason of exhaustion wanting to the solid parts of the body namely flesh nerves veins arteries c. and what is that in reality but to generate flesh nerves veins arteries c. In like manner Accretion is not effected without Generation for all natural bodies capable of Nutrition are by accession of new parts augmented and these new parts must be such as those of which the bodies were at first composed and this is done according to all their dimensions So that in verity the parts of an Animal are increas'd distinguish'd and organiz'd all at the same time by the same Formative power Moreover if we reflect upon the Efficient cause of Formation and Nutrition and upon the Matter it uses we shall on both sides find it necessary that those two works if ye will have them to be distinct be carried on together On the part of the Efficient because idem esse principium efficiens nutriens conservans in singulis Animalibus necesse est nisi aliam formam in puero aliam in adolescente in sene aliam constituamus quod absurdum est On the part of the Matter ex qua because all Animals such as are produced per Epigenesin of which alone is our discourse not of such Infects that are generated per Metamorphôsin are made of one part of the Matter prepar'd by the Formative Spirit and nourish'd and augmented out of the remainder not out of a divers
stomach or both together can do For in all Aliments Vegetables or Animals there are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Hippocrates de prisca Medicina calls them certain indelible characters or insuperable qualities that may be as it were tamed or kept under but can never be totally destroy'd Our meat indeed is cookt by fire broken into small pieces by our teeth softned by the liquor salivalis boyl'd in the stomach melted by the acid ferment exagitated by the peristaltic motion of the gutts and therein farther elaborated and separated from its dreggs squeez'd into the milky veins thence transmitted into the common receptacle thence propell'd by the Chyliferous pipes into the subclavian veins and so mixt with the bloud exagitated again by the motions of the heart and impraegnated with vitality by the powerful energy of the vital spirits all these alterations I say it doth undergo and yet notwithstanding it still reteins much of those invincible reliques of its former nature which the Chymists have named mediae vitae characteres and others Seminales impressiones And hence it is quòd omnia animalia sapiant alimenta quibus vescuntur All Animals however praepared or cook't still retain some savor some ragoust of their usual food as Birds that live upon little fishes yield a sishy Haut-goust and the flesh of Swine fed with Sea-Onions is apt to cause vomiting in the Eaters of it c. Wherefore by this last act of Concoction we are to understand only such a change of the Aliment as renders it more familiar and assimilable to the nature of the parts of the body therewith to be nourished for a perfect Assimilation is not to be expected till the same shall be intimately united with them Nor is Chylification what many have conceiv'd it to be an absolute Metamorphosis of the Aliment or corruption of its first form and change of it into a new species there seeming to be no such thing as Corruption in the case but an Exaltation rather or Melioration of the nature of the food by advancing it from the state of fixation to that of Fusion that it may be praedisposed to its succeding conversion into bloud and the Succus Nutritius True it is indeed that the meat is somtimes corrupted in the stomach by vitious humors therein contem'd and depraving it and by various other causes but it doth not from thence follow that absolute Corruption is necessary to the praeparation of the Chyle but rather that the meat if by accident it be absolutely corrupted in the stomach is thereby render'd unprofitable to nutrition for the most part True it is also that the dreggs of the Chyle being by way of Degradation from their former nature changed into Excrements put on a new form in the Colic Gutt and differ in specie from that part of the meat out of which they are made and yet notwithstanding we can not from thence rightly inferr that the Chyle which is by a perfective motion gradually meliorated is necessarily changed also into a new species before it can actually nourish Is no part of the Aliment then in the act of Chylification metamorphosed from one species to another I conceive not unless the Version of the Acidum Vegetabile in salsum Animale be accounted a Specific Mutation If so then this must be excepted from the general rule For certain it is and acknowledged even by Chymists themselves that Vegetable Salt such as is usually extracted from Plants is no where to be found in the bodies of Animals neither in their bloud nor in urine nor in flesh nor in bones hairs nails c. and therefore very probable that every Acidum Vegetabile is transmuted in Salsum Animale either in the stomach or in the descent of the Chyle into the Gutts or soon after Nor is it in my poor judgement at least a thing of small moment or lightly to be regarded that all parts of all Animals are composed of a Saline principle of a divers nature from that of either Vegetables or Minerals yea more that the Saline volatile spirits of Animals come much nearer to the nature of Sal ammoniac than to that of Salts Vegetable or Mineral But whether these saline spirits of Animals may in all things be consistent with the Nitro-aereous spirit asserted by the ingenious Dr. Mayow may with good reason be doubted For although it be said that this Nitro-aereous spirit doth in passing through the Lungs put on the genius of Animal Salt yet it remains still to be inquir'd why Nature should ordain that spirit to be fetch 't from without from the Aire which Animals have in abundance within them in the Aliments praepared in themselves This nicety therefore I leave as I found it doubtful and proceed to inquire Whence it is that the Stomach infects all meats and drinks with Acidity This requisite and remarkable quality seems to be superinduced by the Stomach upon the newly receiv'd aliment by four several wayes viz. First By educing and separating the sweet and benign spirits of the Aliments from the grosser parts of them and then either absorbing them into its Venae Lacteae or transmitting them by the Pylorus into the Gutts or dissolving them into wind For all nutritive juices whatsoever so soon as the sweet and easily dissipable spirits that praeserve them are exhaled grow acid as is commonly observed even in Milk whose fugitive spirits being for the most part drawn forth by the stomach and thence discharg'd by belching the remaining part soon acquires to it self somwhat of acidity But the truth is this Eduction of spirits though it make way for acidity to succeed doth not yet produce it in that degree which we frequently perceive in very sowr belchings and therefore we are obliged to advance to the Second Cause which consists in this that the stomach turns liquors sowr by bringing their Saline principle or element to the state of Fusion For this Saline Principle while it remains fixt retains its saltness but being advanced to the state of fusion soon becomes acid and that so much the more fiercely by how much the nearer it is promoted to Volatility Whence it is that meats and drinks long detained in the stomach are observ'd to acquire vehement acidity So likewise when any of the Glandules that serve either to secretion or to reduction have by reason of their obstructions long detain'd in them the humors that remain to be carried off after the distribution of the Succus nutritius they cause them by that means to grow more and more acid by degrees to the no small detriment of health Of this we have a remarkable Example in sharp and acid Catarrhs which seem to owe their origin to the recrements of the brain and nerves longer than is fit retain'd in the Glands destined to their secretion and exportation and by reason of their stagnation grown acid and which somtimes become so extreamly sharp as to corrode and ulcerate the Tonsills throat nose and other
as to reject them should dare also to substitute in the room of them some new one of my own excogitation if not more perfect yet at least less culpable To these expecting Gentelmen therefore I say that much less of skill and strength being required to demolish than to build a Pigmy may be able to pull down what Giants have raised and that to form a true and complete definition of any the most obvious thing in Nature much more of Life which is extremly abstruse would puzzel a much stronger Brain than mine Well then may I be excused if conscious of my imparity to a task so desperate I forbear farther to expose my weakness by attempting it and choose rather to leave them to collect what my sentiments are of the nature of Life from my following discourse WHICH being designed only as a modest disquisition of the natural causes of Human Life I professedly pass by what that over-curiose nation of Scholemen impensly addicted to notions abstracted from all commerce with the Senses and to Speculations Metaphysical have delivered of the Life of Spirits of Angells Daemon's and other Beings of that kind subject neither to the Laws of Nature nor to the Empire of Fate And this I do because some of their Doctrines far transcend the capacity of my narrow Wit others seem more fine than useful and all are remote from my present institute I omit also what our equaly acute Dr. Glisson hath with admirable subtility of Wit and immense Labour of Meditation excogitated and not many Years before his Death divulged of the Energetic Life of Nature and its Faculties by virtue of which he supposed that even the most minute particles of this aspectable World do naturally perceive desire move themselves with Counsel and what is yet more wonderful frame Bodies for themselves to inhabit animate or inform them and perform other most noble operations Which I do not only because this opinion how favorable soever hath not yet been received as canonical by common assent of Philosophers but also because I humbly conceive it to be in all things the Name only excepted the same with that antique Dogma first delivered by Plato and after asserted by his Followers that all things in the Universe are Animate that is are naturally endowed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with Sense and Self-motion which hath been sufficiently impugned by Aristotle Lucretius Gassendus and all others who have refuted Plato's Doctrine de Anima mundi upon which it is grounded Not that I reject this opinion of natural Sense or Perception attributed to all things but that I am not yet convinced of the truth of it Insipientis est aliis dogmata illa aut commendare aut convellere de quorum veritate ipsemet adhuc dubitat And well may I suspend my assent to this opinion which gives to things inanimate such Faculties which my Philosophy will not grant to any but rational Creatures Nor indeed would either Lucretius or Des Cartes For the former though according to the Epicurean Hypothesis which he in all things followed he attributes to Atoms or as he calls them Solida Primordia rerum a Spontaneous Mobility nevertheless denies that they are naturally moved with Knowledg or Design in these Verses Lib. 2. Nam neque consilio debent tardata morari Nec perscrutari primordia singula quaeque Ut videant qua quidque geratur cum ratione And the Later in one of his Epistles to Mersennus Epistol parte 2. epist. 44. where he strictly examines the Doctrine of a certain Monk that ascribed to even the most minute particles of Matter a Power of moving themselves and other ingenite propensions the very same I guess with those supposed to be inseparably conjoyn'd with Natural Perception plainly declares his Judgment of the unreasonableness thereof in these Words Non probo indivisibilia ista neque naturales quas illis tribuit propensiones istiusmodi enim propensiones absque intellectu concipere nequeo ne irrationalibus quidem animalibus tale quidquam tribuo Sed quicquid in illis appetitus aut propensiones vocamus per solas Mechanicae regulas explico These two praeliminary Advertisements premised I come into the direct way of my intended disquisition That the Life of Man doth both originally spring and perpetually depend from the intimate conjunction and union of his Reasonable Soul with his Body is one of those few Assertions in which all Divines and natural Philosophers unanimously agree And they have reason For while the rational Soul continues in the Body so long Life continues and when the same is separated from the Body in that very moment of Time Death succeeds Now this rational Soul being by most wise Men granted to be a pure Spirit or substance merely Spiritual it is from thence necessarily consequent that the Life of it is Substantial that is the very substance of it considered as Metaphysicians love to speak non in ordine ad esse per se sed in ordine ad operationes For we dull-brain'd Mortals to whom it is not granted to be able to conceive the nature of Beings purely Spiritual by notions adaequate to it according to the Module of our understanding distinguish even in Angels their subsistence Fundamental from their Energetic Nature although in reality both are the same substance but diversly considered For this substantial Life though it may be as to its Operations by the same Divine Power that gave it suspended cannot yet be wholly taken away so as that it should after continue to be a Spirit Because if a Spirit be supposed to be deprived of Life the very substance of it must also be supposed to be at the same time annihilated For who can conceive so gross a contradiction as a dead Angel The same may be as truly said also of a Rational Soul which is allowed to be a Spirit too Wherefore the Life of it is as I affirmed Substantial and Essential and consequently incapable to be taken away unless the Soul or Spirit it self be at the same time annihilated Which the Omnipotent Creator can indeed when he shall so please do but it doth not appear from any place of holy Scripture that he either hath done or ever will do it and therefore let no man doubt of the Immortality of his Soul Sic etenim lethi praeclusa ' st janua menti From this our fundamental position then that the Life of a Man is in his rational Soul essentially it follows of necessity that the same Life cannot be in his Body too essentially but by way of Participation or Communication Nor is it difficult to conceive in our mind that the Life of the Body being separable from it is only communicated to it or derived from another thing of a different Nature For if a substance essentially living be intimately united to another substance of its own nature void of Life the thing composed of those two substances so united must have Life but
the Soul as the Body is by all Philosophers granted to be formed of the seminal matter and because otherwise Brutes cannot be properly said to generate their like in Specie and by consequence the Power to that end entailed upon them by the first and universal command of God increscite ac multiplicamini would be rendr'd of no effect I farther suppose that this Embryon Soul after this manner newly formed or as it were kindled is dayly augmented by accession and assimilation of like Particles as the Body is augmented out of the grosser and less fugitive Parts of the Aliment till both Soul and Body have attain'd to the standard of Maturity or perfection of growth thenceforth slowly declining in Vigor by degrees answerable to those of their ascent till they arrive at their final Period Death which dissolving the system or contexture of the Soul leaves the Particles of which it was composed to fly away and vanish into Aire and the Body to be resolved into its first Principles by slower corruption For Nutrition and Augmentation are as yesterday I proved Operations of the Plastic Virtue continually reforming the whole Animal and the duration or subsistence of the Soul is the Vinculum of the whole composition or concretion So that the Soul may be by an apposite Metaphor called the Salt or Condiment that preserves the fleshy parts of the Body from putrefaction as the Spirits of Wine preserve the whole Mass of Liquor through which they are diffused from losing its Vigor and generose quality and according to that oraculous saying of Hippocrates 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Soul is always generated anew till Death Which very thing is argument enough to evince that if it be not really a most thin Flame finer and more gentle than that arising from the purest Spirit of Wine burning within a paper Lantern it is at least very like to Flame For as this so that is every moment regenerated at once perishing and reviving perishing by continual dissipation of some Particles and reviving by continual accension of others out of its proper aliment the more subtile and sulphureous Particles of the Blood serving to repair the decays of the Soul as the grosser Particles of the succus nutritius are convenient to recruit the exhausted substance of the Body So that it was not without reason that Democritus Epicurus Lucretius and Hippocrates among the Antients and among the Moderns Fernelius Heurnius Cartesius Hogelandus Honoratus Faber and Dr. Willis held the Soul of a Brute to be of a firy substance and that Aristotle himself called it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and that the Ld. Chancellor Bacon natural Hist. centur 7. makes one of the two radical differences between Plants and Animals to consist in this that the Spirits of living Creatures hold more of Flame Finally I conceive that this sensitive Soul however it be a thing mixt or composed of Particles among themselves in Magnitude Figure Position and Motion somwhat various is notwithstanding by admirable Artifice so constituted and the parts of it so contemperate and context that it is made one most thin and yet continued and coherent substance diffused through the whole Body Nor can its component Particles while it subsists in the Body be dissociated otherwise than by their own evolation which is instantly supplied by the accession and unition of others no more than the natural smell colour or tast can be separated from an Apple Peach or any other Fruit. This universal diffusion of it through the Body is what the Ld. Chancellor Bacon calls Branching of the Spirits in Nat. Hist. Cent. 7. Paragraph 1 where he saith the Spirits of things Animate are all continued with themselves and branched in Veins and secret Canales as Blood is and what Dr. Willis calls Coextension of the Soul to all parts of the Body Granting then that this most thin continued and diffused Substance is conteined in the Body and as it were coherent with the same thereby sustained and bounded we may with the more probability conceive that it is to the Body the cause of all the Faculties Actions Passions and Motions belonging to its Nature as the Organ of such a Soul that it keeps the Body together at once both conserving actuating managing and governing it and that it can be no more separated from the Body without the dissolution thereof than the Odor can be separated from Frankincense without destroying the nature of it And this I think sufficient to explain what I conceive of the first quaestion proposed viz. of what Substance the Soul of a Brute is and of what Particles composed As to the Second viz. wherein the Life of such a Soul doth consist it seems to me probable that since Life according to the general notion of it is nothing but Usura quaedam vigoris mobilitatisque facultatum activarum ejus rei cui inest the Life of a sensitive Soul is immediately founded in a certain Motion of the active and spirituose Particles of which it is composed as the Life of an Animal consisteth in the continuation of the same determinate Motion of those Spirits by which it was at first kindled and of the actual exercise of the Faculties that emerge or result from the union of the Soul with its Body by the Fabrick of the various Organs thereof adapted to perform all the various Functions Offices and Actions requisite to consummate the nature of such an Animal in Specie What kind of Motion that is in which as in its Origine I conceive this Life to be founded I shall by and by declare when I come to enquire what is the immediate Subject or Seat of Life having first endeavor'd to solve the Third Question proposed viz. what are the principal Faculties and Operations of a sensitive Soul These then are as ye well know all comprehended in Life Sense and motion Animal of which I shall here consider only the Second reserving the First till by and by and the Last till the Clew of my method hath brought me to treat of it in its proper place As to the Faculty of Sense therefore which constitutes the chief difference between living Creatures and things inanimate which Lucretius elegantly call's animam ipsius animae and the extinction or total privation of which is Death since I have supposed a sensitive Soul to be Material or Corporeal I must seek for this noble Power whereby she is qualified not only to perceive external Objects but to be also conscious of all her Perceptions in Matter after a certain peculiar manner so or so disposed or modified and in nothing else lest I recede from that supposition But in what matter is it most likely to be found whatsoever the determinate modification requisite to create such a Power shall at length be imagined to be in the Matter of the Soul herself or in that of the Body she animates Truly if we distinctly examine either the Soul or Body of a Brute as
of it as the least indecent Sacrifice I could offer to Your Glory and the same may serve also to incline You to receive it benignly as a specimen of my Devotion to so Eminent a Benefactor and to permit me to expose the same to the Censorious World under Your Auspicious Patronage which will certainly afford it defense from Contempt and might also give it long Life were it not of an infirm constitution as having been form'd in haste and in the declining age of its Author and March the 27th A. D. 1679. Noble Sir Your most sincerely devoted humble servant Walter Charleton Advertisement LEst the Errors of the Press which yet are neither many nor great be imputed to the Author who wanted leisure to prevent them the Reader is civilly desired to correct them thus In Page 19. Line 26. of the Preface read of one and the same part p. 26. l. 30. of the Preface r. Trismegistus in Asclepio In the Book Pag. 23. l. 31. r. Pelican and most other fowls p. 52. l. 19. r. betwixt it and the second or middle coat p. 130. l. 20. r. spontaneous p. 132. l. 13. r. and is not only convenient p. 421. l. 19. r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 430. l. 11. r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 436. l. 2. r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 437. l. 31. r. purification of the bloud p. 438. l. 1. r. or not yet despoiled of its spirits p. 473. l. 26. r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 478. l. 7. r. which threatning a flux p. 498. l. 5. r. a force by transmission and l. 16. r. of such a power and l. penult r. framed p. 502. l. 25. r. Kingdom of Fairies p. 505. l. 20. r. Philosophy p. 513. l. 24. r. arise p. 515. l. 22. r. divine Wit and l. 33. r. so like a bogg p. 519. l. 9. r. Caspar Barlaeus p. 544. l. 25. r. coadjuvantesque omnium operas PREFACE OF THE Antiquity Uses Differences c. OF ANATOMY THIS Place is sacred to the study of God's Works for the benefit of Mankind the Occasion of this Assembly rare inaugural and worthy of the greatest solemnity the Assembly it self frequent and consisting for the major part of Men Noble Wise Learned and Curiose and my talent but a mite Highly then it concerns me before I advance one step to stand still a moment or two and seriously consider what my Subject is and what my Province My SUBIECT is the most abstruse Oeconomy of Nature in the body of Man a System of innumerable smaller Machines or Engines by infinite Wisdom fram'd and compacted into one most beautiful greater Automaton all whose parts are among themselves different in their sensible elements in their magnitudes figures positions textures motions actions and uses yet all ordain'd and adjusted to one common End namely to compose a Living Ergasterium or Work-house in which a Reasonable and Immortal Soul may not only commodiously but also with delight exercise all her divine Faculties to her own felicity and to the praise and glory of her Omnipotent Creator A Subject as ye Noble and most judicious Auditors will all readily acknowledge admirable even to astonishment full of variety and no less full of wonders a Subject wherein the most acute and piercing Wits have found more much more to amuse than to satisfie their Curiosity and which hath forced them after all their anxious disquisitions to sigh forth that pious Exclamation of King David Quà m admirabili nos structurâ Deus formavit My PROVINCE is the Anatomic Administration of these ruines of a Man i. e. to take asunder some few at least of the various Organs of this Master-piece of the Creation so that we may explore their several conduit-pipes their springs movements actions communications offices in fine their whole Mechanism or Construction upon which their respective Functions necessarily depend For most certain it is that the Divine Architect hath fram'd all things as in the Greater World so likewise in this Microcosm in number weight and measure and we have it as a precept from our Oracle Hippocrates lib. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that a genuine Physician ought 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to evince whatsoever he delivers as doctrine if it be possible by demonstration These things consider'd I appeal to You Most Prudent and Venerable President who have been pleas'd from Your good opinion not of my sufficiency but only of my diligence this day to place me where I deserve not to sit and to You my most Learned Collegues of this Illustrious Society who honour me by your presence whether it be not necessary for me to set before you in a short Proem some at least of the many sentiments I have conceiv'd in my mind of the singular Dignity and Excellency of the task assign'd me When by so doing I shall at once pay some part of the debt I owe both to the honour of this Temple of Philosophy in which we now sit and to the Solemnity of this Convention and shew my self however unfit worthily to administre so noble a Province yet duely conscious of the weight of it which may perhaps somewhat conduce to render my faileurs the more Venial That I may therefore both invite your Attention and pre-ingage your Candor I ask leave to make my self for a few minutes your 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Remembrancer by recalling into your memory what ye have heretofore read in the monuments of the Antients concerning the Antiquity of the Art of Dissection and what ye have from your own happy Experience and Observation collected touching the great and manifold Utility of the same Which I shall endeavour to do with as much of Perspicuity as the Umbrage of the Argument and the Scantness of my Readings will permit with as much of Conciseness as can be brought to consist with that Perspicuity ¶ As for the ANTIQUITY of Anatomie that doubtless is if not equal yet not much inferiour in age to Medicine it self which seems to have been invented by men in the very infancy of the World For 1. If Necessity be as hitherto on all hands it hath been admitted to have first suggested to Man all those profitable inventions whereby Humane life has been render'd either more defensible or more comfortable we may with good reason infer that the Art of Medicine i. e. of preserving and restoring health had its beginning as early in the morning of Time as any of the rest it being certain that mens bodies were then not only liable to but actually infested with various distempers pains infirmities and other maladies the Laws and Constitutions of Nature continuing perpetually the same and no less certain that men observing what things were agreeable what disagreeable to the body what mitigated what exasperated their maladies were by the very dictates of Reason taught to provide for the conservation of their Health by abstaining from things noxious and for the restitution of it when impair'd by using
do my best to bring him into this Theatre here to be sensibly convinced of his madness For sure I am that some of the Antient Heathens have call'd the structure of Mans Body the Book of God and that even Galen himself an Ethnic too slow of belief and most alien from Superstition learn'd so much of Piety from dissections that in his whole seventeen Books de usu partium he sings a perpetual Hymn as it were in praise of the Divine Architect that form'd them Of which laudatory Hymns I have chosen one which seeming to me more lofty and harmonical than any of the rest and more proper for this place deserves my recital and your remark In his third Book contemplating the skin that invests the sole of the foot a part despicable to vulgar eyes He breaks forth into this rapture of admiration Cutem ipsam sayes he non laxam aut subtilem aut mollem sed constrictam mediocriter duram sensilémque ut non facilè pateretur subdidit pedi Sapientissimus Conditor noster cui Commentarios ego hos ceu hymnos quosdam compono in eo pietatem esse existimans non si Taurorum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ei plurimas quispiam sacrificarit casias aliáque sexcenta unguenta suffumigarit sed si noverim ipse primus deinde exposuerim aliis quaenam sit ipsius Sapientia quae Virtus quae Providentia quae Bonitas ignorantia quorum summa impietas est non si à sacrificio abstineas Quòd enim cultu convenienti exornavit omnia nullique bona inviderit id perfectissimae Bonitatis specimen esse statuo invenisse autem quo pacto omnia adornarentur summae Sapientiae est ac effecisse omnia quae voluit Virtutis est invictae A Hymn not unworthy to be sung with solemn Music even in our Churches 3. Besides these two noble uses of Anatomy by me now explain'd there remains here to be consider'd yet a third use not as the former common to all mankind but proper to Physicians to whom the study of it is not only profitable and delightful as to their private speculations but also necessary as to their well understanding the divine Art of Medicine which they profess This Necessity is indeed so universally known and acknowledged by all wise men that to go about to prove it would be as supervacaneous as to light a candle to shew the Sun at noon yet because there are some who either blinded with the smoak of fallacious Chymists or corrupted by some private interest perceive it not give me leave I pray toward the disenchantment of these briefly to set before them two or three of the plainest causes or reasons that make Anatomy the grand fundament of Medicine Hippocrates I remember doth often inculcate to his Disciples the genuine Sons of Art three cardinal precepts in which the whole duty of a Physician seems to be comprehended The first is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to understand the present state of the sick the nature of the malady and the part affected the second 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to prognosticate the event of the disease the third 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to relieve or heal the sick But in all these three duties he that is ignorant of Anatomy must needs be shamefully deficient In the Diagnostic part because no good judgment can be made of the nature and kind of any disease unless it be first known what part of the body is thereby chiefly affected and the most certain indieia or distinctive signs of the part affected are taken principally from the situation of the part and from the action of it hurt For instance he that knows the Liver to be naturally seated in the right Hypochondrium if in that place pain be felt or swelling appear from a Tumor within will easily thence collect that the Liver is the part then affected and he that knows that the principal action of the Stomach is Concoction will soon know if Concoction be hurt that the Stomach is misaffected But both the places and actions of the parts are learn'd only from Anatomy and therefore whoever is ignorant of Anatomy can have no certain knowledge of either those or these In the Prognostic part he must likewise fail because the best Ostenta or Signs of the future good or evil event of any Sickness are all derived from these three heads viz. the Excretions the Action hurt and the Habit of the body in colour figure and bulk none of all which are to be known without Anatomy and he is likely to make but an ill Predictor of events to come who has not skill enough to observe and discern the signs that portend them In the Curative part also he must be equally deficient because the true and exquisite Method of Healing is grounded upon and design'd by rational Indications and every Indication is desumed not only from the nature of the Malady but also from the part thereby affected and therefore according to the various constitution temper site connexion sense and other qualities of the affected part the remedies to be used ought to be various And with what face can a Chirurgeon pretend to recompose broken or restore dislocated bones who is ignorant of their site figure structure and articulations Manifest it is then that whoever pretends to the cure of diseases and yet remains ignorant of Anatomy is either an impudent Impostor or at best a Fool. What then are they who put their life into the hands of such men From these nobler Uses of Anatomy in Physic Natural Theologie and Medicine now explicated I might descend to many others less noble indeed yet not unworthy the notice and consideration even of Wise men observable in various inferior Arts more particularly in those two Arts so highly inservient to Magnificence Ornament and Delight Architecture and Painting both which borrow their exemplars rules graces perfection and estimation from the proportions symmetry and pulchritude of the parts of Mans body But these being alien from my task and the hours assign'd me for the performance thereof being few I am obliged to pretermit them Notwithstanding lest I should by mentioning them en passant excite in some of my ingeniose Auditors of the Yonger sort a curiosity which I have not now leisure to satisfie 't is fit I should refer them to two or three Authors of good note to be by them fully inform'd how requisite the study of the fabric of mans body is to all who desire to excell in either of these Arts. For Architecture then I would direct them first to Vitruvius who in lib. 3. cap. 1. laying this down for a fundamental Maxim non potest aedes ulla sine symmetria atque proportione rationem habere compositionis nisi uti ad Hominis benè figurati membrorum habuerit exactam rationem and immediately after measuring the proportions that the several parts of a well-shap'd Man hold one to another proceeds to commensurate
namely into bones cartilages ligaments tendons membranes fibres c. So that all the Organs are at length compos'd of dissimilar parts by wonderful artifice context without the least of confusion or incongruity Which deserves to be reckon'd the seventh Act. 8. In that work of Organization 't is credible the inimitable Artist divides without section only by terminating the parts and unites without glew or cement only by continuing them to the common term or bounds which depends more upon union of matter than upon union of nature By these admirable artifices of Division and Unition the Plastic Spirit perforates separates conjoins cements the yet fluid at least soft Stamina of the parts where how and as often as need requires it deduces and runns out their Rivulets terminated in the fluid matter as by chanels it preserves from confusion the two different Colliquamenta and the Yolk divided as it were by partitions it so distinguishes and disterminates even contiguous and semblable parts that they may be diversly moved at the same time without interfering or impediment and each yield to other when occasion requires and thus almost all fibres very many membranes and in many sorts of Animals the Lobes of the Lungs and Liver and the Cartilages mutually touching each other in the joints c. are divided among themselves In a word by these wayes and degrees here by me from Malpighius his Microscopical Observations collected and rudely described it seems most probable that the Embryo is form'd augmented and finish'd in an Egg. Now therefore that we may accommodate this Epitome to our present Argument if this be the method and process that Nature uses in the Generation of Oviparous Animals and if she uses the like in the production of Viviparous also as Dr. Harvies observations and our own assure us that she doth we may safely conclude that Human Embryons are in like manner form'd augmented and finish'd by one and the same Plastic Spirit out of one and the same matter the Colliquamentum Quod er at probandum I add that the same Plastic Spirit remaining and working within us through the whole course of our life from our very first formation to our death doth in the same manner perpetually regenerate us out of a liquor analogous to the white of an Egg by transmuting the same into the substance of the solid parts of our body For as I said before Nutrition is necessary to all Animals not only in respect of the Augmentation of their parts while they are little Embryons but also in respect of their Conservation after during life because their bodies being in a natural consumption or exhaustion would inevitably be soon resolv'd into their first elements unless the providence of Nature had ordain'd a continual renovation or reparation of the parts by substitution and assimilation of fresh matter in the room of those particles dispers'd and consum'd Having therefore to some degree of probability explain'd the former necessity of Nutrition and the causes of it my next business must be to inquire into the Later Which that I may the more effectually do I find my self obliged to begin my scrutiny from the Causes of the perpetual Decay or Depredation of the substance of our bodies viz. the Efficient or Depraedator and the Matter or substance thereby consum'd and the Manner how The Depraedator then or Efficient cause of the perpetual consumtion of our bodies seems to be what all Philosophers unanimously hold it to be the Vital Heat of the bloud therein first kindled by the Plastic Spirit continually renew'd by the Vital Spirit and by the arteries diffus'd to all parts of the body that they may thereby be warm'd cherish'd and enliven'd This Lar familiaris or Vital Heat continually glowing within us and principally in the Ventricles of the Heart call'd by Hippocrates 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ingenitus ignis by Aristotle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 accensio animae in corde and flamma Biolychnii the flame of the Lamp of Life by others and by others again ignea pars Animae Sensitivae is what Physicians generally have heretofore understood by Calidum innatum tho' they seem to have had but an obscure and inadaequate notion of the thing it self as I hope to evince when I shall come to inquire what life is and upon what it chiefly depends Meanwhile supposing it to be an Actual Heat consisting in a certain motion of the various particles of the bloud and in some degree analogous to fire or flame I cannot conceive how 't is possible for it to subsist or continue for so much as one moment of time unless it be maintain'd by convenient fewel which is thereby uncessantly fed upon and by degrees consum'd for it is of the nature of all fire how gentle or mild soever to generate and conserve it self only by preying upon and destroying the matter in which it is generated This Vital Heat therefore without intermission agitating dissolving and consuming the minute and most easily exsoluble particles of the body must be the Depraedator here sought after So that in truth we have one and the same cause both of our life and of our death or to speak more properly our very life is nothing but a continual death and we live because we die For we live so long as while this internal Vestal Heat is kept glowing in the bloud and when it ceases to glow either from want of convenient sustenance or by violent suffocation life is instantly extinguish'd So true even in this natural sense is that Distich of Euripides Quis novit autem an vivere hoc sit emori An emori hoc sit quod vocamus vivere The Matter consum'd I humbly conceive to be for the greatest part the fluid parts of the body chiefly the bloud and spirits which are most easily exsoluble and somewhat tho' but little of the substance also of the solid parts For Experience teaches that divers Animals Bears Dormice Swallows c. sleep the whole Winter without receiving any supply of aliment and yet have all the solid parts of their bodies as large and firm when they awake again in the Spring as when they first betook themselves to their dens or dormitories and the Reason hereof seems to be this that their Vital Heat being all that time calm and gentle consumes their bloud and spirits but slowly and very little of their solid parts as a lamp burns long when the oyl that feeds it is much and the flame but little and calm We have Examples also of Leucophlegmatic Virgins who from a gradual decay of Appetite have fall'n at length into an absolute aversion from all food and endur'd long abstinence without either miracle or imposture and yet notwithstanding have not been emaciated in proportion to the time of their fasting Whence 't is probable that in our bodies there is not so rapid and profuse an expense or exhaustion of the substance of the solid parts as heretofore many learn'd Physicians
throat and by that compression forces it into the mouth of the Gullet For being so environ'd as that it cannot slipp away either by the funnells above leading to the nosestrills or by the palate it must be cramm'd into the orifice of the Gullet there being no other way or door left open by which it may free it self from compression Nor doth this compression instantly cease but is continued till the roots of the tongue and head of the Larynx filling up the whole cavity of the throat have thence driven all the matter contain'd therein and thrust it down into the Gullet 2. Whilst this action is perform'd the Muscles of the Pharynx being also vigorated i. e set on work by tension cause its membrane closely to embrace the roots of the tongue and head of the Larynx in their ascent but so as that the orifice of the Gullet is at the same time carried upward and a little forward to meet the matter to be swallow'd No wonder then if the describ'd compression easily squeez into the Gullet all the matter brought into the throat when the same is promoted by a clausure on each side from below by the ascent of the tongue and Larynx from above by the tension of the muscles of the Pharynx and at the same time the mouth of the Gullet is offer'd as a door by which it may slipp away and evade the compression 3. No sooner is the matter in this manner thrust down into the orifice of the Gullet than the Sphincter Muscle thereof constringing it self so girds the orifice as that it not only prevents the recoiling or slipping back of the matter into the mouth but squeezes it somwhat farther down And then 4. The Peristaltic or Compressing motion of the spiral fibres of the Gullet beginning and by degrees girding the sides thereof farther and farther downward soon thrusts the matter into the cavity of the Stomach And this seems to me to be the most reasonable and plain accompt that hitherto hath been given how the whole complex work of Deglutition is perform'd Mechanically A work of so great Use to the whole body that all men know and acknowledge it to be absolutely necessary to the conservation of the whole Experience teaching even the most illiterate that when it happens to be abolish'd as in various diseases of the throat chiefly in inflammations tumors and palseys of the muscles of the Larynx and Pharynx it often is miserable famin and death inevitably insue It is not then without good cause that Nature hath according to her accustom'd bounty in works of publick utility either to the subsistence of individuals or to propagation of the species to the exercise of the faculty of Deglutition annex'd an ample reward viz. a grateful Complacency of the instruments therein used yea a pleasure so inviting that many Animals are thereby allured to hurt themselves by eating more than they can digest and above all intemperate Man whose diet is in variety of tasts the most delicious With which vulgar remark I conclude this short and imperfect history of the Oesophagus ¶ PRAELECTIO II. HISTORIA VENTRICULI THAT we may not in our surveys divide parts that Nature hath so closely conjoyn'd let us in the next place convert our contemplation upon the principal Organ of Chylification wherein as in a publick Kitchin nourishment for the whole body is praepar'd viz. the STOMACH This common Receptacle of all our meat and drink and Laboratory in which all the profitable parts of both are by the inimitable Chymistry of Nature converted into a certain whitish liquor somwhat resembling barly cream and call'd Chyle hath been by the Antient Graec Physicians describ'd under three divers names By Hippocrates 't is sometimes call'd 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies to receive or contein because it receives all the Aliment swallowed down and wherever in his works we meet with the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 without addition to appropriate it to the Head or Thorax which by him are also named 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 bellies there we are to understand this part alone sometimes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. Cavity and sometimes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Heart from the vicinity of the upper orifice of the Stomach to the Heart and the symptoms thence arising But of these Appellations the two first are common to all great cavities or receptacles in the body and the last in stricter sense denotes not the whole stomach but only the principal and most sensil part of it the Mouth Among the Latines likewise we find an equal variety of denominations For Celsus lib. 1. cap. 2. lib. 4. cap. 5. uses the words Venter Ventriculus and Stomachus indifferently to signify this whole part and Cicero de nat Deor. lib. 2. expresses the same by Ventriculus and Stomachus indiscriminately But now use hath obtain'd that the diminutive Ventriculus quasi minor ventor without a limitation annext stand for the proper name of what the Vulgar calls the Stomach For tho' Anatomists name the cavities of the Heart and Brain also Ventricles yet they never do so without adding for distinction sake the name of the part viz. Heart or Brain of which they speak This Ventricle then being an Organical part of great dignity but greater necessity well deserves our strictest scrutiny Let us then with diligence and patience consider 1. The Structure or Organization 2. The Elements or similar parts and 3. The Actions and Uses of it For if we can attain to a competent knowledge of all these things I do not see what can remain to hinder us from coming at length to understand the nature of it fully and perfectly Begin we then from the Site or situation of it which being not the same in Animals of all kinds but various requires to be consider'd first in genere and then speciatim to the end that Comparative Anatomy may go hand in hand with simple or Positive In all Animals that have bloud Fowls that feed upon corn only excepted the Ventricle is seated in the upper part of the Abdomen The superior Orifice of it in Man in all four-footed Beasts and in all Fishes that have lungs is immediately under the Diaphragm but in all Fishes that respire not immediately appendant to the mouth as well because having neither thorax nor neck they consequently want the Gullet as because in them the belly is disterminated from the mouth by a certain membraneous partition not much unlike to and as to separation supplying the defect of the midriff Whereas in Animals that respire the Gullet is requisite because of the interposition of the breast betwixt the mouth and the Ventricle which could not be commodiously placed above the diaphragm in the thorax for more than one reason viz. 1. Because it would have straitned and compress'd the Lungs especially when fill'd and distended with food 2. Because the Thorax being inviron'd with strong bones could not be
distended enough to make room for the expansion of the lungs and repletion of the Ventricle both at once and 3. Because the steams arising from the meat and drink fermenting in the Ventricle would much infest the vital parts Which last incommodity Nature seems to have prudently prevented both in Birds that have the ingluvies or Cropp placed not in the lower belly but under the neck before and without the furcula and in Fishes also that want respiration by separating the heart from the ventricle with a certain membraneous partition instead of a diaphragm Again the same upper orifice of the ventricle in Man and in all Quadrupeds is placed immediately under the diaphragm to prevent the farther elongation of the Gullet which would have been unprofitable at least if not in many respects incommodious Nor is the providence of Nature less admirable in placing the Ingluvies in Granivorous Fowls we call it the Kropp or Craw and the Gorge in Carnivorous of Birds under the neck betwixt the horns of the os jugale call'd by us the Fork or merry-thought she seeming to have had three inducements thereto 1. The Crop having no commerce with any part in the Abdomen but only with the Gizard to which it is continued by a peculiar pipe or inferior Gullet and by which the corn steep'd and softned in the Crop is converted into Chyle there is no necessity why it should be seated therein 2. The Crop serves also to keep the body of the Fowl aequilibrated upon the leggs whereas if it were in the lowest belly it would when full of food make the hinder part much too weighty for the fore part 3. Fowls for the most part chiefly the Granivorous feed their young with half-digested chyle or corn macerated puking it from the crop into their mouth as is commonly observ'd in Doves and Rooks which they could not so commodiously have done if the crop had not been seated so near the mouth And as to the situation of the Ventricle consider'd in Specie it is placed in the highest region of the Abdomen partly in the left hypochondrium partly under the pitt of the stomach having on the right side the Liver not only accumbent but incumbent upon it on the left side the Spleen adhaering to it at the bottom the Omentum or Kell or Caul fastned all along and behind the Pancreas subjacent from thence named by some the Pillow or Cushion of the Ventricle and on the fore part the Colon and in this position it is establish'd by various connexions the superior orifice is continued to the Gullet and by the mediation thereof firmly annex'd to the midriffe the inferior united to the Duodenum and by the mediation of the Omentum connex'd to the Liver Back Spleen Colon and Pancreas The second thing remarkable in the Structure of the Ventricle is the Magnitude or Capacity of it which being various not only in Animals of divers kinds but in some individuals also of the same species chiefly in men requires therefore to be consider'd first Comparatively and then Positively If we compare the Magnitude of the Ventricle with that of the whole body of the same Animal we shall find it in weight not to exceed the hundredth part of it So that we might well admire that a part so small should suffice to cook provision for the whole did we not at the same time remember that the Gutts help it not a little in that office If we compare the Ventricle of Man with those of other Animals we shall find it to be in him less in proportion to the whole body than in them So that Aristotles general rule de hist. animal 2. cap. 17. Animalia majora majorem minora minorem habent ventriculum seems not to exclude all exception and there is reason for us to believe that Nature adjusted the capacity of the Ventricle in all sorts of Animals rather to the nature of their proper food than to the magnitude of their bodies For 1. Where the food is coarse yielding but little nourishment out of a great mass there much of it is required to satiate the appetite and recruit the body and consequently the greater the capacity of the Ventricle Hence perhaps it is that the Horse the Ass the Ox Sheep Goats c. that feed upon herbs grass hay stubble and other the like lean and poor aliments from a great quantity of which but little nourishing juice can be extracted have great bellies On the contrary where the food is rich i. e. conteining much of nutriment in a little there is requir'd a less quantity of it to satiate the appetite and repair the body and by consequence a less ventricle as in Man who living upon delicate meats that nourish much in little quantity hath but a small ventricle in comparison of his whole body and 't is observ'd that men of a more delicate diet such as is used at the tables of Princes and Grandees have generally less Ventricles than others that live upon coarse fare 2. Animals that eat but seldom ought to have the Ventricle of large capacity because they devour much at once to compensate their long fasting Which is exemplified in Lions Tygres Wolves c. beasts of prey which tho' carnivorous and consequently of an opime or highly nourishing diet are yet compell'd many times to undergo the sharp pinches of hunger long till they meet with food and then they gorge themselves as if they intended to barrell up in their panches flesh for many dayes to come and are to that end furnished with ample stowage in their bellies The like may be said also of those Men who are accustom'd to eat but one meal a day whether it be a dinner or a supper and that a great one for by that surcharge they so distend their stomach as of necessity to render it in tract of time thinner and by consequence weaker than is requisite to health And hence in all probability it is also that great Drinkers enlarge the capacity of the Ventricle by stretching the coats of it till at length they come to destroy the tone and strength thereof by habitual extenuation and to verifie Seneca's saying of intemperate men epist. 39. quae fecere patiuntur they are their own tormentors Finally if we compare Human Ventricles among themselves we shall find the variety to be great in respect of difference in age sex stature diet and above all in habitual temperance or intemperance Greater is the capacity of the Ventricle commonly in men than in women in proportion to their bodies and yet women are not as Aristotle believ'd greater gluttons than men but rather less as having less room in their bellies to receive and less of heat to concoct food Greater in men of middle age and of tall stature than in old and of low stature Greater also in Gluttons and Drunkards than in the Sober Difficult it is therefore to determine what is the Positive Magnitude of it in
Wherefore the native temperament of all fibres is cold and moist indeed but enrich'd with delicate and noble spirits however fixt and consequently they require to be nourish'd with a spermatic aliment The Corpulency or fleshiness of fibres is variable somtimes greater as in strong and laborious men somtimes less as in weak lean and sedentary The Cohaerence of parts ought to be firm and tough that they may be extended without danger of divulsion or rupture and return to their natural posture by spontaneous contraction after extension Their Flexibility depends partly upon their tenacity partly upon their middle constitution betwixt hardness and softness that they may be neither rigid or stiff nor flaggy The Organical native constitution of fibres consisteth in their due situation figure magnitude and continuity all which are included in their former description The influent constitution of them is either Vital or Animal If the vital influx be deficient the force and strength of the fibres soon languishes as in swoonings and faintings Yea if it be but depraved as in fevers their vigour in a few hours decayes If the Animal influx be intercepted as in the palsy they quickly become languid and stupid yea if the brain and nerves grow dull and sluggish the fibres at the same time grow flaccid and loose unapt for vigorous motion 2. The general Uses of all fibres are to corroborate the parts to which they belong and to move them The special uses are various respective to their various formation in divers parts as for instance in the Stomach and Gutts they serve chiefly to their Peristaltic motion 3. The Action of Fibres is either Common or Proper Common when being invigorated i. e. set on work by extension which is against their nature they pull and move the part to which they are connex'd as a chord pull'd by a mans hand pulls a plummet or any other body fastned to it but this seems to me to be in strictness of truth rather Passion than action in respect of the fibres themselves for they suffer extension being notwithstanding their natural renitency stretcht in length by the pulling of the nerves from which they are elonged Wherefore according to my weak judgment their Proper action is only Self-contraction by which they restore themselves to their natural posture A motion common indeed to all Tensil bodies whatever and therefore rightly term'd by Philosophers motion of Restitution the cause whereof I take to be the strong cohaerence of the parts of which they are compos'd If so what need we amuse our selvs by striving to deduce the spontaneous Contraction of nerves and fibres either from natural Instinct which implying I know not what secret suggestion pro re nata from some forein cause whether God or His servant Nature is to me unintelligible or what is equally abstruse from Natural Perception which supposes even inanimate things yea every the least particle of matter in the whole Universe to be naturally endowed with knowledge of what is good or evil to their nature with appetites to embrace the good and eschew the evil and with power to move themselves accordingly faculties that my Philosophy will not grant to any but rational creatures 4. The Passion therefore of a Fibre is the extension of it which is a passive motion coming from a cause without the essence of the fibre it self Which cause unless it actually relax or stupesie the fibres incites or irritates them to contract themselves and the more violent the irritation the stronger is the renitency and spontaneous contraction as is observ'd in convulsions To me it seems impossible that a simple fibre should by its own action alone extend it self in length nor have I wit enough to conceive how this can be done since all extension is a less or greater degree of force tending to the tearing asunder of the parts of the tensible body against which divelling force the firm cohaerence of the parts makes it strive And as for the Cessation of fibres that is when they neither act nor suffer but rest from all either extension or contraction having restor'd themselves to their natural posture of laxity This they attain to chiefly in sleep when all fibres of the whole body those that serve to respiration and the motions of the heart only excepted are at rest and thereby refresh'd acquiring after labour and weariness new strength and vigor from the sweet mild and balsamic juice dispensed to them from the brain by the nerves After this concise survey of the fibres in the membranes of the Ventricle there remains only their peculiar Parenchyma to challenge our observation which it may with the greater right pretend to because there are many who question whether it be real or imaginary because the whole Ventricle being of a white color seems therefore to be made up only of fibres and membranes It concerns us then to be certified 1. Of the real existence 2. Of the necessity 3. Of the quality and 4. Of the various uses of what we call the Parenchyma of the Ventricle as a distinct part thereof 1. To be assured even by our own eyes that there is really such a thing we need only to essay the excarnation of the stomach by laying it extended upon a plain bord and then scraping it moderately hard with a blunt knife in the same manner as Sheep skins are scrap'd by those who make Velom and Parchment or gutts by those who make Sawciges For by this easie means you may scrape off so great a quantity of soft white pulp as will by nineteen parts of twenty exceed all that you leave behind of membranes and fibres which will yet remain as strong and tenacious as they were before Against which experiment I see not what can be objected For if the firm cohaerence of the fibres of the Stomach be not only not abolish'd but not at all diminish'd by this scraping away of the pulp that stufft them it follows that the pure fibres in which alone the strength of the stomach consists still remain intire and that nothing but the Parenchyma or pulp hath been taken away From the same experiment it appears also that the membrane and pure fibres of the Ventricle are in themselves pellucid or transparent as we see in the skins of Sawciges and that they owe all their opacity to their stuffing with this Parenchyma 2. Which is necessary to the constitution of the Stomach in more than one respect Necessary it seems to fill up and make smooth and plain the inequalities arising from the contexture of the fibres which running various courses and riding each over other somtimes would otherwise render the surfaces of the membranes uneven Necessary it is also to stop the pores of the Stomach that it may hold liquors the better and be stanch even to vapors and wind as linnen cloth is made to hold water by dipping it into melted wax oyle and turpentine which fill up the void spaces betwixt
doubted because they serve rather to dilute the thicker aliments and give them a consistence requisite to their conversion into Chyle than to nourishment and because daily Experience teaches that by how much the thinner and more penetrating or diuretic they are by so much the sooner they pass by urine without any notable alteration as we have already declared of the Spa and Tunbridge waters and spirituose or vinose drinks caeteris paribus are sooner digested than such as are not vinose yea more they are justly preferr'd for their virtue to promove and accelerate the digestion of other things The reason of which perhaps is as well because their spirits augment the influent heat of the stomach as because they soon grow acid and so quicken the activity of the dissolving ferment therein contain'd For most certain it is that all wines turn acid almost as soon as they are receiv'd into the stomach because by the Fermentation therein made their sweet and more fugitive spirits are dispers'd in a trice and those being gone the reliques soon grow sowre from the operation of the acid ferment upon them and by that newly acquir'd sharpness further concoction Liquid or spoon-meats also as pottages milk and the like are sooner and more easily digested than solid because their nutritive parts being actually dissolv'd afore-hand they require only a light elevation of their spirits by the fermentation of the stomach to make them perfect Chyle and fit to be admitted into the Venae Lacteae Provided that if they be of a thick consistence as pap barly cream frumentry gellies butter'd eggs and such like they be first diluted with drink that they may more easily pass into the milky veins Solid meats are as of greatest nourishment so most difficult of digestion For they must pass through all the various Alterations requisite to the concoction of any Aliment whatsoever before they can be brought to the state of perfect Chyle While they remain in a solid form 't is impossible for them to enter into the inconspicuous mouths of the Venae Lacteae and therefore it is necessary they should be melted and reduced into the form of liquor at least that the tincture drawn from them may be such before they be offer'd to them ¶ Now those various ALTERATIONS requisite to the perfect concoction of solid meats are besides those that are common also to liquids but two viz. Liquation and Extraction of Tincture By the first they are dissolved into a kind of Gelly or Mucilage For bread is by digestion turn'd into a papp and the softer parts of flesh into a gelly or Consummè The harder parts of neither are wholly dissolv'd but for the most part commixt with the Excrements of the belly voided whole Hence it is that experienc'd Nurses judge of the good or bad concoction of Infants from inspection of their stools For if they therein discern any reliques of flesh undissolv'd they truly conclude from thence that their digestion is imperfect and that food of easier concoction is more convenient to their weak stomachs and accordingly abstain from giving them flesh till they are more able to digest it By the other the Tincture of solid meats is extracted and this Alteration is competent to such tough and stubborn meats as refuse to be dissolved Some things indeed are now and then swallow'd down that by reason of their hardness are incapable either of dissolution or of yielding any tincture such as Cherry-stones the kernells of grapes or raisins c. but these deserve not to be reckon'd among Aliments nature alwayes rejecting them whole and unchanged among the Excrements And these are the two requisite Alterations proper to solid meats besides which there remain yet three others common to both solid and liquid Of these The First is Dilution or through-mixtion of them with the drink without which even liquids themselves if of a consistence tending to thickness could never be transmitted into the Venae Lacteae To this Dilution of solids is requir'd at first a small quantity of liquor because a large draught in the beginning of a meal doth dissolve not the whole substance of the meat but only the more tender and thinner parts of it and extract them by way of tincture leaving the rest untouch't But after the substance of the meat hath been eliquated into a gelly a larger proportion of drink is requisite to give it a thinner consistence On the contrary to the Extraction of a tincture a copious Menstruum as Chymists well observe is requir'd Which our skilful Farriers and Grooms having from experience learn'd keep their Horses from water for an hour or two after they have eaten their oats 'T is therefore a good rule for conservation of health to drink sparingly in the beginning of a repast and freely toward the end of it when the meat hath been dissolved and requires to be farther diluted The second is an Exaltation of the spirits of the meat to the degree not of Volatility but Fusion that they may be more easily admitted into the Venae Lacteae and passing thence into the bloud serve to recruit the vital spirits For the proper office of the stomach is to make of the food a permanent liquor not fugitive vapors that would inflate and torment it and that permanent liquor ought to be replete with gentle spirits that the vital spirits which are continually dissipated and consumed may be from thence supplied Whence we may collect what the reason is that Wine and all vinose drinks do less require this alteration than other liquors viz. because their spirits are in the state of fusion before they are admitted into the stomach and so need but little farther elevation The third and last Alteration common to both solids and liquids is an Assimilation in some measure of the nourishment to the nature of the body to be thereby nourished at least a bringing of it nearer to the constitution of the body For by how much the more of similitude is betwixt two bodies so much the more easily is the one transmuted into the other Of this Assimilation are two parts of which one takes away the qualities of the food that made it unlike to the constitution of the body assimilant the other introduces new qualities more agreeable and conform to it The first is destructive of the old form the second eductive of a new one The destructive part consists in first a gradual debilitation and then a total subduing or taming of the reliques of the former seminal impressions of the aliments in all which there certainly remain some vestigia or prints as it were of their pristine form which may properly enough be call'd their seminal impressions and these are to be at least so far subjugated as to leave the matter capable of and disposed to admit new specific impressions Not that it is necessary they should be utterly abolished or eradicated which perhaps is more than either the acid serment or heat of the
a needle in many places and in fine by either pressing the water from one end toward the other or compressing it hard in the middle force it to flow forth in as many slender streams as the needle had made holes in the skin And this methink is a pretty lively representation of the manner of the Expression of the Chyle out of the guts into the Milky veins Thirdly I say not by Attraction or Exsuction as is generally believ'd For 1 Natural Philosophers are not yet agreed upon the point whether there be in nature any such thing as Attraction properly so call'd or not and they that are on the Affirmative part seem to me to have the worst end of the staff it being much more probable that all the motions attributed to Attraction are really perform'd by Impulsion 2 Although it were granted that some bodies may be moved by others by way of Attraction yet would it still remain extremely difficult to find what should cause the motion of the Chyle of which we are now speaking by the same way Of all Attractions mentioned by Philosophers there are if my weak memory deceives me not but three differences or sorts viz. Attraction ob fugam vacui Attraction Organic and Attraction Similar or ob similitudinem substantiae But no one of these seems to have place in the effect here propos'd Not the first because the Venae Lacteae are not by reason of their exiguity capable of such a vacuum coacervatum as the Aristoteleans require to cause attraction of even fluid bodies nor do they contain any disseminate vacuities as they call them when they are not fill'd with Chyle because then they close themselves and draw their sides together in so much that they wholly disappear Here then is no danger of vacuity and consequently no necessity of Attraction for avoidance of it Not the Second because the Venae Lacteae have no hooks chords or other instruments wherewith to take hold of the Chyle and draw it into their mouths out of the gutts Nor the Last 1 because all Similar Attraction supposes Natural Perception than which nothing is to me at least more doubtful 2 because the affinity or similitude of nature required to be betwixt the Attrahent and the thing to be attracted is here wanting for what is there of resemblance in substance or qualities betwixt the Milky veins on one part and the Chyle on the other This is a fluid those are solid bodies the Chyle is a liquor composed of heterogeneous or dissimilar parts the Venae Lacteae on the contrary are Similar spermatic parts Wherein then consists the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Analogy that should cause an attraction of the one by the others If it be said that not the Venae Lacteae themselves but the reliques of the former Chyle remaining in them attract the new Chyle ob similitudinem substantiae First we may deny that in the state of health any thing of Chyle is to be found remaining in the Milky veins after the work of distribution is finished and justify this our denial by the testimonies of all Modern Anatomists who have written of the motion of the Chyle and of the Venae Lacteae And then we may ask of the Patrons of Attraction Similar in this case Why the Chyle contain'd in the gutts being vastly more in quantity should not rather attract the supposed reliques left in the Venae Lacteae Besides all these reasons daily Experience assures us that not only pure and nutritive Chyle but the particles of Purging and other ungrateful and offensive Medicaments are received into the Venae Lacteae which they would never admit in case they attracted the Chyle Electivè by election or choice as the supposition of Similar attraction implies To conclude therefore it was not without reason I said that the Chyle is not transferred from the gutts into the Milky veins by way of Attraction or Suction but only of Expression This may be confirmed by the very manner of the transmission of the Chyle into the Venae Lacteae which seems to be not immediately from the cavity of the intestines but through the inmost Tunic of them and that by way of percolation First I say not immediately from the cavity of the stomach and gutts because 't is demonstrable even to sense by various Anatomic experiments made in the bellies of Animals alive or dead that the Venae Lacteae do not perforate or pass through the stomach and gutts but are all terminated in the inmost coat that lines them For neither by injection of liquors nor by inflation with air nor by the strongest compression whatsoever can any thing be made to pass from the stomach or gutts into the Venae Lacteae whether the Animal be open'd alive or dead full or fasting Whence 't is sufficiently manifest that these veins do not open themselves into the cavity of the stomach or into that of the intestines for if they did what can be imagined to hinder the ingress of liquors or air when vehemently urged by compression into them Wherefore I say Secondly that the Chyle is transmitted by percolation through the very Parenchyma of the stomach and gutts tanquam per manicam Hippocratis as through a streiner For it is not the custom of Nature to institute any secretion or separation of humors without a Colatory nor doth she use where there is need of a streiner to ordain a single membrane but some peculiar Parenchyma to that purpose much less to delegate that office to the naked orifices of vessels of what kind soever For the orifice of a vessel as simply such i. e. as a mere organ promiscuosely admitts whatever is brought to it not separating one liquor from another the thinner from the thicker the pure from the impure but taking in without discrimination all that comes Seeing therefore that Nature for the separation of different liquors confused is always observed to use some Parenchyma as a Colatory or Streiner and seeing no other sufficiently noble and considerable use can be assign'd to the Parenchyma of the inmost Tunic of the stomach and gutts but this I now attribute to it these things I say duly consider'd I think it most probable that the Parenchyma of this Tunic doth perform the office of a Streiner to the Chyle receiving and conveying into the Milky veins the thinner parts thereof and excluding the gross and excrementitious as an Hippocras bag transmitts the Wine but retains the Spices infused in it Now this very Percolation of the Chyle doth as I just now hinted not a little confirm my former assertion that it is distributed from the cavities of the Ventricle and gutts not by Attraction or Exsuction but only by Expression For what can be imagin'd more likely to impell it or drive the thinner parts of it into and through the Streiner than Pressure or whence can that pressure come but from the Spontaneous Constriction of the stomach and gutts conjoyn'd with the
the Pulse of the Heart and Arteries 3 Distribution of the Blood by virtue of that pulsation 4 Communication of Life to all parts of the Body by means of that distribution and 5 Reduction of arteriose Blood to the state of Venose the exhalations of it being first partly consumed partly condensed and absorp't into the Lympheducts Of each of the Acts we must particu-larly enquire The FIRST Act viz. the Generation of Original Life in the Blood it self seems to be perform'd in this manner The vital Spirit rector of the Blood by its own natural force and expansive energy endevors to exagitate and expand the Blood now again brought into the Ventricles of the Heart while the grosser parts of the Blood by their nature more sluggish and unactive resist and hinder that endevor to expansion From this resistence or checking instantly arises a certain Colluctation or mutual striving between the expansive motion or endevor of the vital Spirits on one part and the renitency of the grosser parts of the Blood on the other And from this Colluctation an actual Heat is quickly excited or kindled in the Blood actual Heat being nothing else but an expansive Luctation of the Particles of the Body or Subject in which it is as the illustrious Lord Chancellor Bacon hath with admirable sagacity from many instances collected in historia calidi in novi Organi Pag. 218. Seeing therefore that this motion of the Blood consisteth in the expansive endevor of the Spirits and the reluctation of the other parts of it this Motion consequently is actual Heat But because this expansive Luctation is not hostil or noxious but Amicable Benign and tending not only to the conservation of the Blood but also to the exaltation of all its Faculties and Operations and because it comes as I said a little before from within from the Spirit conteined in and ruling the Blood therefore the Motion or Heat thence resulting is also Vital For in that very expansive motion of the Blood doth the formal reason of Life originally consist This being a Theorem not a little abstruse and of very great Moment chiefly to Physicians 't is requisite I should endevor both to clear and establish it That I may do so I begg leave to set before you a short Series or Train of certain Propositions of which the subsequent depending like the Links of a Chain upon the antecedent they may at length convince you of the Truth from thence to be concluded PROPOS I. The Heat is only Motion THe verity of this is apparent 1 From Flame which is perpetually and violently Moved 2 From the like agitation of all parts of servent or boyling Liquors 3 From the incitation and increment of Heat caused by Motion as in blowing up Fire by Bellows or Winds 4 From the very extinction of Fire and Heat by all strong compression which arresteth the Motion thereof and instantly causeth it to cease 5 From hence that most Bodies are destroyed at least sensibly altered by all Fire and by strong and vehement Heat which introducing a Tumult Perturbation and rapid Motion upon their parts by degrees totally dissolves the cohesion or continuity of them Nevertheless this Proposition is to be understood with due limitation or as it stands for the Genus of Heat not that Heat generates Motion or that Motion generates Heat always tho both these be in some things true but that Heat it self or the very essence of Heat is Motion and nothing else yet a certain peculiar sort of Motion or limited by the differences to be subjoyned PROPOS II. That Heat is an Expansive motion by which a Body strives to dilate it self and recede into a larger space than what it before possessed THis also is evident 1 In Flame where the Fume or Fat Exhalation manifestly widens itself and spreads into Flame 2 In all boyling Liquors which sensibly swell rise up and emit Bubbles still urging the process of self-dilation untill they become more extense and are turned into Vapor or Smoke or Aire 3 In Wood and all other combustible matter set on Fire where is sometimes an exudation of moysture alwaies an evaporation 4 in the melting of Metals which being most compact Bodies do not easily swell and dilate themselves and yet the Spirit of them being once excited by Fire begins instantly to dilate itself and continues to push away and drive off the grosser parts till their coherence being interrupted they become liquid and if the Heat be more and more intended it dissolves and converts much of the fixed Metal into a volatil Substance Gold only excepted 5 in a Staff of Wood or Cane which being heat in hot Embers becomes easily flexible a sign of internal dilatation 6 In Aire above all things which instantly and manifestly expands itself by a little Heat 7 In the contrary nature of Cold which contracts most Bodies forcing them into narrower spaces and shrinking their dimensions so that in extreme Frosts Nayls have been observed to fall out of Doors and Vessels of Brass to crack with many other admirable effects of great Cold noted by the Honourable Mr. Boyl in his most accurate History of Cold. So that Heat and Cold though they do many actions common to both are yet è diametro contraries in this that Heat gives a Motion expansive and dilating but Cold gives a Motion contractive and condensing PROPOS III. That Heat is a Motion expansive not uniformly through the whole Subject but through the lesser Particles thereof not free but checkt hinder'd and repulsed or reverberate So that the Motion becomes interrupt alternative perpetually trembling and striving and incited by that resistence and repuls Whence comes the Fury of Fire and Heat pent in and opposed in their Expansion OF this we have instances 1 In Flame boyling Liquors melted Metals glass Furnaces c. all which perpetually tremble swell up and again subside alternately 2 In Fire which burns more fiercely and scorches more ardently in frosty Weather 3 in common Weather-glasses in which when the Aire is expanded uniformly and equally without impediment or repuls no Heat is perceived but if you hold a Pan of burning Coals near the bottom and at the same time put a Cloth dipped in cold Water upon the top the check and repuls thereby given to the expansion of the Aire will cause a manifest trepidation in the Water and intend the borrowed Heat of it 4 In Winds pent in which though they break forth with very great violence so that their motion must needs be extremely rapid and dilating do not yet from thence conceive any sensible Heat because the motion is in all the particles of them equally and proceeds uniformly without check or interruption whereas in the burning Wind from thence called by Aristotle in Meteor 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 great heat seems to be generated from the frequent repulses and repercussions of its rapid Motion insomuch that it scorches where it blows chiefly in narrow
to arrive at the Period of his own within few Hours after ¶ PRAELECTIO V. Of Fevers IT is the custom of Mathematicians as ye most Candid Auditors well know when from a Series of Propositions premised and verified they have inferred the conclusion they sought to add as overplus certain useful Theorems or consectaneous Speculations by the Graecs called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Consectaria sive Coroltaria by the Latins the knowledg of which is many times of equal moment with that of the Verity on which they depend Give me leave then I beseech you so far to imitate this Method of those great Masters in the art of Reasoning rightly as from my discourse on Saturday last in the morning concerning the Primordia perpetual Source and circular race of Life to deduce a few Pathological Consectaries such as may perhaps afford some glimses of Light toward the discovery and nature and causes of a certain Malady which is of all others incident to Mans frail Body the most common most grievous and most dangerous And this Leave I with the greater confidence ask because I intend not to abuse it by digressing impertinently from either my present Subject or my Duty For the Subject of my Speculation designed is the same with that of my antecedent disquisition viz. the Blood and to find out the most probable Causes and reason of curing great Diseases is the principal scope and end of all our Enquiries as well Physiological as Anatomical Of which none can be ignorant who hath perused that little but oraculous Book of Hippocrates de Prisca Medicina where he teacheth that it is the great Duty of all Physicians who desire to render themselves worthy of that honourable appellation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not by discours alone but also by their Works and real succoring of the Sick to be solicitous about investigating the true Nature Causes and Remedies of Maladies above all things Nor is it new to find in the Writings of Anatomists Pathological reflexions subjoyned to the description of the part which is known to be the primary Seat of the preternatural Assections incident thereunto Secure then that what I have resolved with my self at this time to speak cannot in the end be justly esteemed a Parergon or beside the principal purpose I have taken in hand and conceiving great Hope both from the frequency and from the benign Aspect of this learned Assembly that hitherto my dulness hath not been able wholly to overcome your Patience I will presume ye are not unwilling to grant my so equitable Petition In my last Exercitation I endevored to evince as ye may be pleased to remember that the Vital Heat or Motion of the Blood doth formally consist in a certain expansive luctation of the spirituose Particles thereof with the less moveable or unactive repulsed and prevailing alternately but mild amicable benign and conducing to the exaltation of all the faculties and Uses of the Blood Now I come to add that it is not only possible but that it often happens that this Vital Motion although proceeding only from the Spirits that conserve and rule the Blood is by causes beside the institute of Nature invading it perturbed interrupted perverted and sometimes also wholly extinguished the vital Oeconomy being thereby sooner or later utterly subverted Of this we have instances almost innumerable Nor is there any one kind of preternatural Causes assignable by which Nature may not be impeded in her production of this Vital Motion and more or less perturbed as we cannot but observe it within our selves to come to pass sometimes from the immoderate Heat of the Aire surrounding us as in Ephemera sometimes from Meats and Drinks potentially too Hot as in Surfets and drunkenness sometimes from vehement Passions of the Mind as in anger Fear Grief c. Sometimes from a fermentation of the Blood as in putrid Fevers sometimes from venenate effluvia of Bodies as in pestilential and contagious Fevers sometimes from a simple solution of continuity of the Parts as in Wounds so that in fine to enumerate all the various causes by the hostility of which this Life conserving work of the vital Spirits may be hindred and perverted is a thing extremely difficult if not plainly impossible But in all these so various cases this is worthy to be noted as a general verity that the vital Spirits of the Blood are always preternaturally affected and that the disorder from thence emergent ought to be imputed to a p. n. Cause Every thing then that pollutes the Blood and that putts Nature to an effort or essay to separate and eject it from thence as alien and hostile is wont more or less according to the diversity of its Nature and Malice to impugn and repress the vital Motion of the Blood But nothing hath been observed to do it either more frequently or more contumaciously than impurities arising from Crude Humours congested in the Mass of Blood which cannot be separated and extirpated without previous Concoction or Digestion For these constituting a certain peculiar Inquinament or Pollution of the Blood put on the nature and acquire to themselves the efficacy of a Ferment not indeed such as the Leven of Bread or as the Yest of Ale and Beer but such that being in our Bodies mixt with the Blood which perpetually conceives new vital Heat in itself produceth the like commotions therein that those domestic Ferments do in their respective Subjects and may therefore be not unfitly called a Ferment according to the Name given to it by all Modern Physicians For it causeth a manifest Tumult or intestine War in the Blood after this manner The inquinament of the Blood by reason of the crudity and viscidity of its parts impugnes and hinders the benign expansive Motion of the Spirits in which I have declared the Generation of the vital Heat of it to consist and the Spirits on the contrary by their natural tendency to expand themselves oppose that repressive Force and strive to defend themselves from oppression producing by their energy a continuation of the Mication of the Blood imperfect indeed and mixt with Fermentation but the best they are able till they have gained the Victory to produce So that the Fermentation of the Blood in Fevers seems to proceed not from the impurities mixt with the Blood alone but partly from them and partly from Nature i. e. from the vital Spirits conserving the vitality of the Blood For while these are impugned checkt and hindred by those the Motion resulting from that conflict is indeed a certain Mication of the Blood but tumultuous violent unequal and interrupted with little Bubles and Froth I say therefore that this civil War in the Blood as it includes a certain Vital though imperfect and irregular Mication of the Blood cannot be denied so far forth to be the work of Nature but as that Mication is supposed to be tumultuose seditiose hostil and unequal it must be in that respect
the product of the Fermentation arising from the inquinament or corruption of the Blood This Fermentation certainly is the very same thing that the Antient Physicians meant by the Putrefaction of the Blood in Fevers calling for distinction sake all such Fevers which they conceived to arise from thence Putrid Fevers For it is not credible that Men of so acute Judgment and so curiose in observing as their Writings declare them to have been by the Word Putredo intended to signifie that sordid and noysom Corruption observed in dead and rotting Carcases which is absolutely inconsistent with the Principles of Life but only a more mild manner of dissolution of the Blood and such as doth impugn and hinder but not wholly suffocate the vital Expansion of it And of this we are certain that they used to affix the Epithet Putrid to whatsoever doth by a swift Motion degenerate into the nature of Pus or Quitter Which is generated either slowly by degrees by a gentle and long process and also without tumult as when any Humour is without a Fever digested and converted into purulent matter or speedily and with great Tumult and disorder of the State of the Body as in putrid Fevers when the Materia Febrilis or inquinament of the Blood hastens to Concoction and the Disease runs through all its Times quickly and swiftly Of these two so different ways of producing Purulent Matter in the Body the former which is alway simple and without a Fever is called by the Antients 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Maturation or Ripening of the Matter the Later which is alwaies with a Fever is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Putredo Whence that Aphorism of Hippocrates lib. 2. aph 47. Dum pus confititur dolores atque febres incidunt magis quam jam confecto In their Sense therefore Putredo is the very motion of the matter of a Fever tending to purulency and this Motion is the very same that most of the Neoterics Name Fermentation For in Fevers it is the Fermentation that brings the impurities to digestion or Concoction and disposes them to separation from the Blood and therefore the Putrid Matter and the Fermenting Matter signify one and the same thing and by consequence the Materia Febrilis and Fermentum Febrile are but two different Names of the Cause whence the Fever or fermentation of the Blood comes Now if this be granted to be consentaneous to Reason and Experience as to me it seem's to be We need no longer amuse our selves with inquiring either wherein the formal reason of a putrid Fever consists or how those two Enimies Life and a Fever can subsist together in the same Subject the Blood for what I have said may serve to expound both those riddles Confiding therefore in the firmness of this Foundation I design to erect thereupon a short Theory of the nature causes differences and principal Symptoms of Fevers and that according to the Model left to us by that most accurate Surveyor of Natures Works Dr. Fr. Glisson in his last incomparable Book reputing it well worth my diligence to paraphrase upon the Text of so great an Author And because to Physicians accurately investigating the differences of preternatural causes inducing Fevers there occur to be considered more than one kind as of Crudities so likewise of Ferments that I may not leave myself sticking in the shallows of Ambiguties 't is requisite that I clearly and distinctly explain first what I understand by CRUDE HUMORS commixt with the Blood Which I take to be generally the Material Causes of putrid Fevers and then what I mean by the Fermentum FEBRILE which I suppose to be the Efficient cause of them for by this means the Fogg of Equivocations being discussed we shall by a clearer light of distinct notions contemplate the nature of the things sought after As to the FIRST thereof viz. the CRUDITY of Humours 't is well known that Physicians observing two kinds of Concoction or Digestion performed by Nature in the Body viz. One of what is natural and familiar of the Aliment requisite to the continual reparation of the Body which they call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the other of what is preternatural and hurtful as the material cause of Diseases which is named for distinction sake 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 have accordingly constituted two sorts of Crudity one Alimenti the other Inquinamenti Of which the former that respects nutrition is ordinary arising for the most part from some error committed in the use of the six Nonnaturals and consisting chiefly in this that the Spirits of our Food are either not sufficiently excited or if excited yet not sufficiently tamed and subdued by the concoctive faculty of the Stomach to serve to promote the vital mication of the Blood The Later viz. Cruditas inquinamenti is in the general any pollution or corruption of the Blood whatsoever arising from defect of its due preparation and fitness to admit the vital Mication And this being the Mother of Fevers is that intended by Hippocrates in that most remarkable Aphorism 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Concocta medicamento purgare ac movere oportet non cruda This Crudity is subdivided into two sorts one Simple which consisting only in defect of due preparation of the Blood may be corrected per pepasmum or maturation necessarily previous to Evacuation either natural or artificial the other Malignant which always includes certain seminal Reliques of some precedent form of the matter mixt with the Blood highly Hostile to the vital Spirits and incapable of correction or mitigation and many times of expulsion Now from this Malignant crudity of matter mixt with the Blood ariseth a Malignant Fever and from the simple Crudity comes a Putrid Of both which we shall speak more copiously when we come to consider the differences of Fevers As to the SECOND viz. the difference of FERMENTS incident to our Bodies I advertise that they also may be as to my present disquisition commodiously referred to two kinds Of which the one may be called Fermentum irritans because it doth primarily by it self and directly irritate the vital Spirits of the Blood to begin an extraordinary commotion and seditious Tumult with the grosser parts of it and to endevor to deliver themselves from confinement and by dissolving the common Bond of the whole Mass thereof to fly away And under this kind are comprehended all fermenting mixtures abounding with saline Spirits highly volatile and not easily tameable by the digestive faculty of the Stomack among which the Stum of Wine is eminent The other deserves to be named Fermentum Opprimens because it at first and immediately oppresses the vital Spirits of the Blood impugning their expansive Motion tho afterward secondarily and by accident it irritates them to a Pneumatic Fermentation not to dissolve the whole mixture thereof and so to make way for themselves to fly away but only to attenuate discuss eject and exterminate the
answers to the Bile or Choler 2 A whitish and fibrose Grumus that resembles Phlegm 3 A duskish or blackish and friable Grumus comparable to the Melancholy of the Antients for other Humor that may deserve that Name there is none to be discerned in the Blood Now that we may see how far these Elements or constituent Principles of the Blood can be brought to consist with the Humors of the Antients let us equitably compare these with those According to their several Characters or descriptions the pure and natural Serum by which mixt with the Lympha the Blood is made and kept fluid seems to be the same with the natural and pure Biliose Humor of the Antients and the same corrupted and thereby grown acrimonious and corrosive what they understood by Choler analogous to the Gall. 2 The white and viscid Grumus while uncorrupt and in a natural State seems to agree with their natural Phlegm when degenerate and corrupt with that morbific Humor which they called Pituita Analoga 3 The black and friable Grumus when pure and sincere is the Humor Sanguineus specially so called and that very part of the Blood which impregnate with vital Spirits and the nitrose Spirit of the Air gives it a florid red Colour but despoiled of those Spirits and receding from that Scarlet toward a sooty or black whence probably it received the Name of Melancholy is the Melancholy they imagined to be like the Humor of the Spleen This Parallelism being granted there seems to remain no difficulty in reconciling the Doctrine of the Antients concerning the Humors contained in the Blood with the constituent Parts of it now observed by us and by consequence nothing hinders but these Analogous Humors as we have distinguisht and described them may be the Material causes of putrid Fevers yea more t is necessary that one or more of them be peccant in every putrid Fever Which is what we sought toward the establishing our present Genealogy of putrid Fevers without demolishing what the Antients have delivered of the same ¶ Let us then proceed to enquire into the Origine of Malignant Fevers which ought to be deduced from a certain Ferment of another kind not yet described For malignant Fevers being by their Nature alwaies more pernicious than simply putrid and often also contagious it must be therefore that they take their Original from some Ferment more malicious and more grievously hostile to the vital Motion of the Blood This Ferment then whatsoever we shall at length discover it to be may justly be named in the general FERMENTUM MALIGNUM as coming neer to the nature of Poison properly so called about the reason of whose fierce and pernicious Operation upon the very principles of Life Physicians are strangely divided in their Opinions Omitting all which I humbly conceive that the deleterious or deadly force of any Poison whatsoever doth consist not in any manifest quality but in some Seminal Nature highly adverse and destructive to the Mication of the Blood in Man upon which his Life immediately depends There are I must confess too many other things that with equal speed and cruelty break asunder the slender Ligaments of Life even by their manifest qualities if once admitted into the Stomach as Fire Oyl of Vitriol strong Spirit of Salt Aqua Fortis Lixivial Caustics Arsenic Sublimate c. Which by reason of the extreme subtility and most rapid Motions of their Particles and of their force of Penetrating cutting corroding and dissolving almost all Bodies to which they are applied are as mortal as a Sword or Bullet but all these if they be sufficiently diluted lose their fatal Virtue and become innoxious nor can they be rightly reckned among Venoms no more than a Dagger or Halter because they destroy by manifest Qualities and wayes evident to the Sense But Poyson whose Power is founded in a seminal Nature secretly repugnant and pernicious to human Nature whether it be bred in the Body or introduced by contagion or otherwise is always more or less noxious in a small quantity and in a full Dose deadly so that t is dangerous to trust to a dilution of any such Venom And to this kind are the Malignant Ferments of which I am now speaking to be referred though some of them be more venomous than others and some more contagious For the Malignity of all seems to consist in a Seminal Nature which being communicated to the Blood is apt to impugn retard oppress and when it prevails totally extinguish the expansive Motions of the vital Spirits that conserve it ¶ HAVING thus concisely explained the formal reasons and distinct proprieties of both sorts of Febrile Ferments the Putrid and the Malignant that work immediately and per se by way of Oppression of the vital Spirits 't is opportune for us to inquire into the Nature of them considered first absolutely and then respectively to the manner of their Operation upon the Blood in generating Fevers I advertise therefore that when I speak of Crude Chyle brought into the Mass of Blood and by degrees inducing putrefaction or Fermentation upon it as I have briefly shewn in the Paragraph concerning putrid Humors rendring the Blood impure I do not call such Chyle Crude because I think it wholly unfit to afford some nourishment to the solid Parts though impure and imperfect but because it is not sufficiently concocted and prepared so as that being united with the Blood it should be made the immediate Subject of the vital Spirits or which is the same thing be impregnated with Vitality Now Chyle in this sense Crude hath not yet attained to a degree of inquinament high enough to give it the nature and force of a Febrile Ferment which strikes at the very Root of the vital Motion or Heat For it consisteth in a certain Aptitude to infringe diminish retard oppress and if not overcome and expell'd by the Spirits of the Blood utterly extinguish the vital Mication of the Blood whence Life results For consentaneous it is both to experience and to reason that this appitude is not acquired in a few moments of time after Crudities have been commixt with the Blood nor doth it actually attack the vital Spirits so soon as the Ferment is diffused but doth exsert its Power slowly by insensible degrees and as it were by creeping on like an Enemy that designs to steal a Victory First it gently and by little and little insinuates itself into the Mass of Blood and diffuses itself equally through all the parts of it Then it comes to be united with the Spirits that conserve the Blood as if it were a natural ingredient of the mixture That done if either the quantity or contumacy of it be so great as that the vital Spirits be unable to moderate and reduce it to conformity or to expel and dissipate it it begins to operate to weaken and suppress them affecting them with a kind of Torpor and clogging them so as they cannot
the six non-naturals and Extraordinary or alien and hostile to human Nature From the former come all Fevers call'd simply Putrid from the Later Malignant and Contagiose or Venenose The Ordinary may be subdivided into 1 Recent or lately generated such as is either carried out of the Stomach and Guts in the form of crude Chyle or reduced from some part or other inflamed or otherwise corrupted and 2 Inveterate or in a long tract of time by little and little congested and adhering to the substance of the solid Parts The former if it happens to pass into a febrile Ferment produces a Fever putrid indeed but of only one Paroxysm The Later likewise generates a Fever Putrid either accompanying some other Malady or Symptomatic but each of them either Continual of uncertain exacerbation or intermittent of uncertain Paroxysms The Etraordinary or Malignant which includes some certain seminal Principle dangerous and hostile to human Nature is also double viz. either it is disseminated by contagion or is primarily bred in the Body affected The Former though resolved into an exhalation and dispersed through the Air still retains its poysonous Virtue as the Miasma Pestilentiale or infection of the Plague The other is either not resolved into exhalations as Arsenic or is in the very resolution despoiled of its seminal malignity as the Breath of a mad Dog which seldom or never infects alone without the Saliva in forth Having exhibited to your consideration this plain and brief Scheme of the different material Causes from which I suppose the principal differences of Fevers to proceed I must reflect upon the Heads thereof more particularly and in the first place resume the explication of Crudity not Malignant as that which both more frequently occurs to our observation and is less obscure The Matter of Putrid Fevers Not-Malignant proceeds as I lately insinuated either 1 From defect of Concoction of the Chyle in the Stomach and Intestines or 2 From defect of due eventilation and free motion of the Blood in its Circuit Defect of Concoction of the Chyle is a thing so common and so fully explained by Physicians in their practical Writings that it is sufficient for me to name it And indeed in all Fevers the concoctive faculty of the Stomach is wont so much to languish that scarce any thing of aliment can be without detriment taken into the Stomach already troubled and inquinated with vitious and corrupt Humors For then the Food is not digested but whatever of either Juice or Tincture is drawn from it remains crude and turns to the Augment of the matter of the Fever Whence it comes that fasting and a thin Diet are so much commended by all in putrid Fevers Only in Pestilential a Diet less spare is sometimes allowed with good Success because the benignity and sweet Spirits of the Aliment are found to contemperate the Seminium Pestiferum and reduce it to a milder disposition Not of these Fevers therefore but only of those are we to understand the Counsel given by Hippocrates Aphorism n. Lib. 2. Corpora impura quò plus alimenti assumunt eò pluribus damnis augentur Aphor. 7. Lib. 1. si morbus sit peracutus tenuissima diaeta est utendum Defect of due Transpiration or Eventilation and of free Circuition of the Blood is sometimes the Cause sometimes the Effect of Fermentation therein The Cause if no other vice before disposing the Blood to Putrefaction hath given fit matter for the Generation of a Fever for want of free Transpiration and Interception of the course of the Blood in any part of the Body is alone sufficient to infer putrefaction upon the Blood but then the Fever is for the most part easily discussed and with one universal Sweat wholly solved It ariseth commonly from the diminished perspirability and permeability either of the whole Body or of some private part whose inconspicuous pores are constipated or obstructed and this happens either with or without extravasation of Blood With extravasation comes a Tumor if not an Aposteme which most commonly produces a Fever of uncertain Exacerbation as is frequently observed in great Obstructions and Abscesses of the Lungs Having concisely recounted the Procatartic or Antecedent Causes of crude Matter apt to induce putrid Fevers I must come to explain what I said of the Aptitude of crude Chyle received into the Blood to corrupt it Miasmate Febrili That I may do this with perspicuity and coherence two things occur here to be considered One is when that supposed Aptitude or Disposition of Chyle imperfectly concocted comes to be matured or exalted to an actual fermentation of the Blood the other where that crude Chyle is wont to lurk or lie concealed until attaining to ripeness it hath acquired forces sufficient to induce fermentation upon the Blood To the FORMER of these two questions therefore I answer that crude Chyle though from its first admission into the Blood it continually tend toward a febrile Ferment doth yet notwithstanding rarely attain to that last Degree of depravity where it meets not with an Apparatus of like matter before congested in the Body sufficient to augment its Forces and serve for convenient Fewel to a Fever For it is by long experience found that very few fall into any simply putrid Fever unless after many errors admitted in the use of the six Non-naturals nor is the febrile Ferment it self wont so soon as it is existent in the Body to kindle a Fever by breaking out into acts of open hostility upon the sudden but by secretly creeping on as it were and passing through certain degrees of operation successively First it is insensibly diffused through and intimately commixt with the whole Mass of the Blood after the manner of other Ferments Then inwrapping the vital Spirits by little and little with its clammyness it diminishes their Agility and disposes them to sloth After this it endeavours to inviscate bind and as it were suffocate them and then it is that from their expansive reluctation the conflict and fermentation commences All which may be collected from intermittent Fevers at least if it be true what many eminent Physicians hold that the whole Febrile Matter that causes a Paroxysm is as it were burn'd out and consumed in that Paroxysm as in an intermittent Tertian there intervenes a whole day of vacancy from a Fever and of quiet betwixt every two Paroxysms during which interval the febrile Ferment is only dispositive and preparing to unite it self intimately with the vital Spirits But in a simple Quartan two whole days intervene betwixt the precedent Paroxysm and the Subsequent the febrile Ferment all that while recruiting its Forces From whence it is highly probable that the crude matter doth not presently produce a Fermentation but by degrees and by way of disposition Which may be sufficient to solve the first Question viz. When the crudities commixt with the Blood come to acquire he degree of exaltation requisite to induce an actual
they were fomented only by Matter before contained in the Veins and Arteries and yet afterward when they began to be supplied with new Matter or Fewel from the colliquated Crudities that had been long congested in the habit of the Body they have raged in extremity and continued long before Nature however accurately assisted and succour'd by our Art could bring them to a Crisis Conclude we therefore that in putrid Fevers there is no other Fomes but the described Crudities by long intemperance and other errors in Diet congested in the babit of the solid Parts For these are in all putrid Fevers daily resolved or fused into a certain Sanies or corrupt Matter and constitute a new febrile Ferment which is the thing we have gone so far about to find But yet I must not omit to subjoin that these Liquamina of the solid Parts imperfectly nourisht are not confined within the narrow compass of one single Genus but diffused through a large Field of indefinite variety For as indulgent Nature hath granted to us various kinds of Aliments each of which is in its peculiar qualities or proprieties in some sort distinct from all the rest and as the Iuices or Tinctures extracted from them by the concoctive Faculty of the Stomach are in diversity respondent to the diversity of our Meats and Drinks So must it be granted that the Crudities after imperfect digestion admitted first into the Blood and then into the habit of the Body and there affix'd to the solid Parts and at length resolved into a certain kind of Sanies that is most apt to afford Fewel to putrid Fevers as hath been often affirm'd cannot be all of a Sort but some different from others respectively to the different matters of which they were generated And of these doubtless the variety is greater than can possibly be known by any Physician however curiose so far are we from hope to reduce them all to Computation It were hard then for me if any here present should exact from me an accompt of more of these obscure Differences than what my present institute requires me briefly to explain and all my learned Hearers will I presume be contented if I do my devoir to reduce them in general to the Analogous Humors of the Antients above described namely Choler Phlegm and Melancholy not pure or natural but Corrupt For from these Humors taken in the Sense afore explicated may be commodiously and congruously deduced both the principal differences of putrid Fevers and the most probable causes of those Differences First therefore I must put you in remembrance of what I have more than once asserted viz. That the Humors by this Hypothesis assigned to putrid Fevers for their Causes both antecedent and conjunct are such which are not exolete or stale and despoiled of their Spirits and grown vappid but sufficiently stored with Spirits noxious and infest to the vital mication of the Blood Then I with good reason suppose that when the Crudities received first into the Mass of Blood and after into the substance of the Parts come neer to the nature of the Serum of the Blood now corrupt and by that putrefaction render'd acrimonious and well nigh Corrosive which emulating the Bile contained in the Bladder of Gall makes the Choler of the Antients there is congested and prepared Matter most apt and disposed to produce Biliose Fevers as they are call'd Tertians either continual or intermittent That in case the congested Crudities neerly resemble the white and viscid Grumus of the Blood which makes the Analogous Phlegm of the Antients but corrupt then there is laid up Fewel most convenient to foment Pituitose Fevers Quotidians continual or intermittent That if it happens that the Crudities congested be of such a Nature and Condition as to be affine to the Analogous Melancholly of the Antients i. e. to the blackish Grumus of the Blood degenerate from its natural purity and corrupt then the Bodies carrying them about are obnoxious and prone to a Quartan ere long to invade them And this may suffice to explain the Sentiments suggested to me by Glisson's new Doctrine concerning the most general and obvious Differences of Crudities apt to produce Fevers so far forth as they may be taken for the Conjunct Causes of putrid Fevers ¶ I come then to the Fundament of the so often mentioned division of putrid Fevers into CONTINUAL and INTERMITTENT that we may opportunely investigate what that is on which this remarkable difference seems immediately to depend This in probability is nothing else but the very Fermentation of the Blood in which alone the formal Reason of all Fevers doth consist and which by vehemently exagitating the whole Mass of the Blood sometimes continually sometimes by Intervals and those one while certain and ordinate another while uncertain and inordinate induces that Intense and afflicting Heat in which alone the Antients have unanimously placed the essence of a Fever and renders the Pulses of the Heart and Arteries more frequent than they ought to be so that from thence alone as from a Pathognomonic Sign a Physician may certainly conclude of the presence of a Fever A continual Fever therefore is that which from the first Moment of its Invasion to the last of its duration continnes and afflicts without Intermission never coming in all that time to a perfect Apyrexia or utter Extinction This Fever if it be mild gentle unaccompanied with grievous Accidents or Symptomes and but of one days continuance is thence call'd an Ephemera or Diaria if in like manner mild but of two three or four Days duration it is denominated accordingly a Diaria of a few Days or more properly Synochus Simplex An Intermittent Fever is that in which the febrile Fermentation doth not dure from the beginning to the end continually but is intermitted and returns with diverse Paroxysms after Intervals now shorter now longer and these Paroxysms running through their peculiar times namely their beginning augment state and declination there alternately i. e. after the end of every single Paroxysm succeds an Apyrexia not perfect perhaps but quoad Sensum From this vicissitude or rather from the various Intercalation of the Paroxysms various sorts of intermittent Fevers have for distinction sake obtain'd various Names In particular when a new Fit in proportion respondent to the former returns dayly i. e. once in every twenty four Hours the Fever is named an intermitting Quotidian When a Paroxysm recurs every other Day or on every third Day t is called a Tertian and by the Vulgar a third-Days Ague When the Paroxysm recurs not till after two whole Days of intermission 't is call'd a Quartan or fourth-Days Ague and so forward for there have been observ'd also Quintans and Sextan's though very rarely Here give me leave en passant to note that the word Ague by which the common People understand an intermittent Fever is derived from the French adjective Aigù which signifies Acute or sharp perhaps
if I subjoyn a brief Therapeutic Corollary pertinent to my precedent discourse and useful to Younger Students in Medicine for whose instruction chiefly it was that the wise and prudent Authors of the Statutes of this our so worthily renowned Colledge first instituted and ordained Anatomic Lectures to be therein read by the learned Fellows thereof whensoever it should seem fit to the venerable President I will therefore do my devoir to explicate wherein chiefly consists that Pepasmus or Concoction of crude Humors which Nature and her great Minister Hippocrates require to their opportune Evacuation in putrid Fevers and by what kinds of Remedies the same may be best assisted and advanced For these things being well understood will afford much of Light toward the direction of the younger Sons of Art in the true and most rational method of curing Fevers in which no error can be little no caution too great I begin from that never to be forgotten precept of the Divine old Man afore recited 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Concocta medicamento purgare oportet ac movere non cruda neque ineunte morbo nisi materia turgeat To which Seneca seems to have had respect when he said in morbis nihil est magis periculosum quà m immatura medicina and Livy when he affirmed Medicos plus interdum quiete quà m movendo agendo proficere The Concoction or digestion here meant is by Hippocrates expressed sometimes by the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sometimes by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to contradistinguish it from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which properly signifies the digestion of Aliment as I have before advertised and according to the general Notion of all learned Physicians Antient and Modern it is eorum quae sunt in corpore praeter naturam ad moderatam secuturae expulsioni percommodam temperiem deductio In which Sense Duretus the most faithful interpreter of the Oracle of Cous expounds that place Lib. 1. Epidem Anutii Foesii edit Pag. 365. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 eorum quae exeunt concoctiones spectandas esse Upon which Galen copiously commenting gives this memorable definition of the thing 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 nempe coctio est quaedam eorum quoe sunt praeter naturam morbi maturatio And most rightly For the Word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was properly used by the Graecians to express the ripeness of the Fruits of Trees by which they are advanced from the State of Crudeness or immaturity to that of maturity or perfection and metaphorically to signify that maturity of the matter of Diseases which Nature by degrees induces in order to the seasonable and beneficial expulsion of it when she attempts a Crisis by ways most convenient Not that this Maturation is always to be expected in acute Diseases For we are to remember there are two sorts of Crudity of Causes apt to induce Fevers one capable of being brought to moderation and ripeness as that of the Blood in a Phlegmon of the phlegm in a Quotidian of Choler in a Tertian c. Another incapable of correction and mitigation as the Febrile Ferment that causes Malignant and Pestilential Fevers which being by its seminal Nature and unalterable Form pernicious to the very principles of Life in Man is sometimes by the force of Nature expelled and utterly exterminated out of the Body but never can be so changed and brought into subjection as to be made less hostile to the vital Spirits that conserve the Blood And therefore in such Fevers wise Physicians are not wont to stay expecting Maturation of the Poyson mixt with and fermenting the Blood in the mean time losing the Opportunities of relieving Nature by proper Alexiterial and Sudorific remedies To come then to the Marrow of the Question proposed Considering 1 That the Crudity of Humors inducing Fevers simply putrid consisteth only in this that the Spirits lodged in them are not sufficiently educed excited and prepared so as to be fit to promote the vital mication of the Blood 2 that all Fevers are essentially founded in the fermentation of the Blood and 3 That the vital Motion or Heat of the Blood is always more or less impeded and perturbed and often utterly extinguisht by that Fermentation considering these things I say t is not difficult thence to infer that the Pepasmus or Concoction requisite in all Fevers simply putrid i. e. not Malignant must consist chiefly in three things è diametro opposite to those now mentioned namely 1 In the Dissipation and Consumption of the crude Spirits mixt with the Blood 2 In the Moderation of the Fermentation begun and 3 In the Conservation and Corroboration of the vital Powers And these certainly are the three principal Scopes to which a Physician ought to direct his Counsels in the cure of putrid Fevers and which for their great importance require to be singly explain'd To the first of these principal Scopes viz. the Dissipation and absumption of crude Spirits and requisite eventilation of the Blood by them inquinated we may most commodiously attain by fasting at least by a thin Diet by Remedies extenuating acid predatory and conducing to leanness by Diaphoretics Sudorifics and by letting of Blood For 1 Fasting tends directly to dissipation of the crude Spirits because the Spirits if not by intervals recruited out of new supplies of Aliment must necessarily be soon exhausted and resolved into Air. But no mortal being able long to abstain from all sorts of Meat and Drink or to endure absolute fasting we are therefore compell'd to substitute a thin and spare Diet in the place of strict abstinence for the most part thin Broths made of things moystning cooling not prone to corruption subacid and of easie digestion To these 2 are added moderate and grateful Acids apt to attenuate resolve and dissipate the Crudities congested in the habit of the Parts and therefore predatory 3 Diaphoretics which promoting insensible Transpiration must conduce to the dispersion and exhalation of the same Crudities 4 Sudorifics which do the same thing but by a more expedite and conspicuous operation at once rendring the Crudities fluxile and exciting Nature to drive them forth by Sweat For Medicaments of this Family by the tenuity and mobility of their Particles penetrate the inmost Recesses and slenderest Pores of the Body cut attenuate and rarefie Humors into Vapors and irritate the Parts to expel them together with the Serum of the Blood in the form of Sweat But in the use of these Hidrotic Medicaments great circumspection is required lest the matter of the Fever being not yet mature and prepared for this evacuation be both importunely and with too much Violence exagitated to farther corruption of the Blood and increase of the Fermentation So that they cannot be safely administerd to impure Bodies in the beginning nor indeed in the augment until certain Signs of some Concoction have been observed 5 Letting forth of Blood by opening a Vein which evidently detracts part of the Crude Matter
to be educed are obstructed by any vitiose matter cramm'd into them For remedies of this Classis by reason of the great tenuity acuteness and agility of their Particles penetrating into the smallest Vessels and Pores and attenuating viscid and tenacious humours therein sticking open all passages in the Body No wonder then if by rendring the clammy matter of Fevers more thin fluid and more obedient to nature endeavouring upon irritation by Purgers to expel it they conduce mightily to the more facile and more successful operation of Purges Nevertheless we are to advert that not all sorts of humours are to be made fluxil before any be exterminated by artificial purgation but that we are in pertinacious obstructions of the Viscera to act with Aperients and gentle Cathartics by turns For as there are degrees of Concoction so likewise ought there to be degrees of evacuation and so soon as any part of the peccant matter is concocted and prepared we must attempt to carry it off to the end that nature being thereby exonerated of part of her Load may with more facility digest the Remainder at least when we perceive her to be oppressed by too great weight Of Aperients some are hot which ought to be administred to Men of robust Bodies and cold complexion and such as labour of inveterate Oppilations some cold which are proper for persons of hot constitutions and prone to abound with Biliose or Choleric Humours others Temperate and therefore most convenient to tender soft delicate and crazy Bodies But these three sorts being judiciously contemperate mutually refract each the others qualities so as to reduce them to mediocrity Other differences of Aperients there are which I must lightly touch Some remove Oppilations by attenuating simply without the least of Astriction as the five opening Roots the Bark of Tamarise and of the Roots of Capers the Leaves of Maiden hair Hearts tongue Ceterach and Fern Roots c. Others both open and moderately bind as Endive Cichory Agrimony Rhubarb Sage c. Others again are endowed with an aperitive faculty but are withal vehemently astringent as Steel which hath no fellow Now as to the seasonable use of these differences in the beginning Aperients without Astriction are most convenient because they best dispose the humours to fluxility and clear the passages yet are they to be prescribed with this caution that the tone of the parts be not by the importune use of them dissolved or irritated to a cruentation The safer way therefore is to mix with them one or two of the second Tribe that have somewhat of Astriction in them Aperients moderately astringent are indeed in themselves most safe but they are given with best success after a general Evacuation And more vehement Astringents are to be kept in reserve to finish the cure by restoring the weakned parts to their pristine tone and vigor But is it not plainly dissonant to reason ye will say that the same remedies should be at once both Aperient and Astringent I answer therefore with Doctor Glisson that Aperients and Astringents are not directly opposite each to the others For the contraries to Aperients are Obstruents and to Astringents Laxants Besides in a Cachexy and Dropsie which either proceed from or are commonly accompanied with great Obstructions the natural tone of the parts is always relax'd more or less It must be confessed indeed that in those maladies the tension of the Nerves is for the most part too great by reason of their continual irritation by vitiose humours but nevertheless it cannot be denied that their natural tone is less firm than it ought to be If therefore Obstruction may consist with Laxity why may not Deoppilation as well consist with Astriction And thus have I run over the three principal things praerequisite to Evacuation in putrid Fevers viz correction of the peccant matter conservation of the vital Mication of the Blood and permeability of the ways It remains only that I adjust what hath been said to a certain Rule of Hippocrates that seems to render it doubtful The precept is this Aphor. 29. lib. 2. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ineuntibus morbis si quid movendum videatur move Which some perhaps may think plainly repugnant to the former Aphorism upon the explication whereof I have so long insisted To reconcile therefore these two equally true Aphorisms I must acknowledge that it is not always requisite to expect a Pepasmus or maturation of the Morbific Matter in Fevers simply putrid For there are various cases in which whether they happen to be single or concurrent the counsel of this latter Aphorism is to be preferred to that of the former And all these Cases may be reduced to the number of five The FIRST is when any vitiose humor either by its abundance or irritating quality or motion doth molest the patient in the first region of the Body that is in the Stomach or Guts or Pancreas or Liver c. which requires to be speedily expelled upward or downward For 't is not to be doubted but that a Physician may and ought in this case to relieve molested nature as soon as is possible by carrying off the irrequiet humor 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by ways most convenient And by the Oracle of frequent experience we are taught that not only intermittent but continual Fevers also are much diminished if not totally eradicated by safe Vomits or Purges administred in the beginning For the fovent cause being taken away the proxime cause is much more easily discussed which seems not to be any humor stagnating or congested either in the Viscera themselves or in their Confines as hath been already shewn but floating in the Mass of Blood within the Arteries and Veins This therefore is not to be attempted by any purging Medicament until Concoction hath preceded and the latter Aphorism advising Purgation in the beginning of putrid Fevers is restrained to crude humors contained in the first Region of the Body nor doth it respect the times of Diseases so much as the strength of the sick which is very rarely exhausted in the beginning according to the judgment of Galen libr. ad Thrasybulum cap. 38. who gives this reason of the Aphorism Quòd natura adhuc satis valida existens detractâ oneris quo premitur parte quod reliquum est faciliùs ferre citiusque concoquendo mitigare possit Hence it is that not only Glysters that rinse the Guts but gentle Solutives also such as may without any great tumult or commotion carry off any vitiose humor lodged in primis viis are commended by the most experienced Physicians in the beginning of putrid Fevers The SECOND Case is when any matter incapable of mitigation by Concoction begins to shew its Turgescence i. e. either from its abundance or from its malign quality flying from place to place induceth a frequent mutation or shifting of Symptoms all which Hippocrates comprehended in the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies
rage or fury Which for the most part happens in the beginning of the Fever and then arise various Symptoms and dangerous according to the various Temperament Irritability Action Use and Situation of the part upon which the turgent matter rusheth As for instance in Phrenetic Patients we observe an admirable change of Symptoms sometimes their Sight sometimes their Hearing sometimes their Tongue being invaded and disordered by the wandering humor that causes their Delirium and often shifts the scene of its tragical fury And the Reason seems to be this that the inraged matter of the Disease is so highly offensive to Humane Nature that no part of the whole Body can suffer it so much as one moment of time without uniting the Forces of all its irritated Fibres to squeeze it out so that it is transmitted from some parts to others in a trice If it happen therefore that any crude humor be in this impetuose manner transmitted to any Secretory Organ even though it be not redundant in the whole Body a considerable part of it may be by help of purging Medicaments respective to that Organ speedily carried off to the preservation of the Patients life For the humor so turgent and rushing into the Organ doth by its very motion irritate the Fibres of it to contract themselves vigorously to expel it no less than if it were redundant in the whole Body If the storm then fall upon the Stomach the danger thence impendent may be easily prevented by a moderate Vomit given before the humor be removed to some other part if upon the Guts a convenient Purge may serve to turn it downward And yet I must confess that such early Evacuations are commonly tumultuous and painful as promiscuously educing all humors they meet with and therefore never to be instituted but where the matter of the Disease is turgent The THIRD Case is when some little portions of any one or more of the Analogous Humors formerly described chance to be carried together with the stale and dead recrements of the Blood to the Secretory Organs In particular when some of the acrimonious and corroding Serum of the Blood is by nature therewith offended transmitted together with the Biliose Excrement of it to the Liver or some of the whitish and viscid Grumus of the Blood together with the Pituita emortua to the Stomach or finally some of the aqueous or potulent matter with that of the Urine to the Kidneys Because Nature tends that way and being assisted by a convenient Parge in the first Case in the second by a gentle Vomit and by temperate Diuretics in the third may continue the same course until she has brought the remainder of the peccant matter to a perfect Crisis The FOURTH is when any vitiose matter yet crude is so redundant in the Blood that nature reduced to her last shift is compelled to exclude it by parcels by any Secretory Organ not by that which is most proper and congruous to the nature of the humor As it happens in the Yellow Iaundise when part of the corrupt Choler is separated from the Blood in the Kidneys and makes the Urine thick turbid and yellow and in that dreadful Disease call'd Cholera all the Bilis ejected upward and downward is not concocted and truly felleous but for the greater part crude and only analogous to that which is separated from the Blood in the Liver and thence brought into the Bladder of Gall and seems to be generated by a certain malign or venenose corruption of the Blood For improbable it is that so prodigious a quantity of biliose matter hath been separated in so little time by the Liver or excreted by the Porus Bilarius but most probable that the same is separated from the whole Mass of Blood in the inmost Coat of the Stomach and Guts In like manner they who drink Mineral Waters or Wine profusely make Urine indeed in abundance but thin and crude The FIFTH and last Case is when the Febrile Fermentation appears to be slow and lingring For here 't is lawful by just intervals to ordain Evacuations by milder Cathartics not only in respect of the Focus which in such Cases is wont to be recruited often and therefore requires to be substracted by repeted Evacuations but also that the Fermentation it self may be quickned and so nature excited to perform her work of digesting the Crudities with more vigor and expedition Besides since in lent and lingring Fevers the crude matter is not brought to the state of maturation all at once but first some part and then more and more successively 't is fit the same should be evacuated per Epicrasin or part after part accordingly and this lest that part of the matter that is first digested remain still mixed with the Blood and inquinate it or at least being separated in the inmost Coat of the Stomach and Guts pervert either the Concoction or Distribution of the Chyle and so foment the Disease And thus have ye at length succinctly set before you all the opportunities in which it is not only lawful but expedient for a Learned Physician directing his judgment 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as our Master Hippocrates speaks by certain observation of Signs and Symptoms in the sick to institute convenient Evacuations at least by milder purging Medicaments even in the beginning of putrid Fevers Nor doth any thing else remain for me now to subjoyn concerning this Argument but this brief admonition that no young Practitioner be so rash as to purge where he finds not one or more of these opportunities offered to him For if he attempt crude matter by strong and fierce Catharticks 't is ten to one but he will exhaust much of the vital spirits colliquate the Blood and render the Disease mortal ¶ CONCLUSION ANAGNOSTICK 'T is the custom of Travellers ye know when they have with panting Breast and painful Steps ascended to the top of a steep Mountain to turn about and look back upon the places and ways they have with so much labor and patience passed and this not only to take breath a while but to imprint more deeply in their memory the Images of whatever things they had in transitu observ'd uncertain whether or no Fortune may ever bring them that way again Let us then most judicious and most candid Auditors who are all Travellers too in the most darksome and rocky ways of Natural Knowledge follow their Example and having now at length attain'd to the end of this Mornings Journey take a short review of the things offered to your notice as we passed along to the end ye may the more easily recall them to mind whenever ye shall be pleased to think them not altogether unworthy your Examen it being unlikely that I shall at any time hereafter have the honour to serve you in the quality not of a Guide but Torch-bearer in this place The Heads therefore of the various things proposed by me to your
consideration are these I shewed in the first Stadium 1. That the vital motion of the Blood is sometimes disordered impeded and impugned by causes praeternatural and chiefly by crude humors constituting a peculiar Fermentative Inquinament of the Blood and that from thence arises a duel or conflict between the vital spirits on one side and that Inquinament on the other which conflict in putrid Fevers is call'd by the Ancients Putrefaction and Fermentation by the Moderns 2. That the same Ferment in Fevers tends naturally to the oppression of the vital Mication of the Blood in which life it self immediately consists 3. That the crudity of humors generating that Ferment and consequently Fevers doth consist chiefly in this that the spirits of our food receiv'd into the Stomach either have not been by the concoctive faculty thereof sufficiently exalted which always happens in Fevers simply putrid or though excited have not been subdued and tamed so as to become useful and fit to promote the vital Mication of the Blood which always happens in Malignant Fevers 4. That the principal reason why in putrid Fevers it is unsafe to purge before nature hath concocted the crude matter mixed with the Blood seems to be this that in the whole Body are no Secretory Organs destined peculiarly to the separation of humors yet crude from the Mass of Blood 5. That the Analogous Humors of the Ancients are coincident with the Elements by the Moderns supposed to constitute the Blood and that it is plainly necessary that in every Fever of whatever sort some one or more of those Analogous Humors be in fault 6. That the formal reason of a Malignant Ferment is radicated in some seminal nature pernicious to the principles of Life in Man In the Second 1. That the oppressive Energy of the Febrile Ferment described comes immediately from the pendulous Lentor or clamminess of it by which it is apt to render the Blood soul and roapy and to inviscate the vital spirits that should by their expansive motion conserve its purity 2. That these vital spirits are incited to raise a Fermentation not by the exhalations of the Blood retained but only by the said clamminess of the crude matter inducing the Fever In the Third 1. That the Symptoms contingent in the beginning of a Febrile Paroxysm may be most commodiously referred to the aforesaid Conflict or Colluctation betwixt the expansive endeavour of the vital spirits and the opposite clamminess of the Febrile Ferment And 2. that the Symptoms succeeding in the Augment State and Declination may be with equal congruity solved by the same Hypothesis In the Fourth 1. That the cardinal Differences of Fevers are most probably derived from the Different Ferments that induce them immediately 2. That the Origin of all Fevers simply putrid i. e. free from all Malignity may be most congruously deduced mediately from defect either of Chylification or Transpiration and free motion of the Blood whether this happen with or without extravasation thereof 3. That the Blood when inquinated by crude Chyle doth not presently conceive a Fermentation but after some time and by degrees 4. That in intermittent Fevers the matter of each single Fit is not generated anew but comes from a general Fomes existent in the very substance of the solid parts imperfectly nourish'd with crude juices 5. That this very substance of the solid parts is melted into a kind of Sanies or putrid matter and remixt with the Blood in all putrid Fevers 6. That the Analogous Humors of the Ancients result from various Crudities mixed with the Blood and that from thence arise various sorts of Fevers namely biliose pituitose and melancholic 7. That the division of Fevers into continual and intermittent doth immediatly depend upon the Fermentation sometimes continual sometimes ceasing and recurring diversly by intervals 8. That an intermittent Fever simple is not the direct cause of an intermittent double or triple In the Fifth and Last 1. That to the Maturation of the crude matter are required three things viz. Dissipation and Consumption of the unexcited spirits therein remaining Moderation of the Fermentation already begun and Conservation of the Vital Faculties 2. That in order to safe and opportune Evacuation of the same peccant matter is required also due preparation of the Ways or Passages by which it is to be educed and that by Remedies Lubricant Abstergent Aperient 3. That sometimes even in the beginning of putrid Fevers Purgation is requisite specially when vitious humors molest in the first Region of the Body or when the Febrile Matter is turgent or when part of it is transmitted together with the stale Recrements of the Blood to any one or more of the three Secretory Organs or when Crudities are highly redundant in the Mass of Blood or finally when the Fermentation it self is too sluggish and lingring but in no other case whatsoever And this most candid Auditors is the Sum of what hath been in this Session said concerning Fevers Nor have I any thing more to add but only this that if I have by offering you this Abridgement usurped the Office of your Anagnostes it was not from a vain conceit that the positions therein contained are worthy your belief but only from hopes that ye might be thereby more easily inclined to let me understand from your judgment of them how far they may be worthy mine For in this Argument as in all others whether Physical or Pathological I pretend not to know truth but to seek it nor to seek it contumaciously and arrogantly but modestly and doubtingly as becomes a Man a Philosopher and a Fellow of this Royal Colledge of Physicians into which I entered with no other ambition but that of being more and more instructed in Natural Science and all other Virtues ¶ PRAELECTIO VI. OF MOTION VOLUNTARY IN the beginning of time when it pleas'd the Divine Majesty to call this visible University of things the World out of nothing and to create Subjects whereon to exercise his infinite goodness having indowed all living Creatures with Appetites requisite to the conservation of their peculiar Beings and accommodated them with Objects proportionate to those Appetites He saw it convenient to consummate that Emanation of his Bounty by furnishing them also with Faculties by which they might be impowerd not only to discern what Objects are good or convenient what evil or inconvenient to their particular Natures but also to pursue or avoide them accordingly Now among these so necessary Faculties that by which all Animals are inabled to prosecute what is presented to them under the appearance of Good and to eschew what they apprehend to be Evil is what Physiologists call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the faculty LOCOMOTIVE and rightly enough define to be the Power by which a living Creature is inabled to move or transferr from place to place either is whole Body or any Part thereof at pleasure To the putting this noble Power into Act are required as
creep along slowly For some there are who fond of the Chimera's of their own Imagination and carried away by affectation of Glory from the invention of I know not what new Theories in Physic as if Philosophers were like young Ladies best pleased with Novels have confidently taught that these Spirits are not only moved most rapidly in the Brain and Nerves as Lightning is darted through the Air but as it were shot out at command of the Phantasie into the Nerves and recall'd again by the same ways in an instant according to the exigence of the Actions to be performed by them And yet neither of these seems consonant to right Reason Not the Former because in their supposed Motion from without inward by which these Gent. would have all sensation to be made the perception of a tangible Object for example which is made in the top of a Finger is in the very same Moment perceived within in the Brain and the Action of the Finger and the Action of the Brain make one continued total sensation of the whole Object Which could never be in case that Sensation were performed immediately by the Ministry of Animal Spirits For these Spirits so soon as they are informed in the external Organ of Touching of what nature the Object is cannot bring in tidings of what is done there unless they recur and fly in to give an account of their Embassy and at the same time desert the outward Organ So that the action of the outward Organ cannot be coincident with the action of the Brain unless you can obtain of them that the very same animal Spirits are in the Finger and in the Brain at the same time which is manifestly absur'd Evident therefore it is that Sensation cannot be made by the mediation of animal Spirits as these Positive Wits have defined Not the Later because we do not find that Nature hath any where in the Body instituted contrary Motions of the same Fluid in the same Vessels unless in the branches of the Wind-pipe and in the Guts In respiration the Air is both received into the Lungs and thence quickly emitted together with the Vapors of the Blood by the aspera arteria which being to that end made of round or circular Gristles is alwaies open and the Thorax is always organically dilated and contracted alternately In the Gutts also Nature hath ordained a Flux and reflux of the Chyle but they have a Peristaltic motion granted to them to that end in order to the frequent inversion and more expedite distribution of the Chyle But in the Nerves there occurs no sufficient reason why the Spirits should be carried sometimes outward and sometimes inward unless we attribute to them a Peristaltick motion or imagine that the Spirits themselves like Gnats playing in the Air fly to and fro in the Nerves at their own pleasure Farther to what end should they recur to the Brain through the Nerves To relate to the commmon Sense what is done in the external Organs If so with what Tongue can they deliver their relation By what signs can they give notice of their meaning Do they bring in with them the idea of the impression made by the Object upon the external Organ Certainly the idea in the outward and inward Organ is one continuate representation as the Object represented is one But the sensation of the same Object doth sometimes dure two or three Hours together Do the Animal Spirits all that while run forth and back uncessantly to continue the sensation both without and within These truly are to me inextricable difficulties Riddles never to be expounded or rather extravagant fictions such as might dissolve even Heraclitus himself into laughter No wonder then if Dr. Glisson plainly discerning the incongruity of this most rapid and reciprocal motion attributed to the animal Spirits not only wholly rejected it but excogitated another plainly contrary thereunto For he concludes that the Spirits lodged in the Succus Nutritius are carried from the Brain through the Nerves by a Motion not impetuose or rapid but gentle Slow and placid inperceptible by the Sense and tending only outward as the nourishing Juice of Plants is believed to creep up from the Roots along by their Fibres and that they do not immediately move the Muscles but by recruiting their Vigor and corroborating the tone of their Fibres render them habil to execute their Offices promptly and strongly He adds that in all voluntary Motion the Fibres of the Muscles do by their own proper vital Motion abbreviate or contract themselves needing no copiose and suddain afflux of Spirits either Animal or Vital to shorten them by way of inflation and put them upon performing the Motions commanded by the Phansie How then are the votes or mandates of the Ruling Faculty in the Brain communicated and made known to the Fibres of the Muscles destined to put them in execution He answers that the motion of the Brain from within outward by which it rules the Fibres of the Muscles is made known to the Fibres to be moved not by sense for the Intellect hath no notice or cognizance of it at all but only by Natural perception and consequently that the Brain by mediation of this Perception Natural doth at command of the Phansie excite the Fibres of the Muscles to Motion and recompose them at pleasure And to explain more clearly his sentiments concerning this supposed motion of the Brain ad extrà that is to the originals of the Nerves which he seems first to have excogitated he soon after subjoyns that the Motion is not to be understood of the whole Brain but only of that little part of it the Fibres of which are conjoyned to the Fibres of the Nerve peculiarly designed to perform the action commanded by the Phansie and that this Motion is no other but a certain Striate or Streakt invigoration running along the Threads of the Brain toward the beginning of the Nerve to be excited and requiring a Motion of the Nerve conform thereunto By invigoration meaning a Motion tending to a greater contraction of the part of the Brain then acting than before Contractio enim hic requisita saith he fortasse ducentesimam partem crassitiei digiti transversi non superat nec refert quà m exigua sit mutatio sitús modò tensura sit nervo perceptibilis gradibus variari possit prout appetitus fortiorem aut debiliorem actionem à nervis exigit An Hypothesis I must confess most subtle and worthy the sublime Wit of the Author and perhaps coming neerer to Truth than any other hitherto excogitated And yet notwithstanding had not fate by taking the Author from us prevented me I should ere this have taken the liberty to beg his pardon of my foolishness if out of an honest desire of learning from him I presumed to trouble him with one or two Questions about things delivered in this Hypothesis which to me seem doubtful and extremely difficult to be conceived The