not the causes of natural things 6. The Form is not the Act. 7. A false Maxim of Aristotle 8. He erreth in the attributes of the Form 9. He knew not the true efficient cause 10. The Father is not the efficient cause of the Son 11. There are two onely causes in Nature 12. The End hath no reason of a cause in nature 13. That the three beginnings of Bodies of Paracelsus have not the nature of causes 14. Whence the definition of any sort soever of natural things is to be required 15. The definition of a Horse 16. The division of sublnnary bodies among the Auntients is dangerous or destructive 17. The definition of Animalls Plants and Mineralls 18. The name of Subject sounds improperly in Philosophy why 't is to be called a co-worker 19. Things without life that are produced how they receive their ends 20. Why the seminal Power is attributed to the Earth 21. That there is not a conjunction of the Elements 22. The Principles of the Chymists have not the power of principiating 23. That there are two onely Principles or beginnings of Bodies to wit that from which and by which 24. What the Ferment or Leaven of things is 25. What are Ferments in their kinde 26. What is immediately in places 27. The Ferments of the Air and water 28. There is onely a speculative distinction of the Ferment and efficient cause 29. The Ferment is the original of some seeds 30. The principiating Ferment of what sort it is and where 31. Ferments are immediately in places in things themselves as if in places 32. The name of matter is speculative but that of water is practical 33. What the inward efficient cause is 34. A false Maxim of Aristotle 35. The efficient cause in natural things is explained 36. Fire is not of the number of seminal efficient causes as it hath deceived the Aristotelicks neither is the influence of the Heavens among the number of efficients 37. The diversity of the efficient and effective cause 38. The wit of Aristotle is ambitious and idle 39. A false Maxim of Aristotle 40. Aristotle was more able in the Mathematicks or learning by de monstration than in Nature 41. How great hath been the ignorance of the Schooles in natural things hitherto 42. Aristotle is in the things of natural Philosophy ridiculous and to himself contradictory I Come into a forsaken house to re-melt the dross that is to be swept out by me Most things are to be searched into and those things to be taught which are unknown those things which have been ill delivered are to be overthrown what are unclean are to be wiped off and what things are false are to be cast away but all and every thing duly to be confirmed But let it be sufficient to have forewarned thee of these things to withdraw wearisomness if happily new and Paradoxall things do more trouble than true things delight The knowledge of Nature is onely taken from that which is in act and in the thing it self for it is that which no where consisteth in feigned Meditations Indeed the whole composure of Nature is individual in very deed in act and fastned in any Body except the number of abstracted Spirits Lastly and chiefly I seriously admonish that as often as I speak of the causes of Natural things these things are not at all to be taken for the Elements or for the Heaven because they supernaturally began with the Title of Creation and to this day do also constantly remain the same which they were from the beginning Therefore I understand the causes of natural things to presuppose a Being subject to change And although the Bodies of the Elements have come under Nature yet their speculation is of another manner of unfolding and another kinde of Philosophy For they who before me have thought that to all Generations or Births of Bodies four Elementsdo co-mix have beheld the Elements after the heathenish manner have tried by their lies or devises to marry the Elements obey them Therefore every natural Body requireth no other than corporeall beginnings for the most part subject to change and succeeding course of dayes but Nature doth not consist of an undetermined hyle or matter and an impossible one neither hath it need of such a Principle as neither of privation but order and life are in the efficient cause of necessity And every thing is empty void dead and slow unless it hath been constituted or sometimes be constituted by a vitall or seminal Principle present with it And moreover those Lawes should rush down together unless there were a certain order in things which did interpose which might incline proper things to the support or necessities of the common good Aristotle hath declared four constitutive causes of things which have made also their own Authour ignorant of Nature For in the first place he confoundeth the Principle with the material cause to wit calling the first cause an undetermined or unlimited matter or a corporeal subjected heap wanting a formall limitation And then he confoundeth the other cause even the inward Essence or form of a thing with another of his Principles Next the third which is external he calleth the efficient cause and at length the fourth he nameth the end to wit unto which every thing is directed But this cause in the minde of the efficient he would have to be the first of the three former causes and so natural things not onely to be principiated or made to begin by the Being of Reason and mental but also as if they were inanimate things they did lie hid through the end in the minde of the efficient cause But if therefore he doth badly search into natural causes he hath far worse appointed a supernatural end in the minde of the first mover in the room of a natural cause or he requireth a mentall conceit of the end in things without life Truly I who have not been accustomed through the floath of consenting to serve others enterprizes without foreweighing them have very much found that the three latter causes in natural knowledge are false yea and hurtful But the first of the four I will by and by shew to be fabulous For first of all since every cause according to nature and succession of dayes is before its thing caused Surely the form of the thing composed cannot be the cause of the thing produced but rather the last perfect act of generation and the veriest essence and perfection it self of the thing generated for the attaining whereof all other things are directed Therefore I meditate the form to be rather as an effect than as a cause of the thing Yea more For the Form seeing it is the end of generation is not meerly the act of generation but of the thing generated and rather a power that may be attained in generation but the matter or subject of generation as it is in act so also its act is an inward worker or
Agent the efficient or Archeus or chief Workman Therefore it is false that by how much the more a thing hath of the form by so much the more it hath of the act of the Entity or Beingness of vertue and operation Because the form is not gotten or possessed by parts or degrees neither therefore are Beings more or lesse capable to receive from the form yea although they were more capable to receive yet the activeness of the Agent is not of the form it self but of the Master-workman or Archeus of whom by and by Therefore the form cannot be divided For whatsoever Aristotle hath attributed to the form or to the last perfection in the Scene or Stage of things that properly directively and executively belongeth to that Agent or seminal chief Workman In the next place seeing that the efficient cause of Aristotle is external as he saith the Smith to be in his view of the Iron I easily knew that he hath set to sale his fictions for true foundations and all his speculation about artificial and external things of Nature to wander The whole efficient cause in Nature is after another manner it is inward and essential And although the Father generating be effective yet in order to causing or doing he is not but the cause efficient of the Seed wholly outward in respect to the Being which of the Seed is framed by generation For in the Seed which fulfills and contains the whole quiddity or thing liness of the immediate efficient that is not the Father himself but the Archeus or chief Workman For that the Father in respect of the thing generated hath the Reason of nought but an external cause and occasionally producing for by accident alone the effect of generation doth follow although the Agent applies himself to generation with his whole intent Therefore the constitutive constituter efficiently causing inwardly perfectively and by it self is the chief seminal Workman it self really distinct from the Father in Being and properties Even as in Vegetables Herbs indeed are the productresses of Seeds but they are but the occasional and remote causes of Herbs arising from that Seed and therefore although they are natural causes yet not sufficient and necessary ones for neither of every Seed will therefore rise up a Plant. Therefore the seminal Being is in the Seed the immediate efficient cause efficiently the internal as also essential of the Herbe proceeding from thence But the Plant that goeth before that Seed is the remote cause the natural occasion indeed of the Seed which by it self and immediately frameth the Plant and effects it with the assistance of that which stirs it up For otherwise if the Herbe causing should be the efficient of the Herbe produced the working or begetting cause could not be burnt up but the Plant produced should also perish Therefore the Seed is the efficient inward immediate cause of the herbe produced Wherefore after a diligent searching into all things I have not found any dependance of a natural body but onely on two causes on the matter and the efficient to wit inward ones whereto for the most part some outward exciter or stirrer up is joyned Because that these two are abundantly sufficient to themselves and to other things and do contain the whole composure order motion birth sealing notions or tokens of knowing properties and lastly whatsoever is required to the constituting and propagating or increasing of a thing For the seminal efficient cause containeth the Types or Patterns of things to be done by it self the figure motions houre respects inclinations fitnesses equalizings proportions alienation defect and whatsoever falls in under the succession of dayes as well in the business of generation as of government Lastly Since the efficient containeth all ends in it self as it were the instructions of things to be done by it self therefore the finall external cause of the Schooles which onely hath place in artificial things is altogether vain in Nature At leastwise it is not to be considered in a distinct thingliness from the efficient it self For that which in the minde of the Artificer is the Being of Reason can never obtain the weight of a cause real and natural Because in the efficient natural cause it s own knowledge of ends and dispositions is infused naturally by God Indeed all things in Nature do desire some generating juyce for their matter and lastly a seminal efficient disposing directing principle the inward one of generation For of these two and not more have all corporeal things need of But the three principles of bodies so greatly boasted of by Paracelsus although they should be found in all things that are to be framed yet it would not therefore follow that those have the force of principiating because those three seeing they are the fruits of Seeds they do partake as it were of a specifical diversity which they should necessarily be ignorant of if they should be true principles that is if they should be present before the framing of the particular kinde Nor also could one thing passe into another which notwithstanding is a thing natural or proper to the three first principles of Paracelsus Moreover since matter and also the efficient cause do suffice to every thing produced it followes that every natural definition is not to be fetched from the general kinde and difference things for the most part unknown to mortal men but from the conjoyning of both causes because both together do finish the whole effence of the thing And then it also followes that the thing it self produced or the effect is nothing but both causes joyned or knit together Which thing truly is to be understood of things without life to things having life life is otherwise to be added over and above or the Soul of the Liver For so a Horse is the Son of his four-footed parents created by virtue of the word into a living horse-like soul Sublunary things are commonly divided into Elements and things elementated but I divide them into Elements and seminal things produced These again into Vegetables Animals and Minerals So as every one of them may shut up a peculiar Monarchie secret from the other two Therefore Minerals and Vegetables if by any condition they may seem to live since they live onely by power and not by a living form in light enlivened they may also fitly be defined by their matter alone and internal efficient For every effect is produced either from the outward Agent and it is a thing brought forth by Art or from an outward awakener and nourisher which is the occasional and outward cause which notwithstanding hath an efficient and seminal causewithin and remains the efficient even until the last period or finishing of the thing brought forth yet the occasional cause is not the true but mediate Agent But the subject which the Schooles have called the Patient or sufferer I call the co-agent or co-worker But in respect of both limits or in the disposure of the
Bacchus's Feasts to Predictions Therefore Prophesie from new Wine or otherwise foretelling seemeth to be in some men almost foolish but if they were drunk familiar which constitution or frame Paracelsus calleth a drunken or besotted gift which was made known to the Jewes and therefore falsly attributed to the Apostles Moreover that I may demonstrate the events of men to be described in the Stars I will shew at least three examples of dâabolical Predictions instead of a thousand nor those drawn out by the evill spirit from any other place than out of the decyphered figure of the Stars First of all Roderick the fourth the last King of the Gothes reigning the Castle of Toletum which had now stood shut even from the dayes of King Bamba was through the curiosity of Roderick opened but there was nothing found in it besides one onely Chest But in the Chest a Cotten Towel rouled up shewing the Garments and Persons of the Africans But there was in it thus written When this Castle and Chest shall be unlocked a Nation shall break into Spain of this similitude and cloathing and shall obtain Victory over the Spaniards But the Moores were decyphered with a cloathing as it was to be above 200 years after Two others are modern examples The Duke of Biron being apprehended by his King for the crime of Treason straightway busily enquired of what Nation the tormenter or Executioner of Paris might arise whom when he understood to be a Burgundian he fearing sighed and said Alass I am undone for truly he had sometimes understood by a Soothsayer that he was onely to beware of a mortall stroak which a Burgundian was to give him in dayes to come The Earl of Loniguium was slain in a Duel nigh Bruxels itching with a desire of Combates and being the more bold because he had understood by Fortune-tellers that âe should be mortally wounded by a Wolf But there was a young man a Companion in the Duel to the Earl de Sancto Amore whose Sur-name was Loup or Wolf who being deadlily pricked thrust Loniguius thorow Let the Devill be the Authour of these Predictions But it is at leastwise of Faith that the Lots of every Victory are in the hand of the Lord. Let us grant that the Devil stirred up Roderick to open the Chest and also to have pricked on very many Kings of the Moores to invade Spain Yet he could not know that he was to obtain this beyond the will of so many persons much lesse that the Arabians should obtain Victory which the Lord alone gives to whom he will unless he had first read the consent of the Lord painted forth in the Stars for neither could the evill spirit have known this by the motion and Light of the Stars that was to come for two Ages from thence In the two other Histories the Devill besides the houre and place had foretold also the Nation of the killer and his name but at leastwise a name is not shewen by the Planets Moreover the divulged Rule The Stars do incline but not necessitate hath seemed to me contradictory to the Text of holy Scripture The Stars shall be to you for Signes seasons dayes and years because it is not lawfull for any mortall men to extend the bounds effects or appointments of the Stars above without or besides the intention of the Creator Whether therefore they are for fore-shewing Signes onely or at length for causes of seasons dayes and years Seeing that they are meanes for both ends which God useth as second causes they ought to have a relation of necessity by reason of the certainty and independency of him whose meanes they are But so far as it hath regard to inclination which the Schooles do grant to the Stars it no where appeareth in the holy Scriptures that the Stars are to us causers of inclinations but as oft as the Stars are the causes of causes so oft also they are the necessitating causes of the thing caused by the meanes of other second causes For the Sun doth with no lesse necessity bring on the day and Summer than burning or flaming straw under a dry Fagot doth kindle this Fagot But when Stars do obtain the nature of a Signe Preacher or Messenger then also they do not exceed the conditions of a presage nor in any wise assume the office of a cause but they do onely then foreshew from the infallible fore-knowledge of God and so also do import a necessity as much as is from them and from mans free will as fore-shewing Signes of the Handy works of the Lord. And although they do not necessitate causatively things to come yet they do necessitate as they shew the will of the Lord. For free contingencies do depend on their causes also sometimes primarily on those not intending such kinde of effects which by divine permission do proceed from thence unthought of for neither in the mean time are those things which come to passe from free causes immediately understood in any respect to be inclined by the Stars although fore-shewing ones onely to produce their effects For truly a strong native continuall soliciting repeated c. inclination doth after some sort import a necessity over free will which I do not indeed grant in the least point of it to be inclined by the Stars For even so as a friend is not the inclining cause of War or the inciting cause if he doth secretly declare to his Prince by an Epistle that an enemy doth prepare War and plot the invasion of his Camp But the Schooles defend themselves by that saying A wise man shall rule or have dominion over the Stars As though if the Stars should stir up any one to murders thefts man-slaughters adulteries seditions drunkenness c. yet a wise man might by the liberty of his own free will make those inclinations void and this they call to rule over the Stars But surely the authority of the Scriptures being badly understood brings forth perverse consequences For first of all it is not in a wise man to resist evill inclinations but it is of grace And so a wise man in this place is not understood to be him which is fenced with sufficient grace because if he shall rule over the Stars there is no cause why he should fear conquered inclinations even as the word to dominate or bear rule doth import yet this is false throughout his whole life Next also they presuppose a falshood because it is by no meanes of the appointment of the Stars that they should cause inclinations in us but onely that they are for signes seasons dayes and years and no more In the next place the Heaven was created without spot Therefore it is absurd that it should be unto us in the room of the Devill the Tempter and which is more of an incliner because it should infuse into us a continuall fewel unto vices and a headlong inclination Far be it to think these things of the divine goodness Every
over all the families of digestions Wherefore from a contrary sense they have sometime perceived that wine because it easily waxeth sour within us it enflames and perverts wounds unlesse by a vulnerary Lixivial fixed Salt being administred that sharp faculty of the wine become mild For truly the hurt or dammage of a wound is onely an inward fermental sharpnesse which being absent the lips of that which was continued do hasten to run together Wherefore the Schools being deceived have universally forbidden wine to those that are wounded which thing the use of a vulnerary remedy at this day hath disallowed to the disgrace of the Schools For neither doth an Alcali go materially unto places far off to restrain sharpnesse seeing neither indeed is it able to pierce unto the Spleen the seat of a Quartan Ague Therefore it sufficeth that it restraineth sharpnesse in the Stomach the ruler of all the digestions Not indeed that it destroyeth the sour ferment of the Stomach but as it is corrected and the translation of the ferment unto remote places is hindered which thing also the aforesaid Paradox it self confirmeth to wit that the digestion of the Stomach is chief over the particular digestions of a thousand kitchins And then that there is not made a wandring of Lixivial Salts materially that it is better to drink the Alcalies of these stones than calcined Shell-fishes Because that although they do help and the Alcali in calcined things is far more powerful yet it hath under an actual vigour vitiated the ferment of the Stomach or at least doth incline it Whereas the Stone of Crabsis carried not so much into the ferment as into the product of the ferment Also there is a plain reason why that Stone and herbs like unto it do heal great and remote wounds yet that they do not any thing help small ulcers in the throat wind-pipe or bladder For it is also hence confirmed because every Wound doth sharpen its state if the sournesse beaming forth out of the Stomach unto the wound from the vital digestion be also hindered to be in the remedy But because an ulcer doth not arise out of the sharpnesse of the Stomach but from the proper vice and received contagion of the Archeus of the parts The which also therefore is not appeased by the taking of an Alcali and there is need of Secrets piercing every way For meats drinks and medicines do lose their own virtue or strength about the first digestion of the stomach neither do they go or are carried deeper because they onely nourish simply and therefore do there put off and plainly detest every mask horrid to nourishment or are otherwise changed into excrements And so also they are made unprofitable for the conceived curing But if indeed the Stone of Crabs be a provoker of urine it is not that therefore the coming thereof even into the bladder is to be hoped for or that its virtue remains untouched and unbroken Far be it For let it be sufficient if that Stone do spoil the whole drink of a souring faculty because it is that which onely how little soever of it be brought down in the urine belongs to the breeding of the Strangury or pissing by drops Dysury or difficulty of pissing and heats familiar in the disease of the Stone For the sharpnesse although it be most excellently subdued by a sound gaul yet the least quantity of it may be hostile in the urine and to the parts subservient unto it and no lesse unto the whole remaining family of digestions Now at length I return unto the Authority of the Duumvirate that it may be manifest in what sort the soul doth divers ways exercise its own commands in its own body and doth act by way of a command government rule as also of cruelty fury and tyranny neither that to this end it stands in need of pipes winds vapours smoaks and least of all of the help of heats colds and defluxions The Schools beholding the effects of the Duumvirate and thinking to knit causes to them all have transferred all things into heats or humours and the declinings or cessations of these as if those things which naturally happen in us should happen only through an urgent necessity of weights heats and imaginary humours And seeing they have gone back from the Soul from living strength unto the artificial or dead examples of learning by demonstration at length they have quieted themselves that they wrought in vain with the admiration unwilling experience and wonted obseruation of the vulgar that many diseases being among the catalogue of incurable ones or the number of wonted diseases are of their own accord cured under the care of the Kitchin so that they had but forsaken the vein and the paunch oft-times unto the death or voluntary wearinesse of rhe sick And at last for the most part a Jugler or Fortune-teller or an aged old woman cureth them whom the very experiences of Physitians had deserted CHAP. XXXIX The Authority or Priviledge of the Duumvirate 1. An Aphorism of the old man is illustrated 2. The falling-evil and madnesse are proved to proceed from the Duumvirate 3. That sleep is from the Duumvirate 4. An argument against the prerogative of the head 5. The same thing is confirmed from Galen against his will 6. A privy shift of the Schools for the head 7. What all particular Senses can attribute unto the thing generated 8. The vegetative power is in and from the Dunmvirate 9. The Young lives divers wayes 10. The phantasie of the Brain doth presently die unlesse it be nourished by the lower parts 11. Why the soul is said to be in the blood 12. Conceipts ascending from the parts about the short ribs are presently seen in the countenance 13. The first conceptions are proved to be formed in the seat of the soul 14. Sleep and dreams to be from the Duumvirate 15. The Mare is in the stomach therefore sleep and dreams are from thence 16. But the Gumm-ich before the comming of teeth from the sensitive soul onely 17. The opinion of the Schools about the Mare 18. It is noted for an absurdity 19. Balaams Asse spake not the word of the Angel 20. An history of my own steep fall 21. Some dignities of the Pylorus are reckoned up and astonishing remedies by reason of their easinesse 22. Concerning the seat of the soul for the Duumvirate 23. An history of madnesse from a medicine as yet existing in the stomach 24. The same by fainting or swooning 25. From a Maxim of the Schools 26. From the suffering of hunger 27. That troublous passions of the mind have respect unto the Duumvirate not the head 28. Too much study brings forth madnesse to be felt or perceived first in the stomach 29. An errour of the Schools 30. By the Maxim of the Schools it is contended against the Schools 31. Sleep is from the Midriffs 32. A remedy of Opiates 33. Vesalius carps at Galen 34. Of what sort
effect is supposed and likewise a cause thereof neither is it doubted what that effect or what the cause thereof may be but the knitting of them both is only sought for To wit after what sort the effect proceeds from the cause or on the other hand after what manner and by what means such a cause may produce its effect The knowledge I say of the Tree and its Fruit is presupposed The which if we compose them for healing for if the whole world be for man also the whole physical knowledge of nature shall therefore be subservient to man the knowledges of ones self shall be first to be presupposed To wit that a true Physitian doth know the Tree of the whole nature of man and the fruit thereof to wit health Likewise also the tree of vitiated health and the very rank or order of health depraved as the Fruit of that Which proper knowledges of the thingliness or essence together with its adjacents are required Therefore that we may know the Tree in its root and properties that ought to be done by the Fruits wherefore also the Fruits are first to be known But the Fruits as well of entire as of vitiated health seeing they are the Scopes whereunto the properties of occult Remedies are referred have themselves in manner of a Tree and Trunk whereinto the young budding slips and seeds of things ought to be ingrafted as it were the Fruits of the same This indeed the ordination of Medicine requireth that Remedies although they have themselves in manner of a cause yet that they become fruits or effects in us as they do fructifie in our Tree and so they are not only the Fruits of their own native Tree whence in the nature of things they are derived but rather they are new Fruits from an ingrafting of a product and so are plainly promiscuous of a branch or Fruit of the Tree implanted and of the vital power of the stock whereinto it is ingrafted Such fruits indeed do bewray their own Tree And so as in every progress of nature a duality of Sex is required for the production of every Fruit it was no wonder that the rank and applications of occult Qualities or Remedies hath remained unknown if it hath hitherto stood neglected that a healthy and diseasie state is bred by the same Parent and so also they have referred the whole essence of a Disease into external occasional efficient and warring causes but not into the true and inward Tree of sicknesses Let us suppose therefore the Archeus to be provoked and almost furious the which being provoked by occasional causes doth pour forth its own blood and causeth the Bloody-Flux or likewise let us feign the Archeus grievously bearing the mark of pain conceived in some part serving to the last digestion and being as it were stung with fury to stir up an Erisipelas The question is of finding out a Remedy by the occult or hidden property The Schools therefore have considered to apply cooling things to the Erisipelas as to the fruit and they would not apply a Remedy to the vitiated tree But the Secretaries of natural things have attended to the aforesaid furies to be restrained by fear so that the fear is not to be incurred on the man but on the Archeus Therefore they have killed the most fearful creature to wit a Hare Not indeed with a weapon that he might dye by an unexpected death but by hunting that he might perish by the biting of Dogs whereby a doubled force of fear may be imprinted on his whole Body Therefore they have tinged a bloody Towel in the blood of the Hare and kept it being dryed And that they have administred by pieces in Wine and the Dysentery was cured And likewise they have put it dry on the Erisipelas and it was cured Yea the Germane Souldiers do give an Hare dryed in the smoak in drink and the Bloody-Flux or Dysentery is cured with an undeceiveable event From whence they have learned that cuttings of veins and purgings are vain whether thou respectest feigned humours or in the next place a diminishing of heat and strength together with the blood likewise that coolings are ridiculous because they are those things which endeavour to heal from the effect do never touch at the roots and for that cause do for the most part provoke nature into greater furies The Erisipelas therefore and Bloody-Flux have obtained some common point wherein they might agree And that is a certain Ideal poyson bred by the Archeus For truly in the Tree of man every exorbitant passion of the Archeus doth tinge its own Idea or likeness on the blood yea and on the excrements no less than in the Tree of a Dog through the exorbitancy of madness Fruits are bred in his spittle which do afterwards produce in us the Fruit of the transplanted madness Therefore the knowledge of hidden Remedies is badly sought into from the Fruit. For I have known that whatsoever things are made in the world are made from the necessity of the Seeds of every Archeus and so by means of an incorporeal and invisible Being But I have known that seminal Beings do arise from an imaginative sorce of soulified things or the Archeus of the same by a co-like perturbation And so that by a certain invisible Principle this visible world is continued But in things subjected or not soulified I have observed that they after a co-like manner have themselves by the same certain Analogical proportion But that every disjoynting or irregularity of the Archeus doth by its Idea's frame the Seeds to be poysons unto its own Body and so a sound Tree rusheth into a vitiated one I have considered that the poysons of some things which are bred with us do bear Seeds not those which by the exorbitancy of their of own Archeus but in respect of our Archeus might produce vitiated Idea's and to themselves natural to us mortal Idea's Whence indeed if Fruits or Branches be implanted into the Tree of our entire health it happens that from both as it were from a promiscuous Sex vitiated or poysonous Fruits do arise in us But the poysons are on both sides among the number of occult properties Let therefore suitable helps or Remedies have Idea's which are chiefly the extinguishers of the poysoned Idea's or those which by an eminent goodness may transchange as well the Archeus the producer of the poyson as the poyson it self produced whence I have very clearly learned that almost every poyson and its Antidote and so also the whole race of occult or formal properties do seminally descend from the activity of a vital light For so the poysons of soulified creatures do arise from disturbances the which by how much the sharper they shall be by so much also the more cruel poysons they bring forth For so the poysons of Serpents are bred from anger envy sury pride and those being variously mixed with fear But the corrosive and putrifactive
to be sensitive doth not shew the unseperable Essence of an Animal And seeing otherwise the definition of every thing is from the Essence of the thing as they will have it but man according to his Essence was made in a full possession of Immortality and henceforth of an Eternal Duration according to his Soul the Schools could not believe that man by reason of a sensitive Soul alone was essentially an Animal Especially while they believed his Essence to depend on an Eternal Duration and an uncorruptible Soul or Form All which absurdities I acknowledge to have crept into and to have remained in the Schools by reason of the truth of our Position being unknown Even hitherto I have established the Position out of the holy Scriptures Now again the same by the Authorities of Fathers which matter B. Augustine hath seemed to have understood before others saying After what manner had it shamed Man of the Transgression of a Law when as his very Members had not known shame As if he should say His Members were stirred up unto the Concupiscence of the Flesh and acts of his Privie Parts presently after the Eating of the Apple Their Eyes were opened but for this they were not opened that they might know what might be performed by them through the cloathing of Grace when as their Members knew not how to resist their will And dost thou not blush at that Disease or that thou although shamefac'd dost confess that that Lust entred into Paradise And to impute it unto Husbands and Wives before Sin He who was to be without Sin would be born without the Concupiscence of the Flesh not in that Flesh of Sin but in the likeness of sinful Flesh As if he should say whatsoever is born from Copulation although it had been born in Paradise and before Sin would have been and is the Flesh of Sin Seeing that alone which is not born of Copulation is not the Flesh of Sin Whatsoever off-spring is born from Concupiscence or of the Flesh of Sin is obliged unto Orignal Sin unless it be born again in him whom the Virgin conceived without Concupiscence The Flesh of Christ drew a mortality from the mortality of his Mothers Body because she found not the Concupiscence of a Copulatresse For indeed as Original Sin is not derived on the Posterity any other way than by the Concupiscence of the Flesh So it must needs be that in the Apple was included the Concupiscence from whence the humane stock degenerated and was vitiated in generating For truly if off-springs could have been generated any otherwise than by carnal Copulation the Matrimonial act had been unlawful Whereunto this every-way convincing Argument serveth That act before the Apple was eaten was either unlawful and not thought of or it was lawful If it were unlawful now our Position is proved But if lawful therefore whatsoever I have above described out of Augustine is false Seeing therefore they had now actually felt the effect of the eaten Apple or the Concupiscence of the Flesh in their Members in Paradise presently it shamed them because their Members which before they could rule at their pleasure were afterwards moved by a proper incentive of lust At length how greatly Virginity hath alwayes pleased the Bridegroom of the Soul doth clearly enough appear out of divers Histories of the Saints And indeed in Cana of Galilee the Bridegroom having left his Bride followed the Lord Jesus and it is that Disciple whom Jesus therefore so greatly loved The same thing was familiar unto Alexius Aegidius and to very many others especially with poor Women-Virgins For indeed the infinite goodness from the proper motion of its good pleasure from Eternity created Man and fore-loved him with so great a love that he determined to co-knit his own Divinity unto him and to enlighten him with the Light which enlightneth every man that cometh into this World and to Adopt him for the Son of God giving him Power to become the Son of God by the new Birth which new Birth before Sin was not necessary Seeing therefore he requireth People to be re-born of God therefore before Sin they were all born of God which thing Lucifer with his own Spirits seeing through a long-since Pride of his Beauty and since his fall being wholly become Envious supposed that he was wiser than God who had raised up a vile creature unto that height wherefore he aspired to exceed God whom he had not yet seen and to throw him down from his Seat of Majesty Presently afterwards he after that he had paid the punishment of his Sins being more cruelly wroth saw also that Eve being a Virgin was by the onely Goodness of God without all desert and freely now appointed for the aforesaid Instrument of that Adoption and Mother of Men Therefore he endeavoured to hinder the Love of God through the Eating of the Apple Because as seeing that the Lasciviousness and Concupisence of the Flesh implanted in the same was Diametrically opposite unto Gods intention Therefore the Eating of the Apple was not forbidden unto man by a Law but by a fatherly Admonition neither is Original Sin from the Transgressions of a Law from the Eating of the Apple as being forbidden food but by Reason of the effect arising from the Apple and the properties inserted in the Apple After another manner the Transgression or Eating did offend onely in a Voluntary Act but not for Posterity unless Naturally and by the second Causes of a brutal Copulation following from thence otherwise in our first Parents impossible it had inverted the intention of Divine Generation Yea Original Sin fell not so properly on the guiltless Posterity as the effect of Generation the which indeed hath brought forth an Adulterous Beast-like Devilish Generation and plainly uncapable of the Kingdom of God and of Union with and Enjoyment of God By Reason of the Similitude whereof those that were born in Adultery were excluded from the Participation of Heaven But let us feign the opposite thing to wit that our Parents were conscious that there was a Law declared by God the Creator of the Universe touching the forbidden Apple and that upon such an account Death was foretold unto him and all his Posterity and undoubtedly came unto them but at least-wise an irregular Sin being so bold and so ungodly and cruel a Wickedness on all their Posterity could not be forgiven without a great note of Contrition Neither had God how Merciful and Good soever straightway so suddenly made that man fruitful with so great a Blessing and substituted the other living Creatures under his Feet he not being ignorant that neither of them did Grieve Repent Pray but only it shamed them and that they endeavoured as Fools to hide themselves from God and to cover their privy Parts with Leaves Therefore I collect from thence that on the same day not only Mortality entred through Concupiscence But moreover that it presently
constrained to acknowledge with us that there is a Magnetism that is a certain hidden Property with this appellation by reason of the manifest Prerogative of that Stone divided or distinguished from other abstruse and commonly unknown Qualities A Load-stone being laid upon a thin trencher of Wood and swimming on the Water is forthwith on one and that a certain side turning towards the South but on the other side toward the North The Austral or Southern Part thereof if it shall touch Iron it turns that towards the North and the northern Part of the Load-stone having touched Iron will incline it to the South By its Sepentrional or northerly Part that is its Belly it allures Iron or Steel to it and by its Austral Part or Back it drives that Iron or Steel before it The Northern side by rubbing of the Point of a Compass-Needle from the right Hand to the left will direct the same to the South but if the rubbing be made from the left Hand unto the right the direction of the Point will be contrary In like manner also the South side of the Load-stone is varied Yea which is more if a Load-stone by its rubbing on a piece of Iron doth make it to be Magnetical that is an attractive of other Iron let the same Iron which is now Magnetical be rubbed again being turned upwards and downwards upon the Load-stone it will presently put off its attractive Power Of which Effects if they relish thee enquire thou of William Guilbert a Physitian of London in his Treatise of the Load-stone than whom none ever wrote better concerning this Subject and by whose Industry the variation of the Compass may be restored The Needle which now bends to the North under the Aequinoctial Line staggers to and fro but beyond it bends it self unto the other Pole I shall add this medicinal Faculty of it The back of the Load-stone as it repulseth Iron so also it drives back the Gut cures Burstness and every Catarrh or Rheum which is of the Nature of Iron for all Magnetisms are ordained for the use of Man The Iron-attracting Faculty if it shall be married to the Mummy of a Woman then the back of the Load-stone being emplaistred within her Thigh and the Belly thereof on her Loyns doth safely prevent a Miscarrying already threatned but the Belly of the Load-stone being applyed within her Thigh and its Back to her Loyns doth wonderfully facilitate or dispatch her delivery All which Effects of the Load-stone our Anatomist shall illustrate by Reasons drawn from foregoing Causes and explain to us the manner thereof as made known unto him Or I shall by a like Argument of Ignorance conclude that these likewise are the Delusions of Satan and not natural Effects I will now produce some Examples of a co-like Magnetism that we at length may come with the more seasoned Judgment unto the positive Reason and refuting of all Oppositions What can I do more the Reasons which thou hast not brought in thy own behalf I my self will devise Every Effect thou wilt say proceeds either immediately from God the Work-man and so is a Miracle or from Satan and so is Monstrous or from natural and ordinary Causes and then is natural but Magnetisme is not a Miracle neither is it a natural Effect therefore Satanical I answer Although I am able to shew this aforesaid rehearsal to be insufficient in regard the inward Man acteth even after none of the fore-mentioned wayes the which hereafter we are plainly enough to declare nevertheless we now with a dry Foot pass over the Assumption as being about to deny the Subsumption or Inference to wit in that part wherein it is affirmed that the effect is not natural For that was first to be proved least a begging of the Principle or Question should be committed but herein our Censurer hath and will be defective to say that it is not a natural Effect unless he thought that for him to say it was all one as to prove it and to have placed his own Authority in the room of Reason For there are many Effects natural which do not ordinarily happen to wit those which are the more seldom incident Therefore in favour of our Anatomist I shall every where not only defend the affirmative part but also I will declare it by Reasons and confirm it by Examples For so the Argument now alleaged shall violently fall with its own weight There is a Book imprinted at Frankford in the year 1611 by Uldericus Balk a Dominican concerning the Lampe of Life where thou shalt find out of Paracelsus the true magnetical Cure of many Diseases namely of the Dropsie Gowt Jaundise c. by enclosing the warm Blood of the Sick in the shell and white of an Egg which is exposed to a nourishing Warmth and this Blood being admixed with a piece of Flesh thou shalt give unto a hungry Dog or Swine and the grief is presently drawn and departs from thee into the Dog no otherwise than as the Leprosie of Naaman passed over or was transplanted into Gehazi through the Execration of the Prophet What wilt thou account this also to be diabolical to have thus restored the sick Party by the Magnetisms of the Mumial Blood alone But yet he is wholly and undoubtedly restored A Woman weaning her Infant whereby her Breasts may the sooner grow barren Milks out her Milk on hot burning Coals and her Dugs soon grow Flaggy Doth haply the Devil suck them If any one shall Foul at thy Door and thou intendest to prevent that Beastliness for the future lay thou a red hot Iron upon the new laid Excrement and by Magnetism the voyder of that Ordure shall soon grow Scabby on his Buttocks to wit the Fire roasting the Excrement and as it were by a Dorsal or rebounding Magnetism driving the sharpness of the Roast into his impudent Fundament Perchance thou wilt say that this is Satanical because the end is a hurting of the Party But surely the abuse of Powers is in the liberty of Man Yet it is not the less natural in its use Make a small Table of the lightest whitest and bafest kinde of Lead and at the one end hereof put a piece of Amber and three spans off place a piece of green Vitriol this Vitriol will forthwith visibly loose its Colour and Tartness Both which Effects are found in the Preparation of Amber At least-wise this very Experiment shall be free from all Illusion of Satan A certain Inhabitant of Bruxels lost his Nose in fight he comes to Tagliacozzus a Chyrurgion living at Bononia in expectation of another Nose and when as he feared the Incision of his own Arm he hired a Porter for his end out of whose Arm he having given him his Price the Chyrurgion at length digged a Nose About thirteen Months after his return into his own Country presently on a sudden the ingrafted Nose grew cold and after some dayes fell off through Putrefaction By
flowing be more inclinably obedient unto the Clientship of a putrefactive humour than phlegm otherwise was But why doth not Choler move a fit daily if a lesse moiety thereof be sufficient for a Tertian To wit while as the greater moiety thereof is rejected by Vomit Lastly They ought to have told how many ounces of a putrified humour should be required for every fit whether six or seven Truly oft-times a double quantity thereof is rejected by vomit about the beginning of a Tertian and the fit is nothing the lesse Therefore if as yet seven ounces have proceeded unto the mouthes of the Veines and twelve ounces were voided by vomit Therefore 19 ounces are requisite for a Tertian Whereof if thou shalt take the half To wit 8 ounces of yellow Choler every day and by consequence a double quantity of phlegm there shall be 17 ounces thereof and at least 4 ounces of black Choler every day and at least as much of Bloud every day as there is of phlegme That is 17 ounces which being joyned together 46 ounces shall be daily made even in an abstinentious Feverish person Let him give credit to these Fables that will and let the Musitian make an Harmony of these pipes that can I at least conclude from the supposed dreams of the Schooles That there ought in no wise to be the cutting of a Veine as neither a laxative Medicine for those that have a Fever if so much of humours be bred in him seeing as much is consumed in an abstinent Feverish person because his appetite digestion and Food failing Yet it is of necessity that this weight be recompenced out of the Masse of the Bloud Therefore an emptying is not to be instituted in a Feverish or Aguish person who abstaineth for the space of two dayes But I pray from whence hath Galen known That as much of yellow Choler is made every other day as there is of phlegm daily and of black Choler every third day Especially who is proved by Andrew Vesalius of Bruxels and the Prince of Anatomists in 106 places never to have pryed into a humane dead Carcase For if Galen writeth this without proof at leastwise the Schooles were not bound to subscribe to his Doatage But if he learned this as being perfectly instructed by Fevers themselves Verily he could not refer this same thing into the effect and also into the cause of one thing For it must needs contein an absurd and blockish begging of the Principle to produce the same thing to be for a cause and effect for it self Namely That a Tertian happens from yellow Choler putrified every other day and a Quartane from black Choler putrified every third day because as much of yellow Choler is made every other day as there is of black Choler in full three dayes space And again Let him prove the truth of this matter That a Tertian assaults us every other day and a Quartane in the space of three dayes because as much yellow Choler is made every other day as there is of black Choler in three dayes space Surely miserable are the Speculations of Healing which are handed forth in the spring of young men being commanded to serve the sick and hitherto adored by the Schooles To wit From whence unprosperous curings of Diseases daily succeed to the destruction of the Christian World and salvation of Souls But at leastwise if yellow Choler should exceed Melancholly or black Choler in one part and an half of its proportion the Spleen exceeds the little bag of the Gawl sit times at least If therefore it be supposed that the Schooles do teach with Galen That as much of Gaul or yellow Choler is made every other day as there is of black Choler every three dayes and the Spleen be the Case or Receptacle of black Choler and the little bag of the Gaul be the sheath of yellow Choler the Creatour hath either erred in his Ends in framing the very Receptacles of those otherwise than Galen hath determined or the Gaul and Spleen were not the Butteries of the Fables of the School of Medicine Therefore others whom the devices of Galen concerning the Circuit of Fevers did not satisfie have begged Astrology for their ayd because a Fever doth sometimes return at set hours But these also are dashed against other straits while as Fevers begin at all houres and likewise do delay or forestall for some houres yea are silent and sleep for some turns Whence they have not sufficiently confirmed That mans nature is constrained at the pleasure of the Stars as neither that there is a wedlock of the matter of a Fever with the Stars They are Rubbish and vain Tincklings poured over credulous eares Others also at length suppose that they have given themselves satisfaction to the Question by Similitudes if they shall say that Fevers have themselves after the manner of other Seeds To wit some whereof do quickly bud as the Water-cresse but that of Parsly far more slow But the example availes not because it resolves one doubt by another For Seeds which are the more slowly resolved in moisture by reason of their Gummy oyliness do also more slowly bud as also others more readily which obtain a muscilage nearer to the juyce of the earth wherefore such a Similitude hath no way regard unto Fevers wherein they will not have fits to be made by reason of an easie or difficult resolving but by reason of a scanty or plentifull afflux of putrified humours Otherwise surely phllegm being the most estranged from putrefaction should scarce afflict on the seventh day whereas in the mean time black Choler which is reckoned to be most like unto a dead Carcase or flesh should far sooner putrifie But at leastwise the Doctrine of the Schooles concerning the cold fit and circuit of Fevers standing it must needs be That a Tertian is cured by exhausting of the matter in the fit and by a defect of new Choler requisite for a future fit if the Patient shall abstain from meat and drink for full two dayes space But the Consequence is false therefore also the position of Galen But if the Schooles do teach and say that then new Choler is dissolved out of the venal bloud Yet this is to feign Nature to be more solicitous that she may preserve the Fever than otherwise the Life and Bloud the Treasure of Life Again That Choler being separated or made out of the Bloud if it be putrified why is it not banished by the veines together with the Choler of the foregoing fit the which was already before deteined in the veines with the Bloud or hath perhaps that remaining and putrified Choler fore-known that there would happen an abstinence of two days To wit that it might reserve it self for this defect for a continuance of the Fever or Ague which otherwise should perish through want of Choler Or hath Nature well pleased her self in the preserving of putrified Choler But if indeed that Choler issuing
and receives an image or Idea of indignation the which is clearly expressed in a woman great with Child fearing or desiring any thing while she conveighs the seal of the thing desired on her young and whatsoever of the Archeus is defiled by that forreign Idea this ought to have been rooted out by the fit so that that is the cause of wearisomness in Fevers because the spirit being marked with a forreign likeness or hateful image as unapt for the performance of the wonted Offices of its government totally vanisheth For so those that profoundly contemplate are tired with much weariness For the Archeus if he hath an image brought into him is unfit for governing of the body For therefore persons void of care the more healthy more strong ones and those of a longer life do slowly wax grey The endeavour therefore of a Physitian is not to direct unto the effect or unto the alterations naturally received in the Archeus For as I have said in Diseases all things depend on the occasional cause implanted into the field of Life because Diseases have not in them an essential root of permanency and stability as other Beings have which consist and subsist by their own seeds Because in very deed all do immediatly consist in the life therefore in a dead Carcase there is no disease and therefore all the destruction and cessation of these depends on the removal of the occasional cause The Scope therefore of healing cannot turn it self unto the cooling of heat or to the' stupefying of alterative motions as neither unto the expectation of Concomitant accidents and produced effects For the Physitian shall labour in vain shall loose his labour time and occasions as long as he shall not be intent on the withdrawing of the occasional cause yea by how much the more he shall do that by so much the more delightfully and acceptably there will be help In all Fevers there is one only inflaming or indignation of the Archeus whence also they agree in the Essence and name of a Fever being distinguished only by their occasional cause Indeed the Matter and Inne distinguisheth Fevers yea it is of no great moment with a good Physitian to have curiously searched into the diversities of Fevers according to the properties of the matter and places since it is neither granted him to have prevented them neither can it be said to a remedy Go thou unto such a vein or unto that place For it is sufficient to have known what things I have already before in general concluded And let the whole study of a Physitian be to have found out remedies with whom all Fevers are of the same value and weight as I shall presently declare CHAP. XIV A perfect Curing of all Fevers 1. The property of the occasional cause 2. Why it becomes not putrified 3. Vomitory and laxative Medicines cure only by accident 4. The Schools why they have not had meet remedies 5. None cured of Fevers by the Physitians 6. The Authors excuse 7. Of what sort the Remedy of a Fever is 8. The successfulness and unadvisedness of Paracelsus are noted 9. The Description of an Vniversal Remedy 10. A Remedy purging Fevers and the sick but not the healthy is described 11. The most rare property of the Liquor Alkahest 12. Particular Remedies of Fevers THerefore it is now manifest and be it sufficient that the occasional matter of a Fever is to be vanquished and that that matter if it be not food corrupted as in a Diary at least that it is an excrement not indeed a putrified one unless in malignat Fevers wherein putrefaction is as yet in its making but a strange forreign one not vital being deteined against nature and so brought into anothers harvest And by this title altogether hostile to the Archeus For if it were putrified it should not be tough neither should it adhere as stubborn for by putrefaction the stedfast Fibers decay and so neither should it afford daily Fevers but it should presently make to putrifie and mortifie the vessel containing it together with it self whence death would be necessitated The occasional matter of Fevers therefore is detained besides the desires of nature in undue places wherein there is not any sink of the body therefore vomitory and laxative remedies if ever they have performed any profitable thing another prone neighbouring matter is thrust out together with it for otherwise the occasional matter of Fevers doth ordinarily reside in the hollow of the stomack or bowels because they are sinks and places appropriated for expulsion unless perhaps in a Diary Fever the disease called Choler the Flux bloody Flux and other Fevers of these pipes stirred up from a matter adhering unto them For I speak especially of the primary or chief Fevers First of all the Schools could not seek meet remedies for Fevers they being seasoned with First of all the Schools could not seek meet remedies for Fevers they being seasoned with bad and false Principles But they not seeking after remedies neither also could they find them Therefore Physitians being hitherto destitute of a true remedy have endeavoured to cure Fevers going into a Circle But if any have been cured under them that hath been by accident Let them give God thanks who hath bestowed strength on the sick whereby they have tesisted the Fever and their succours Physitians therefore instead of curing Fevers have neglected them by exhaustings of the strength and blood Far be envy from what is spoken for not boasting or the vain desire of a little glory I call God the Judge to witness but mans necessity and the compassion of Mortals hath constrained me to write and make manifest these things I have bestowed my Talent let him believe me and follow me that will It shall no longer lay upon me if Mortals being rash of belief perish by Fevers Indeed the occasional cause of Fevers is cut off by one only hook That remedy is sudoriferous or a causer of sweat which cuts extenuates dissolves melts shaves off and also cleanseth away the occasional cause in whatsoever place it at length shall exist And it is a Universal Medicine of Fevers Diaphoretical or transpirative indeed causing the aforesaid effects unsensibly and without sweat For indeed Paracelsus although he had Arcanum's or Secret Medicines whereby at one only draught he alike successively cured the Quartane Ague and all Fevers yet the knowledge of their causes was not granted unto him He being contented to have introduced into us all the particular Creatures of the Microcosm and so under a rashness of belief to have applied the Species Numbers and Properties of all Simples and Stars unto the Medicinal Art and that not indeed by similitudes but he would have them to be so precisely known by a simple identity under the penalty of convicted Idiotism Therefore I distinguish not a Fever if there be the greatest goodness of a remedy For that remedy is the Diaphoretick Precipitate of Paracelsus
the air water or earth that that can neither be a disease in it self nor the containing cause thereof Yea whatsoever is marked with the name of antecedent causes is nothing but the occasional cause causing nothing by it self but by accident nor any thing without an appropriation received in us Wherefore they neither betoken nor desire nor prescribe a cure but only a caution or flight The occasions therefore of the Plague are to be considered as the occasions of diseases being sometime entertained do passe into the order of causes First of all therefore I have already sufficiently taught that the Pest is not sent down from the Heavens And seeing every effect is the fruit or product of its own and not of anothers tree therefore every cause produceth its own and not anothers effect therefore the Pest hath a specifical proper and not a forreign cause For neither may we distinguish of Plagues by their accidents concomitants or signates because they are those which flow immediately from the diversity of subjects because they diversly vary after the manner and nature of the receiver according to the custom of the Beings of nature Wherefore also the Pest consisting of matter form essence a seed and properties requires also to have its own and one onely species seeing the very essence it self of things or defects is most near to individuals But if it either happen from without or be generated within that is all one seeing from thence the Plague is now constituted Again if it do the more swiftly or slowly defile its issue be the more violent and speedy do invade diverse parts or diversly disquiet the body yet that doth not therefore change the species of the poyson For they are only the signs of quantiry co-mixture of a ferment appropriation and incidency on the parts receiving Otherwise the internal and formal poyson of the Pest and that which conteins the thingliness thereof is ãâã âys singular in every individual Because the essence or Being of things consisteth in the simplicity of their own species as there is the same essence of fire on both sides whether it be great or little whether quiet or driven with the bellows or lastly whether the flame shall be red yellow green or sky-coloured Therefore the remote crude and first occasional matter of the pestilence is an air putrified through continuance or rather a hoary putrified Gas which putrefaction of the air according to the experience of the fire which Adeptists promise hath not as yet the 8200. part of its own seminal body The which thou shalt the more easily comprehend if thou considerest a hoary putrified vessel and hogs-head of wine now exhausted without any weight of it self to corrupt new and old wines infused in the hogs-head For I have treated in my discourses of natural Phylosophy concerning the nature of a ferment putrifying by contmuance and after what sort vegetables do arise from an incorporeal and putrified seed that from hence the progeny of the Pest may be the more distinctly made manifest Moreover I have shewn that the earth is the mother of putrefaction through continuance that we may know that popular Plagues do draw their first occasional matter from an earthquake and from the consequences of camps and siedges For therefore as much as the earth differs from the heaven so much also is the occasional matter of the Pâst remote from the Heaven But I call this first matter that incorporeal hoary puârified poyson existing in the Gas of the earth And so I substitute this poyson as theremoâe matter under another more near poyson which disposeth the matter of the Archeus whereby he may the more easily assent and conceive in himself a pestilent terrour that at length a formal pestilential essence may suddenly come upon the previous dispositions hereof But besides if I must duely Phylosophize concerning the infections of the Air I ought of necessity to repeate the Anatomy thereof from the fore assayed doctrine of the elements in my treatise of natural of Phylosophy The air therefore in it self is one of the first-born elements being transparent and void as well of lightnesse as weight unchangeable and perpetual being endowed with natural cold unlesse it be hindered by the strength of scituations and things co mixed with it but being every where filled with pores and for this cause suffering an extension or pressing together of it self The porosities whereof are either filled with vapours and forreign exhalations or remayning in their integrity they plainly gape being void of a body the which I have elsewhere demonstrated in the treatise of a necessary Vacuum For in very deed if the air were without pores that are empty of every body vapours could not be lifted up without a penetration of bodies But since a most manifest enlargement and com-pression of the air is granted as I have elsewhere fully demonstrated an emptinesse also is of necessity granted For such porosities in the air are as it were wombs wherein the vapours the fruits of the water are again resolved into the last simplicity of waters from whence they proceeded and are spoyled of any signatures of their former seeds whatsoever But those effluxes in the air are forreign ây accident and various according to the disposition of the concrete body from whence they exhaled First of all they are the vapours of pure and simple water and then of the waters of the salt sea which season the rain with their vaporous brine and for that cause preserâe it from corruption For otherwise by reason of the societies of diverse exhalations being admixed with it rain waters would of necessity putrifie and stink no lesse than clouds in mountains and most miââs The poysons therefore of the air being drawn in are partly entertained in manner of a vapour in its porosities and do partly defile the very body of the air without a corporeal mixture even as glasse conceiveth odours which defilement hath of right the name of an impression I have an house in a plain field being rich on its South-side in a wood of oakes but on the north it respecteth pleasant meadows moreover toward both the mansions of the Sun it hath hils that are fruitful in corn But linnen cloaths being there washed and âânced in the fountain being hung up in the loft look most neatly white while the North wind blows and here and there also from east to west or on the other hand from west to east But the south-winde only blowing and the southerly windowes being opened they are notably yellow with a clayie colour For from the numerous oakes a tinging vapour is belched forth into the air and I have learned that this vapour is breathed in by us as also drunk up by the linnen And also thus from Groves of oakes after the Summer solstice an hidden vapour doth exhale which inâecteth an unwonted countenance and neck with a frequent itching pustule or wheale and afterwards they becoââ plainly visible in the
help doth concur now it shall be with the labour of a desire stirred up without the understanding Furthermore that passing over and transfiguration of the understanding otherwise natural to it they do signifie to be sometimes subordinate Poets the name of Protheus even as a Fable But I have now known more clearly than that that that transchanging of the understanding ought to be made because the intellect is in it self wholly pure simple one onely and undivided Wherefore for that cause also some onely simple uniform and single act should belong to it plainly undivided from the understanding it self Otherwise the understanding should loose the homogeneal simplicity of its unity by a duplicity of interchangeable course Notwithstanding I have sufficiently found that it is not of the full and free power of our will now thus to enjoy its own understanding And that there is more required unto that thing than to think endeavour wish will c. And that not onely by reason of an accustomedness whereby we have been wont from a Childe by animal or sensitive acts to obey the Imagination but much more because the will it self together with the memory ought for that space of motion to be wholly supt up and as it were annihilated in the understanding The which surely is the weight of a great Mystery For else as soon as any one doth think of his Soul or of any thing as of a third with a seperated interchangeable course without the understanding for that very cause there is not yet the thought or operation of a pure and onely intellect But when the Soul thinks of it self or any other thing as it self without an interchangeable course of the thinker and of the thing thought of without an appendency out-turning or respect to duration place and circumstances Then indeed such a thought is intellectual or of the understanding But it is not as yet therefore illustrated or made lightsomely famous although that understanding is already a far more noble thought than that which rusheth in by things that happen whether those do come in to it by likenesses without a sequel as being infused or next being drawn from experiences and observations do by influence flow to it of their own accord Because the Soul in that state of light doth thus apprehend the more inward and formerly essence of the thing understood because the intellect it self doth transform it self by passing over or thorow into the thing understood Hence indeed it followes If intellectual knowledge be with a similitude of the thing understood in the understanding it self that also the Kingdom of God doth as it were come to us and is renewed or doth spring again as oft as we in faith do intellectually and presentially adore the goodness power infiniteness Glory truth of God c. in the Spirit And thus it is unto God a delight to be with the Sons of men Surely it is thus Our understanding is as it were all to be sprinkled with a new dew of perfection as oft as any thing that is super-celestial or heavenly above is intellectually contemplated of because for that moment it passeth over into that and tasteth down that Then indeed the Image of God shines all over within and becomes glorious Good God whitherto dost thou bring mortalls But surely such an intellectual thought is not made with a distinction of words or properties of speech neither with the girding of the sences or reason neither with a certain more swift conception of a whole Discourse abundantly drawn in nor with a dependance and sequel of things before thought of nor being environed with circumstances of here now white great bitter like pleasing c. But one is not in the understanding without the other neither with-the other under an interchangeable course neither also even as it may be conceived by Reason or Imagination or be thought by Imaginations or likenesses But in that state now here sense reason imagination memory and will are at once melted into a meer understanding and do stand obscured under darkness by the light of understanding Then then I say a certain light falls upon the Soul And that in my judgement is all of whatsoever could ever be declared by word thought speech and writing But whether that light be altogether supernatural or that the understanding be of its own nature thus kindled or enflamed I had rather experience than determine That one thing at leastwise I know that it doth not happen without grace Wherefore whether the understanding be transformed or whether it doth transform it self into the Image of the thing understood surely it had need of help from God and that indeed a singular one because then at leastwise the Soul beholds its own understanding under a form taken on it in the said light and in that its glasse it beholds it self intellectually without a reflexion of interchangeable course and so it conceiveth a knowable thing together with all its properties For that this light of knowledge is not that which issues out of the understanding but remaineth within reflexed upon the understanding which may be perfected in all truth and perfect certainty Indeed some Rabbins do fear this state of the Soul as dangerous The mystical School also feareth the danger of arrogancy and spiritual adultery But both as they do avoid or shun that which is hurtful And the Adeptists think if it should often invade one or long continue undoubted death would be brought together with a sickness which the Rabbins call Binsica which properly is an unnourishment or pining away of the Organ of the phantasie Notwithstanding I pray let them pardon me if I shall think otherwise First of all because the Instruments of the Imagination do not labour in this act but they sleep unmoved as if they were not Therefore likewise they suffer nothing Then because that act is not in our power for I believe that that principal act is of Clemency Which Clemency doth never give make cause or admit of that which is inordinate Therefore although Clemency should the more often and longer abound yet neither therefore could it contain or argue an inordinacy I beseech therefore that the Father of Lights would vouch safe to prevent and follow me with his clearness that he may bring me unto the calling which is pleasing to him in his grace The light therefore which falls from above upon the Soul when it is lesse tied and bound to the Organs of the Body and the which is in it self not capable of suffering and immortal cannot also hurt the life For truly after the receiving of a small quantity of the light I finde a man scarce to suffer any thing by three dayes fasting Wherefore it comes into my minde that the friends might stand by Job as Companions for the full nine dayes without meat or drink Moreover according to my opinion that light doth so dispose of the understanding without the help endeavour and labour of the understanding
working motion to the co-working the action doth re-bound Therefore things that are produced without life do not receive their forms through the makeable disposition of the working terme or limit but onely they do obtain the ends or maturities of their appointments and digestions For while from the causes of Minerals or Mettalls a stone doth re-bound or from the Seed of a Plant while a Plant is made no new Being is made which was not by way of power in the Seed but it onely obtains the perfecting of the appointed ripeness And therefore power is given to the Earth of producing Herbes but not to the water of producing Fishes Because it is not so in things that have a living Soul as in Plants For as their Monarchies are plainly unlike so also their manners of generation and generating For therefore the natural gift of increasing Seeds durable throughout Ages is read to have been given to the Earth not so in living Creatures although these in the mean time ought to propagate Therefore the Seeds of things that are not soulified are indeed propagated no otherwise than as light taken from light Yet in the partaking of which enlightning the Creator is of necessity the chief Efficient But the Creator alone createth every where a new light whether it be formal or also vitall of the individual that is brought forth for neither was that light before not so much as in part although from the potential disposure or fit or inclinable disposition the Seeds of things not soulified may in some sort be reckoned to obtain a Form so are things that have life yet the formal virtue is not so neerly planted in these as in Plants For Souls and lives as they know not degrees so also not parts And although the Seed of a living Creature may have a disposition unto life yet it hath not life neither can it have it or effect it of it self for the Reasons drawn from the Rise or Birth of Forms Wherefore I shall teach by and by that there are not four Elements nor that there is a uniting of the three remainders yea nor of two that bodies which are believed to be mixt may be thereby made but that to the framing of these two natural causes at least do abundantly suffice the matter indeed is the veriest substance it self of the effect but the efficient its inward and seminal Agent and even as in living Creatures I acknowledge two onely Sexes so also are there two bodies at least the beginnings of any things whatsoever and not more even as there are onely two great lights For the three beginnings of bodies which the Chymists do call Salt Sulphur and Mercury or Salt Liquor and Balsam I will shew in their place that they cannot obtain the Dignities of beginnings which cannot be found in all things and which themselves are originally sprung from the Element of water and do fail being dissolved again into water as at sometime I shall make to appear for it behoveth the nature of beginnings to be stable if they ought to bear the name and property of a Principle Therefore there are two chief or first beginnings of Bodies and corporeal Causes and no more to wit the Element of Water or the beginning of which and the Ferment or Leaven or seminal beginning by which that is to be disposed of whence straightway the Seed is produced in the matter which the Seed being gotten is by that very thing made the life or the middle matter of that Being running thorow even into the finishing of the thing or last matter But the Ferment is a formall created Being which is neither a substance nor an accident but a neutrall thing framed from the beginning of the World in the places of its own Monarchie in the manner of light fire the Magnall or sheath of the Air Forms c. that it may prepare stir up and go before the Seeds This is indeed a Ferment in general But what things I here suppose I will at length evidently shew every thing in its place I will not treat of Fables and things that are not in being but of Principles and Causes in order to their ends actions and generations I consider Ferments existing truly and in act and individually by their kindes distinct Therefore Ferments are gifts and Roots stablished by the Creator the Lord for the finishing of Ages sufficient and durable by continual increase which of water can stir up and make Seeds proper to themselves Surely wherein he hath given to the Earth the virtue of budding from it self he hath given so many Ferments as expectations of fruits that also without the Seed of the foregoing Plant they may out of Water generate their own Liquors and Fruits Therefore Ferments do bring forth their own Seeds not others that is every ones according to their own Nature and property which the Poet saith For Nature is subject to the Soil Neither doth every Land bring forth all things For there is in places a certain order divinely placed a certain Reason and unchangeable Root of producing some appointed effects or fruits nor indeed onely of Vegetables but also of Minerals and Insects or creatures that retain their life in a divided portion For the soils and properties of Lands do differ and that by reason of some cause of the same birth and age with that Land Indeed this I attribute to the formall Ferment created in that place Whence consequently divers fruits do bud and of their own accord break forth in divers places whose Seeds being removed to another place we see for the most part to come forth more weakly as counterfeit young But that which I have said of the Ferment or Leaven placed in the Earth that very thing thou shalt likewise finde in the Air and Water for neither do they want Roots Gifts fermental Reasons or respects which being stable do bring forth fruits dedicated to places and Provinces and that thing not onely the perseverance of fruits doth convince of but also the voluntarily and abundant shedding abroad of unforbidden Seeds Therefore the Ferment holds the Nature of a true Principle divers in this from the efficient cause that the efficient cause is considered as an immediate active Principle in the thing which is the Seed and as it were the moving Principle to generation or the constitutive beginning of the thing but the Ferment is often before the Seed and doth generate this from it self And the Ferment is the original beginning of things a Power placed in the Earth or places but not in seminal things constituted But the Ferment which growes up in the things constituted or framed together with the properties of Seeds hath it self in manner of the efficient cause unto the Seed of things but the seminal Ferment is not that which is one of the two original Principles but the product of the same and the effect of the individual Seed and therefore frail and perishing Whereas otherwise the
learn the wit of Aristotle ready in founding Maxims that as oft as he found any thing agreeable to his own conceipts he would presently draw it into Rules under an universal head by binding or tying up the Roots of weaker authority that were taken from one to another Which Maxims indeed of his the following age wondered at to wit being prone to sloath and therefore easily worshipping him and those Maxims Also oftentimes he brought learning by demonstration into Nature by a forced Interpretation as that he would have natural causes wholly to obey numbers lines and letters of the Alphabet by a rashness altogether ridiculous By way of example he taking notice that fire did sooner burn about dry Wood than moyst he thereupon straightway meditating on a general Maxim would That the act of active things should onely be on a matter disposed which thing notwithstanding is enclosed with many ignorances For first as soon as he saw the fire an external Agent to agree with combustible matter he shewed hence also that every other Agent in Nature ought to act by the meanes of fire not knowing the fire not to act by meanes of a seminal Agent and to be a peculiar Creature Therefore with the like ignorance he judged every efficient cause like the fire to be of necessity external He was also deceived in this that he determined every natural Agent to require a disposed matter when as otherwise the Agent in Nature doth dispose of the matter that is subject unto it For neither doth any counsel of a natural Agent act for any other end than that it may dispose the matter subjected to it unto aims known to it self at least appointed for generation Indeed out of one onely juyce of Earth and one onely Garden four hundred Plants do grow and fructifie For if the Agent doth finde a friendly disposition in the matter 't is well indeed but if not he easily prepares the same for himself What if hereafter I shall plainly shew that all tangible bodies do immediately proceed out of the one onely Element of Water by what necessity I pray you shall the Agent require a fore-existing disposition of the matter or if the disposed matter do fore-exist who shall be that disposer or fore-runner of the Agent By it self sufficient to the disposing of every matter wherein it is But if thou sayest the Ferment At leastwise thou oughtest again to have known that both causes differ not in Nature from the thing produced unless in ripeness nor is the Agent to be distinguished from the Ferment The which if the Schooles seasoned with the Discipline of a better juyce did know they would also know Aristotle to have revolted from his own Rules which being at first true he erected into the premises of Scientifical demonstrations He had even become mad about the wondrous generatings of stones in us And although before the Elements of Euclide sprang up he was more ignorant of the Mathematicks yet Aristotle being far more skilful in this than in Nature endeavoured to subdue Nature under the Rules of that Science For he knew the Circle to be the most capable of figures in a plain Therefore he suddenly forced it into a general Maxim that also Ulcers and wounds that are round were more hard to be cured then any others that were alike in extension But truly a piercing wound by a broad Dagger is more difficult than a round one in the flesh But in Ulcers the Fistula of the fundament or weeping Fistula are more laboursome in healing than any Ulcer of the shanks or leggs extended into a Circuite Indeed he thought being deceived with the aptness of Rules the incarnating of a wound to promote it self onely by an external working Plaister and that outsideness not onely to be in relation to the superficies of our Body but in a figural respect of the distance of the lips of the wound in order to its Centre I will relate a Story A Trooper infects his Wife with the Pox or foule Disease but this through extream want of a remedy enlarged it self into an eating sore or Ulcer One at least I saw wasting the fleshy membrane or coate from the Ear into the neck shoulder and elbow behinde thorow the shoulder blades the whole side of the ribs and breast Which membrane as it is fatter in Women so it contains a deeper depth She said she had many other and lesse sores thorow the bottom of the belly into the legs and she shewed a humane body almost without a skin The Woman was carried by my authority into the Hospital of Vilvord the Nuns refusing but might prevailing also sometimes for a while commands the Nuns The chief Chyrurgion Tow being steeped in Aqua fortis with incredible pain toucheth the quick muscles and smites the house with a miserable howling But passing by I asked why he had done that He saith it is an ulcerated Cacner and wholly so and by how much the sooner she died by so much the happier she would be The complaining Nun hearing that said she was not bound by the rules of her house to entertain the Cancer Leprosie or Pox c. Forthwith therefore before the twilight they bring forth the Woman to the Suburbs and laid her on the Dunghill But a poor Country man pitying the unknown Woman makes her a little Cottage of boughes against the Rain but he applieth some Colewort leaves to the abounding or running filthy matter and to drive away the unkindeness of the Air. He tells the chance to me I gives her the Corallate of Paracelsus prepared by the white of an Egge and in twenty six dayes she was wholly well For the great Ulcers with a hastened force were covered with skin some exceeding small chaps from the beginning keeping a longer continuance A little after a certain Kinsman dying bequeaths to this most poor Woman a House and Land Her Husband perished behinde the hedges She marries the second time being now rich in a Herde a flock and in Lands For I having admired in her Husband and the Chyrurgion robbers or murderers in the Monks lightness in the Countryman the Samaritane and in the Woman Job I knew the God of Job to be the same and the continual almighty Ruler of the Universe From whom although man hath privily stolen the Titles of Majesty Highness Excellency Clemency and Lordliness he hath reserved at least one onely perpetual one to himself which is that of Eternity In respect whereof man is a Mushrome of one night on the morrow rotten Therefore let the Schooles know that the Rules of the Mathematicks or Learning by demonstration do ill square to Nature For man doth not measure Nature but she him For neither shall a Heathen man that is ignorant of the wayes shew more the wayes than a blinde man colours not seen before Therefore besides the ignorance of Nature in its Root and thingliness or what it is the Schooles have not known the causes number requirance
power is an accident and no accident or quality can be a partaker of a Body but on the contrary a Body is a partaker of accidents 4. That souls do not differ but in respect of that body which at length he calleth meer heat notwithstanding that all Souls are a power partaking of a heavenly Body therefore Souls do not differ in respect of that Body in which he hath said they all do agree or if there be any difference between Souls let it be in respect of the matter of a Body or of an unnamed Client or retainer being neglected by and plainly unknown to Aristotle And so in so great a dress of words he hath spoken nothing but trifles 5. If Souls do differ onely for that bodies sake the act shall be now limited by the power the Species or particular kinde by the matter not by the form 6. The Seed contains the cause of fruitfulness it is a Childish and triflous thing because the Seed ceaseth to be Seed if it be without the cause of fruitfulness 7. Every power of the Soul is a partaker of some other body than those which are called the Elements Yet he would have the bodies of all soulified or living Creatures to be of necessity mixt of non but actual Elements 8. The Seed is not fruitful but by heat As though Fishes were not more fruitfull than four footed Beasts and as though Fishes were not actually cold 9. He knew not another moderate heat from live Coals which nourisheth Eggs even unto a Chick And he knowes not that all heat is in one onely most special kinde of quality being distinguished onely by degree 10. He is ignorant that heat onely makes hot by it self and that it should make fruitful by accident And therefore although that heat be the principle of motion and the power of the Soul that is Nature by it self yet as it should make the Seeds fruitful by accident it should be the beginning of motion by accident Therefore in respect of the same Nature it should be a beginning by it self and by accident or with relation to the same Nature it should be Nature and not Nature 11. He confoundeth the quality of heats with the spirit and air of the froathy Seed which notwithstanding do differ no lesse than in predicaments 12. Heat is the spirit of the froathy body and the nature which is in that spirit is heat Therefore the spirit shall be in the spirit 13. Nature is in that spirit and that spirit is not nature defined by Aristotle for the subject of natural Philosophy yet that spirit is the Principle of motion in the Seed and of life in living Creatures and he much more strictly denies the froathy body of the Seed to be of the account of nature as though the seed of things were a froath and not the more inward invisible kernel in a corporeal seed but that onely the power of Souls which with him is nothing but heat were nature 14. Because every power of the Soul is encompassed with heat he excludes out of the account of nature any other bodies and accidents 15. That power of Souls for whose sake Souls do differ is onely heat not indeed a fiery one but agreeing in proportion with the Element of the Stars that is it hath not been understood by Aristotle nor is it to be any way to be understood by the Schooles how heat doth agree with a body with an Element what agreement there can be between such various dependants of predicaments 16. He denieth this power of Souls to be of the race of Elements That plural number rejecteth not onely one Element but by reason of the strength of negatives all Elements 17. Every power of the Soul is a meer heat not indeed answering to the heat of the Element of the Stars but altogether to the Element it self 18. For truly he acknowledgeth no other heat than that of fire nor any other Element of fire than that which is of the kitchin because he distinguisheth Elementary heat from the Element of the Stars yet by his own authority he hath inclosed fire that is not of the kitchin between the Heaven and the Air. 19. At length as oft as he was positively to tell what nature was the privy shifter saith sometimes that it is the power of the Soul sometimes the fruitfulness of the Seed and at last he neither perceived nor ever knew what the heat not fiery was and makes a fifth Element of the Firmament of the Stars after he hath cast away the other four by denying them Therefore he runs about in denying by far fetched speeches and least he should be laid hold on he denyeth nature to be of the race of Elements As if it were enough to have said there is a Chymera or certain fabulous Monster not of the Elements but of the fifth Element of the Stars It is not a body not an accident but a heat answering to the Element of the Heavens not to the heat of the same 20. And he would not say that indeed these things are so bur that they seem to him to be so Seeing that according to the same man many things may seem to be which yet are not 21. And if thou wilt not believe it go to see or expect it for ever 22. As though the whole action of nature were made by heat 23. Also that Mettalls which elsewhere he writeth to be co-thickned or condensed by their own cold because they do abound with heat should now be out of nature 24. And as though the seeds of Vegetables because they are not froathy should not be endowed with fruitfulnesses or should not contain nature in themselves 25. Therefore he denieth the heat of living Creatures actually hot to be Elementary the which notwithstanding I shall at sometime in its own place prove to be true being unmindeful of his own maxim that the cause is of the same particular kinde with its thing caused He knowes not I say that our heat doth make any other things to be hot by a naked Elementary heat And likewise that since not onely Elementary heat which he placeth in the sublunary fire distinct from the common or kitchin fire but also the kitchin fire do heat us in a degree fitted to us Therefore they ought to be of one and the same species or particular kinde 26. At length he rashly affirmeth that nature or the power of the Soul or seminal truths are nothing besides that heavenly heat 27. Therefore he acknowledgeth heat actually cold in Fishes to be the cause of fruitfulness seeing it distributes from every power of the Soul For that is to have sold trifles instead of Phylosophy And as oft as he feareth his toyes are not saleable he provokes us to the Element of the Stars after that he had provoked us it seemes by one affirmative and many trifles of denyalls to the proportion of the Element of the Stars Surely it is a shame for Christians
as it were the sheath of the Earth nigh the Poles is deeper than under the compass of the Sun for if Lucifer or the Day-star being willing to place his seat over the North may be understood to have been guilty of pride Truly if he were not higher in the same place that should not be imputed as a signe of arrogancy especially since in the places where the holy Scriptures were written the Pole-star hath alwayes seemed very neere to the Horizon neither doth the Heaven there promise any thing of height as to sight But in our Horizon I have seen the whole Body of the Sun to have given a shadow on the pin of the Diall a little after the ninth houre in the fourth moneth called June but in the morning I have seen the whole Body of the Sun above the Horizon about the fourth houre for it did not as vet cast a shadow by reason of the thickness of the Air and Vapours Therefore the shorâest night is onely of seven houres at the most but in the Winter Solstice the Sun ariseth â5 minutes before the eighth but sets 27 minutes before the fourth Therefore the shorest day is at least 7 houres and 42 minutes But it dârogates or takes away from the roundness of the Sphere to have more of light than darkness At length modern or late made Navigations have seen the Sun under the North for a moneths space before that the perfect roundness of the Heaven had suffered that thing CHAP. XI The Air. 1. The Dreams of the Schooles concerning the maystness of Air. 2. A foolish or unsavory objection 3. They preâuppose impossibilities 4. The Air is never made Water through a condensing of its parts 5. They beg the Principle 6. A ridicuâous thing of the Schooles concerning the ââtive heat of the Air. 7. The old Wives fiction of an Antiperâstâsiâââ compassing about of the contrary 8. The deep stupiditâââ of the Schooles are discovered 9. Arguments 10. Another alike stâpidity 11. That the Air is colder than Snow 12. An Exhortation of the Authour unto young beginners A Mathematicall demonstration that the Air and Water are primigeâiall or first-born Elements and ever unchangeable by cold or heat into each other THE Schooles with their Aristotle do hitherto endow the Air with eight degrees that is to be most moyst but to be hot unto four degrees or to a mean but they give the greatest coldness to the water with a slack or mean moystness And so they command the Air to be twice as moystas the water for that because the Air by its pressing together and conjoyning doth generate the water But I pray you what other thing is that than to have sold Dreams for truth For if the Air be co-thickned the moysture thereof shall be also more thick greater and more palpable in water than it was before in Air seeing that condensing cannot make a new essential form nor is it a principle of generations what other thing is that than impertinently to trifle At least the water should not be but Air co-thickned in the moysture to ten fold or rather to an hundred fold and more active and therefore and straightway it should moysten more and stronger than the Air by a hundred fold So far as it that therefore the water should be lesse moyst than the Air. But if a naked condensing doth dispose the Air to a new form seeing the same disposition of the inward efficient is the necessary cause of that thing generated it must needs be that the same doth remain in the thing produced and so if the Air co-thickned be water there shall now be but two Elements to wit Water and Earth Whiles the water shall be as moyst as while it was being at first Air to wit wherein the condensing alone came which is a co-uniting of parts but not a formall transchanging of a thing into a thing For truly the form every way re-bounding from the moysture of the Air being condensed into an hundred fold it shall be even moyster and shall more moysten by an hundred fold than the auntient Air. But surely the water doth not moysten by reason of thickness for otherwise the Earth should hitherto more moysten because moysture onely doth moysten and not thickness For else Quick-silver should more moysten the wooll or hand than water For whatsoever doth more moysten that it self is also more moyst and on the other hand whatsoever in an Elementary nature is moyster that likewise doth more moysten Nature laughs to require belief of things known by reason of sense from a Dream and even till now to teach the shameful devises of Airstotle for truth But the Schooles will say we must thus teach it for a Maxim That by reason whereof every thing is such that thing it self is more such as though that for the honour of a Maxim we must belie God! But the water is not moyst but for the Air therefore the Air ought to be moyster than the water But they shall sweat more than enough before they will prove the subsumption or second Proposition but the Air is neither moyst nor hot in it self and whatsoever of moysture there is in it that is a stranged contained in it never touching at the nature of Air although vapours may be contained in the porinesses or hollow places of the Air. For what doth it belong to the nature of Glasse if it shall inclose water within it For I shall teach by and by that it is impossible for Air and water to be changed into each other And so by absurdities the Schooles do wholly suppose impossible speculations For it also contains an absurd and impossible thing that Air condensed should be made water and be the perpetual matter of Fountains For there hath been Air pressed together by some in an Iron Pipe of one ell almost the breadth of fifteen fingers which afterwards in its driving our hath like a hand-gun discharged with Gunpowder sent a Bullet thorow a Board or Plank Which thing verily could not be done if the air by pressing together might by force be brought into water Especially because that experiment did no lesse succeed in the deepest cold of winter than in the heat of Summer What if therefore the Air being pressed together by force in a Pipe and cold season be not changed into water by what authority shall the Schooles confirm their fictions touching the co-thickning of the Air for the springing up or over-flowing and the continuance of Fountains For Cold hath not the Beginnings Causes and properties of generating in nature Yea no moysture at all is found in the aforesaid Pipe and moreover wet Leather in the end of a Hand-Pistoll drieth presently It is also a ridiculous thing to prove the Air to be moyst by the original of Fountains and likewise to prove the rise of Fountains from the supposed moysture of the Air. Both Arguments of the Schooles is from the scarcity of truth and a childish begging
fortune come suddenly unlooked for Famagusta had been destroyed Therefore let the Reader know that the Eastern Marriners were wont on the day that they do observe such Windes to take a great Knife wherewith they make the Sign of the Cross in the Air and do utter these words In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and God was the Word and suddenly all the Whirle-winde and tempest seperates it self and ceaseth For I have seen this experiment twice And on the second time while I returned out of Cyprus into Italy For neither do I finde any thing of Superstition therein but that the Knife must have a black handle And so I can determine of nothing certainly Thus far he A wonder at least That this divelish tempest should cease and the Devill spare the whole City perhaps for the sin of one sinner Moreover about Blas this is as yet considerable If in the great heat of Summer thou holdest a burning Candle about the hole of a Window there is no foot-step for the most part of mooved Air to be perceived but throughout the whole winter however small the hole be a troublesome Winde breatheth and that continually But since there is not a greater quantity of air let us now take the air for its Magnall or sheath being constrained by reason of cold than of that which is rarefied by reason of heat there seemes not to be a stronger reason of this than of that to stir up the Winde Therefore there is a twofold Motive locall Blas in the Air one indeed which stirs up the Windes and so includes a violence or swiftness from a native power or motion But the other which followes as for an alterative Blas for co-thickning or rarefying in the air But since this is almost universall by reason of Summer and Winter it also sends forth a certain slow flowing of the Air. And although cold may equally condense the Magnall and the Air be in this respect unmoved by reason of an alterative and violent windy Blas yet seeing in the opposite Coast of the Sphere the Magnall or sheath in the Air is generally made thin onely by reason of heat the Air in the Northern Coast must needes partly go back be knit together and so occupie the lesse room and partly be gently driven forward by the rarefying and rarefied Magnall of the Air that co-toucheth with it from the other half of the Orbe And this is the cause of the Question proposed to wit of the slow and uncessant flowing in the Winter Air which we do experience through a Chap be it never so small also the Winde ceasing But not so in the Summer-time For the Magnall being once made thin through heat the air stands unmooved amongst us CHAP. XV. A Vacuum or emptiness of Nature 1. The true definition of the Winde 2. The undistinct sincerity of former ages 3. Whither the Authours invention tendeth 4. An examining of the Air by an Engine like to a Hand-Gun 5. A Vacuum or emptiness in the Air is proved 6. A Vacuum is easier believed than a piercing of bodies 7. A Handicraft Demonstration by fire in behalf of a Vacuum and five remarkable things of it 8. A Handicraft operation concerning a sulphurated Torch or Candle 9. Subsequent Collections from both the Handicraft Operations 10. Pores of the Air are demonstrated 11. Opposite suspitions are taken away 12. Inward heat and inward fire being shut up together in a Glasse how they act diversly into the Air. 13. That it acts more strongly by the pressing together of its smoak than by the enlarging of heat 14. Of what sort the sense or feeling of the Air is 15. A new end of the Air. 16. That the fire lives not by the air but onely is choaked through penurie 17. Vacuities or emptinesses in the air are needfull 18. That every thing hath hated pressing together made by its guest by the lawes of self-love 19. A Vacuum being an impossible thing with Aristotle hath now become a requisite thing in nature 20. That there is given in the Vacuum of the air a middle thing between a body and an accident and so a neutrality 21. What the great Magnall may be 22. How the Blas of the Stars is communicated without Species or particular kindes 23. The tristes of the Aristotelicks concerning the Winde 24. A ridiculous multitude and plenty of exhalations according to Aristotle 25. The Opinion of Galen touching the Windes is hissed out 26. The Opinion of Galen concerning Quicksilver badly from Diascorides and worse copied out 27. The nature of rarefied air for the confirming of a Vacuum 28. While the air is commonly thought to be made thin it is indeed pressed together by reason of the extension of of its Magnall or Sheath 29. The body of the air hath its just extension under cold 30. Why in a hotter Climate the favours of the Heaven are the greater 31. The Magnall is proved to be increased and diminished but not the air to be properly rarefied or condensed IN the beginning of the Blas of a Meteor I have defined the Winde by a true definition that is by its constitutive Causes Seeing that a thing without or besides the containing of its Causes is nothing and every thing produced doth naturally shew an originall and essentiall respect unto its own producer which is inward to it Therefore a naturall Winde is a flowing Air mooved by the Blas of the Stars And that for distinction from a prodigious or monstrous Winde raised up by the malice of evill spirits Hypocrates calls the Winde a Blast and saying that all Diseases are from blasts he reckoueth up his To Enormon or forcible blast among the chief or first causes of Diseases For such was the plainness and candour or simplicity of former times wherein because they being more blessed there was not yet such knowledge nor cruelty nor frequency of Diseases For all things were not granted to Hypocrates For it hath well pleased the Almighty since Hypocrates to have also created his Physitians He made known indeed to Hypocrates that there is in us a Spirit stirring up all things by its Blas which Spirit he afterwards by a microcosmicall analogie or the proportion of a little World compared to the blasts of the World and restrained into the order of a blast whether they were partakers of life or indeed did contain the causes of death and destruction Lastly he left it undecided whether they being stirred up from the Heaven they should shew the suitable proportions of the Heavenly Circle or at length were stirred up by a sublunary law For the race or descent of the vitall Spirits had not yet been plainly made known For none had hitherto learned by experience that the matter of Gas was water and so it had not been as yet known that the windes of the World did wholly differ from the vitall Spirit From the knowledge of the windes handed forth by me in the
into the aforesaid Bladder being pressed together laying on the ground and void of every Body however most strongly it should blow yet it could not at all blow up the Bladder because the low Countries laying on it should presse it together But if indeed a fiery exhalation be sought for in the place of the Winde or Air I have already demonstrated before that fire to be impossible and the exhalation of so great an effect throughout all the low Countries to be fabulous At length that continuall Bladder so strong and capable to be hammered thin also faileth which may sustain with its back the low Countries Seas Rivers and far more For although I have granted the same it is not because I think it to be but because that Bladder being supposed so great absurdities may also follow and the Schooles at length be squeezed to an impossibility Mountains Sulphurous places and the mansions of Mines have afforded to Countrey people whence the Schooles have them the beginnings of this Dream Alass is there every where a miserable drowsiness in searching into the causes of effects The Mountain Soma or Vesuvius nigh Naples hath burned now for some Ages with Sulphur or Brimstone and fire-Stones But it hath a gap in its top large enough whereby the smoaks and flame might expire or breath out To wit perhaps to the largeness of three filed measures or Acres of Land But a Vault that was next to the flame as being now sufficiently roasted and full of chaps at length about the sixteenth day of the tenth Moneth or December of the year 1631 by one sudden fall fell down into the Gulf of the flame But it is the property as well of some Metalls as of bright shining Fire-stones while they are melting that if any thing of water shall fall in among them they all leap asunder therefore the Sulphurs with the Fire-stones being melted in the bowels of Vesuvius they did not endure the roasted fragment falling down from the Rocks without a great deluge but the flame did vomit out all of whatsoever had slidden down from above and more Neither was this sufficient But moreover some Fountains were loosed from above into the Chimney of the fire But what have the melted Sulphurs or what the raging tempests of smoakes common with an Earth-quake Do Sulphurs thus burn throughout all the low Countries For an Earth-quake had gone before at Naples and did accompany that danger of Sodom And although they shall happen together they do not therefore partake of one onely root the which do obey divers causes that Earth-quake fore-shewing a wonder did also inclose in it a monstrous token and doth alwayes inclose some such But the belching out of Metallick Veins stands by its natural causes Surely a wretched Sophistry it is to argue from not the cause as for the cause For neither are exhalations to be believed to have been enclosed in that Earth-quake a Chimney is produced having long since a way opened for exhalations I would the Schooles hath hearkened to their Pliny that oft-times at the present time or urgency of an Earth-quake Birds the winde being still being as it were sore smitten with fear do fall down out of the Air that in a quiet Haven the Oare Galleys do leap a little But what fellowship interposeth between the Air and the Sea with an exhalation shut up under the Earth For doth the Air tremble when the Earth doth Is so small a trembling of the Air sufficient to cast down Birds which fly in every winde For because the Sand of the Sea and that indeed without gaping should leap a little for the depth of half a foot ought therefore the Superficies of the deep Sea void of Winde together with Ships to tremble A Manuscript of the Curate of S. Mary beyond Dilca of Mecheline was shewen wherein he had written that in the year 1540 once every day for three dayes space the Earth trembled before that lightning inflamed its Sand-Port and also the Gun-powder contained therein whence the City by an un-thought of slaughter being almost utterly dashed in pieces went to ruine Lastly in the year 1580 the second houre after noon the fury of the Windes ceasing the City trembled two dayes before the English invaded Mecheline and took it for a prey But what have those events happening from a fatall necessity common in the joyning of causes with a dreamed exhalation under the Earth For what could a supposed exhalation portend besides or out of it self For why should it include a future signifying of a VVar-like invasion or Lightning to come and to kindle the Vessels of Gun-powder there also kept shaking the Sandy Tower and throwing down the whole City For before that the Mountain Vesuvius belched out its bowels and covered very many small Towns with a Minerall Clod and denyed hope to the Husband-man for the time to come thick darkness under the Sun went before in the Air lamentable howlings and the Earth trembled things stirring up the required devotion of the Nation Truly the Earth trembled from its own cause for a fore-knowledge of the future slaughter threatned But the slaughter it selfe followed by its naturall causes But the fore-going signes have never any thing common with the event of future fire Since therefore now it is certain that there is no place among the Pavements of the Earth nor exhalation that layes under them and if any should be under yet that it were impossible to cause an Earth-quake yet that it is an undoubted truth that the Earth doth truly and actually tremble without the dis-continuance of its pavements or through the opening of some gap I have considered that trembling to be in the Earth no otherwise than in Brasse when as the Clapper hath smote the Bell. For as long as the Bell trembles without a cleft so long it gives a Tune The Earth also while it is shaken with its Super-natural Clapper sends forth a deaf sound because its body toucheth together indeed by Sand and VVater even into its Center yet it is not holding together by a continuance of unity without intermission And it may tremble without the dis-continuance of touching together indeed by so much the more freely if the Mettall be bended without the renting asunder of that which holds together the Earth also in trembling hath its inward Clapper more famous than the voice of Thunder But because the stroak waxeth deaf in the Sand and VVater therefore it is shaken together with a certain tune or note while it trembled yet the roaring which is sometimes heard is not of the Earth but a strange one not proper to the Earth-quake but an accidentary howling of Spirits which by the Italians is called Baleno At length I weighing the cause of an Earth-quake do know that in the first place there is a motive force in the Air whereby the Air doth commit to execution the spurre conceived in the Stars For the Stars shall be to you for
Beere belcheth forth its Gas an easie sudden death and choaking doth break forth Wherefore I have greatly grieved and pittied mans condition that by so gross negligence of the Schooles the more profound Remedies of fumes are almost suppressed whereby not onely those who faint are refreshed but also whereby the healings of most Diseases are performed Which thing concerning odours or smells at sometime explained in the matter of Medicine every one shall with me more easily disclose Surely almost all Medicines are neglected which do restore the strength and they have applied themselves onely to the diminishments of bodies by the with-drawings of bloud and solutive scammoneated potions and by Cauteries Baths Clysters Sweats and Cantharides For a Gas is more fully implanted and odours do keep a more immediate co-touching with the vitall Spirits than Liquors if they are not partakers of a poysonous infection at leastwise of the dulled properties of second qualities and the which qualities or especially that sublime one of the first digestion they do lay aside as it were Soils covered with Clay if they are not as yet received with a great averseness of the Archeus or they being rebellious and stubborn do with anguish resist the digestive powers Notwithstanding the Scripture might be opposed against me which saith concerning man Thou art Earth and into Earth thou shalt go How therefore shall flesh bone c. be materially of water alone But I will say this from the force of the same Argument If man be Earth how therefore do the Schooles affirm that man materially is not one onely Element but foure Elements therefore from that Text those things which I have spoken above are confirmed To wit that the Earth is not in the holy Scriptures a primary Element but every thing co-agulated of water is called Earth because by its consistence it is more likened to Earth than to Water and so the veriest Earth it self the prop of nature is of water no lesse than Man Wood Ashes a Stone c. CHAP. XIX The Image of the Ferment begets the Masse or lump with childe of a Seed 1. There is no seminall successive change without a Ferment 2. Handicraft operation is brought into a Circle by Ale or Beere 3. The Ferment makes volatile that which otherwise is changed into a Coal 4. It is proved by handicraft-operation in the venall Bloud 5. The Bloud attains its own various ferments in the Kitchins of the members 6. The unconstancie of Paracelsus is taken notice of 7. The Beginnings of Paracelsus are made by the fire but they are not in Bodies 8. There are double ferments from whence are the seeds of things 9. The Birth of Insects 10. 'T is not sufficient to have said that Insects are born of putrefaction or corruption 11. A twofold manner of generation 12. How seedes are made 13. In what manner an odour or smell causeth a ferment and seed 14. A Scorpion from Basil 15. The ferment in voluntary seedes reacheth to the Horizon or bound of life 16. The ferment of Diseases and healings 17. Almost all Medicines do act by way of an odour onely 18. Therefore seedes are strong onely in a specificall odour 19. An odour and light do pierce the spirits 20. Odours do cause or incite and cure the Plague and divers Diseases 21. Art having forgotten its perfume is translated into a servile rage or madness 22. Vnappeaseable pains are presently appeased by the odour of an outward application 23. The ferment is the Parent of transmutations 24. Of what quality the ferment of the stomach is 25. Why very many do abhorre Cheese 26. A sharp fermentall thing differeth from soure things 27. From whence belching is 28. The labour of Wisdom 29. All things which are believed to be mixt are onely of Water and a ferment 30. The ferment of the Equinoctiall Line 31. The progress of seedes and ferments unto proPagation 32. The originall and progress of Vegetables 33. Ferments do sometimes operate more powerfully than Fire 34. Paracelsus is noted AS no knowledge in the Schooles is scantier than the knowledge of a Ferment so no knowledge is more profitable The name of a Ferment or Leaven being unknown hitherto unless in making of bread when as notwithstanding there is made no successive change or transmutation by the dreamed appetite of matter but onely by the endeavour of the ferment alone In times past leaven and all things leavened were forbidden and the Mystery hidden in the Letter was then of right interpreted according to the Letter For as leavens or ferments were altogether the way-leaders and necessary unto every transmutation of a thing so they did denote corruption unconstancy and impurity and therefore a flight from leaven was enjoyned I will first of all explain a thing surely so paradoxall in naturall Philosophy by an example The purest of Ales or Beeres which is deservedly the nourishing juyce or meat melting or finished right of the Grain requireth so much Grain by how much there is capacity and largeness in the Vessel or Hogs-head And so indeed that the Bran being taken away all the Meal doth melt into the Ale or Beer and the Water onely supplies the place of the Bran. That Ale or Beer by a very little ferment or leaven being administred doth boyl up by fermenting in Cellars it waxeth clear by degrees and the dreg falls down to the bottom at length something doth fermentally wax soure by which tartness it consumeth all its dreg And then it looseth more and more daily its sharp or pricking soureness At length it is deprived of the taste virtues and body of the meal And last of all it of its own accord returns into water That Ale or Beere being distilled layeth aside very much residence in the bottom like a Syrupe which at length by proceeding is changed into a Coal But if that same Ale or Beere by the degrees of the ferment shall passe over into water it leaveth no more dregs in the bottom while it is distilling than otherwise the water from whence it was boyled did contain because the natall sediment of the waters is not subject to the ferment of the Grain since it is not the object thereof but the Client of or dependant on another Monarchy Therefore the Grains do return unto their first matter whereof they are which is water and that by the virtue of the ferment onely In the next place every one of us doth daily frame to himself 7 or 10 ounces of bloud but at leastwise in our standing age as much bloud must needes be consumed as is a-new generated For else a man might straightway fear a hugeness or excessive greatness And then the bloud is by degrees changed into a vitall muscilage or flimy juyce the true immediate nourishment of the members of which it is wont to be said we are nourished by those things whereof we consist But they will have this nourishment to be sprinkled on all the particular members in
not in very deed of themselves cause substantial forms but it is the virtue of substantial forms whose Instruments onely accidents themselves are or as he elsewhere saith That accidents are the properties of substantial forms whatsoever they do work that that is done by virtue of the forms But surely by the leave of so great a man it is not in the things of nature even as it is in humane affaires where the Judge or Priest doth work by the name or authority of an office and not as John For such kinde of respects nature is ignorant of and those she hath even hitherto willingly wanted For every thing in her possession acteth that which it doth act without the relation of authorizing To wit an accident doth act as much and such as it is in it self but not as by the commission of that whereof it is the Instrument because nature is ignorant of under-appointments and every fallacy of right or authority For a thing operateth as much as and what it can without a Commission For what doth it belong to the effect of producing of forms that accidents do act in as much as they are the Instruments of the substantial form or in any other respect if in the mean time essential forms are in very deed and actually constituted by accidents themselves But surely an Instrument although it may generate something in Mathematical Science yet in no true understanding is it a generater in nature because it is external to the thing generated and singularly to its form nor indeed containing the essential Idea or first shape of the form much lesse the Archeus thereof For truly Accidents as they proceed from the generater for the intent of generating ought to contain a thingliness and seminall properties requisite to generation whereof accidents as they are such are deprived Because at the most they are onely dispositive meanes of the matter to receive a form but not to procreate it therefore it seemes according to D. Thomas that accidents as they are the Instruments of the form should be as it were the Instrumentall pipes by which the form of the generater should breath a form into the thing generated if the matter hereof be first well disposed by other accidents But then the immediate generation of the form should not agree or belong to accidents as indeed accidents are never under the understanding of an Instrument substantiall producers But Scotus insisting on the same delusions drawn from the producing of fire declareth that accidents do no manner of way generate substantial forms but that one substantial form doth in very deed actually produce another out of it self This saying at leastwise taketh from the Heaven and Sun the generation of forms Secondly it maketh every seed actually animated to be endowed with a substantial life and form with the doating Thomas Fienus Physitian at Lovaine A third there is which holds that accidents by their own proper virtue and without the concourse of a substantial form do immediately produce a substantial form For this man as I have said being most exceedingly over-blinded by the presence of the fire and light like Bats is constrained to confess that the solemn command of that great blessing increase and multiply is given onely to accidents For others like Africa do alwayes bring forth new Monsters out of the presumption of humane knowledge So that although the foregoing opinions were absurd yet these men do here set up as yet more superlative absurdities For indeed if nature doth require as the Naturalists do suppose a certain seminal succession and continuance of one flowing from another as a principle or beginning con-substantial and conjoyned with the thing begun how therefore could accidents being any way taken procreate or contain a substantial form they confess that every form is the inward perfection of the thing the essence substance and originall of the accident of its composed Body yet they will have it to be born produced and as it were created of nothing by accidents as it were dependances of the essential form its Predecessor But seeing that all natural things do produce their like in the special kinde therefore it followes that they will have the essential form to be of the same Species with accidental forms yea that accidents have have snatched that Prerogative from substances that accidents should produce accidents and moreover the essential forms of substances But that substantial forms as it were growing dull through rest should keep holy-day and had committed the whole weight of their business to accidents their Vicars that they might falsifye their own proper maxim and that of Aristotle That every Agent is naturally born to produce its like Seeing accidents should not in producing be onely accidentall but also substantial forms and the which they teach also to be substances Therefore the maxim of the Schooles seemeth to me to contain a falshood and something of Atheisme That every Agent which disposeth to a sorm doth also give that form because if a substance differs in its predicament from accidents their principles ought not lesse to differ For the active motive dispositive and essential principle of generation is the very efficfent cause and the Archeus Faber or Master-workman Therefore the glorious God doth at length create the forms of substances therefore whose principles are in the general kinde and predicament divers the effects of those things do equally differ even as the same like causes are like to the like things caused But it followes from what hath been already said That heat produceth heat not fire and much lesse by far the form of a Chick in the next place not any other thing besides heat because seeing the efficient cause is internall and of the essence of the thing caused which thing I will afterwards prove against Aristotle therefore one and the same thing cannot be constituted by high causes different in the particular kinde And much lesse by things differing in the whole predicament For neither is a thing granted to be without its essential properties as neither an Agent without an Instrument and mean By what mean theresore or at length by what property out of it self shall heat be an agent in the producing of a form or any substance and by what co-touching shall heat touch a form that it may produce this form in another general object from the participation of its own Being For truly according to the Schooles seasoned with heathenish errour every form of substances is a substance From whence Christians ought to infer That the Heaven as neither accidents dispositive to a form can frame any substance out of nothing because the creating of a substance is proper to the Creator alone Therefore B. Augustine rightly thought if God contains all particular kindes or Species yea and their individuals in his eternall understanding how should he not make all things would he not be the artificer of some things of effecting which his laudable minde should have
the art and knowledge unutterably Therefore although the seed doth contain the Image of the Begetter an Archeus proper to it self with all things requisite to generation yet unless the essential Being of a form did depend originally wholly exemplarily perfectively issuingly and immediately on God nature could never work any thing to attain a form because it should plainly want an active power if it should be deprived of that relative respect Therefore in the first place the Heaven or Stars in no manner of understanding by motion light influence concurrence co-operation or coupling do efficiently and immediately produce the essential forms of things which indeed are onely alone to us for signes seasons dayes and years and whose offices none may compell into new services Jeremy according to the wayes of the Gentiles do ye not learn and be not afraid of the Signes of Heaven which the Nations fear If not of the Signes much lesse of the Stars because they have not the reason of causes but as they are for seasons dayes and years Neither can a Christian without wickedness give them other offices For there is according to Gregory a power conferred on the Earth of budding from it self even as also I esteem it wickedness to attribute the power of increasing and multiplying to living Creatures as to the Heaven But the Schooles do easily go back from the Heaven to dispositive accidents But I on the contrary state it for a position That accidents neither by themselves nor as they are the Instruments of forms do produce the forms of substances Neither that they do produce any other form of one substance Seeing the form of the thing generating is locally without the seed 2. The Earth also although it hath received a power of budding and the seeds of fructifying without the intervening of the seed of Heaven or any other cause yet it is not the productive or effective cause of forms 3. I suppose therefore that God is the true perfect and actually all the essence of all things 4. But the essence which things have belongs to the Being or the Creature it self but is not God 5. For although a Being hath its essence from God dependently for a Pledge Gift League or Talent yet it is proper to the them by Creation 6. But it agreeth to a Being with its essence that it doth and operateth something for the propagation of it self according to the blessing increase and multiply Hence indeed it hath the place of a second cause 7. Therefore God concurreth to the generation of a Being as the Universal Independent totall essential and efficiently efficient cause but a created Being concurreth as the dependent partial particular and dispositively efficient cause But what the Creature can contribute to the producing of a form Mark That since Beings have nothing from themselves for generating but do possess all things from a borrowing and freely they do confess for that very cause that God worketh all things mediately and immediately but that a living Creature doth not generate a living Creature but the seed well disposed to a living Creature Therefore it doth not generate the form thereof But the seed is as it were the disposing Master-Workman as to the form of a living Creature but not as the maker of the form indeed it borroweth the Archeus from the thing generating not the form yea nor the light of life wherein the form shineth Therefore in the beginning of generation the Archeus is not as yet lightsome but it is an Air into which the form life or sensitive soul of the generater hath a little twinckled untill it had sufficiently imprinted some shadowie Seal of its brightness Which Air being greedy of the splendor felt in the generater once and shadowily conceived in it self intends by every way possible for it to organize the body or fit it with Instruments for the receiving of that light and of the actions depending on that light which way therefore it breathing in desire enfiames it self more and more this thing in a metaphoricall figure is for nature through a desire of self-love to pray seek and knock and runs most perfectly that it may receive that light form or life which at length it obtains not else-where than from him who is the way the truth and vitall light or light of life Whither therefore when the Archeus hath come nor in the mean time can proceed any further and is stayed at length it receives forms from the hand of the Father of Lights after that it hath fully performed its offices Christian Philosophy dictates these things thus which in living Creatures and Plants is made easie to be understood But in Stones Mineralls and Metalls and so in fruits of the water that are without life the same things are fuitably to be interpreted For although this Family doth not propagate by virtue of a seed neither doth send forth its posterity out of it self a Being is not therefore wanting in it which may thorowly bring it unto the appointed bounds of maturity For indeed since nothing doth any where dispose or move it self unless it be a seed it must needes be that whatsoever is generated that hath a disposer within who sits in a soft watery salt clayie c. Air Not indeed that it floweth here or wandereth thorow that masse even as it doth in bruit Beasts or that therefore it dwelleth in a perpetual juyce but the Air is incorporated throughout the whole Body nor varying from the disposition of the fruit produced yea in the number or rank of Mineralls that disposer is almost vitall and sensitive Because Chymicall Adeptists do with one voyce deliver that if the seed of the Stone which maketh Gold being once kept warm in their Egg be afterwards in the least cooled or chilled its conception and progress to a stone would be afterwards desperate which thing seeing it is like to Birds Eggs it also therefore cannot subsist without a sensitive life Truly it is to be wondered at that the Schooles do acknowledge all second matter to flow from a certain universal matter yet that they do not admit immediately to derive every life or all forms from the primitive life and first act of all things To wit to derive all the perfection of things from the universal and super-essential essence of perfection yea rather that they at this day do deride Plato with his principle of the Gods and Avicenna with his Cholcodea Panto-Morphe or goddess of Cholchis that gives a form to all things who nevertheless have far neerer saluted the truth in this thing than Christians who maintain that the very lives substantial forms and essential thinglinesses of things are produced by the aspiration or influence of the Heavens by the endeavour of accidents and the favour of material dispositions I set forth the blindness of the most rare men made under or in a time of light For they think the fire to be a substance and the light to be an accident
heat For if a little heat causeth a small digestion and amean heat a mean one Verily at a powerful and troublesome digestion a great heat ought also to be present Which thing notwithstanding although I have divers times the more curiously searched into I have not found to be true Then at length it is to be noted That the digestion of bread in a Man Dog Horse Fish Bird differ in the whole general kind no otherwise than as a manifold venal bloud and filths sprung from thence Wherefore from one only particular kind of digesting heat those kinds of varieties of digestions cannot proceed Therefore let the Schools erect and defend so many general kinds of heats and colds before they do require for themselves to be believed I therefore do draw so great a difference of venal blood from formal properties and specifical ferments never from heat For truly I perfectly know that whatsoever things have divers essential efficients have also divers effects and attributes to wit So that products divers in the general kind do necessarily require their own efficient causes diverse in the general kind For otherwise any thing should produce any thing indifferently to wit even as one and the same thing doth arise from the same nigh causes For how frivolous a thing is it to have adjudged the vital powers and the formal and specifical parents of transmutations unto luke-warmths For if the digestion of heat were needful a more prosperous and plentiful digestion should continually follow a greater heat For by how much every cause is more powerful in nature by so much it doth also more powerfully perfect its own proper effect By consequence the stomack of one sick of a Fever in a burning Fever should more powerfully digest than that of a healthy person But surely in the stomack of him that hath a Fever nothing is rightly digested For Eggs Fishes Fleshes and Broths are presently made cadeverous or stinking within and therefore they do cause adust or burnt belchings the which if sowre belchings do soon follow after Hippocrates hath reckoned to be good as well from the sign as from the cause Yet there is in one that hath a Fever a heat also sometimes that heat is temperate to wit while it is not troublesome neither doth stir up thirst yet the digestion is void Impure bodies by how much the more powerfully thou nourishest them by so much the more thou hurtest them which in a Feverish man is manifest wherein we must presently use a most slender food easie of digestion And we must abstain from the more strongmeats to wit those consummated or accomplished in growth from meat Broths because the ferment being absent they do easily putrifie contract an adust savour and turn as it were into a dead Carcass No otherwise than as raw flesh being bound on the Wrist Breast Soals of the feet or Neck so far is it that it should be resolved into Chyle that straight-way after some hours it putrifies and stinks although it be salt The same thing is in an impure Feverish body where heat is present but a digesting ferment is wanting For if heat be the cause of digestion otherwise digestion is wanting in a Feaver but heat is present but we must more apply our selves to digestion than to cooling refreshment especially if no very troublesome heat be present Therefore we should rather study the increase of heat than cooling And so the Scope of the Physitian should be changed while it should be devised concerning the increase of heat in a Fever for digestion nourishing and increase of strength Neither also shall sharp and hungry Medicines of Sulphur Vitriol Salt Niter Citron and the like help but the heat should be stirred up and increased by sharp things He speaketh something like madness who saith That the Snow makes cold as it is white So it is a ridiculous thing to affirm That the specificall ferment of the stomack doth digest by reason of vitall heat existing in it Surely it is to be lamented that the credulity and sloath of those to whom the care of the life is committed have changed burying-places into a meer Sumen or fatting juice despairing of the searching out of natural properties whence notwithstanding they have their Sur-name Paracelsus also being deluded by a digestive heat and ignorant of the Ferment of the stomack admires that some things which are most hard are changed into Chyle in a few hours and that a bone is consumed in the luke-warmth of the stomack of a Dog who aspiring to the Monarchy of healing failed thereof after that he named this a power to be admired at was ignorant of and knew not the ferments For being unconstant to himself he wrote elsewhere That this digestive property doth agree no lesse to the mouth being shut than to the stomack and so also from hence That Anchorets have spent their long life happily without swallowed meat But surely that Idiotisme is to be left to his own boldness while in the mean time whatsoever hath perhaps remained within the hollownesses of the Teeth is straight-way made like a dead carcasse with a horrible stink but is not digested For I remember that a white and thick glasse being cast out of my Furnace was swallowed by my Hens they being deluded through the heat of Milk but the fracture of glasse is always sharp-pointed but after a few dayes some Hens being killed the glasse was found to be pointingly diminished on every side and to have lost its sharp tops and to have been made roundish or globish But the other surviving Hens and Guests had presently after a few dayes consumed the rest of the Glasse although they had also devoured the small Pellets of Glasse taken out of the Hens formerly slain Thou shalt take notice in the mean time that glasse doth resist waters which resolve any Mettals Indeed the ferment in many Birds is so powerful that unlesse they are now and then fed with Tiles or Bricks Chalk or white earth they are ill at ease through the multitude of sharpness But on the contrary that the stomack of one that hath a Fever is wholly of an adust savour he rejecteth meats of three dayes continuance being oft-times as yet distinguished by the sight or sometimes turned into a yellow or rusty liquour to wit through the straining scope of the ferment I learned the necessity of this ferment of the stomack while being a Boy I nourished Sparrows I oft-times thrust out my tongue which the Sparrow laid hold of by biting and endeavoured to swallow to himself and then I perceived a great sharpness to be in the throat of the Sparrow whence from that time I knew why they are so devouring and digesting And then I saw that the sharp distilled Liquor of Sulphur had seasoned my Glove and that it did presently resolve it into a juice in the part which it had moistned which thing confirmed to me a young Beginner that meats are transchanged
the middle waters but it hath need of a fermenting odour of the side whereby it doth as it were putrifie Therefore coagulation is made on the sides of the Vessel to which it fastneth it self According to the common Chymical Maxim Every Spirit dissolving by the same action whereby it disselveth Bodies is it self coagulated Therefore the more sharp Wine dissolveth the Lee in its Bark because a sharp Salt of the sour dissolving Spirit is presently coagulated together with the dissolved Lee or Dreg and applyeth it self to be neighbour to the side or Concave of the Vessel And that least both to wit the thing dissolving and thing dissolved be hindered from coagulating but at least that it be not on the other side encompassed by Liquor Therefore Tartar the new off-spring of coagulation is affixed Understand thou also that before it be coagulated there is not yet a coagulation and therefore that somewhat sour Wine the Lee being now dissolved by it in an instant before it is coagulated snatcheth hold on the Vessel and doth affix and glew it self on there by the proper Solder of its Cream Else it should settle to the bottom This very thing is the Tartar of Wine of which we are speaking That these things are on this wise Vinegar it self proveth For Wine set in the Sun and the Vessel being heated by the Sun the Vinegar never hath Tartar in the Vessel yet it is the same matter differing onely in cold or heat There indeed with Tartar but here without it First of all a remarkable thing plainly appeareth from what hath been before deduced that the aforesaid Maxim of Chymistry erreth in that because it will have the dissolution of a Body to be made together with the coagulation of the Spirit by the same action in number For if divers moments of motions should not intercede the coagulated thing it self should not adhere toughly glewed to the Hogshead as if by that which is melted it should be there powred on it but if it should be coagulated in the very motion of dissolution it should fall down to the bottom in the shape of a coagulated matter but should not adhere to the sides But on the other hand in the Region of the Lee Tartar is not found Let there be another remarkable thing and of greater moment that the Tartar of Wine is altogether impertinently taken according to the likeness of coagulated things in us wherefore the name History manner and end of Tartar of Wine hath been impertinently introduced into the Causes which make Diseases And these things shall be made manifest when as I shall make the devise of Tartar in Meats and Drinks plainly to appear Likewise as to that which belongs to Tartar of Wine for that is not a strange forreigner to Wine produced by a forreign Mother matter against or besides the nature of Wines as neither to expiate the wickednesses committed by Wine by those things which are adjoyned for a curse And then neither is the Tartar of Wine ever coagulated by a Cream proper unto it although Paracelsus hath otherwise so supposed but the Tartar is coagulated after that the dissolutive sourness of the Wine is woren out and glutted by the Lee. That is the sourness being overcome by the dissolved content doth think of making a coagulation not indeed to make a true Stone but a feigned one because it is that which is again dissolved in hot water as it were a sharp Salt in Liquor which is therefore commonly called Cremor Tartari or the Cream of Tartar All which things surely do badly square or suit with our coagulations yet they all have by a like identity or sameliness of Tartar in all particular nourishments been intruded by a winy devise Lastly and that a violent one Because Tartar is not an excrement of Wine unless in respect of one part which is a solved Dreg which thing surely was not also hid from Paracelsus who now and then doth extol the Tartar of Wine far above the Wine as it were an heir of greater virtues Wherefore he doth badly accommodate or fit the Tartar of Wine by the identity of Being and framing with diseasie Tartarers which he calls an excrement yea a curse arising from the Thistles and Thorns or an ill endowed entertained Being in a pure Saphirical Being of things Therefore the Tartar of Wine although there should be any other being erected into the matter of Diseases in taking the Tartars of Diseases they should even according to the minde of Paracelsus badly agree together And so he hath also but impertinently referred the cause of Diseases unto Tartar Seeing they do not any way agree in the matter efficient manner cause of coagulations in the bound of a Cream in their object as neither in their principles For the Sand or Stone are not resolved by elixing or seething even as otherwise the Tartar of Wine is Therefore the whole metaphorical transumption of name and property is frivolous and a bold rashness of asserting by bespattering all created things with a curse so as wholly throughout they should be nothing but of Tartar and the boldness hath proceeded so far that they seign Tartar to be even in the Marrows yet not coagulable which neither hath Paracelsus ever seen but hath asserted onely by a boldness Now he maketh Tartar not to be Tartar nor coagulable And so that not onely every coagulable thing and that which hath solidness but that every liquory thing that is the whole Creature should be nothing but Tartar appointed for a punishment of sin Now when new Wine hath waxed cold hath lost its sweetness and hath assumed the qualities of Wine the whole Lee hath fallen to the bottom and then the transmutation of the more sour part of the Wine beginneth to act of the Lee For truly that which is more fruitful than the Spirit of Wine desiring by degrees the more inward parts doth forsake the Superficies of the Hogs-head but this beginning thereby to wax sour nor finding an object nigh to it self on which it may act but onely in the bottom it by degrees dissolves that object in the same place And thus indeed the sharpness thereof is by degrees the more confirmed But seeing every sour thing doth as it were boyl up in corroding hence it comes to passe that when the sourness which is about the bottom hath acted upon the dreg it ariseth from thence and is substituted or affixed in another place Therefore the generation of Tartar is slow And therefore cannot the Tartar be affixed in the bottom by reason of the disquietness of that continual boyling up wherefore generous Wines nor Wines easily forsaken by their fleeing Spirit do not readily wax sour and they do yield none or but a little Tartar But old Rhenish Wines do become weak indeed in the acceptableness of a winie tast as their sourness was drunk up in the Lee yet are they stomatical because that their Spirits are not wasted according to
of name of the Philosopher despised the contradicters of his own and indeed false beginnings no otherwise than as Necromancers do require to be credited without demonstration Let eternal prayse and glory be to my Lord in all Benediction who hath formed us not after the Image of the most impure VVorld but after the figure of his own divine Image therefore hath he adopted us for the Sons of Election and co-heirs of his glory through grace Surely the condition of that similitude were to be grieved at and too much to be pitied which had hitherto subjected us under the Law of all calamities from our Creation even till now and that before sin we should onely be the engravement of so abjected a thing as if the VVorld had been framed for it self but not for us as the ultimate end but we for the VVorld whose Images indeed onely we should be to wit we ought to be made stony that we may represent Stones and Rocks And so we should all of right be altogether stony leprous c. For indeed seeing we are by Creation that which we are and a Stone should be made in us that we may represent Rocks Now death and a Disease were in us before that we departed out of the right way or fell Let Heresies depart For neither do we all suffer the falling evill neither do they who labour with it have it that sometimes we may represent Thunder or the Earth-quake or an unknown Lorinde of the Air its unconstancy But now if there were at least the least truth hereof verily he who suffers dammages according to Justice ought also to perceive the profits of the Microcosme even so that especially we ought to fly Seeing it is more rational for us sooner to shew our selves Birds than great Stones or storms of the Air or water Therefore let allegorical and moral senses depart out of nature Nature throughly handles Beings as they do in very deed and act subsist in a substantial entity and do flow forth from the root of a seed even unto the conclusion of the Tragedy neither doth it admit of any other interpretation than by being made and being in essence from ordained causes I observe also that Paracelsus Tartar being invented and introduced into Diseases hath not yet stood secure enough for truly he immingles Tartar also in the first Beginnings of our constitution and so neither doth he require the Seeds of things themselves out of Tartar but he will have Tartar to be radically intimately and most thorowly immirgled with the Seeds whereby he may finde out the Seminary of Hereditary Diseases Of which mixture he being at length forgetful calleth it ridiculous He saith that a VVoman having conceived by the Seed of man it doth separate snatch lay up Tartar into it self and that the Seed being as it were anatomized doth constitute it self the flattering Heir of that Tartar On the contrary that the Spirit of Wine is never so refined by possible circulations as that it doth not as yet contain its own Tartar in it As if Tartar were the chief Root of the Universe or an immediate Companion thereunto But I know if any forreign thing be materially in the Seed generation doth never follow Next that the Seed of Adam being materially prepared in Paradise had not generated a more perfect off-spring than that which afterwards after the fall was made in him Cain and Abel do especially prove that thing At length if Tartar should so intimately grow in Seeds that after many years from generation it should cause hereditary Diseases by materially separating it self from the whole surely that Tartar should not so soon be separable by the Magnet or attraction of a VVoman seeing if any thing be separated from the seed it is a Gas diametrically opposite unto Tartar For if the womb should separate any thing from the seed that should happen by drawing but such is the condition of drawing things that they draw for themselves and unto themselves and then cease but if the womb shall extract for separation sake there shall now be no fear of an hereditary evill because the womb hath a power of serving that which is hurtfull Lastly although Diseases shall come by degrees into the place of exercise yet they were never materially thorowly mixed with the Seed after the manner of Tartar that not Tartar not a gowty Chalk fore-existed in the Seed but that Diseases derived from the Parents do lay hid in manner of a Character in the middle life of the Archeus whose Seal doth at length under its own maturity of dayes break forth and frameth a Body fit for it self and so is made the Archeus of a Disease together with every requisite property of the Seeds For a Disease also is a natural constitution proceeding from the Seed consisting of an Archeus as the efficient cause It hath otherwise rustically been thought in the Schools that Diseasie Bodies do materially conflux unto the Generation of hereditary defects It also contains an Idiotism to exclude a Disease out of the number of natural Agents and corporal Beings seeing the matter also which they say is diseasifying is now and then obvious to the finger if it be thorowly viewed by the eyes If therefore a Disease be now reckoned among the Beings of Nature why should it not be established by a necessity of its own seed It is rude Phylosophy that Tartar had been from the beginning in the seed and that after thirty whole years it should begin the first principles of a Cream and should meditate of an Increase and as it were a particular Republique for it self and that wholly without the direction of the seed God made not death nor therefore hath he connexed Tartar unto seeds as the matter of Diseases For if so stupid errours should happen unto the seminal Archeus the Ruler of Nature hath already forsaken the Rains of the same and mankinde shall shortly go to ruine Also that saying of Paracelsus is absurd that not so much as the Spirit of Wine doth want its own Tartar For although it should be circulated for the space of an Age yet it shall never in very deed separate any Tartar For Paracelsus who never saw or found that Tartar of the Spirit of VVine will therefore be credited in his own good belief no otherwise than as elsewhere where he thinketh that water as oft as it hath ceased to be seen doth wholly depart into nothing and that something is created anew For it doth not follow a Salt is made out of the Spirit of vvine it receives a coagulation in the Salt of Tartar therefore the Spirit of vvine doth contain Tartar Because although every coagulated thing should be Tartar which it is not yet those Bodies do not contain those things which at length are made of them To wit Milk is made of Grasse of Milk Arterial Bloud and from hence the seed of man yet Grasse doth not contain a man in it self as neither
of a Stone making for the tooth the which although it were already made a superfluity it as yet reteined not indeed that it might therefore be Tartar but from the determination of the Archeus whereby it had been already appointed for the making of a tooth But a spear-like gum is there a sign of the most perfect health or foundnesse and therefore it scarce createth a tooth-stone For the gum co-touching with the tooth even unto the end of it doth not admit the tooth to bring forth excrements but preserveth the tooth Even as a tooth being bared of gums doth easily ake doth putrifie and affix a Stone For the eyes do weep forth a Liquor which in the morning in the eye-lids looks like Amber and the which by the Germans is for this cause by way of similitude called Augstine or Austine But the excrement of the eares like unto a yellow Oyntment is a great comfort in the pricking of the sinews therefore it hath not been an unaccustomed thing for the teeth to produce an excrement and this a strong smelling Carcase resolved out of stinking bloud For the muckiness cast on the tongue from the meats is dried neither doth it wax stony unless it shall be admixt with an excrement which doth unsensibly break forth between the tooth and the gum For as that is the excrement of the tooth it had drawn a limitation of hardness from the beginning And so it being grown to the tooth it deceives with the shew of a stony crust I have observed also a tooth to grow even unto the fortieth year with a true growth For that which is opposed to the tooth pulled out through the penury of attrition or grinding doth exceed its own rank and enters into the opposite rank even unto the aforesaid terme therefore a tooth after it ceaseth to grow scarce wanteth nourishment or but little because it is a substance scarce capable of diflation or blowing away then therefore the gum is fruitful in more superfluity snatcheth somewhat more of nourishment becomes bloudy and being swollen is presently lessened and becomes as it were rotten For from hence is there often tooth-ach rottenness hollowness and putrifying especially in those whom a little after due season they do in youth suspend their growth therefore the teeth as they do live in a peculiar Family-administration so also they have their own ages which I thus remarkably distinguish For the tooth which after a mans eighth year doth shew forth the clearness of dark or thick Glasse which from the colour of Milk Artificors call Lattime or of a Snail-shelt is a young one It is a white Colour bright and polished And then by degrees it waxeth pale presently afterwards it becomes dully white as it were Ivory It is the youth of the Tooth Then afterwards it becomes obscurely pale as is seen in those who swoon in deceased Virgins And this is its manly Age And at length it waxeth palely yellow like a bone and looseth its former brightness Then doth the old age of a Tooth begin For so much as a gristle differs from a membrane but the Tooth-ach is frequent while the Gum decreaseth and the Tooth is of a bony Colour But last of all a rotten hollow black wormy and strong smelling Tooth is the frail or declining age of that Tooth therefore cold is an enemy to the Teeth For it hastens their old Age the greyness of hairs doth argue the old Age of the same even besides the old Age of the man and one hair waxeth grey long before another So also one Tooth waxeth old before another whence it is plain thas every Tooth doth live in his own quarter Southern people have brighter Teeth than Northern because they enjoy a more bountiful Air for the Teeth the Teeth of Children before the seventh year of Age do easily feel rottenness because they are driven out of their ditch by another growing up are deprived of nourishment and loaded with a Tooth-like excrement therefore the hurting or anointing of the Teeth is to be esteemeâ ãâ¦ã the annoyance of the Gums to wit from the plurality and bruitishness of ãâ¦ã No otherwise than as the Brain being hurt doth heap up very much muck ãâ¦ã other part being discommodated many dregs so the Teeth and the nourishing parts of these if they are hurt do thrust forth not a little of a stony and stinking superfluity But because that excrement is not so much the superfluity of meats as the excrement of man therefore all Nations have very equally a stinking Tooth-stone which doth circumvent Paraceljus and hath increased the suspition of Tartar in us Hence therefore it is manifest why of the same Urine the same stone doth first grow together aâ brickle in the Reins and afterwards in the Bladder is most exceeding hard not-indeed because there is Tartar in the Urine which by how much the farther it slides down by so much it is the harder that is a childish thing But surely every stonyfiable juyce hath its own determined and not a forreign hardness from the virtue of its own seed For this juyce being oft-times mixt with a matter not becoming a Stone waxeth greatly hard Suppose though Rie meal doth not become a Stone but being at length resolved into dung it fails in rottenness or a worm Notwithstanding if it be joyned to Lime which is conjoyned with its Saud it affords a stony and not perishing Morter So likewise the Bladder at the time of the Stone being its guest weeping out the muckiness of its own nourishment doth also co-mingle it with the stonifying juyce of its Urine affords a hard Stone to the Bladder far different from the Disease of the Stone of the Kidneys Wherefore the Reins also being vexed with a Stone of long continuance do no longer produce a reddish and sandy Stone but a whitish and hard one to wit when the Superficies of the substance of the Kidneys being wasted the fibrous parts and seedy or spermatical stuffe or threds do supply a white co-like muckiness from a spermatick alimentary juyce wherein it hath no lesse been erred hitherto than if thou shalt say that Rie meal is of it self stony which borrowes that from an adjunct which it had not from it self therefore the Muscilage in the Stone is not phlegme but a spermatick nourishment separated under the burden being not of it self stonifyable but onely by its adjunct For thus in distinguishing causes by themselves from causes by accident sufficient ones from co-assisting ones primitive causes from transplanted or derived ones we come down to the knowledge of the thing For Paracelsus doth for the most part ascribe the hardness of Bodies unto feigned Tartars but elsewhere all hardness to be from Salt or from one of the three things However both together cannot stand seeing one of the three first things doth not subsist as a Beginning nor without the fire Also if it should subsist it should differ from Tartar as it were a
stirs up giddinesses of the head and by so much the more troublesome ones by how much these do the more behold or respect its hinder part But an Apoplexy ariseth while as an unsavoury Muscilage plainly by a strange motion and entertainment doth enter from the hollow of the Stomach into the veins thereof about the Orifice and doth keep the rightness of its own side and distinguisheth a great one from a lesse by theabsence or presence of poysonsomnesse But there is for the most part in such chronical diseases a certain sealing Character So indeed the Gout doth oft-times issue from the Beginning of the Parents into the off-spring and doth there patiently wait very many years before that the proper fruit thereof doth obtain its own ripeness Therefore in the vital Beginnings and radical Organs of the Stomach which are the local or implanted Archeus it self that post-bume and translated gouty character or impression doth stick fast by a hereditary right and consequently likewise also that entired character which is gotten by an inordinary of living that sits in the Archeus of the orifice of the Stomach the which while it is wearied by the insolency of a strange guest doth sharpen it self for an expulsion of the same and from thence also the fruit of an Apoplexy issues For neither is that silent gouty Character materially laid up in a certain nest within and received in a separated Stable in the folds and wrinckles of the Stomach as it were some forreign Tartar adhering to it But it is a committed character in the very Archeus of life For let us feign a unity of the thing supposed and of the property whereby that character doth lay intombed for the Gout Apoplexy or Falling evil and is stirred up at the set stations of its own ripeness or is much stirred by certain meats taken or smels And then let us consider the natural sharpness of the stomach now degenerate and likewise the tenderness of its orifice stirring up swoonings and falling sicknesses which testifies nothing besides an easie feeling hurting suffering disturbance of the life and so an enemy present tumulting from very many things therefore if the sharpness which is co-mingled with the Archeus be stirred up besides nature and seeing this is chief over all the particular digestions that sharpness is beamingly brought down unto strange cottages whereto is wholly an enemy and from thence doth the Gout or joynt sickness issue forth But if it be co-knit to the meat or drink pains of the Colick wringings of the Guts and other exorbitances of the parts occasionally are present But if that the sharpness of the Stomach doth degenerate and associate it self with an opiate or drowsie poyson with a piercing toward the seat of the Soul the falling evil is straightway present But if a stinking muscilage inclining to bitterness doth arise there is a giddiness of the head and that more strongly insulting doth stir up an Apoplexy For neither is it meet to distinguish those precisely from each other while it is better to have the matter or occasion exhausted Likewise some external Medicines bound about the head do preserve from an Epileptical fall and fit which is for a signe that either the fruit of the Character is hindered or the applying of the occasion to the Archeus Indeed in either manner the hurtfull matter is to be letted or prevented to be extinguished or annihilated that it be not co-mingled with the Archeus And moreover as vegetables are wont for the most part to sleep in Winter and to be as it were awakened at Spring that they may send forth a bud leaves flowers or fruits So a Gouty Epileptical c. Character is also stirred up into a ripeness at a fet period unlesse the importunity of provoking things do forestal it At leastwise the giddiness of the head and Apoplexy c. although they are brought back within occasional causes yet they do sit immediately within the very nest of life in the Archeus which indeed is implanted in the orifice or upper mouth of the Stomach For in how easie a breviary by things hanged on the neck or body is the falling-evil suspended and detained Because an entrance of the hurtful cause into the sensitive soul is hindered for there is a piercing of the hurtful cause lurking in the Archeus to within and the which doth therefore wholly take away the mind Indeed it leaves a pulse to wit of the heart but it so tramples on the sense imagination and every principal power of the soul that for that space of time they seem to be plainly withdrawn From whence also we must note with a pen of iron that the Soul so trampled upon doth not dwell in the heart which never a whit stumbleth But the Gout as it tends to without so the Character thereof doth not so much affect the secret chamber or seat of the soul as the Archeus the President or chief Ruler of the digestions which things do therefore happen because an hereditary character of the Gout is stamped on the Young from the beginning of Generation and long before its quicking And therefore it respecteth only the Archeus but not the soul which then alone bare the whole burden on himself But he that hath gotten the Character of the Gout by the exorbitances of his life although it shall come to him being a man in years yet it keeps the nature of its own property whence it is made manifest that the stamp or character of every disease is promiscuously to be admitted into the lap of the sensitive soul So that as great fear hath made many persons Epileptical or to have the falling sickness for their life time so a co-like fear hath afterwards rendred many free from the Gout Indeed in the one the fear generated in the conjunction of the life and sensitive soul an Epileptical character which fear being more slack by one or two degrees and more outwardly killed the character of the Gout and rendred it either congealed by the fear or even oppressed the Root thereof Black choler according to Hippocrates which seeing it hath no where ever existed is to be taken for the effect attributed to that choler subsisting in the Midriffs for he hath had respect unto the seat of the soul or the Duumvirate not yet known if it he dispersed into the body provoketh the falling sickness but if into the soul madness For such was the plainness of the first age which indeed did candidly fift things but for want of light from above it came not unto the grounds of the matter There are some simples which are without a valuable abhorrency which by eating of them do produce true madness but others cause sleep some also produce madmen for term of life but others do bring forth doatages only as it were certain drunkennesses according also to the equalities whereof I will have the characters of diseases to be judged Because not only such hostile things being taken
of Rosins flowres and herbs have arisen and likewise those which are prepared of Minium or Red Lead Cerusse or Colcotar Hitherto also doth the Salt of âartar tend being rectified by the Spirit of Wine until it obtains an astringent taste For it is the Balsam Samech or of Tartar of Paracelsus even as out of Arsenick for Ulcers whereof moreover there is its Balsam of smoak because that Arsenick is by skilful men accounted the fume of Metals Not indeed that it is not simple born and subsisting by it self but from a Similitude for that metallick smoaks do imitate an Arsenical malignity And so I close up the Doctrine of external Diseases CHAP. XLII An unknown action of Government 1. The Maxim is opposed That of Contraries the Remedies are contrary 2. The foundation of that Maxim 3. The Maxim concerning the re-acting of the Patient or of its defence in time of fight is examined 4. Arguments on the opposite part 5. The same by moving strengths by things generative and irregular 6. There is no re-acting of weight 7. Arebounding action neglected by the Antients 8. Bright burning Iron acteth and doth not re-act 9. The swiftness of a mover is not the action but the measuring of the action 10. Altering Agents do not properly re-suffer 11. Another Maxim is noted of falshood 12. From whence the falseness thereof hath issued 13. What Agents of a different inclination and irregular are 14. He proceeds to prove what he hath undertaken to prove 15. Wherein the opinion of Aristotle may be preserved 16. An explaining of action in the slowness of the fire 17. Actions on an object separated from the thing supposed 18. A Fermental and radial or beaming action 19. That these kinde of actions are not to be referred unto the fault of vapours 20. The Blas of Government hath been hitherto unknown 21. The falshood of a Maxim 22. The fire suffers nothing by a burnable object 23. To determine or limit an action and to re-act do differ 24. New actions 25. The dimness or giddiness of the Schools 26. Their staggering 27. Likewise some neglects of the same 28. The unknown action of Government is not that which they call an action by consent 29. The Errour whence it is 30. Why Anatomy hath arisen into so great curiosity 31. How much may be required from Anatomy 32. A neglect of the chiefest part of natural Philosophy 33. The Schools deluded by thinking 34. Many things happen in us by the action of Government without conveighing Pipes or Channels 35. Blindness hath brought blinde persons unto blinde vapours the action of Government being unknown 36. Things admitted by the Author 37. The action of Government is abstracted from a co-binding mean 38. A natural action in incorporeal Spirits 39. Which is a jugling action 40. Luxury takes away the Remedy of the Horse-hoof 41. An Example of Government 42. The government of the Womb is wholly over the whole Body 43. Government acteth into its own marks the middle spaces being untouched 44. The faculties of the actions of the Womb. 45. The furies of the Womb. 46. The manner of making in the birth of a Disease from the action of Government 47. Why the fore-head is not bearded 48. That Capital Diseases do not arise through Fumes out of the Stomach FRom the first time wherein the Schools placed contraries in Nature they presently universally established that nothing acted without strifes war and discords Even so that also chidings hatreds emulations have been reckoned the Foundations or Principles of Nature no lesse than self-love And moreover also they being credulous of hatred by the perswasion of Astronomers have introduced the same things into the courses or dances of the Stars Likewise they have determined that in the whole sublunary frame or stage nothing is done or generated but by a Relation of the Superiority of an Agent unto a Patient So indeed that the Patient is with violence compelled tamed altered destroyed and is wholly translated into the Nature of the Agent onely by the relation of a stronger on a weaker But when the Schools saw that Agents did by degrees languish away either through space of time or wearinesse of acting they likewise decreed from thence that that indeed did not so much happen through a tiring out of the seeds and powers but by a re-acting of the patient Therefore they confirmed it that every patient or sufferer doth likewise of necessity re-re-act and for that cause likewise every agent or acter doth re-suffer neither also that it is any other way weakened Whence by consequence I guessed with my self that sometimes the seeds of things shall at sometime be naturally wholly undoubtedly extinguished unless they are miraculously preserved Notwithstanding I do even contemplate that there is on both sides a perpetual rudenesse and continued sloath of a diligent search in the doctrines of the Schools And that one onely thing hath repelled from me the former fear For truly after that I with-drew contraries out of Nature I could not afterwards in sound judgment find out any re-acting in the patient as neither could I admit of hostilities in nature elswhere than among soulified or living creatures For contrariety is in those things alone wherein there is an actual defence in the will of the patient against the injuries brought on it and felt from the Agent Wherefore there is never a re-acting of the patient on the agent unlesse where there is a contrariety conceived in the soul But that this is thus ordinary and ordained in nature I will forthwith demonstrate For first of all the Universe should remain still even as it now subsisteth by the infinite power of the Word if it should be so commanded I say things should be infinite in their own successions and duration but they should not be infinite by an actual virtue of the unity of a creature And that thing because it is of faith it wants no proof Therefore there is no infinite of sublunary things by their own power Hence it follows that at length every particular Agent doth by degrees also of its own free accord at some time decay and having finished its offices dies by a dissolution of its strength circumscribed in space of place and in the power of continuance strength unlesse perhaps the appointed day of its proper and limited period or conclusion be shifted off by a preventing of the term or the impediments of the object But of natural Agents some are those which have a motive force which I have called a motive Blas but the Agents themselves I call moving strengths But other moving Agents I call an alterative Blas to wit those which do operate by the seminal force of a ferment And such Agents do for the most part generate their like Lastly in the third place some Agents are irregular or of a different inclination I will speak of those three in order Indeed acting strengths do act on their objects First by a prevailing weight
digestion which thing if it be rightly considered it will now plainly appear that a Cautery is not to be imprinted for the purging out of a malignant humour neither that a bad or evil humour doth exist but only for the diminishing of the abundance of Blood and so from a beholding of an exesse of a good humor only Whence it follows that it is not convenient for Young Folks not for those that are become lean again not for such as are brought low by any disease as neither for those that live orderly and least of all for religious abstashing Persons But they have not yet distinguished whether corrupt pus in an issue be only of the venal Blood or of one of the four feigned humours or indeed of a co-mixture of the four If the first should be true then the Pus should not be from an ill humour but from the best of the four humours and so an Issue shall be made void and the best Pus or the effect of an Issue shall be worst of all feeing it was not but the corruptive of the best of all But if they had rather devise to wit that the Blood is not at first evil but becomes evil while it is seperated from its other fellows At leastwise the three remaining ones shall in that severing be as yet more bad than the bloud and upon every event an Issue shall not be made but for an evil end that it might corrupt the good and guiltless Blood But if they will have the corrupt Pus to be made of the four humours being co-mixt then a Cautery errs in its end seeing a Cautery prevails not to purge out hurtful humours but to corrupt the good ones which are by nature not erring sent daily unto it self for Nourishment In the next place a Cautery shall not be to be reckoned as a preventing of a Catarrh or else the matter of a Catarrhe should not be a vapour nor also Phlegm but venal Blood it self which the Issue in it self corrupteth For corrupt pus is not made of Phlegm but only of venal Blood as hath been sufficiently instructed in the Schools Therefore by the essence of corrupt pus being well searched into in its matter efficient cause the ends of Cauteries the purgings out of Catarrhs and evil humours do cease For indeed any sumptom of wounds being taken away in Cauteries and a supposed health it must needs be that a loosing or seuering of that which held together doth produce snotty matter in the Issue and that that doth not flow from elsewhere but that it is generated in the part it self Also the Archeus daily dispenseth so much of the venal Blood to the parts proportionally as they have need of for their own nourishment Therefore the Pus or corrupt matter is venal Blood vitiated in that part wherein the Wound is and an effect of digestion vitiated in the same place Therefore to have vitiated the entireness continuation or holding together and digestion of the parts next to have converted the venal Blood into corrupt Snotty matter is reputed the very same thing in the Schools as to have gone to prevent Catarrhs or Rheums or thorow the hole of a Cautery to have extracted from the Head from whence they originally fetch all Rheums an excrementous humor which otherwise had threatned to fall down on a noble part whether in the mean time there be an agreement between the Head and the Wounded part or not for it is all one so the Skin be deteined Wounded whether that excrementous humour be Blood or be made snotty pus or liquid Sanies is all one so by the thred-bare words of Catarrhe prevention derivation revulsion and an Issue the world be circumvented For I behold a small Infant of a Year old now breeding Teeth and to suffer a Fever froath of the Mouth and Spittle without ceasing And aââength that there are wringings of the Bowels and Stools of Yellow-Green-coloured excrements At least that Tooth is a part of the Head wherefore the Flux shall be a Rheum of the Head But what consent is there of a Tooth about to break forth or a swollen Gum with a Bowel Or what power thereof is there of begetting or sending away that Catarrhe out of the Stomack of a little Infant unto his Head And from thence into the Ileos By what right shall a vapour dropped or stilled out of the Stomack be made Cankered Choler in the Head Hath perhaps the shop of Choler now wandred from the beginning of Life unto the Head Could a Cautery if an Infant were for undergoing it suck unto it a leeky Flux into it self And by a few small drops of corrupt matter recompence or Ballance the leeky Choler of some pounds Why doth the Stomack of a small Infant frame a Catarrhe by reason of the pain of his Tooth Why is it sent into a Bowell and not unto the paining Tooth Doth not the reader yet see that a Flux is not a Rheum But that the Archeus wheresoever yee will have it being enraged is ready in the Bowels to transchange the nourishable juyce into excrements which by the Schools are reckoned Choler Phlegme c. If therefore the Flux be not a Rheume and the Archeus being wroth can transchange any thing into a troublesom Liquor if the Gum be but afflicted shall not he be able on every side to unload himself by the appointed emunctories And not to wait for the Skin to be opened by a Caustick Alass hath cruel dullness caused the Schools to be cruel towards their mortal kinsfolks For neither do they consider that in Women and those that are somewhat fat or gross there is in the fleshly membrane about the ordinary places of a Cautery a meer grease to the thickness of two fingers at least for which persons notwithstanding the more frequent Cauteries and those the more profitable ones are perswaded wherefore also the bottom of the Issue shall scarce be in the middle of the grease therefore there is not a passage whereby the evil banished feigned humour of a Rheume may rush down out of the Brain or between the Scull and Skin thorow the middle of the fat But what is that solitary humour in the next place which for its offence being banished from the sending part descending thorow the Substance of the grease unmixed doth degenerate into corrupt Pus If it be an exhalation of vapours out of the Stomack why shall it not be more frequent to younger and hot Stomacks than to weak old and cold ones In what sort shall that water that droppeth out of a vapour put on the form of Snotty matter How shall it hasten thorow the Brain Coats and Scull to find a hole made by a Cautery that it may flow down thither only and be purged Why doth not the vapour fly first an hundred times into the Air before it reach to the place appointed it by the alluring Cautery How shall the Water which climbeth
pulsive or driving Blas But wind being shut up doth cause the less pain so long as it is quiet So every pulsive Remedy should of necessity increase the pains of the wringings or gripes and so nature sheweth that we must abstain from things that do drive or force windiness But they strongly meditate that in carminatives there is the force of a whip But are flatus's like unto cattel For do they acknowledge that they and their carminatives are to be set in the place of a suitable Pestil or that perhaps carminatives have the same virtue like a voice which drives away cattel and that windy blasts in the Body do hearken unto the exhortation of enchanting Poets or Singers I know indeed from hence that the Schools are ignorant of the force property causes and manner as well of the gripings or wringings as of the Remedies For winds are not to be driven away and secondly not to be dispersed For this is impossible but that contains a childish Fiction Neither also by an honest man are flatus's to be restrained by any Verse or Song a religious Etymology whereof doth notwithstanding hitherto remain in the Schools A windy blast is not inwardly stirred up in the Wombe because the Wombe is destitute of a flatulent matter and its digestion is not fit for creating of flatus's but outwardly Air scarce enters into the Wombe because it is that which least it should suffer a vacuum or emptiness in its membrane it falleth down wholly moist and flaggy and so of its own accord a passage for the breathing Air is prevented unless it be by force cast into it by an instrument In the next place neither do external winds borrow a force from the mouth that they may enter into unwonted regions and that they may strongly thump the Pleura grown to the ribs but that between this and the Muscles between the ribs they may stir up a flatulent Pleurisie and presently after tear the Pleura from the ribs and frame a true inflamation of the Pleurisie Because there is no way for Air thither yea if it should reach thither it hath not a Blas behind which might be of any damage And by which way it had entred for therefore before it had hurt it had expired Neither also are flatus's made internally in those parts the matter whereof and the efficient cause hindering it It is also like an old Wives Fiction that an external wind or blast of Air doth pierce thorow the skin however so pory it be even as also the fleshy Membrane and also the Muscles under it According to the shameful reason of Physitians wherein they say He hath lately contracted wind whence his parts are ill affected For I have oftentimes with my own blushing heard this cause to be assigned almost to all Diseases from the head even to the ankle The distemperature of the Air is accused for the vices of the head eyes ears teeth Oasand for hoarsnesses coughs likewise for all defluxions unconcoctions feavers and so the Air hath been accounted a Pandora's box And that not only by the touching of cold as an outward cause but as a windy blast hath been drawn inwards and there unduely detained Of which things elsewhere But now our speech is of our and those internal windy blasts I grant indeed that an unwonted cold as a guards-man of Death doth indeed affect some noble part or servile one as it disturbs the last digestion thereof whence excrements pains yea and Aposthems of the similiar parts do diversly follow But in these the faculty of the cold is only an outward occasional cause which shews a prevention not likewise a cure or quality of a Remedy Therefore let the trifles of the Schools bid farewel But besides that any Physitian may rightly perform his office he shall know first what wind is and then what is a windy blast from whence it is made why it causeth pain and then the Remedy shall be easie unto him Indeed the cause of flatus's being known we must take heed least their concrete or composure be turned into a Gas But a Gas which hath been once made prepareth an easie way or passage for it self But if not and if the bowel where it is beneath it be stopped with a more hard obstacle this is to be loosed But where there is no excrement as a partition and yet the wringings do proceed shall not those things be vain which drive away winds and foolish which disperse them For truly not the windy blasts but the matter from whence the bowels are drawn together and the bowels themselves do generate windinesses is to be brushed away The cure I say may not be converted unto the flatus produced but unto the cause producing it I see therefore that the Remedies of Dill Caraway Anise Cummin wild Carrot seed c. were found out not by the Schools who are ignorant of the causes of wringings of the bowels but that they were made known from Divine compassion to little ones and poor ones from whom the Schools have begged them as also many other experiments from thence For truly the original essence matter property process and history of flatus's have lain hid to the Schools In the next place neither is the Volvulus Iliack passion or that of a barbarous name miserere mei any twisting or writhing together and extravagancy of the lesser bowel For besides that it should be a perpetual and of necessity a relapsing evil Anatomy resists it which shewes the bowel to be cloathed with the mesentery to wit with an external cloathing with a third garment and upper skinny one and it being fast tyed to the loynes by that mesentery to hang or bend forwards Therefore that bond being once burst asunder and the society of the mesentery despised there is no hope for the future of reducing the bowels into their former case from which they had freed themselves by breaking Prison And so the evil being by a strong fortune restored should of necessity presently return and should alwayes afterwards rush into a worse state Again throughout the whole tract of the bowel there should henceforeward be no nourishment with the Veins and no attraction of chyle for life when as nevertheless in the mean time that Disease gives place to an easie Remedy For if besides its wonted circles the bowel should be co-writhed who should be that mover or who that tormenter For from without it hath none and fears none which bowel is covered with a smooth caule and simple bladder of the Abdomen or bottom of the belly Also if it be stopped up by an internal excrement for this nor the other can happen unto it now the gut Ileon is stopped wherein excrements are not yet wont to be hardned by an unwonted dung but not co-writhed not dissolved without the case of the mesentery And so the Schools being amazed that Disease hath been unknown in its causes and manner For I remember that Thomas Balbani of Antwerp
Objects receiving Especially because dungs are not the voluntary putrifyings or artificial putrifactions of things but the limited and specifical ones whose efficacy seeing it doth not proceed onely from the thing it self it hath need of an external author alwaies operating in the same agreeing resemblance also in the same manner and character most especially because the impression follows both the healthy disposition of its ferment as also the sick one Which thing doth from thence more clearly appear Because belching or a flatus originally in the stomack even as also the flatus of the Ileon do extinguish the flame of a candle But a dungy flatus which is formed in the utmost bowels and breaks forth thorow the fundament being sent thorow the flame of a candle is enflamed in flying thorow it and expresseth a flame of divers colours like a Rain-bow But that which is formed in the Ileon or slender bowel is never inflameable is often without smell unless it bring down the mixture of another with it it oft-times strikes through being tart sharp and brackish in the Fundament Therefore flatus's or windinesses do differ in us in their matter form place ferment properties and so in their whole species Neither have flatus's less their own generical and specifical varieties than the Bodies from whence they proceed For flatus's are in no wise Air. Yea flatus's are not only distinguished by the matter whereof they are but also by the ferment and seed of flatus's Hitherto have those things regard which I have taught concerning the birth of a Gas or wild Spirit which surely should else remain in its antient concrete Body unless a ferment of the place being adjoyned and a seed of sharpness drawn it be made or composed into a flatus or Gas I will repeat in this place the general kinds of diversities of flatus's bred in us which are specificated by their ferments and the properties of things from whence they arise Behold their Scheme or Figure For there are two irregular flatus's in us whereof one is ordinary natural and necessary in the Ileon The other is plainly pestiferous and degenerate the which a poyson being taken or bred within doth for the most part lift up the whole habit of the Body into a tumour And then there are four flatus's in the stomack and bowels One of the stomack which is belching And this is either specifical from undigested hard and stubborn meat Another is unsavory of the cream being almost digested but bred from a weakness of digestion but a third is sower from the cream digested but yet hindered A fourth belching is brackish being produced from the ferment of the place being exasperated The second flatus is that of the and it hath some diversities in it The first whereof containeth farting arising from Ileon the abundance of the aforesaid natural flatus The other is bitter which breaks forth from strange and ill digested dregs And it hath somewhat of an over-hasty dungy ferment Also the flatus of the gut Colon succeedeth from meats not plainly freed from their stomatical sharpness but being corrupted by a prevention a dungy ferment fore-timely coming unto them There is also a dungy mortified flatus from a resolving and putrefaction of the lively and vital nourishment of the solide parts Lastly without the channels of a bowel is the flatus Tympany arising from a diseasifying cause between the Bought of the intestine and the concave of the Peritoneum or skin which covereth the bowels Which diseasifying cause hath the property of a local matter but a more mild one But the flatus which is hence begotten is not from a diseasifying matter but it is the product thereof indeed it is from the same matter whereof the natural and ordinary flatus of the Ileon is That is from the very immediate nourishment of the bowel But it is mortal as well from a poysonous cause or from a radical Disease as in respect of the place which produced Disease may be increased without a limit and at length may choak the sick like the Dropsie Ascites The Scheme being now finished thou shalt see that the matter whereof flatus's are is that concrete Body about which a ferment doth operate And then that he who strives to drive away flatus's by propulsion or dispersing and so to overcome the Disease doth not take away the cause but goes unto the last effect Which thing that it may be the more cleerly made known to thy view I will suppose three Brethren to be nourished with the same drink and meat one whereof can send forth almost no flatus But another and the weaker can bring forth many un-savory and now and then sower belchings But the third undergoing a disproportionable temper of his bowels can make many crackings From whence first of all it becomes plain to be seen that flatus's are not made of flatulent or windy meats the use whereof is therefore so greatly forbidden in the Dietary of the Schools But even as fulness doth for the most part cause many windy blasts the which sobriety excuseth therefore it follows that the fardle is for a burden but that a burden presupposeth a labour or weakness of the digestive faculty So sharpish Apples if they are roasted do puff out very much windiness the which if they are eaten by a strong stomack are void of windiness Whence it is sufficiently manifest that a flatus is the vice of us but not of things The which that nothing hinders that some things are more apt for the producing of flatus's and that from hence they are called windy Because those things which are most flatulent do not beget flatus's but in defective persons For if windinesses were by themselves and materially in meats flatus's should equally bewray themselves in all and he that should send forth the less of flatus's the same being retained he should be the weaker Both whereof is false Therefore the aforesaid interchangeable course of flatus's doth accuse the agent rather than the matter In the next place if it should be moved principally from the matter and there be a fatty flatus in us but that could in no wise be troubled or moved by our luke-warmth which is first obliged to vaporal moistures before that it can be sufficient for dry and oylie exhalations Therefore even from hence it is also manifest that flatus's are made by a causing but not by a separating agent Again that also of Galen is absurd that some things are windy in the first digestion but that other things utter their flatus in the second which he calls sanguification and so also hence he names them things venereous or causing natural lust But the third things he calls windy in the last digestion even as he saith concerning the keepers of Fig-trees That their fleshes are blown up and swollen with windiness from the eating of abundance of Figs. For every flatus which was after any manner materially in meats at least while the food
the chest of the Gaul is broken For neither doth this want its own vigor of truth Not indeed that it is literally true that the bladder of the Gaul being broken and that its bursting forth had brought a lightnesse to the dead carcase but the Gaul is the balsome restraining corruptions which are to arise in living creatures from a sharpness wherefore while corruption is present a defect of the Gaul is conjectured A new Alder settles to the bottom but when the juyce contained in it is corrupted the tree springs up from the bottom Furthermore I have said that the lesser hot Seeds were from divine compassion made known to mortals and by the good common People the use of the same brought into the Schools not knowing the cause and circumstance of Flatus's Those seeds therefore do restrain the coruption and also the sharpness of matter and therefore they are refreshments of the Bowels But that ease or comfort learn thou by this Example There was a burst man that was negligent whose Intestine fell out into his Cod it presently riseth unto the bigness of ones head is hardned and at length waxeth black and blew or envious For they in vain attempt with a various warmth of milk and a luke-warm fomentation of Cows-dung and it seemeth to be sixfold less through the hole than is the swelling of the Cod which is to lay aside the hope of its return by reason of hardness And then through the drink of the seeds to wit of annise caraway fennel coriander c. in wine the hardness of the bunch doth presently vanish and it suffers it self to be repulsed inwards The which a clyster and outward fomentation afforded not therefore that defect doth by it self silently speak That the bowels being exorbitant about the stones do presently put on an hardnesse and stirre up flatus's All which things by a comfort to the Archeus of the bowels do presently disperse which else would cause a swift and painful death But I will adde something concerning the natural flatus of the Ileon which is not known by the Schools A noble woman is taken with a little pain of her belly she walks about the chamber had dined the pain streight way ascends as to her right pap invades her shoulder and a little after kills her Her dead carcass being dissected nothing is viewed by the eyes which could be blamed to have brought death on her But they fitly see the Ileon stretched out with a little flatus Wind wind I say the Doctors accuse to be the Executioner The judgment being brought unto me I judged that the pain of the belly was from the womb therefore that it ascended unto the dugs with whom the womb doth ordinarily talk and so to have strangled the woman But the wind in the Ileon I said was not onely guiltless but that in every dead carcass even in him that is slain by a sudden death the Ileon is alwayes naturally stretched out with a little wind because that is natural unseparable and proper For without wind the bowels should fall down the excrements should the more difficultly pass thorow For unless they were driven and liquid from behind they should easily return backwards and as it were without progress should there contract too much delay If therefore some wind be a native inhabitant in the Ileon or slender Gut there is no place for complaint of a flatus in gripes or wringings of the guts and much less for things carminative expelling and dispersing of winds Let wringings therefore be of a brackish muscilage more or less sharp at the resolving whereof if they shall stick fast or expulsion if they shall floate a restoring of health is expected But if in the mean time a sharp flatus be bred or the Ileon do swell with windes more than is meet that doth easily find a way for it self A dismissing of windie blasts doth indeed lighten from pressing together or stretching out but a flatus doth not cause wringings or torments of any great moment but that they do soon produce a way for themselves But if indeed a flatus be prevented from utterance by a more hard excrement from beneath now it is called a volvulus or rowling pain and hath departed from the word of wringings or gripes Therefore it is now sufficiently manifest that flatus's or windy blasts in the body are not made by aire but materially from things cast into the body things ordinary or from poysons corrupting the similar liquor of nourishment And then that they cannot be made elsewhere than in the first Kitchin of the digestions and they are belchings in the second also which is finished in the gut Ileon but by no wise in the following families of digestions unto whom every sharp and brackish thing is a forreigner Except in a poyson being taken Wherefore there is no occasion force or power in flatus's for a disease of these regions But so far as doth belong to a windy blast or exhalation or vapor lifted up from the stomack from the womb or any other place that I will shew in its own place to be frivolous Let these things therefore suffice concerning flatus's CHAP. LVII The Toyes or Dotages of a Catarrhe or Rheume 1. Who is the Heir of Diseases and Nature 2. Some suppositions in the room of premises 3. A conclusion 4. It is proved from experiences 5. An explication of the thing granted 6. The Lungs are the first thing dying 7. Why the Author hath departed from the Schools 8. Things premised of the miseries of old Age. 9. Why loosening Medicines do hurt in these cases 10. The miserable Testimonies of Physitians of their own ignorance Because the Phrygians are wise too late 11. A shameful Maxim which is drawn from things helpful and hurtful 12. The Errors of Physitians 13. The Unconstancy of Paracelsus whence it was 14. The manner of making a Catarrhe is like unto an old Wives Fable 15. The Diseases attributed to Catarrhes 16. How great destruction of mortals ariseth from thence 17. After what sort they make the sick perpetual bondslaves unto them 18. An ordinary privy shift of the Schooles 19. Thirteen Positions 20. Nineteen Conclusions proceeding from those Positions 21. By a sufficient numbring up of parts 22. A Dilemma or convincing Argument 23. Some Absurdities 24. Catarrhs or Rheumes do arise in the Schooles onely from their mother Ignorance 25. Ignorance is the same Fountain of Absurdities in Curing 26. Shame makes the Schooles unstable 27. A denyal of Principles granted in the Schooles 28. Whence heat happens to the Liver 29. A proof from Remedies of none effect 30. The Tooth-ach is again examined 31. The digestion of the Tooth and Nail differs from the digestion of all the parts 32. A Rheum unto the inward parts is shewn to be impossible 33. A Pose is decyphered 34. Absurdities following upon a Rheume of the Stomack 35. A Rheume is fanned into the Lungs 36. What may drop down at the beginning of
which is the first and easiest sequestration of Heterogeneal things There are not a few things also which it fixeth before they were volatile or on the contrary And then among some volatile things it separates odoriferous things from things not odoriferous which distinction is falsly reckoned of the pure from the impure For truly the action of the fire is to burn and therefore it burns as well the pure as the impure And then a third separation is made by digestions and proper ferments as the parts which do stick fast with a stubborn continuity do depart from each other through a discord of the ferment For so Bodies do in the fulness of their last life voluntatily decay and entertained faculties do come to light Moreover by boyling and melting the parts formerly ruled by one rein do now act on each other under which degree they attain other virtues Therefore Chymistry produceth those things which else should never be made or had in Nature and that not onely in separated volatiles but also in things residing and the which residues are therefore calcined But if by a co-mingling and co-fermenting of the composed Body new faculties do arise that very thing is more beholdable in Alchymical things not only because Art doth wholly imitate Nature in all her operations but also in a peculiar efficacy of a moist influx and melting which do perform various operations under the fire and change the Nature For so the spirit of Salt-peter doth elevate a moist Sulphur and embrination or sharp waterishness of Vitriol from whence are poysonous waters the Spirits of both which notwithstanding being separated were fit for Healing and grateful to the Stomack In the last place Chymistry doth bring up some more milde things unto a degree as poysons may be made of Honey Manna c. most things how violent soever they are do also wax milde under the Fire So that fixed Alcalies is they are made volatile do equalize the powers of great Medicines Because by the virtue of Incision Resolving and Cleansing they being brought even unto the entry of the Fourth Digestion do fundamentally take away the toughnesse of things coagulated in the Vessels For Chymistry doth so resolve the most hard and compacted things that they being not onely forgetful of their former curdling and constancy against the Fire do retire into a tameable juyce and being occult are made manifest but moreover they become social unto us Yea it doth not onely so prepare things themselves but it also effecteth means whereby Bodies may be opened For so coagulated things do depart into the Family of resolved things fixed things are changed into volatile and on the contrary crude things are ripened and things Heterogeneal or of diversity of kind are divided into their Classes's or Ranks In the next place drowsie or sleepie things do attain degrees of Virtues and many new things spring up which have remained unknown in the Schooles of the Gentiles Finally and finally Chymistry as for its perfection doth prepare an universal Solver whereby all things do return into their first Being and do afford their native endowments the original blemishes of Bodies are cleansed and that their inhumane cruelty being forsaken there is opportunity for them to obtain great and undeclarable Virtues But how much purity the Understanding may attain under this Work the Adeptist hath onely known Ah I wish the Bottle once possessed by me had not been taken away But God hath known why he hath given to the Goat so short a Taile Let his Name be exalted throughout Ages and let the alone sanctifying Will of him onely be done CHAP. LXI The Preface 1. The Authors intention 2. The Authors excuse 3. The event is suspected from Divine Ordination 4. A wish of the Author 5. A reason of doubting of the fallacy of the Devil 6. How the Author knew that he was not deceived 7. A Reason teaching that this Talent is of God 8. The judgement of quick-sighted men 9. The whole light of Healing hath appeared in one only moment 10. What the Author hath conjectured from thence 11. Why the Author hath written sharply against the Chaires 12. The event is intellectually foreseen 13. Fevers are frequently stirred up the occasional cause being absent 14. A Relation of terms seeing it is not a Being it doth not cause a Being in act To what end the dissection of a man of sixty years old was re-minded in his sleep I Have deliberated in the good pleasure of God to make manifest that before the world and especially in the Schools the causes of Diseases the knowledge of their essences and their Remedy have been hitherto hidden To wit that the essence of Diseases have not yet been pierced by so many Ages and Judgements of men Truly I have earnestly and notably grieved that this Ignorance of Ages past and of the present Age is true and so that it ought to be discovered by me an unprofitable old Man It hath seriously grieven me that they have been careless as well for their own life as for the life of their Neighbours and that Physitians should seem to have studied only for gain but that such was the ordination of God that as long as the Schools did adhere to Paganim Doctrines they should also persevere in the aforesaid darkness until at length in the fulness of times there should be one who should open the essence and thingliness of Diseases unto his Neighbours and that indeed before the very Chaires of Medicine to wit that as it were in a Fountain the errors of Heathenism being driven away the Truth may hereafter shine and as many as had not shut their eyes through obstinacy may repent Truly I propose to the whole World and to our Posterity a matter new and plainly to be admired And ah I wish that I alone who do first make manifest these things may therefore contract on my self and sustain the reproaches nor that the life and health of my Neighbour may suffer For I had willingly been silent neither had I divulged my Talent but that I knew this one only Talent to have been given me for the life of my Neighbour And while I do as yet contemplate with my self of the greatness of the thing in the succession of so many Ages and their fatal ignorance and the continued sluggishness of Body or negligence in a thing I say of so great moment as is the life of Man I cannot but many times for amazement look back repose my quill and doubt of my own fallacy of rashness To wit that in the Universities themselves wherein fresh the more fervent wits and those not yet defiled with gain are exercised a Disease is as yet altogether unknown to wit the adequate or suitable object of the Medicinal faculty the object I say of so many readings established by Princes Surely I had wholly doubted of my own rashness unless he who giveth such a Talent were the dispenser of the same within and
the next place the immediate and connexed cause of the disease Oft-times again the opinion of their minde being changed they have withdrawn those qualities out of the account of diseases and causes and have undistinctly banished them into the troop of sumptomes and co-incident things onely being altogether doubtfull what a disease what a cause causing or what a sumptome should be But of the internal occasional causes of diseases which in the Book of Fevers I first brought into open view and of the equivocal or various kinds of products of diseases nothing hath been heard in the Schools For besides heats colds pains weaknesses and co-incidents of that sort they have known no other fermental effect of a disease whereunto at length for a conclusion they have brought death And so they have confusedly joyned privative things to positive In the mean time they have doubted to what predicament they might ascribe diseases For they oft-times denominate a disease to be a quality otherwise also a certain relative habitude or disposition of body oftentimes also to be a quality of the number of actions they do often say it to be of the predicament of quantity to wit while they say that diseases are not the first qualities themselves but their distemperature or degree or excess onely and while they bring a sixth finger into numbers But being unmindfull of what they said before they will have a certain disposition resulting from a hurtfull quality of humours to fill up both pages or extensions of a disease to wit so as that that disposition may be the daughter of the hurtfull quality as of the diseasifying cause And so then a disease should supply the room rather of an action hurt than of the hurter of actions And likewise a disease should not be any longer a distemperature or the excess of a quality but another product as yet unnamed from the distemperature it self to wit a hurtfull quality of humours shall generate the disposition which onely and alone should at length be truly the disease For truly a man that hath the falling Evil a mad man a gouty person and one that hath a Quartane Ague besides and out of the fit are diseasie and do nourish the disease within Yet they have not such a diathesis or disposition for if the Schools do believe diseases to be meer accidents surely these know not how to sleep neither are they while they do not act in the time of rest from invasion Therefore at least-wise in that sort of sick folks the disease shall by no means be such a dispositive disposition Again they being unmindfull of themselves do will that if that disposition be small it is not to have the reason or essence of a disease but therefore that it then doth bring forth a neither state or an hermaphroditical Being between a disease and not a disease so that its essence doth for the half of it partake of a non-being and that as well in the state of declining as of recovery And which more is they reckon such a small diathesis not among diseases but with the weaknesses of a state of neutrality and among symptomes And that there it doth patiently wait until that having obtained a degree of a symptome it be made a disease And so a diseasie disposition is not a disease if it hath not as yet manifestly hurt by its excesse wherefore also not the disposition it self but the excess thereof is the disease of a proper name in the Schools The correllative whereof is that the degree onely of some qualities doth make and change the essence and species of its own self neither shall a species therefore have its own thinglinesse in its being specifical but onely in the point of excesse So at length a disease shall wander from a quality into the predicament in relation In the next place if a disease be an effect immediately hurting action they ought even from thence at least to acknowledge that the Archeus himself or the maker of the assault while he is irregularly moved to wit while Scarr-wort doth embladder a living body not likewise a dead carcass and layes aside and loseth a part of himself for this purpose ought to be the universal and primary disease of all Even as I have threatned to demonstrate concerning Feavers They likewise ought to acknowledge if material causes do by themselves and primarily suffice for an immediate hurting of the functions themselves to wit as a Cataract before the apple of the eye doth by it self and immediately bring forth blindness even as the cutting off or mayming of a tendon doth take away motion without the intervening of a disposition really distinct from the curtailing wound that there is no need of feigning such a disposition for there is not any stoppage or diathesis which stops up the passage of the urine if the stone alone doth immediately do that and materially stop and doth so perfectly and really contain the whole foundation of a relation in it self that the disposition or stoppifying action proceeding from the stopping stone is nothing but a relation and meer Being of reason which in diseases in time of healing as also in true Beings and things truly existing hath no place wherefore extrinsecal diseases such as are wounds and what things soever do intercept any passage seeing they do not arise from a seminal beginning nor do nourish a cause which may stir up the Archeus they are the clients of another Monarchy But for seminal diseases it is a nearer thing in nature and motion to suppose the Spirit the Archeus as it is the efficient beginning of feeling and motion to be immediately and most nearly affected by hurtfull things and that that occasional cause and the Archeus do mutually touch each other in a point whence a disease For the occasional matter whether it be brought to within or be bred within or be coagulable or putrifiable lastly dispersable or waxing hard doth alwaies onely occasionally stir up the Archeus that he may thereby be astonied or sore afraid and wax diversly wroth To wit under whose perturbation an Idea is bred informing some part of the Archeus And that thing composed of the matter of the Archeus and the aforesaid seminal Idea as the efficient Beginning is in truth every seminal disease Therefore the Schools being seduced by their own proper liberties of dreams have thought that because the consideration of Causes and Principles differs from the consideration of the thing produced by them therefore from a necessity formally causing all Causes ought in making being operating and remaining to remain perpetually separated from the things caused not heeding that for the most part the consideration of Causes and Principles doth not otherwise differ from the consideration of the thing caused than by the relation of a mental Being the which although it be received in Science Mathematical and discoursary things yet not in the course of Nature Therefore the Schools being deluded by such faulty
ones contrary to the nature of relatives and contrary to their own Maxim That one contrary is said to be as many wayes as the other For the doctrine of contraries in Remedies standing health likewise ought to come forth of Medicine as a chick out of an egge Or seeing that contraries ought to reduce each other unto nothing health ought to proceed from a Disease even as otherwise weakness proceeds from a Disease For if a Remedy be contrary to a Disease verily the faculties of our life cannot be contrary to a Disease and by consequence a Disease shall not be able to hurt our faculties or the actions of these And the Schools have erred while they contend that in a Crisis or judicial Sign a Disease doth in its whole course sustain a single combat with our faculties But if a Disease be contrary to our faculties and to the Remedy it self at least wise they shall incongruously apply cold things in a Fever they being applied no lesse to the vital faculty than to the Disease Yea if from a contrariety of disposition a Disease be bred our action ought not wholly to depend on the Spirit making the assault but on the meer cause of the Disease and the which therefore seeing it should have the principle of its motion in it self it ought to operate as well in a dead carcass as in a living Body and the whole skirmish should be only between the dispositions of strange accidents suppressing each other Of which strife the life it self should be only a hateful spectator without discommodity to it self What other thing is this than to have feigned a sluggish and cold vital Philosophy and that the Physitians or Curers of Fevers are cold What if a Disease doth stand in a quality whose contrary warriour they will have to be known by sense and elementary why therefore are so uncertain weak and slow Remedies of Diseases devised Why are there so manifest and ready Tokens Remedies and Simples of manifest contrary qualities boasted of in the Schooles Therefore according to mee a disease is a substantial Being begotten by Archeal causes as well materially as efficiently But heat and cold and that sort of signed Concomitants I call fruits and symptoms far different from the produced Diseases For a Disease is oft-times furiously moved against us wherein many symptoms do interpose which Disease notwithstanding doth oftentimes cease without a product As is manifest in intermitting Fevers For neither doth a new Disease arise from thence But only nature intends to shake off a tedious guest under which endeavour fruits and symptoms are produced drowsinesses heats colds pains watchings disquietnesses vomits weaknesses c. Elsewhere also a Disease doth often convert the matter of its Inne To wit while the Archeus being stirred up by an occasional ferment doth bring forth a new product whether in the mean time the former Disease be shut up in the term of the product or not Neither doth a Disease also seldom occasionally produce a Monster unlike to it self While a Fever doth cause the Dropsie a Cataract Scirrhus c. because they are the products of Diseases by accident To wit whereof a new Idea from the Archeus is the Mother as shall appear beneath in its place But weaknesse is a universal Fruit of Diseases the Chamber-maid of these The which indeed is no other thing than a disposition following a diminution of the strength or faculties And it is either total by reason of the afflictings of a notable or noble part It happens also through an adherency of a diseasie occasion unto some solid part Whence the Archeus being at length the extinct a blasting of that part and presently after a death of the whole Body do also proceed Or weaknesse is particular by reason of a particular Blas affecting some member by its animosity or wrathfulnesse For so from the stomack is there a giddinesse of the Head Head-ach c. as from the Womb the parts do diversly and miserably languish by an Aspect Which things surely are the symptoms and fruits of the Archeus but not the Diseases thereof the which otherwise do naturally lay up their own efficients in themselves Even as elsewhere concerning the action of Government In the next place the product of a Disease differs from a symptom in this as this is a fruit it requires indeed a mitigation from the Archeus himself but not a curing as it is by it self Because it likewise vanisheth together with the Disease But I find no mention of the product of Diseases in the Schools but it is either confounded with a symptom or is attributed to a certain new distemperature and a new aflux of humours Others also are wont to dedicate Diseases to the parts containing the causes likewise to the parts contained but to banish symptoms into the spirit making the assault Being in the first place badly mindful that they attribute the heat and cold of the first qualities as Diseases to humours contained In the next place if a Disease be in the part containing and the cause in the thing contained If the spirit in-bred in us shall not move or stir up the cause and the disease whereby I pray you shall it be done what shall beget a disease by a cause if not the spirit For as wrath bashfulnesse and agony do heat by a Blas so fear grief and sorrow do cool without the aid of humours But Pepper and heating things do heat living creatures but not dead carcasses as neither do Cantharides Scar-wort or Smallage embladder these But Causticks do even wast a dead carcasse and that not through the effect of their own heat but only by virtue of a burning Salt which resolves the solid parts into a Salt without heat To wit even as Calx vive doth resolve Cheese into a muscilage Causticks therefore or searing Remedies do generate an Eschar in a live Body but not in a dead carcasse but they do resolve this by a simple resolution of their Salt But because in a live Body the Archeus is also inflamed within an Eschar is produced from both Agents To wit the Caustick and the Archeus Lastly the fire doth indifferently burn as well a living as a dead Body and more speedily the live Body it self Because the fire consumes from without by burning and the spirit it self through its inflaming becomes caustical or burning within Therefore from a fourfold handy-craft operation to wit of the Fire Pepper a Vesicatory and Caustick the remarkable things which follow do voluntarily issue 1. That the efficient heat of heating things is ours In Pepper therefore there is only an occasional exciting heat 2. That a Fever is not heat effentially but it hath things proper to it as well cold as heat from the property of an alterative Blas And that not efficiently but only occasionally incitingly and accidentally But the Archeus alone is the efficient of heat and cold For neither is a Feverish matter in a Body otherwise hot
known that the same Humours do become degenerate in the passage of Digestions and are the occasions of many Diseases But that the Liver alone in Vices of the skin doth bear the undeserved blame that is a thing full of ignorance and worthy of pity I will at length moreover commune with Christian Physitians by one only Argument To wit Iâ is of Faith that God made not Death for Man Because Adam was by Creation Immortal and void of Diseases For concerning long Life I have explained after what manner a Disease and Death at the eating of the Apple as an Effect unto a second Cause have entred into Nature Therefore in this place it hath been sufficient to have admonished That the Concupiscence of the Flesh arose from Transgression and also to have brought forth the flesh of Sin and therefore that Nature being corrupted produced a Disease through Concupiscence I could wish therefore that the Schooles may open the Causal Band and Connexion between the forbidden Apple and the Elements or the Complexions of these Whether in the mean time they are lookt upon as the Causes bringing Diseases or as Diseases themselves To wit let them teach If the Body of Man from his first Creation did consist of a mixture of the Four Elements after what manner those second Causes or co-mixt Elements onely by eating of the Apple which else had never been to fight the Bonds of Peace and Bolts of humane Nature being burst asunder at length naturally exercise hostilities and all Tyranny What common thing I say doth interpose betwixt the Apple and our constitutive Elements But if this came miraculously and supernaturally to passe that Death was made a punishment of sin Then God had made Death Efficiently but Man had given onely an Occasion for Death But this is against the Text yea and against Reason Because Death was made with Beasts in the Beginning even as also at this day unto every one happens his own Death that is by a natural course and a knitting of Causes unto their Effect It must needs be therefore according to Faith that Death crept naturally into Nature so that man was made Mortal after the manner of Bruits For it is certain that at the eating of the Apple the brutal concupiscence of the Flesh was introduced Neither do we read at length of any other knowledge of good and evil to have been brought in which was signified under the opening of their Eyes than that they knew themselves to be naked and then it first shamed them of their nakedness Wherefore I have long stood amazed that the Schooles have never examined the aforesaid Text that they might search out the Disposition or Respect of the Cause bringing a Disease unto its natural Effect In what day soever ye shall eat of the forbidden Fruit ye shall die the Death Which indeed is not so to be taken as if God had said by way of threatnings If ye shall eat of the forbidden Tree I will create or make Death in you Diseases Paines Miseries c. for a punishment of sin or that through a condign curse of my indignation ye and your posterity shall die For such an Interpretation as that resisteth the divine goodness because that for the sin of our two Parents he had equally cursed all their posterity with an irrevocable curse of his Indignation who after sin commited and the Flood it self readily blessed Noah by increase and multiply c. Wherefore those words Ye shall die the death did contain a fatherly admonition To wit that by eating of the Apple they should contract the every way impurity of Nature as from a second Cause seated to wit in the Concupiscence of the flesh of sin But seeing such a concupiscence can never consist in elementary qualities it is also sufficiently manifest that a Disease and Death are not connexed as Effects to the Elements and the qualities of these But the concupiscence of the flesh as it infected onely the Archeus even so also it did onely respect the same In the Archeus therefore every Disease afterwards established it self and found its own onely and immediate Inne And so also from hence the Archeus is made wholly irregular inordinate violent and disobedient Because he is he who from thenceforth hath framed inordinate images and seales together with a spending of his own proper substance as it were the wax of that seal For images or likenesses are at first indeed the meer incorporeal Beings of the mind but as soon as they are imprinted on the Archeus they cloath themselves with his Body and are made most powerful seminal Beings the sealing dames mistresses and architectresses of any kind of passions and inordinacies whatsoever which thing I will hereafter more clearly illustrate in the Treatise of Diseases Finally the adversaries will be able to Object That it would be all as one whether a Disease be accounted a disposition or a distemperature of the first qualities or a disproportionable mixture of humours or lastly whether it be called an indisposition or confusion and likewise that it is as one whether the Cause which brings a Disease he called the occasional or the material Cause of Diseases or the internal and conjoyned Cause thereof For truely the one onely intention of Nature and Physitians on both sides is conversant about the removal of that matter for the obtainment of health Therefore that I am stirred about nothing but an unprofitable brawling concerning a Name I Answer Negatively and that indeed because both the suppositions are false For as to the First For that doth not onely contain a manifest fault in arguing of not the Cause as of the Cause and of a non-Being for a Being But besides the Destruction and Death of mortal men doth from thence follow For for that very Cause for which a Remedy is administred to correct the distemperature of a Discrasie or the abounding or disproportion of humours because of things not existing in Nature they at least cannot deny that our Disputation is of things but not of a Name onely when as to wit they accuse cure or undertake to cure the Disease for the Cause or this for it They handle I say things that are never possible as if they were present And then also they presse a falshood Because indeed I never said that a naked confusion or indisposition of the Archeus is a Disease but I affirme that the immediate and internal matter of a Disease is to be drawn from the masse of the Archeus himself But I call the imprinted seminal Idea which springs from the disturbances of the Archeus the efficient Gause but as to what appertaines to the other supposition the occasional or inciting Cause and the internal containing Cause or the very Body of a Disease do far also differ from each other For example The occasional Cause of intermitting Fevers is present out of the fit which should not be if the occasional Cause were the very internal matter of
so a small vein being burst had caused a difficult breathing and did also dissemble a Dropsie But when as the rupture of the vein being more rent had poured forth its Blood it choaked the man A certain Dropsical Man and but one onely being seen by me shewed a black and stinking Bubble in the hollow of his Liver Barth-Cabrollius an Anatomist of Mount-Pellier Saith that he cured very many Dropsical Persons by Incision made in the very Navill it self standing out and that in both sexes But surely if the errour had been in the Liver it could not have issued forth with the water through the Navil or that the Liver being mortally defiled should admit of a restoring Which thing the Schooles will not admit of Wherefore I remember that I have restored above two thousand Dropsical Persons also whose Urine did now wax-blackish with Bloodinesse and who had scarce made a spoon-ful of water in one night whose Liver if it had had but even a mean and not a mortal fault I consess I had not Cured them I have seen also that they whose Liver hath been notably wounded have escaped who although they thenceforth fore-perceived the Storms of the Aire yet not the Dropsie I have seen moreover those whose last day a slow Fever had closed in whose Liver small Stones had grown yet they had not shewn a Dropsie It is a familiar thing for the Liver of Oxen to abound with small Stones although they are continually fed with grasse Whence at leastwise I have learned that Grass-roots do never remove the obstructions of the Liver The Schooles will say to these things the Dropsie indeed is not made from a visible corrupting or obstruction of the Liver as neither from the Salt of the feigned Jamenous-alume as otherwise hath seemed to Paracelsus but from a meer cold and moist Distemperature thereof for so a large Flux of Blood because it brings the aforesaid distemperature it causeth the Dropsie But this is wholly prattle old Wives Fables and vain sounds For first of all I have sufficiently demonstrated the nullities of mixtures and temperatures not any more to be repeated 2. I have seen many all the venal Blood of whom a Consumption had exhausted so as that scarce two ounces had remained when their Heart Lungs and Liver were plucked out but their Liver was of a yellowish Colour because it was without Blood yet there was no cold and moist distemper in these Livers as neither a Dropsie the Supposed son of its feigned Mother 3. If much Flux of Blood should generate cold and moist distemperatures surely the Schooles do not affirm that thing to be done but by the reason of a withdrawing of the vital Spirit which alone is the cause of our heat But the defect whereof seeing it includes a privation it cannot induce a positive Being such as a cold and moist distemperature and Dropsie should be 4. And likewise seeing they will have contraries to be contained under the same general kinde our vital heat which they will have to answer to the Element of the Stars cannot have an Elementary cold contrary unto it 5. A notable Flux of Blood doth of necessity cause cold And therefore if a cold distemperature arisen from a Flux of Blood should be of necessity the mother of the Dropsie at every notable flux of blood the Dropsie should of necessity be present But the consequent is false Therefore also the Antecedent 6. And moreover seeing cold from a flux of blood becomes universal there is no reason why the Abdomen should be rather loaden with water than the Breast whither to wit the Aire being continually breathed in doth increase the cold 7. If the Dropsie be the son of that distemperature in the Liver Whence therefore is there an uncessant thirst 8. If the Expulsion of water into the Abdomen be an action of a distempered Liver Why doth not the Liver use the same its own expulsive action while the Veines do swell with Urine they being intercepted by a destructive Stone 9. Likewise the Blood of Dropsical Persons even as also the Urine should be exceeding watery if the Dropsie should be from a cold distemperature of the Liver But the Urine should not be so reddish and Bloody 10. In the next place between a Dropsie and cold distemperature arisen from a flux of blood a positive cause being a third from a cold should of necessity interpose Which the Schooles do hitherto name because of a non-being there is no search made 11. Neither also do such distemperatures produce thirst together with a Salt Water in the Abdomen seeing they do not thirst who do plentifully detain a salt Urine throughout all their veins in the Stone which stops up the Reines on both sides 12. If the Dropsie be from a cold distemper Then a Dropsie should never be expected after a Fever or wringing of the Bowels if there be not a branded confusion of causes And in vain do they flee unto a cold distemperature for a Dropsie the which should equally proceed even from opposite causes 13. Every old and decrepite Person should now nourish the necessity of a Dropsie 14. A cold distemper seeing in its root it is like to Death extinguishment old Age and privation every Dropsie should contain a necessary despaire of health even as such a distemperature denies a restauration 15. If the Liver be the Liver and not the Lungs by reason of its Elementary co-tempering as the Schooles say and so from one only Seed all the Elements do proceed and wander hither and thither confused that they may be the constitutives of appointed Organs therefore the Liver receding from its natural temperature shall cease to be the Liver and shall be the Kidney Lungs or Milt 16. At leastwise a Member struck with a Palsey should not be wasted but should be after some sort swollen with a Dropsie 17. At length if the Venal Blood be resolved into four or again into three Humours from whence it is either naturally composed or they are in it being applyed unto or co-mixed in the subject of the Blood The Blood shall never be able to be changed into a Dropsical water Seeing this is not any Humour of the constitutives of the Blood Yet I have seen a country-man out of whom all the water was taken by a Borer in twelve hours space for he being become my Opposite Scoffed at me But the morrow morning being swollen with the former Lumpe of his Belly he died For the Dropsie increased not by degrees even as it had increased from its beginning but it presently hastened and proceeded unto an extream extension For I observed that his Flesh and Blood being melted into Water had made their retreat to the neather part of his Belly For in that one only day he had descended into extream Leannesse Therefore his Flesh and Blood shall now wander into an Hydropical or fifth Humour through the cold distemperature of his Liver I could perhaps pardon
that the Liver being cooled doth afterwards generate the more cold Blood for all Blood being deprived of vital spirit naturally waxeth cold because it is a dead carcase But that a more cold Liver doth melt fleshes into a Dropsical water that can be founded upon no reason 18. The Schooles cannot deny but that a Dropsie is sometimes solved by the Kidneys But there is no reason why the Reines do stubornly close themselves even untill Death because the Liver was more cold than was meet Let these arguments onely as yet suffice the Humourists which are distempered with cold that the Liver may be from a mortal offence Now I will over-add somethings concerning the occasional Cause I will therefore resume the fact of our Treasurer who shewed nothing memorable in this dissection beside Blood out-hunted and hardned in his Kidney to be the occasional Cause of his Dropsie and Death yet while the Stone plentifully stopping the Kidney doth not produce a Dropsie yea although the whole Kidney shall wax brawnie or hard with little Stones and shall reserve nothing of its substance besides skin Therefore the obstruction of the Kidney as such is not the occasional cause of Dropsie But the out-chased venal Blood For so the Woman of Sixty years old having dashed her self against a corner of the Table contracted a Dropsie So those that are wounded in their Abdomen and badly Cured do become Hydropical So out-chased venal Blood lighting and laying on the Menynx or Coate of the Brain doth presently render the countenance swollen with a Dropsie So at length great gripings of the Guts do pour forth Blood out of the Veins into the space bordering on the hollow bending Bowel So those that have the Bloodie-flux And so Drinkers do enter into a Dropsie as something of blood is co-heaped in the hollow Bought of the Bowel But this thing I learned in a Fracture of the Scull and in a Dropsie of the Lungs For there the Blood making oftimes a stop blows up the whole Head and Face as it were with a Dropsie But here I have observed the Blood to have consisted or remained about the conduit of the arterial Vein for neither doth the venal blood degenerate in the form of corrupt Pus unless it be cocted in the hollowness of the Flesh but without the Flesh in a free place the Blood presently waxeth clottie and straight way after it being made more dry is hardened and presently conceives a Poysonous ferment Whence the Archeus stirs up a Dropsie Indeed our Treasurer hath taught me that the blood being hunted out and become clotty causeth a Dropsie of the Belly and besides that the Kidney is an Adequate or suitabl Aertificer Causer Executer and Judge or Arbitratour of a true Dropsie That thing hath confirmed it to me because at the time of a Dropsie the Kidney scarce makes Urine and on the other hand because the Kidney being excited to restore the Urine himself doth empty the whole Dropsie out of the Belly Wherefore also that the water is brought back into the Abdomen by the arbitration of the Kidney Vain therefore is the devise of Paracelsus that the Star Zedo is the one only and singular Architector of the Dropsie For the cause is in our innermost parts and in the very Beginnings of Life but not to be so far fetched and Cured For the Dropsie is not the workmanship of the Stars neither is there such an ordination of the Stars neither is that of concernment although Mercurie being seperated dead from its Vein doth truly and perfectly cure the threefold Dropsie For Mercurie is an Analogical and feigned Name neither doth it denote a Star but a running Mettal For what doth a Name that is Metaphorically feigned belong unto the feigned Star of Zedo For metallick Mercury is neither a Star nor kills a Star nor hinders its operation nor dis-joynes the conjunction of a Star with us if there were any For the Stars are the occasions of Meteors but of Diseases occasions onely by accident For primarily they are the Causes of times or seasons and of the Blas of a Meteor but secondarily and by accident they disturbe our Bodies proyoke Diseases or ripen the occasional matter But Causes by accident do not respect Cures but fore-cautions especially where Causes per se or by themselves do operate with or in us by a proper motion and appointment of their own seeds For indeed the left Kidney of the Treasurer is stuffed or condensed with the more dry Blood the left part of his Abdomen is extended and presently waxeth hard the right part being safe His Leg also presently swels and afterwards his Thigh on his left side and therefore the extension of his Belly is extended not by reason of the quantity of water onely but his Membranes are extended from the Disease it self no otherwise than as the Artery under a hard pulse But the Membranes are extended and contracted also before a plenty of water by the same workman which begets the Dropsie Indeed it contracts all the pores of the Membrane that they cannot transmit or send the Wind or Liquor thorow them when as otherwise in those that are alive that is healthy the whole Body is perspirable and conspirable or inspirable The Treasurer therefore first of all makes a little water the Dropsie straightway invades him by degrees and begins on his left Side And therefore presently after its Beginning his left Leg is besieged by an Oedema and afterwards his whole Body becomes swollen But why doth not his right Kidney draw the Urine nor transmit it the which otherwise happens when but one Kidney is besieged by the Disease of the Stone For therefore there is a double Kidney by Nature and a single Spleen or Milt that one may relieve another in their troubles and banishments of an Excrement Yea and from hence it is sufficiently manifest that the Spleen is not a sink nor emunctory Therefore in the Blood being chased out of the Veins deteined and condensed there is an exciting ferment such as is wanting to the Stone I will therefore declare the whole order of the matter so far as my Observation hath taught me For the Liquor Latex unknown to the Schooles as long as it is carried with the Blood in the Veins or to the Glandules it enjoyes a common life neither doth it obey the rules of water-drawing Organs But it knowes not upwards and downwards because it hath it not But it being once rejected out of the fellowship of Life now it undergoes the nature of an Excrement and hastens downwards as being burthened with its own weight Therefore the Latex is of a vile esteem And therefore as oft as every Bowel is ill affected it presently neglects the Latex and excludes it from the company of its Venal Blood and findes business enough for it self at home for its own defence The Latex therefore being once divorced elsewhere and spoiled of the society of Life doth presently receive
the disposition of an Excrement Because it s own and that which is native to it 1. This is the cause of an Anasarca or in speaking precisely the Water is not the Dropsie as the Anasarca it self neither is the Wind the Tympany it self but the Water in the Abdomen and the Latex in the Anasarca are the Products of the Dropsie As the Wind is in the Tympany Surely the Dropsie is a Guest received with a more inward society of familiarity and is more intimate unto us the which doth attempt the vital principles and faculties of Life before the Water be bred and so every Disease doth by occasional Causes immediately talk with the vital Beginnings wherein at length it findes its matter and efficient Cause 2. And then I have noted that seeing the Urine of all Dropsical persons in general is little and of a ful colour the Latex was the matter as of the Urine so also of the Dropsie For neither is it formally Urine but the matter hereof before Urine was made thereof by a co-mixture of other things and the receiving of a Urinal ferment 3. But I understand in the Dropsie a threefold matter To wit the first occasional such I have said out-chased venal blood to be And then a second which is the Water it self and the very Latex in the Abdomen which is a certain product And lastly the third matter hath its internal efficient arisen in the internal vital principles of the Archeus of the Reines 4. Like as also drink failing the Reines do notwithstanding as yet allure forth the Urine of Blood although sparingly 5. So also in the Dropsie the Urine is of the Blood not of the Drink not of the Latex The Reines do actually conceive frame and contein the Dropsie But the Abdomen or neather part of the Belly through the action of government of the Reines doth afford an Inne and the Kidney sends the Latex thither as the product of the Tragedy For it is not as the Latex is theevishly snatched away by another Bowel but the Kidney alone doth banish the Latex unto places subjected unto it 6. But the Latex being lesse chief in the accustomednesse of Life in an Oedema and Anasarca than in an Ascites it is also again supped into the Veines and slides unto the Reines that it may undergo the last determination of Life 7. An Ascites is regularly cured if the Kidney shall make much and abundanâ of Vrine of its own accord or by a Remedy But it committeth a relapse if the Disease be not wholly taken away out of the Kidney 8. The Water between the skin or Anasarca by a retrograde motion draws the Latex into the mouthes of the Veines from thence through the Veines it is sucked into the Kidneys and expurged in manner of Urine The least quantity whereof onely doth exhale by transpiration And therefore they abusively teach that the Latex is Phlegm in an Oedema and that it is recocted into lawful Blood 9. Therefore the Command and Action of Government of the Reins doth extend it self not only into the Kidneys Ureters and Urine Vessells But besides into the hollowness of the Belly between the Peritoneum or wrapping Skin thereof and Muscles of the Abdomen and likewise into the several Divisions of the hollow Vein beneath its self even also into the Feet and Legs 10. The Reins therefore do not suffer the Latex to fall down through its own weight but do truely send it no otherwise than as they do truly again draw the same thorow all the blood of the Veines to wit until the Dropsie be cured by pissings 11. And which is more the Kidney doth alwayes co-operate and principally operate in the framing of a Dropsie It is therefore of necessity primarily affected Because it wanders from the ends of its acting 12. And seeing the Kidney is the chief effecter of the Dropsie although another member may now and then contain the occasional Cause 13. Therefore a Cure which is instituted by a removal of the Water is alwayes subject to a relapse and is for the most part attempted in vain Because a worthy or meet Cure is never instituted from the ultimate or last Agent 14. Therefore the Dropsie Ascites is alwaies an immediate effect of the Reins and so the Cure of the same doth expulsively require a restauration of the Kidneys whether the defect be occasionally stirred up or in the next place consisteth in the Kidney it self 15. Wherefore I do far retire from the Doctrine of the Schooles which the Reins being paspassed by and neglected doth continually behold the Liver and direct its desires of curing thither 16. But the Dropsie is not a wandring abuse or exorbitancy of the Archeus in the Kidney a stopping up thereof by a stone or muckishnesse But a certain sleepy or stupifying poysonous faculty in the venal blood which is expelled or in a like manner entertained through importunity whereof the Kidney doth first of all forget its office casts away the Rains of separating the Latex and straightway after also doth snatch up a fury while through an inordinate motion it banisheth the Latex into the Abdomen 17. Even just as I said before that a Kidney was exclusively shut against the simple Urine even until death 18. Indeed I meditate of a co-like devious or wandering quality of out-chased venal blood in the Dropsie through the occasional Cause whereof the Kidney is made forgetful of its duty and the seasonable removal of which poyson doth free the Kidney from its bond and so the Abdomen from the Water For when the Kidney seeth that an Error was committed by it and being well admonished by a right Medicine it earnestly repents and again suppeth up the Latex being dismissed unto it and drives it forth 19. Therefore the true Dropsie Ascites is in the Reins or to lose the stubborn bolt of the Reins is to lose the Dropsie even as to solue the congealed Blood is to solue the occasional cause thereof That is the immediate cause as well the material as efficient of a true Dropsie is the Archeus of the Reins erring to wit so far as he becomes Exorbitant and is as it were driven into a furie by the occasional Cause he begets an Idea or shape the which the implanted Archeus of the Reins himself being stubborn doth foster and nourish Whereby indeed he doth not or scarce separates the Urine or imploys himself in the care of his Office or of his appointment Yea neither doth he only pass by and neglect his own Offices but also being as it were in a rage dismisseth the Latex unto the Abdomen that he may as it were procure his own Destruction Therefore we must dissolve the vice of stubbornness in the Archeus so that pissing may follow if health be to be expected Paracelsus feigneth that in the Dropsie the venal Blood is by the star of Zedo turned into a muscilage but from hence into water But that its cure doth
Preparations Exaltations Appropriations of Remedies That is not to have known a Scientifical or Knowldegable Curing of the Sick For I have believed that I must proceed by the same Beginnings Because they referred all sicknesses a few perhaps being excepted into Elementary qualities and the inbred discords of Nature into Humours Catarrhes Flatus's Smoaks or Fumes So that the knowledge of the Schooles being withdrawn into a Fume and Vapours doth vanish into Smoak At length through the Errors of Tartar it descends unto Tartarers that they might shew that they being involved in darkness have stumbled in their wayes For it hath behoved me diligently to detect those things if Young beginners must hereafter repent But it hath not been sufficient to have shewn their Errors Unskilfulness Sluggishness and stubborn and constant Ignorance unless I shall restore true Doctrine in the room of Triffles For the abuses of Maxims had remained suspected by me for very many Years the which in the Book of Fevers I have deciphered to the Life before that I came unto a sound Knowledge of the Truth And I had a long while thorowly viewed the truth of the Theorie before that in seeking I had found some right Medicines which were sufficient for those that had made a Beginning Wherefore seeing I was about to speak of Diseases under so great a Paradox and weight of things and sound none among the Antients and Modern Juniors to be my assistant I seriously invoked God and I found him also favourable Therefore I determined before I wrote to call upon Logick that by its Definitions it might demonstrate unto me the Essences of Diseases indeed by their Divisions Species and interchangable courses or mutual respects and at length that by Augmentation it might suggest the Causes Properties Meanes and Remedies of knowing and curing them But at my acclamations made even into its mouth it was deaf stood amazed heard nothing remained dumb and helped not me miserable man in the least Because it was wholly impotent without sense Afterwards therefore I called the Auricular Precepts of the natural Philosophy of the Schools unto my aid To wit their three boasted of Principles four causes fortune chance time infinite vacuum motion yea and monster Whence at length I discovered that their whole natural Philosophy was truly monstrous having feigned false mocking Beginnings not principiating and much less vital in the sight of the King by whom all things live likewise Causes not causing Also adding or obtruding the phantastick Beings of Reason and opinions beset with a thousand absurdities wherein I as yet found not any footstep of Nature entire and much less the defects of the same or the interchangable courses of faculties or vital functions But least of all from such a structure of Principles was the knowledge of Causes Natural Vital of Diseases Remedies and Cures to be fetched Whither notwithstanding I supposed the knowledge of Nature had respect as unto its objected scope For whatsoever I sought for from the Schooles and attempted to handle by their Theorie that thing wholly Nature presently derided in the Practise and it was accounted for a blast of Wind She derided me I say to speak more dictinctly together with the Schooles as ridiculous And at length she together with my self complained of so unvanquished stupidity Then also Logick bewailed with me her impotent nakedness and the vain boasting of the Schooles Because she being that which even hitherto was saluted the Inventer and Searcher of Meanes Causes Tearms and Sciences grieved that she ought to confesse that she was dumb no lesse in Diseases than in the whole compact of Nature and also that she ought to desert her own professors in so great a necessity of miseries ãâ¦ã she by one loud laughter had derided also the natural Philosophies of Aristotle and the blockish credulities of the World and of so many Ages if she her self had not been a non-being fiction swollen only with the blast of pride Wherefore seeing Nature doth no where exist or is seen but in Individuals there is need that I who am about to write of Diseases have exactly known the Causes of particular things even as also it is of necessity for a Physitian to have thorowly viewed those Causes individually under the guilt of infernal punishment Therefore it hath seemed to me that the quiddities or essences as well of things entire as of those that are hurt were to be searched into after the manner delivered concerning the searching out of Sciences But seeing the Knowledge thus drank may be unfolded I have confirmed unto the Young Beginner that an essential definition is to be explained by the Causes and properties of these which is nothing else besides a connexion of Causes but not the Genus or general kind and difference of the thing defined But this is an unheard of Method of explaining even as Logick the Inventress or finder out of Sciences hath feigned And also seeing all that faculty is readily serviceable unto a discursive Philosophy for they do vainly run back unto the Genus of the thing defined and the constitutive differences of the Species for the Diseases which have never and no where been known Therefore seeing it hath been hitherto unknown that things themselves are nothing without or besides a connexion of the matter and efficient Cause By consequence also the Schools have wanted a true Definition That is a right knowledge of Diseases If therefore the Essence or thingliness of Diseases and the condition of Diseasie properties do issue out of their own immediate essential Causes of necessity also the knowledge of the aforesaid Diseases and properties is to be drawn out of the same Causes Because the consideration of Causes is before the consideration of Diseases Therefore I have already shewn even unto a tiresomness That the Essences of Natural things are the matter and efficient Cause connexed in acting Therefore also the Essence of every Disease doth by a just definition consist of those two Causes and its knowledge is to be fetched out of the same First of all a Disease is a certain evil in respect of Life and although it arose from sin yet it is not an evil like sin from a Cause of deficiency whereunto a Species Manner and Order is wanting But a Disease is from an efficient seminal Cause positive actual and real with a Seed Manner Species and Order And although in the beholding of Life it be evil yet it hath from its simple Being the nature of Good For that which in its self is good doth produce something by accident at the position whereof the faculties inbred in the parts are occasionally hurt and do perish by an indivisible conjunction Defects therefore there are which from an external Cause do make an assault beyond or besides the faculties of Life concealed in the parts and they are from strange guests received within and endowed with a more powerful or able Archeus And from hence they are the more exceeding in
that the Life is the immediate mansion of a Disease the inward subject yea and workman of the same But seeing Life is not essentially of the Body nor proper to the Body but that a Body without Life is a dead Carcass and a Disease is in the Life Of necessity also every matter or mansion and efficient Cause of a Disease doth not exceed the Limits of Life That is of necessity every Disease doth inhabite within the Case of the Archeus who is the alone immediate witness executer instrument as also the inne of Life but Apostemes Ulcers Filths Excrements c. Are only either the occasions of Death and Diseases or the latter products of the same raised up into a new scene or stage of the Tragedy Neither surely is it therefore a wonder that together with the Life all Diseases do depart into nothing if the Life be the immediate subject and mansion of Diseases But I long since admired that no Physitian hath hitherto known in what the essence of Diseases should shine But that they have wandred about Elementary qualities Humours Complexious Contrarieties and Dispositions Neither that indeed they have once observed that as filths are not Diseases so neither are Diseases in filths but that they live only in the Life it self and being included in the same do so arise grow and perish that seeing they are no where out of the Life they ought to be the intimate and domestick Thieves of the Life These things be spoken of the proper receptacle of Diseases Furthermore seeing a Disease is without controversie admitted to be a Being existing in us as in an inne and doth enjoy its own and singular properties and different Symptoms A Disease of necessity is not of the number of accidents because an accident is not of an accident combined with it and distinct from it self in the whole Species For truly sharpness or bitterness is not a property of whiteness blackness lightness or heat But every one of them do stand by themselves Wherefore if a Disease be a Being and not an accident if in the next place it produceth from it self not only alterations diverse dispositions weaknesses c. But moreover doth generate substances degenerating from the ordinary institution of their own nature of necessity also it ought to consist of matter and its own internal or seminal efficient Lastly seeing a Disease is internal as to the life it self it also follows of necessity that the matter of a Disease is Archeal and its efficient cause is vital And that I may speak more clearly every Disease is of necessity an Ideal efficient act of the vital power cloathing it self with a Garment of Archeal matter and attaining a vital and substantial form according to a difference of the slowness and swiftness of Ideal seeds which things indeed have been hitherto unknown by Mortals and those things which follow are as yet more largely supported with this position God made not Death and so far is he alwayes estranged from Death that he refuseth to be called the God of the Dead First of all also although Death doth sometimes invade without a Disease yet for the most part Death follows Diseases so that none doubteth but that that Death is the daughter of Diseases or the second Cause whereby and by means whereof the Life is extinguished That is Death is present but seeing God is not in any wise the Author of Death to wit by whom Death entred into Man who else was immortal and that no more or by a stronger right in the beginning of the World than at this day A Physitian must diligently enquire from whence Death doth causally invade from the beginning and even unto this day that it may from thence be manifest from whence a Disease hath drawn its integrity For truly although it be sufficiently apparent that Death doth contain as it were a privation or exstinction of Life so neither in it self or for its existence it doth not require any substantial form and much less a vital one But surely a Disease as such doth not bespeak a privation but a Being truly subsisting acting by an hurtful act of Life and ensnaring the Life So also it behoveth a Disease to consist in the form of its own thingliness which the Life can receive into it and be informed by it But seeing a Disease arose from the same Beginning as Death did neither is God ever the Author of Death It by all means follows that God is not the Author or Creator of Diseases neither therefore although a Disease hath a certain substantial form Yet it hath not Life nor a vital Light but what it hath borrowed from the Life it self to wit so far as it glistens in the Light of our Life or in that of Cattel But not that a Disease doth require or hath begged a vital Light from the Father of Lights for the being of its seed the which in it self is rather to be named a deadly or mortal thing and altogether estranged from the goodness of God the Creator Therefore although God alone doth create all the forms of all things and the Father of Lights doth give every essential form to wit a vital substantial form and so also the formal substance without any mutual competitor yet that hath not place in Diseases in the forming of which indeed man alone is chief Because the Life of Man alone containeth the second Causes of Diseases and Death Therefore because the Creator God denyeth that he made Death therefore also a Disease For a Disease standeth in the Life of Man and therefore all its quiddity or thingliness depends on the Life of man and that not only Seminally even as otherwise it is proper to all the seeds of any things whatsoever But besides also formally so that the Life of the Archeus or his Flesh and Blood are and do remain the whole formal Cause of Diseases or the effective Cause of the formes of a Disease For he who from the beginning refused to have effected Death or Diseases will never at length thence-forward be willing to have made Death nor Diseases For the Father of Lights will not give his Honour of Creating formal Lights unto any Creature except the Mortal formes of Diseases whereof as neither would he be called the God of the Dead Therefore Man remains the workman of his own Death who the day before was immortal as also of his own Diseases as if he were the Creator of Death So indeed that whereas God hath made vital Lights Man Createth Diseasie Obscure and deadly Idea's or Shapes and such an Idea doth as much differ from a vital Light as a black heat doth from Light Therefore the formal act of Death and Diseases sprang from the action of original Sin and shall so spring even unto the end of the World For the same Cause which in the beginning of the World made Death or the same second natural Cause which gave a natural entrance of Death into
humane Nature The same Cause also doth wholly at this day make Death and a Disease For it is repugnant with the Glory of the Creator not to have made Death from the beginning and afterwards when it was made by Man for him to have assumed to himself the Glory of knowing how to make it as if he ought to have learned that thing from Man But what hath been already spoken concerning Death that is by an equal right to be understood concerning Diseases Because that seeing Death and a Disease have issued from the same piont of their original therefore if God be said to give Diseases or Death it is not that now he will be the Creator of those things whose Fabrick he before wholly refused But he is permissively called the Author and Prince of Life and Death Because as he is the true and alone Author of Life and therefore doth govern it and suffer it at his Pleasure So he permits that this man doth yield or depart and the other Man fall and that second Causes do happen as well directly as irregularly whence Man dieth or a Disease groweth But the Creation of a Disease as of a Being subsisting from a seminal matter and efficient and of an Ideal and deadly evil never proceeded from God For while he had placed it in the will of Man that he might remain without Death or the same day to die the Death by the same step also he put it into Mans hand to frame Death and a Disease it self as a fore-runner and preparer of Death The entrance of Death into the nature of Man being considered even as I have elsewhere explained it by a remarkable Paradox doth most exactly prove that a Disease doth nor only consist in the vital part of Man but also that a Disease it self is bred by a seminal Idea out of the Archeus himself But I will briefly prove that thing From the concupiscence of the Flesh arose the flesh of Sin and therefore also a mortal Archeus in that Flesh and from thence by consequence also the Archeus forasmuch as he is vital acts in the flesh of Sin every action and produceth every formal hurtful and deadly act which God hath refused to do and hath suffered Man to stamp on himself the Causes of Death and Diseases Yet Man is not therefore a Creator although he maketh formal acts to himself or the substantial formes of Diseases or the hurtful ones of Life For truly that was granted unto him by virtue of the Word That on what so ever day he should eat of the Fruit of the Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil he should die the Death and should make guards-men appointed for his own Death And that from the very Nature of Death it self necessarily brought forth in the flesh of Sin The act therefore which is of the Essence Exsistence and Subsistence even as also of the propagation or fruitfulness of the contagion of Diseases doth altogether depend in the Life from the Life by the Life within which it is also enclosed Surely miserable are Mortals and most exceeding miserable are the Sick who have hitherto hired Physitians at a great and dear price who know not what a Disease may be from whence it may arise and in what it may consist and subsist But I admire that before me the more Antient as neither Modern Physitians have smelt this out because their sacred Anchor being for the most part in the hope of a Crisis and concerning Crises's they have devised very many things to excuse their own Ignorances For truly a Crisis or judicial sign in Diseases proveth nothing besides the Archeus if they believe their own Hippocrates who saith that Natures themselves are the only Physitianesses and helpers of Diseases For the Moon doth not make Crises's causatively but the Archeus alone who follows the Harmony of the Moon For the Moon measureth dayes hath more regared unto the proof of the actions of the Archeus than unto causality For the Moon is alwayes on the fourth day in an opposite place to that which she was in on the first day Therefore also the Archeus hath opposite powers or faculties who doth imitate the Harmonious motions of the Moon So also on the seventh day c. I conclude therefore for the knowledge of a Disease that a Disease hath either a Fewell or an excitement only from the occasional Cause or doth arise from a voluntary and proper motion and perseveres in its own contagion of a seed as while an Epilepsie or the falling Evil is once con-centred or the Gowt hath taken root doth indeed awaken of its own free accord as oft as it listeth Even as also the Disease ceaseth for two or three dayes or more and again returns at set Periods although the occasional cause in the mean time be alwayes present and so after a hurtful solutive Medicine being taken although it be expelled a few hours after yet the Archens being thereby defiled rageth and is obedient to the drunk contagion of the venom So also ready inclinations and hereditary Diseases Proper or Natural unto some one whole Family are co-bred with us Because they are Con-centred in the Life it self and are as it were the Characterical marks and imprinted seales of hurtful Diseases CHAP. LXVIII I proceed unto the Knowledge of Diseases 1. Medicine is the most occult or intricate of Sciences 2. Therefore the ignorances of past ages are excusable 3. In what thing Diseases may inhabit 4. The rise or original of Diseases 5. Whence a Disease began 6. Why a Disease is immediately in the Being of the first Motions 7. Why the essence of Diseases hath been unknown 8. A Disease hath married a vital Being 9. After what manner all seeds do issue from the invisible World 10. The rise of Efficient Causes and the property of seminal Idea's 11. All the seminal Beginnings of things are from an invisible Idea 12. How a seminal beginning receives its compleating 13. The Ideal power of seeds is declared by their ranks 14. Although Death and a Disease began from the same Beginning yet they differ in that a Disease hath Idea's but a Death not 15. The Schooles will laugh at Idea's But the Author carps at the ignorance of the Schooles 16. He proveth their ignorance at least by one Example I Have already oftentimes nor in vain asserted that Arts and Sciences have hastened unto a pitch but that the art of healing alone if it hath not gone backwards at leastwise to have stood at a stay and to have whirled round about the same deceitful point Hence also I have conjectured that the knowledge of Diseases and a Medicine depending thereon was to Man most difficult On which so many flourishing wits have for so many ages vainly bestowed their endeavours and that thing I do not hereby conjecture to be from a contingency or events alone to wit because the knowledge of Diseases hath even hitherto stood neglected But because in respect
Favour a desire of Praying of Talking with God with humility an amorous perfect and exceeding delightful Faith or Confidence For these things the World is ignorant of For I being a Phisitian ought here on purpose to treat of Morality however others may laugh And that not onely as the indispositions of the Soul do defile and blemish or corrupt the Health But especially from that Title because seeing a Disease is the Son of Sin it cannot be perfectly known if the faculty of the Concupiscence of Sin be unknown from whence every assault towards a Disease drives it self into the Archeus But hitherto concerning Idea's conceived by the cogitation of Man of which it shall as yet be more liberally treated under the Chapter of Things Conceived Now it remains to unfold from whence Idea's made by man are of so great strength that oft-times they call for a Disease yea and also Death on the Imaginer From the Premises therefore we must resume 1. That Idea's are stamped in the Imaginative faculty by cogitation 2. That they imprint their Image on the Spirit of Life 3. That they are operative means whereby the Soul moveth and governeth the Body 4. That they are seminal Images 5. But that they are graduated according to the power and strength of the Imaginative Faculty 6. Wherefore that a humane Embryo is changed into diverse Monsters 7. That every man by the Images of Sorrow Terrour c. doth form seminal Poysons unto himself which do consume him in manner of the Plague or else by a violent languishing 8. That they do also passe forth out of the Body of the Imaginer because an Image conceived by a Woman with Child regularly wanders into the young even on the last day of carrying it in the Womb yet then it is without controversie that the young doth enjoy its own Life and lives by its own Soul and Quarter It is manifest therefore from the aforesaid particulars not only concerning the question whether it be to wit that there are in Idea's a most powerful force to operate but also because they are seminal that they do naturally pierce and operate on all things For truly if there be not a certain ruling and forming Idea of the matter of seeds formed by the generater the seed by it self remains wholly barren In the next place those Idea's ought to be immediately not indeed in the Soul of Man but immediately in the Archeus which maketh the assault because without such an Idea the Archeus should plainly remain an unpartaker of all action operation and propagation Therefore also by Idea's every motion and action of Nature as well in remedies as in poysons and every Natural power is seminally imprinted by every Parent whatsoever Yea forreign strange Idea's are introduced and those ascending into those already constituted because Idea's no otherwise than as Lights do mutually pierce each other and do keep a perpetual and co-marriageable mark of the Archeus with the Archeus which Idea's while they take hold of the matter of him a Disease is now bred For as seminal and primitive Idea's being planted in the seed by the Parents do figure a Man Bruit Plant c. So also the Idea's of inclinations affections c. coming upon them do determine or limit the countenance of a Man unto the delineaments or draughts of Physiognomy Which afterwards also are varied by the future Idea's of manners customes c. For bruit Beasts through the troublesome Idea's of lust do not wax fat even as those that are gelded do But Eunuchs if they are without care do fatten who else through the Idea of grief do also wax lean But from whence there is so great power in Idea's it is worthy to be known that the table or matter upon which even as on water the phantasie decyphers its Idea's even as on water is the very substance of the Archeus it self the which being once defiled by a conceived Idea and as it were instructed by a seminal principle is afterwards uneffectual for other Offices Therefore indeed those that are without care do slowly wax grey and in a contrary sense but many cares do speedily draw on and ripen old age according to that saying my Spirit shall be diminished and my dayes shall be shortned Rightly therefore was it said from of old That the perfect curing of Diseases consists in the removal of the Cause or Root The which if it should be the visible peccant matter it self even as the Schooles do nevertheless point it out to be now a Fever or the colike Diseases could not be cured unless all the occasional matter were first removed which thing is as manifestly false as it is most exceeding true that Fevers are silent the same occasional Cause remaining So indeed I have oft-times perfectly taken away the Colick Choler Flux Bloody-flux and other Diseases by a true Laudanum without Opium although the residing mass or lump were as yet entertained within Therefore all visible and forreign matter either happening from without or sprung up of its own accord within how degenerate soever it shall be from the very nourishment of the solid parts and a liquor separated from them it hath it self alwayes by a proper name after the manner of an occasion and a provoking Cause whether that shall be for a primary Disease or indeed shall be produced and constituted by a primary Disease consequently afterwards pricking forward the Archeus unto the erecting of a new storm or Disease And so every Disease is caused from the violent assaulting Spirit by Idea's conceived in the proper subject of the Archeus by whose fault alone a live Body but not a dead Carcass suffers all Diseases But if that this off-spring of a Disease be spred into the families of the digestions it produceth occasional matters indeed for secondary Diseases which are bred to stirr up afterwards the same Archeus unto new seminaries of Diseases For so wheresoever Hippocrates hath not found any visible matter as the occasion of a Disease he accuseth a Divine Beginning in Diseases because it is invisible from the hidden Store-house of seeds from the invisible World or out of Pluto's River of Hell or from the Chaos of successive changes Therefore I do in all things wholly admire at this Divine Beginning be it spoken by the liberty of Hippocrates in Diseases as the judge of a broken purity so also a revenger of an hidden impurity and concupiscence lurking in the flesh of sin And therefore also persevering in the radical disorder of a vital principle But as it doth immediately sit in and is awakned by a vital and seminal principle Hence also consequently Diseases have properties directions proportions durations affections and respects unto members and places which things certainly in a good understanding cannot be attributed unto the ulcerous predicaments of heats and colds as neither to Distillations and Catarrhs flowing down with a voluntary fall of weights But it is profitable to have made this
they are received inwardly and are digested as Medicines yet they are even presently transchanged into the Stomack and do presently put on strange savours and figures of qualities as they do even fully put off every condition of their former Life unless they had rather be accounted ungrateful or poysonsome Yea they are afterwards altogether so truly transchanged that they do wholly leave behind them the Image of their former act of perfection or may scarce be reputed to have possessed it In this respect indeed are they for that Cause taken in a great quantity or abundance that they may seem the more inwardly to breath some very small matter into a Man And with what great dammage that is done they have known who have sometimes experienced that to live medicinally is to live most miserably Therefore scarce any thing of those Medicines which are taken into the Body doth resemble its former Being and if it doth shew it forth woe to the Receiver Wherefore if there were any Virtue in a Medicine surely that was before it laid aside its own proper Nature and antient Being for it hath presently failed assoon as it hath represented only its Odour Therefore the force of every Medicine is well nigh concluded in the co-touching of its Odour and in almost a certain momentary perfuming Neither is there therefore so great reason for a disturbed Rumour to wit because the Oyls seasoned by the little Stone do presently cure by their Odour Let them therefore be the murmurings of Young Beginners about the accustomednesses of parts nourished They are altogether vain although it shall seem Wonders unto Wits not yet meditating of unwonted matters but being accustomed unto a subscription alone to wit after what manner the Archeus being driven into Fury being so suddenly touched even with a white wand of Peace doth fall asleep or being corrected doth abstain from his own mischief begun But surely that is less to be wondred at seeing every thing doth naturally desire to be and remain and easily abstains from its own hurt so it be made or be tractable for the pacifying of its conceived Grief or Fury What if a Flux of Blood an Ulcer Wound Bone-breach may be presently restrained and safely healed if the out-hunted venal Blood corrupt Pus or Sanies be over-covered with an absent Remedy shall not the little Stone season the Oyl with its co-touching that it may be able being be-smeared or anointed to cure a Disease laying hid under it For truly no other thing is denoted by these Words The Maker of sweet Oyntments shall Compose the Paints or Varnishes of Sweetnesse neither shall his Works be Consummated or come to an end For why shall the little Stone touching at the Tongue less cure than Woolfes-bane doth cause the Tongue to swell by its co-touching God hath made benefits in respect of Diseases at least equal in authority if not much more famous and more So far is it that I should consecrate these kind of Effects to the Devil that I am the more powerfully moved in admiring of the divine Goodness to adore the most ready mercies of Jesus Christ my Lord whereby without the Labour of Physitians Apothecaries and others who like Lice are fatted only by others Miseries to wit whereby the miserably Sick are the more safely and speedily holpen Indeed Examples of these things have of late been made manifest in external Diseases to wit in Wounds and Ulcers that we may repay the Honour due to God out of the midst of our Ignorance of Causes and may cease to refer those things unto wicked Juggles and uncertain Superstitions and so unto the Works of Satan which are the issuing Pledges of divine Love manifested from God in the most afflicted Seasons of the deep Ignorance of Medicine for the comfort of the Miserable and Poor who indeed would be called the Father of the Poor because he ought so to be I say this kinde of Sympathetical Remedy in Wounds hath first and that now of late by the permission of God bewraied it self to wit that we may by degrees be led by the Hand from external and the more appearing Diseases unto the reliefes of internal and the more abstruse Diseases But that Diseases should almost by the least point of a Medicine be put to flight To wit that Butler could cure some ten thousands every year by almost an infinite Faculty or Virtue the Text hath perswaded me That the Works of that Maker of sweet Oyls shall not be Consummated or come to an end And then I ought to believe that thing as being an eye Witness that the touching of his little Stone hath blessed first a spoonful of Oyl and afterwards a whole little Bottle of Oyl with a medicinal Virtue Indeed I have tried and attempted many things and that long about the framing of that little Stone I have learned indeed that in the family of Vegetables there is the Herb Chameleon and likewise Arsmart which by their touching alone do presently take away cruel Diseases or at least-wise do ease them I have seen I say the Bone of the Arm of a Toad presently to take away the Toothach at the first co-touching some things to take away the Falling-Sickness and the like Calamities Therefore I have believed that in the Herby Family a Remedy doth also lay hid for every Disease but surely that they do only obtain an efficacy of particular Diseases but do never ascend unto a universal and renowned Government over every Disease Wherefore I ran over unto the race of Minerals which is enriched with a long Flux of time or ages First of all that the Virtue of Stones is great I ought to believe being admonished by the holy Scriptures And first of all I knew that every colour and power of Gems or pretious Stones is begged from Metallick ones Because although Metallick Faculties are enclosed in Gems by reason of the hardness of their Christal yet they are commended in the holy Scriptures for great ones Therefore I consider that in Metallick Bodies the same Faculties or Virtues of Gems do more familiarly converse with us For Picus in some Books unto his Wife doth narrowly search why Gold is of so great Price also according to the will and esteem of the Lord But he was not able to determine his Question For it is certain and not to be doubted that the names of the Planets are put upon the seven Mettals as whereon the Celestial Virtues we may believe are so clearly or famously conferred But at least-wise let them be the nourishing or milky Juice of the whole terrestrial Globe And therefore also for the price of things and the desires and rewards of frequent handlings But the Father of the Poor hath not disposed of Sol and Lune of Gold I say and Silver for the uses of Diseases in the Poor for whom notwithstanding he hath been eminetly careful and therefore he hath so firmly shut up Gold and Silver that they do
free Faculty that it concludeth with the excellency of a Christian especially of a righteous Man that the Devil hath no right or authority of entring or introducing of his Means Seeing it is all one to him to have hurt by a medium or by himself There is therefore a far other Power of enchantment besides the Devil and therefore a natural and free one over a righteous Man he hath no command But if the Devil should have a free Power of enchanting it should also be alike free to him of killing by a Knife or a Hammer and so none should be free Yea if the Devil could he would not enter within the Skin of a just Man by reason of the divine presence of the Kingdom of Heaven Indeed the Devil doth behold God to be present in a just Man after another manner than any where else which is an everlasting Cause of his hatred toward us neither therefore doth he enter although he could but he goes about as a roaring Lyon Therefore a Witch doth by a natural Being imaginatively form a free natural and hurtful Idea the which Satan cannot form because the forming of Idea's requires the Image of God and a free Power and therefore Witches do operate by a natural virtue no less on the righteous and innocent than on wicked men Yea seeing enchantments do more easily infect Children than those that are of ripe years Women than stout Men A certain natural Power limited in the enchantment is signified against which an opposition is easily made by a warlicke and strong or stout mind The Devil therefore offers Filths or Poysons to his Clients that he may fermentally co-knit their Idea's formed in the imaginative faculty of these Yea he preserves that Ideal Poyson that it be not blown away by the Wind or that being over-covered in the Earth it be not destroyed by a putrifying by continuance But he locally derives that Poyson according to the object which is to be enchanted yet he is no way able to apply them or to bring them into a Man Therefore a Man also doth afterwards dismisse another exsecutive issuing and commanding Mean to enchant a Man which Mean is the Idea of a strong desire For it is a thing unseperable from a desire to be carried about desired Objects In all which the Devil being only a spectator is an assistant in its passage Because in very deed I have already demonstrated that the operative means themselves do belong to man alone For God alone is the Creatour most glorious and to be praised for ever who hath created the Universe of nothing But man as he is the Image of God doth create some Beings of Reason or non-beings in their beginning of nothing and that in the proper Endowment of an imaginative virtue the which notwithstanding are something more than meerly a privative or negative Being For first of all while those kind of conceived Idea's do at length cloath themselves with a Body in the shew of an Image framed by the imagination they are now made Beings subsisting in the middle of that garment wherein they do equally reside throughout its whole and in this respect do become seminal and operative Beings to wit by whom their very own assumed Subjects are straightway wholly directed But this Power is given only to Man Otherwise a seminal virtue for propagation is given to the Earth bruit Beasts Plants c. And likewise a Dog is able by madness to transfer his Spittle into a Poyson because it is proper or natural to his Species The which also is easie to be seen in diverse Poysons of living Creatures But to form Idea's abstracted from their Species and adjacent properties that is granted to none but Man Also by a more full looking into the matter it is seen that if in an Idea formed by the imaginative Faculty there was not the authority of a certain entity or beingness president which was not able to cloath it self or assume a Body yea neither could it be associated by the imaginative Faculty to the Body of the Archeus For truly that which is in it self meerly nothing doth effect nothing hath also negatively a right unto nothing And therefore the conception should perish presently after the conceit neither should it cause an Idea yea if it should be a meer nothing it should presently also wander into nothing But seeing the plantasie doth proceed from a conception unto a formed Idea or Image and from hence unto a seminal Being it follows that the conceit is made this some thing in the imaginative faculty That is that the imaginative faculty doth create a certain seminal Being which is a Beginning dispositive unto the formality of a Being in Power Even as out of a Steel and Flint a spark doth arise from whence there is a flame very greatly operative So the imaginative Faculty doth co-rub it self on an Object by a conception from whence there is an Idea And therefore the act of imagination is not so of nothing that it hath not some foundation in it approaching unto a principiating realty For the imaginative Power hath for this end either Images proper unto it self conformed with the Soul as many do believe or at least-wise Images sometimes present being stirred up by the Memory and re-called again by remembring But I consider of these things not that Essaies or flourishes of Idea's do fore-exist in us before that which is Imaginatively conceived that they may be the conceived Images of a proper name but that they are made by a co-touching of the imagining Power in act that is by the Image of that which formeth and of the Object imagined And therefore the Soul doth nakedly form an Image out of its own Bosom the which unless it do presently bind up in the Archeus it also perisheth and for that very cause becomes barren Neither doth that hinder that in Fevers or Diseasie watchings we do against our will experience the shadows of Images To wit the which foolish shadows of Images do walk up and down without a connexion and discourse before the imaginative Faculty But whatsoever imagined thing doth voluntarily walk up and down yea and bring labours or troubles we being averse thereunto and unwilling thereof that very thing must needs fore-exist as it were shadows laid up before an imaginative force be reflexed upon them But those kind of Idea's are sometimes confusedly imprinted they running back out of the storehouse of the Memory but not that they had fore-existed before every act of imagining And likewise neither doth it prove that because the aforesaid shadows of Idea's are confused oftentimes ridiculous and false therefore neither ever before conceived by a sound imaginative Power For truly Images or Likenesses being once naturally determined and seriously constituted a second third and further Image is brought in upon it and they do fold up and pierce each other whence there is a confusion Otherwise the following Image doth by course destroy the
former if it be opposite unto it but if not and if it agree with the former it is comforted or if there be any crookedness between both of them both are confusedly undetermined and wander as being shadowie Images which thing surely no way brings help unto the supposed fore-existance of Idea's It hath alwayes seemed to me that Idea's are stamped anew by the act of the imaginative Power like a spark which is made anew by a co-rubbing of the Steel and Flint Neither doth this derogate any thing from the activity of Idea's no more than sparks unto a great flame I answer therefore unto the first Objection That as Fire is not present in the Steel and Flint before a co-smiting of them So neither doth any essay of Beingness or footstep of an Image fore-exist before a conception and co-rubbing of the imaginative Faculty on the Object but every original entity of an Idea doth arise in the act of conceiving and a true Idea is made while the spark which elsewhere should presently perish doth fall upon the Fewel and the conceived Image fals on the imagining Fewel of the Archeus from whence the most powerful flames of Diseases do follow Notwithstanding because the treatise of Idea's doth most nearly touch Conceptions I defer and omit further to discourse of Idea's CHAP. LXXXI The manner of Enterance of things Darted into the Body 1. The one only means whereby the Devil doth co-operate in darting things into the Body is the juggling deceit of the Eyes that they may enter invisibly 2. A motive and determined or limited Blas belongs to the Devil 3. How much Man may contribute hereunto 4. The primary or chief Curing of things injected 5. A natural Cure 6. The variety of Gifts in Simples 7. The Author proceeds by way of naming them 8. Karichterus is commended 9 A fore-caution in Herbs 10. The manner whereby things cast into the Body being once expelled forth do hasten their rejections I Will now proceed to supply the manner whereby things darted or injected into the Body do enter or are admitted and also I will subjoin their Remedies First of all things injected or cast into the Body do enter it invisible And this one thing is meerly diabolical For truly the most miserably Mocker seeing he hath nothing real which is left him in liberty hath only vain appearances because the father of a Lie dissembles things themselves and makes them falsly to appear from the Beginning of the World In these kind of juggles a Man who is the Devils Bond-slave co-operates nothing But after what manner Satan doth make things which are in themselves visible not to be visible whether he involves them in his own invisible Spirit and doth enclose the things themselves round about or in the next place doth act by a bewitching of the Eyes or also at the very same time wherein any thing corporally pierceth another as hath been already at large shewn by Examples it be perhaps for that Cause invisible for whatsoever looseth the dimensions of a Body may also deceive the sight at least-wise I am not a curious Searcher out of the Works of Satan which do in propriety belong unto himself And it is sufficient for me that what things are believed to belong to him I have shewn to be proper to Man and that I have discovered the every way and most poor misery of Satan Things therefore which are to be cast in being made invisible the Devil transferreth unto an Object the Idea of mans desire directing their passage For because it is not any way granted to the Devil to enter into a Man much less to hurt him and least of all that he should encompass him with an invisible burden Therefore he makes use of the free Blas of a Man which is bound over unto him A Man therefore doth imprint his own free motive Blas on a Body which is made invisible but the Devil derives it even unto to the man into whom it is cast And as a Knife is through the desire and consent of the Person wounding infixed into the Flesh of him that is to be wounded So this Body being made invisible by the Devil is cast into the Body of him that is to be enchanted by an Idea of the motive Blas of the Witch Satan conspiring hereunto as for direction of the smiting Man The Cure of things injected is performed partly by Remedies famous from the rise of the primitive Church the which do not operate but miraculously but why they do not regularly alwayes every where and amongst all obtain their effect I leave it to others But I do not touch at the unsearchable judgments of God as neither the Remedies which are out of the compass of Nature And partly also a Cure is had by some Simples whereinto the Almighty goodness hath put in a natural Endowment from the Beginning of their Creation of resisting preventing and correcting of Sorceries and likewise of expelling things injected such as the suffumigation or smoakiness of the Liver according to Tobias is read to be And such as that of Salomon or Eleazer according to Josephus Lib. 8. Chap. 2. For some Simples do drive away evil Spirits a miserable rout of Men it is which gives its service of adoration unto Gods who are not able to resist the natural efficacy of simples In the next place others take away the penetration of a formal light being fast tied to excrements Some likewise do at least hinder their touching enterance or application Finally many Simples there are which do correct those kind of Poysons and kill them First of all the Mineral Electrum or Amber of Paracelsus which is immature being hung on the neck freeth those whom an unclean Spirit doth persecute the which I my self have seen But I remember that the drink thereof hath delivered many from Sorceries But there is none who that Simple being hung on the Body which shall not prevent that things Injected are not sent or admitted within or that is presently not loosed from importunate bands Barth Karichterus chief Physitian to Maximilian the Second the chief among Physitians that I know of hath dedicated a small Germane Treatise as taking compassion on his neighbour unto his Master Wherein with a few Herbs he cureth any and after what manner soever they are enchanted He hath preferred his Standard-defending Simple Daurant it is the Phu of Diascorides with Purple Flowers it is the last kind of Valerian in the last Edition of Mathiolus before all I also greatly esteem Vervaine with a Purple Flower the more herby St. Johns Wort with a small Flower Southernwood Adiaâtum or Venus hair Rue c. And likewise red Coral and the extracted tincture thereof I have experienced to have brought much refreshment We must use the Herbs raw cut but not boiled Because their entire power consisteth in the integrity of their composed Body Therefore the Ideal faculty of the herbs perisheth by pownsing or contusion
But Herbes are gathered and Roots are digged up in a station wherein there is the more of vigor and therefore also presently after Sun-rising For things Injected are driven forth no otherwise than as a Snake from the Fire But Divines are wont to consume things Injected which are rejected in the Fire for a disgrace of the evil Spirit Those things indeed do thus rightly perish yet the relapsing returns thereof are not thus hindred Therefore things Injected which were expelled are more rightly involved and kept in Simples in any whereof there is an expulsive force With the like reason whereby Sympathetical Remedies do cure an absent Wound do these endowed Simples drive away things Injected do detain and restrain them that they are not Injected and do delude the vain endeavour of the Magitian The weaknesse therefore of an in-darting Being is deservedly suspected which cannot send in things that are to be cast into the Body because a certain hindering Herb is present and President Therefore the force which derives things Injected inwards is not that of the Prince of this World and of a most powerful Spirit But that of a certain Ideal and more infirm Being which doth so easily hinder all enterance for the future CHAP. LXXXII Of Things Conceived or Conceptions 1 The Spleen is the Seat of the first Conceptions 2. As well the Idea's of the Immagination as Archeal ones do issue from the Spleen their Fountain 3. Therefore also they smell of an Hypocondrial faculty or quality 4. The Plague alwaies begins about the Stomack 5. Of soulified Conceptions 6. Idea's from the Womb. 7. Madnesses 8. A mad Irreligion 9. The reality of Conceptions in respect of the Matter and efficient Cause 10. Presumption doth blind almost all mortal Men. 11. An occult madnesse 12. Diseasie Conceptions 13. Diseases of the Womb. 14. Womb Phantasies 15. An instruction of every Monarchy 16. A double Government in a Woman 17. The Womb is not ill at ease but from things conceived 18. The Female Sex is miserable 19. Diseases of the Womb differ from their Products 20. The Cure of its last or utmost Fury 21. A twofold Idea of things Conceived 22. The rise and progresse of a Feverish Dotage 23. The progresse of Idea's unto their maturities 24. The Entry of all good is in Faith 25. The flourishing of Passions MOreover a Diseasie Being is like unto things Injected the which I call that of things conceived For although this Being doth not come to us from without nor is nourished from elsewhere Yea neither doth Satan co-operate with it yet because it doth not much differ in its root manner of making and a certain likeness dââfects from some Injected things I have not unadvisedly referred things Conceived among Spiritual things Received Unto the clearing up whereof I have already premised many Prologues Wherefore I have already elsewhere demonstrated the Imaginative Power of the first Conceptions to be in the Spleen and that it is from thence extended unto the Stomack the companion of the Duumvirate and that also it is hence easily and originally in the other Sex extended unto the Womb. The Spleen therefore is as well the Fountain of Idea's Conceived in the imaginative faculty of a man as of the Archeus himself The Archeus hath his own and peculiar Imaginations proper unto him for whether they are the Phantasies of a true Name or onely Metaphorical ones it is all one to me in this place for the sake whereof he continually feels Antipathies and self-loves and from thence stirs up derived motions Surely the Conceptions of the Archeus doe forthwith attain the most powerful determinations in the aforesaid places Because they smell of their native place they are Hypocondriacal Qualities they bear the Monuments of the first and undistinct motions And although a soulified immagnation which is there delayed without the strength of impression or the inclination of any prejudiced thing may be at length made as it were sleepy undistinct and almost confused wherefore indeed times do seldome wax gray or old with carelesness yet those which in the very shops of the first Motions receive the deliberation of some Passion do also allure unto them the Spirits made old in the Brain do undergo the contagion of the place and are made and forged by the Judgement of a deprived Idea and do seminally bring forth affects co-agreeing with their Causes To wit those which are suspected of Hypocondrial madness confusion and disturbance For therefore we do all of us suffer every one his own anguishes of mind Yet the already mentioned Archeal imagination as it neither desireth the consent of the Soul so neither doth it exspect it and therefore it happens unsensibly and without our knowledge Therefore indeed the Plague whether it be made from a terrour conceived in the Soul or next from a proper Vice of the Archeus yet it alwayes holds its first consultations about the Orifice of the Stomack For the Idea's of the Archeus are most powerful also the most fierce ones of Diseases Because they being irrational do happen unto us without our knowledge and against our will and therefore also incorrigible and are for the most part out-laws and do therefore invade us after an unthought of manner I will now treat of soulified Conceptions because they are the more distinct and sensible ones whosoever they be which do as it were weaken insatuate and now and then enchant themselves with the perturbations of the first motions and the conceived Idea's of these they afford a fit occasion unto the aforesaid Causes And although this kind of Vice doth sometimes invade even learned and judicious Men produceth foolishnesses and crabbishnesses Yet it is more social unto a Woman by reason of the agreement and nearnesse of affinity of her Womb. Indeed the Womb although it be a meer Membrane yet it is another Spleen And therefore it doth as it were by a proper instinct of the Seed presently wrap it self in the external Secundines of the young as it were another Spleen As elsewhere in its place Not indeed that a Woman doth by this Vice of Nature forge execrable Hypocondrial Idea's for the destruction of others after the manner of Witches but they are hurtful onely to themselves and do as it were inchant and infatuate and weaken themselves For they stamp Idea's on themselves whereby they no otherwise than as Witches driven about with a malignant Spirit of despair are oftentimes governed or are snatched away unto those things which otherwise they would not and do bewail unto us their own and unvoluntary madness For so as Plutarch witnesseth a desire of Death by hanging took hold of all the young Maids in the Island of Chios neither could it be stayed but by shame or bashfulness sore threatned unto them after death Seeing therefore the Vice of things Conceived doth also touch men let the Reader be averse to wearisomness if it shall behove me to stay the longer in these things who
utmost of Three Hundred Years because they are those which some living Creatures do daily of their own accord reach unto but man very seldom and that not but in some unwonted places But why Long Life may be extended with so great a largness it comes to pass because it is on both sides received after the manner of the Receiver For the Modern Tree of Life should now no longer render me capable of the least Dignity or term by reason of the light of my Life being depraved by many storms the thred whereof they have cut off while it was as yet in the Flax. He shall fullfil thy desire in good things and thy Youth shall be renewed as the Eagle For neither is it said as of the Eagle because the former Youth of an Eagle is not restored But the Eagle is renewed no otherwise than as the Serpent puts off his skin and the Stag his hornes although in the mean time they do not cease to wax old under that renovation So that the Eagle hastens into grey Feathers Therefore I thus speak of Long Life not indeed which may be extended even unto the last day according to the rashness of Paracelsus as neither do I speak of a sound Life which is plainly free from Diseases but of that which under some certain kind of Protection of the Faculties doth for some good while enlarge the bound of Life Which meanes if they are administred unto a Child and strong Infant are to bring the same unto the aforesaid term if he proceed to use the same What if at length certain Climates do protract the Life shall that thing be denied unto a Medicine unto which there is a natural endowment of Long Life For oft-times he which is constrained to use Spectacles in the fiftieth Year doth afterwards again of his own free accord see clearly in the eightieth Year of his Age. Why shall not that therefore be done totally by Art which happens in the Eyes from a voluntary vigour But I have alwayes supposed that whatsoever was once Natural to wit in Nestor doth not resist a possibility of Nature Neither also doth it move me that Arch-Physitians have found this place untouched and dumb and therefore also have left it Because the Schooles do long since despaire to be wise beyond Galen who notwithstanding like an Apothecary doth substitute one thing for another and indeed hath set forth ridiculous Books of Preserving Health as for Long Life For he encloseth this in straight crooked athwart and circular rubbings to wit he acting great motion and being a great Circulater in these things which are of his own Invention even as an ignorant transcriber of others For as oft as he faileth from whence he may copy out serious things he so discovereth the wonderful poverty of his wit that he hath seemed to have doated throughout some Books in a figural friction or rubbing And therefore none of his successors hath hitherto counted the Books of Galen of Defending Health worthy of a Commentary or hath attempted to lift them from the ground but rather by a successive Interpretation every one hath bound that Doctrine of Galen unto the obedience of the huckstery of the Kitchin and Diet. For so through the craft of the Devil Long Life hath wandered into defending of Health and from thence into the Kitchins The Art therefore of some Years is Short and the Life Long if we must have respect unto the Hope of Life which the loose Doctrine of the Heathens hath neglected CHAP. XCII The Enterance of Death into Humane Nature is the Grace of Virgins The Index of the Contents 1. Why it is Treated of Death before of Life 2. A final Cause is not in Natural Things as neither is it the first of Causes 3. Some Absurdities of Aristotle 4. The Author prostrates this Treatise to the Censure of the Church 5. God indeed made Death for bruit Beasts but not for Man 6. What may be denoted by the Etymology of Death 7. The Devil could not make Death for Man 8. Man prepared Death effectively for himself 9. Of what sort the Immortality of our first Parents was 10. By what means Immortallity did stand in Man 11. Why the Mind is not capable of Suffering 12. The necessity of the sensitive Soul 13. The eating of the Apple did contain in it the second Causes for a necessity of Death 14. The inward Properties of that Apple 15. Man before the Fall wanted a sensitive Soul 16. The Mind Imprints its Image in the Seed 17. A chain flowing from the eating of the Apple 18. To what end the Author hath written this Treatise LIfe was indeed before that Death could be therefore although Life be before Death in Nature and Duration yet for this Treatise the Enterance of Death into Man's Life doth precede Life because I might not treat of Immortal Life such as it was from the intention of the Creator before the Sin of our first Parent but onely of the Length of Life or of the prolonging of Life whose end because it is closed terminated and defined or limitted by Death Death ought to be first determined of by its Causes as the remover of the bound of Life Truly I have not studied to imitate Aristotle in this thing who teacheth That the End is the first of Causes For I have elsewhere plentifully demonstrated that Aristotle was plainly ignorant of whole Nature Wherefore that his Maxime as well within as out of Nature is false Because if we speak of God the First Mover the Arch-type of all things and of the invisible World be it certain that with him there is not any Priority of Causes but that they all do co-unite into Unity with whom all things are onely one Likewise seeing whatsoever is made or generated in Nature is made or generated from a necessity of the Seeds and so that Seeds are in this respect the original Principles and natural Causes of things and do act for ends not indeed known to themselves but unto God alone From a necessity of Christian Phylosophy a Final Cause hath no place in Nature but onely in artificial things And therefore also from hence is verified what I have elsewhere sufficiently proved That Aristotle hath understood nothing less than natural things and that he hath deceived his Schools by artificial things And he is wholly impertinent in this place because he hath reduced artificial things under the catalogue of natural Causes Yea in more fully looking into the matter Aristotle remaines alike ridiculous For truly a builder before the bound or figure of Houses made out of Paper doth presuppose a knowledge of the Place an attainment of Meanes in the next place of Lime Bricks Stones Wooden and Iron materials a computation of which Meanes doth go before a Figure of the Houses And so neither also is the Final Cause if there be any the first of Artificial Causes in the Mind of the Author Therefore it is a
of eternal Life that is a Superiority over the necessities of Death At length if death had happened from a Law from the Punishment and Curse of Sin it should be false that God had not made Death because in very deed and immediately Death had proceeded from God and not from a natural Cause or that of Nature corrupted And by so much a stronger right where the same Person the Almighty Creator is the Law-giver like as also the Executer Last of all Sin is a mental Being or a Non-Being which cannot produce a real and actual Being And therefore Death at its Beginning had not proceeded from natural Causes even as at this Day Death doth arise in bruit Beasts equally as in us and therefore Death in its Beginning had been different in the whole kind from that at this day And therefore the Text should speak that which is ridiculous God made not Death if by reason of disobedience he had cursed Nature that it should die It is therefore of necessity that the Death of Man in its Beginning began and was made from second Causes altogether natural whereby we die at this day Also at this day Death hath reciprocally invaded through the natural Causes of defiled Nature even as in times past in its Beginning Indeed although Adam became Mortal from eating of the Apple yet his Death happened not but naturally some Ages after and from Old Age as from second Causes Far therefore be a Law an opposing thereof Sin a Curse in the original of Death appearing so many Ages after from second Causes speaking as it were in our presence Therefore every and the total Cause whereby Man hath immediately framed Death for himself is to be seen in the Position For although we are now Mortal yet we die not when we will and when we desire Because Death proceeded not from the Will or from Sin but from the Apple Neither indeed because Death it self was in the Apple as in a mortal Poyson but there was in the Apple the Concupiscence of the Flesh an incentive of Lust a be-drunkening of Luxury for a Beast-like Generation in the Flesh of Sin which Flesh carried with it the natural Causes of Defects and necessities of Death Wherefore it is likely to be true if the Serpent had not been able to obtain of Man that by Sinning he should eat of the Apple that he had cast an Apple cropped from thence unto the Root of some lawful Tree that by this means the Enemy of our Life might rejoyce to have introduced Death And that thing is sufficiently gathered from the Text which doth not say If thou shalt eat of that Tree but he saith In whatsoever day thou shalt eat thou shalt die the Death As if he should denounce that that danger of Death to come was fore-ordained For for this purpose the World was created and the Instruments of Generation were given unto Man because the Corruption of Nature the necessity of regeneration in a Saviour and the virgin Purity thereof was foreseen Let therefore those brawlings cease whether Eve ate an Apple or indeed a Fig. For the Text calls an Apple That which is pleasing to the Eye but a Fig doth not so allure by the sight of it And that one only Tree was of that Property whereof then there was not the like nor at this day is there another read to exist among created Things Finally the Words of the Text I will multiply thy Miseries and thy Conceptions so far off is it that they do signifie the Indignation of God and much less his Curse Yea rather they denote his love toward the devoted Sex For truly there is none which knows not that by how much the Life of the devoted Sex shall be the more miserable by so much also that it is nearer to the Son of Man for otherwise tribulations which God sendeth on his Saints and Martyrdom it self should by an equal right be Curses I will add last of all that as the Works of the Flesh are devillish So the Text I will put Enmities between the Seed of the Woman and thy Seed doth fully or plainly confirm this Position For first of all the Woman of whose Seed God there speaketh is the God-bearing Virgin which as a Virgin hath left no other Seed an Enemy to the Serpent but the Sons of Light the Sons of God and those who are renewed by the holy Spirit who have no Enmities with the Eggs of any creeping thing but only with the Sons of the Devil and Darkness forasmuch as they keep the Seeds of Sin Therefore the Text there promiseth a future Regeneration in the God-bearing Virgin calling those that are not renewed the Seed of the Devil because they are Adamical Flesh Therefore those things being heeded which I have already above demonstrated original Sin doth not properly expect a quickning or the moment of hecceity For although the Soul cannot be guilty of Sin before it be Yet seeing original Sin is in the Contagion of the Flesh it self is presently in the supposition of the concrete or composed Body after the manner of its receiver and assoon as there is a sexual mixture of the Seeds according to that saying For behold I was conceived in Iniquities before the coming of the Soul because in Sins my Mother hath conceived me For Sin is in the same point wherein Death consisteth the which indeed is in the very mixture of the Seeds For Death is immediately in the Archeus but not in the Soul which thing the sometimes mortal indisposition it self of the Archeus proveth from whence the conception is made voide which before now was in its whole hope vital And although the impurity of the material thing supposed be before the Flesh thereby generated and therefore also before the Soul yet there is not properly Sin unless the Soul âall put that on There is therefore a far different infection of original Sin than of any other Sins whatsoever which require a consent of the Soul For other Sins the Soul it self committeth but original Sin defiles the Soul not consenting because the Thingliness or Essence of that original Sin is the very Flesh of Sin For neither therefore is it called the Soul of Sin but the Flesh of Sin because the Soul is defiled by the Flesh But the Devil not from elsewhere than from himself Therefore Man admires mercy but not the Devil Therefore from the good pleasure of the Creator the Apple did carry in it not only the Concupiscence of the Flesh but consequently also the generation of Seed but there was not therefore a Faculty in the Apple of propagating the sensitive Soul The Arbitrator of the World in creating would oblige himself to create every living Soul in every soulified Body when corporeal Dispositions had come unto the bound of enlivening For therefore the Apple presently after it was eaten disposed the Arterial Blood unto a Seed and from thence into a sensitive Soul And that thing was
but it puts it not on but by the Will except in Women with Child Whether therefore we call Sin a nothing or a something at least-wise there is never made a Consent to Evil without a real Procreation of this certain kind of Entity and the assuming and putting on thereof This hath been the Cause of the Fruitfulness of Seeds for the Phantasie or Imagination being much moved by Lust produceth a slender Entity the which if the Soul puts on through the Will as the action of the Mind being imprisoned in the Body doth alwayes tend downwards and outwards it disperseth this same Entity into the Liquor of the Seed which otherwise would not be but barren Which Action is made as it were by an estranging of the Mind to wit the Will through the true Magick of the more outward Man departing into a certain Ecstasie in which there is made a communicating of a certain Light of the Mind upon the Entity descending into the Body of the Seed As oft soever therefore as the Cogitation or Thought drawes the Sense and Will into a consent so often a filthy Skin is bred and put on being a bastardly Ideal Entity by which birth the Will is said to be confirmed Also that Ideal Entity whithersoever it is directed by the Will thither it goes by this meanes the Will moves sometimes the Arm sometimes the Foot c. Furthermore when the said Entity is spread upon the vital Spirit for to love help or hurt any thing it wants only a light Excitement whether made from the asistance of God of the Cabalistick Art or of Satan that indeed the small Portion of the Spirit which hath now put on that Entity departs far off and perform its Office enjoyned it by the Will So the Male layes aside his Seed out of himself which through the Entity which it hath drawn is very fruitful and performes its Office without the Trunck of its own Body Truly Bodies scarce make up a moyity or halfe part of the World But Spirits even by themselves have or possess their moyity and indeed the whole World Therefore in this whole Context or Composure of our Discourse I call Spirits the Patrons of Magnetism not those which are sent down from Heaven and much less is our Speech of infernal ones but of those which are made in Man himself for as Fire is struck out of a Flint so from the Will of Man some small Portion of the inflowing vital Spirit is extracted and that very thing or portion assumes an Ideal Entity as it were its Form and Compleating Which Perfection being obtained the Spirit which before was purer than the Aetheâeal Air is subâilized or rarified like Light and assumes a middle Condition between Bodies and not Bodies But it is sent thither whither the Will directs it or at least whither the inbred infallible Knowledge of the Spirits sends the same according to the scopes of things to be done The Ideal Entity therefore being now readily prepared for its journey becomes after some sort a Light and as if it were no longer a Body is tied up to no commands of Places Times or Dimensions neither is that Entity a Devil nor any Effect thereof nor any Conspiracy of his but it is a certain spiritual Action thereof plainly natural and proper unto us He who well receiveth this Wisdom shall easily understand that the Material World is on all sides governed and restrained by the Immaterial and Invisible But that all other created Corporeal Beings are put under the Feet of Men for indeed this is the Cause why also the Mummy Fat Mosse and Blood of Man to wit the Phantasie existing in them in the Unguent overswayes the Blood of a Dog of a Horse c. being conveighed by a Stick into the Box of the Unguent There hath not been yet said enough concerning the Magnetism of the Unguent I will therefore resume what I spake of before namely that the Magnetisms of the Load-stone and of inanimate things are made by a natural Sensation or Feeling which is the Author of all Sympathy is a certain Truth For if the Load-stone directs it self to the Pole it ought of necessity to have known the fame if it be not to commit an Errour in its Direction And how I pray shall it have that Knowledge if it be not sensible where it is Likewise if it self to Iron placed aloof off the Pole being neglected it must needs have first been sensible of the Iron Therefore one single Load-stone hath diverse Senses and Images Neither also-shall it be sufficient that it hath Sense unless we add the Spurs of Friendship and Self-love and so that it is endowed with a certain natural Phantasie and by reason of the Impression whereof all Magnetisms are forged For it is directed by another manner of Phantasie toward the Iron than toward the Polo âor then its Virtue is dispersed only through a neighbouring Space It s Phantasie is changed when it restraines the abortive Young Catarrhs or Rheumes or the Bowel in a Rupture Also by another Phantasie doth the Load-stone draw any thing out of Glasse throughly boyled or melted by Fire for a very small Fragmen thereof being cast into a Mass or good quantity of Glaâs while it is in boyling of Green or Yellow makes it White For although the Load-stone it self be filled with a red Colour and be consumed by the Fire that dissolves the Glass Yet in the mean timâ while it hath Life it aââracteth and consumeth the tinged Liquor out of the Fiery Glass and so its attraction is not only to Iron but moreover unto that aiery Part which would with difficulty depart out of the Glass and for this Cause it is of common use with Glass-makeâs The Phantasie of Amber drawes Chaffs and Moates by an attraction indeed slow enough but yet with a sufficient perfect Signature of attraction for it being married to our Mummy is also stronger than our attractive Faculty drawes in opposition thereunto and becomes a Zenexton or preservatory Amulât against pestilential Contagions But Amber being mixed with Gumms its imagination being now transplanted draws the Poyson and Bullet out of a Wound indeed its pleasure and desire of drawing being on both sides varied But what Wonder shall it be unless with those who being ignorant of all things do also admire all things that inanimate things are strong in Phantasie When as he who is wholly the Life creates all things and hath therefore promised that nothing is to be expected as dead out of his Hand Also no one thing at all shall come to our view wherein himself also may not clarely appear as present The Spirit of the Lord hath filled the whole Globe of the Earth Yea this Expression That he containeth or comprehendeth all things carries the force of the World Do we not believe that there was much Knowledge in the Apple and that through the eating thereof our first Parents both are it up and together
truth of Healing doth not descend but in the fullnesse of time appointed by God For neither shall Light which is freely given shine at our pleasure For he who made all things as he would makes the same things when he will and perfects them in whom he will For I have waxed old now for forty years and more in the rout of Physitians and at length I being an old Man have known that the Speculations of the Schools ought by me to be subverted that all things in the Age that is soon to come may fall into dung as they being destitute of the Lime of truth do not co-here together There hath been so great a certainty with me of that Gift being obtained and so reverend an Authority thereof that I perceived that the Giver would together with his Gift be also the interpreter thereof and that in this respect I should exclude every doubt whatsoever and such a knowledge is far more sure than that which is formed by demonstration because there is not a Faculty in Words to make this certainty common to others I know also that all who are to read my Beginnings of Medicine will not carry back an equal Fruit from thence because God is still to remain the dispenser of his own Gift I have spoken these things that ye may also know that my unworthiness will overspread the Gift with darkness that he may compass the race of Nature who can for I have hoped that when he shall now increase the number and fierceness of Diseases he will inspire the Gift of Healing into the little ones and despised of this World And since that in the aforepast Age he sent Paracelsus a rich forerunner in the resolutive knowledge of Bodies and tâstre of Remedies it might be that he would now over-add the knowledg of an Adeptist which that other wanted Furthermore if it liketh thee without wickedness to enquire into the reason of the pleasure of that Divine Decree for which the Adeptical gift of Healing hath not descended unto Christians I suppose that the Schools do resist it as they stubbârnly insist on the Principles of Heathens And then also because Medicine is wholly excercised for Gain presently after its Beginning the which alone of Arts is to be mercifully exspended from compassion But not as though Men were to live merrily and pompously or to grow rich by the Miseries of the miserable Sick Wherefore gain hath prevented a necessary Dsposition in Men and the falshood of Paganish Doctrin hath diverted the Adeptical or obtained Gift of Healing The searching out whereof hath therefore seemâd to me to consist in compassion towards the Sick by un-learning of false Theoremes and by putting on deep humility of Spirit The which as it is not then blown up with the Letter nor pressed down through inordinacy So in a humble beholding knowledge of ones own nothingness the Mind empties it self of all Science or Knowledge introduced by the inducements of Reason Then afterwards then I say the Most High scarce suffers the Mind to be empty but he replenisheth the same with a fruitful Beam of his own Light I have already perhaps found some who because I say that the obtainment of Medicine descendeth down from above will have Medicine to be perfectly learned after the manner of other Arts The Intellect or Vnderstanding they say is a natural Power but every natural Power is born to work a proper Effect but the proper Effect of the Intellect it self is Understandingness Therefore Man naturally understandeth all intelligible things as the proper Object of the intellect Moreover the Faculty of healing is intelligible and therefore it descends not from above I answer The Soul and the Understanding thereof are not the immediate Works of Nature because they are those which arise from a supernatural Fountain And so although the intellect as to its beginning be a natural Faculty of the Soul yet it is not altogether to be reckoned among natural Faculties It is of Faith that God hath created the Physitian and so that the Art of healing be-speaks something bâyond the common rule of created things so as that the obtainment thereof doth not happen after the manner of other Arts For Nebuchadnezzar will testifie a taking away and a restoring of the understanding Likewise do not ye become as the Horse and Mule which have no understanding the which had been spoken in vain if understanding were equally given by Nature Moreover the Understanding given whereof they here declare exerciseth not its own natural or intellectual Act but as by discoursing it drawes some Notions from Observations which it received from the perceivance of the Senses when as it is altogether ignorant of the Causes from a former But unto the Science of Medicine a certain clearness of Light is required which exceeds that knowledge by the Senses yea and by the consequences of Causes to their Effects according to suppositions brought on them by reason for the most part deceitful ones For it is of Faith that the intellâct together with the totalness of humane Nature and so from thence howsoever cleer it be doth not perceive Propositions firstly or chiefly true which exceed sense unless with the afflux or concurrence of a supernatural Light Suppose thou I often read a place in a Book attentively and although I understood the Words yet I once only draw in the sense thereof unlooked for with an admiration of forepast readings But such Knowledge I call that of Grace For so the Understanding how clear soever it be doth not alwayes assent to the truth because neither doth it naturally perceive this truth for from hence are there Factions in Sciences and Religion So in the gift of Medicine there is something more noble and superiour than that which is formed in the imagining Faculty from a fore-existing knowledge of the Senses the which is true solid good exceeding the authority of consequences yea which can neither be properly taught or demonstrated Yet I would not be understood that the obtainment of healing is such an infused Science as in times past enlightned Bezaleel and Aholiab and much less such a one as on the day of Pentecost rained down with a large showre on the Apostles so that they forthwith spake in diverse Dialects Neither also is the obtainment of healing therefore of things plainly sublunary For the Eternal Wisdom hath created its Physitian after a singular manner before other created things and so some more famous thing seemeth to be required for him than for other Professions the which therefore neither hath he commanded to be honoured After another manner truly all our understanding in Nature ariseth only by way of discourse of the Observations of that which is supposed of consequence and of a diligent enquiry and all that from the effect Wherefore all such Knowledge is encompassed with uncertainty Therefore between an ordinary manner of understanding and infused science of the first degrees there are certain
by heat alone becomes a stone as they will themselves For because a stone melts not by fire even as otherwise mettals do therefore they conjecturing of Nature from a Negative have supposed they have untyed every knot And this grosse wit ought to have been suspected by every one long since if they all did not sleep a diseased drowsie sleep For what will they say of Sulphur which flowes or melts with the fire Hath frozen water or earth given a beginning to Sulphur because it melts Or what will they say of the condensing or co-thickning of Glass which is again dissolved by the same heat whereby it is made And what lastly concerning Salt which by one degree of heat is coagulated and waxeth dry and by another degree thereof is melted and a gain is dissolved by moist things Surely it is a shame to stay any longer in Aristotelical trifles and the Fables of Elementary qualities while we must diligently search into the causes and original of things Wherefore Paracelsus first taught our Ancestors that all Minerals which he believed to be materially made of the conjunction of the four Elements and elsewhere onely of the three Beginnings consisted chiefly of water and so that they are the fruits of the Element of water no otherwise than as Vegetables are the fruits of the earth But it hath not been alway unknown to me that all Bodies which are believed to be mixt are materially onely of water none excepted But that their Body is constrained or coagulated by the necessity of a certain proper and specifical seed for Ends known onely to the Creator from their cause which proposition I have proved to the full in the beginning of Natural Philosophy It hath also been hitherto neglected after what manner these seeds of things may come to light may cover themselves with the wrapperies of Bodies and dispose the same and how those very seeds may at length of necessity hearken to the importunities of Bodies Wherefore neither shall it be unacceptable in this place briefly to repeat the progress and flux of Seeds to their form and their maturities in Minerals out of the Doctrine by me elsewhere more largely delivered For indeed if a Stone be not made of a Stone it must needs be that stonifying includes the Generation of some certain new Being but every Generation presupposeth some kind of seed which may dispose the matter to a Being in potentia or possibility seeing nothing which is not vital is able to promote it self to perfection And therefore it would be a foolish and accidental perfection which should proceed from a Body without an internal Guide and an end appointed unto it Therefore if a Body be dispositively distinguished from the internal Efficient and doth issue in its production unto ends proposed unto it in Nature then also the Etymologie of a seed doth of right belong unto it because it proceedeth wholly from an incorporeal Beginning But this Beginning shall easily be granted by me to issue forth in vital things from the Image or according to the Idea framed by the Conception or cogitation of the Generater which therefore is called the imaginative power or faculty But that inanimate things have seminal Gifts implanted in their first Beings which after the manner of the Receiver do also proportionably after some sort answer to the Imagination the Sympathy and Antipathy of inanimate things do teach For a non-sensitive Body namely the Loadstone must needs after some sort feel the Scituation of the Pole or North star if it direct it self of its own accord unto it but is not drawn by the Pole even as in the Book of the Plague I teach by manifest Arguments Likewise that it feels or perceives Iron if neglecting the Pole it by a Choice inclines it self to the Iron which particulars least they should be here after a tedious manner repeated by me it is sufficient thus to have supposed them by the way Moreover This very Idea and perfect act of a new Being to wit the seminal efficient cause doth even in unsensitive things perform its office no otherwise than if it were strong in Life and Sense which Idea or imaginous likenesse cloathes it selfe with the Ayr of its own Archeus and by meanes thereof doth afterwards perfect the dispositions and Organs of the Body and at length compleateth those things which in the delineation of its own seminal Image are designed it for Ends known to God alone And in this respect also every Creature depends originally on God For this God hath freely put into living Creatures and plants a seminal faculty of framing such an Idea that is a fruitfulnesse of multiplying and raising up Of-spring by vertue of the Word Encrease and multiply to endure for Ages The which under the correction of the Church I thus borrow from the Scriptures In the Beginning the Earth was empty and voyd For surely it was beset with a double emptinesse or vacuity The which notwithstanding is not so said of the Element of water For the earth had not as yet minerals in its Bosom if it were void Indeed the earth was a meer and pure Sand not yet distinguished by a numerous variety and ranks of minerals But the Spirit of the Lord was carried upon the Great Deep of the Waters Not indeed that that carrying was not an empty idleness wanting a mysterie or a voluptuous ease of swimming but it contained the mysterie of a Blessing whereby the water might replenish the vacuity of the earth in one of its emptinesses with Fruits But on the other hand might satisfie the vacuity of the earth and fill up its emptinesse by Vegetables and living Creatures Therefore before the Light sprang up all mettals and minerals began at once in the floating of the divine Spirit Of which thing first of all the hidden lights of mettals imitating the Stars and the foregoing Testimonies which are wont to shine by Night in Mine-making Mountains do perswade me At leastwise the Spirit of the Lord which filled the whole earth being now earnestly desirous of Creating sealed by its Word the fruitfull Idea of its desire in the Spondill or Marrow of the Abysse of the Waters which in an instant brought forth the whole wealthy diversity of Stones Minerals and Mettals whereby it replenished the emptinesse of the earth with much usury which vaculty indeed living Creatures and plants were not able sufficiently as neither suitable to fulfill But the Pavement or Pantafle of the earth which this most rich of-Spring of waters was entrusted with for the filling up of its vacuity is called by Paracelsus the Trival-line the Womb that was great with Child with the seeds of minerals wherein the Lord implanted Reasons or Respects Endowments and seeds that were to be sufficient for Ages For so indeed the wealthy seed of Rocky stones and minerals is implanted in the Water that it may receive its determination and Ferment in the womb of the Earth But what the Virgin
its drying something that is not fixed doth of necessity puff out Moreover let the Retorts be senced with a crust or parger which may neither cleave asunder nor contract chaps or fall down of its own accord or be too much glassified Let also the neck of the Retort which hangs out be most exactly connexed unto the large receiving vessel that not so much as the least thing may expire But let the Receiver be placed in moist sand likewise let the boughty part thereof be covered in a Sack being filled half full with moist sand Which Sack let it be divers times renewed being tinged in the coldest water But let half of the Retort be filled with poudered Vitriol But distill it by degrees and at length let it be urged with coal as much as is possible for the furnace of wind which is blown by its own iron grate But when the furnace of wind shall cease to dismiss the spirit into the receiving vessel let the porch be opened on the side by which way the Reverbery of the flame of the wood may pierce under the Retort and let it so continue for five or six nights with the highest fire possible to nature The Retort perhaps in so great a storm of the fire will seem to thee to melt but nevertheless it will endure constant throughout because the outward coat of male or fence of earth with-holds and sucks the glass and so it is englassened as much as shall be sufficient for the work At length remember thou to sequester the receiving vessel from the neck of the Retort the fire being as yet most ardent otherwise thou shalt see in a more cold station the spirits to return into the Lee or Dreg which spewed them our Then lastly take the Colcotar or Lee remaining of the distillation which thou hast reserved from true Cyprus Hungarian or at leastwise Goslarian Vitriol Let that residing dreg being co-mixed with Sulphur be again burnt unto the every way confuming of the Sulphur But afterwards thou shalt bedew and moisten this feces with the aforesaid spirit For that spirit as it is presently imbibed in the glassen dish or gourd so being fetcht again from thence it returns nothing but a watery and unprofitable phlegm the spirit having remained imbibed in the Colcotar And repeatingly renew thou that operation six or seven times until at length the spirit that is poured thereon wax red which will swim upon the Colcotar which is a sign that we must cease from the plenteousness of imbibing And so let this rich Colcotar being well dryed be put into a Retort and let this rich Colcotar be distilled even unto its utmost spirits now waxing yellow and casting the smelling odour of grateful honey Yet remember thou to draw away the receiving vessel from the Retort being as yet of a bright burning heat and that this spirit must be kept by the mouth of a more strong bottle being close stopped with wax Whereinto lastly if thou shalt cast water the vessel it self presently breaks asunder Therefore by the only spirit of the former distillation this second spirit is bridled or restrained whereof scarce one pound is poured over from bottle into bottle but there is made a loss of one ounce at least And likewise unless the Receiver be seasonably taken away from the Retort as I have said thou shalt see the Furnance being cooled that most potent spirit to have returned into Colcotas from whence it was struck out by fire Moreover the Lee of Colcotar which is left of the second distillation is as yet wholly Coppery and waxeth green after many fashions From whence 1. That is manifest which I taught before Namely that the fire of Venus is not to be drawn out and had but by an every way destruction and separation of the mettal 2. That this therefore must be done by a far more hidden way 3. That the Vitriol which is rich in Copper is less fit for distillation than otherwise the common Vitriol is 4. That the Vitriol of Copper poures forth the spirit of the Vinegar of a mineral salt but not the volatile Liquor of Copper 5. And therefore that the sulphur of Copper is rightly called the sulphur of the Philosophers being fit for long life Being sweet I say in tast but not tart or sharp 6. That the spirit of Vitriol which is above perfectly taught cures some Chronical Diseases 7. And that therefore the spirits of Vitriol hitherto sold and in use are nothing but a mineral Vinegar being also adulterated in it self 8. That the residing Colcotar is most rich in a Medicinal Virtue 9. That the preparation of Vitriol prescribed by Isaac Holland and other Moderns hath not sent the Arrows unto the true mark 10. That our spirit above described and thus rectified as it is volatile and salt proceedes even into the fourth Digestion and reolves diseasie Excrements that are met withall in its journey And by consequence also takes away the occasional cause of many Chronical or lingring Diseases I have therefore already delivered the like Form or manner of distilling the spirit of Sea-salt of Salt-peter and the like Yet thou shalt remember that Vitriol hath in it self the earth of Colcotar wherefore the other salts do desire dryed Potters earth and that being exactly admixed with them But besides I have already delivered the manner of preserving from the Disease of the Stone by Aroph and likewise by Ale boyled with the seed of Daucus or the yellow wild Carrot I might therefore desist and repose my Quill and leave the matter to others more successefull than my self by wishing that every one may henceforward add what things he shall find out to be farre better For since Duelech besiegeth onely mankind and is produced from Excrements themselves after an irregular manner but doth not arise after the manner accustomed to other infirmities Therefore it seems to be singularly bred for a revenge of sin even before other Diseases and to be permitted by God in Children being as yet Innocent for the averting of a greater evil For although some Bruits do generate small stones in themselves yet those stones are not bred in them from the Causes of Duelech nor appointed for a punishment or tribulations unto them but rather produced for the profit of man But if therefore Duelech doth relate to the fault of sin but since sin hath drawn its rise from a Wood or Tree it hath seemed also to me that preservation of health in the disease of the stone is not onely to be expected from the seed of Daucus and some such like Herb but from some certain Wood Wherefore it is indeed true that a Wood against the stone of the Kidneys hath been of late brought unto us out of the Indies but I have not ever therefore perswaded my self that divine Goodnesse had so long denyed unto the Europeans that it might succour even the poor man that had the stone untill that through many expences a Remedy
sometimes made in these so ready and stubborn a perseverance of affection that it presents a Spectacle of Admiration to the Beholder especially if any one doth examine the attributes of the Life and spiritual Seed For how most suddenly are Children Women and improvident people angry do weep and laugh For the sensitive Souls of those do freshly as it were immediately even adhere unto sensible things It is therefore a natural thing that the sensitive Spirit is voluntarily and easily carried into these kinds of overflowings because that Soul being easily received by its own sensual judgement slides into the voluntary passions of material Spirits and as even from a Child these same exorbitances have encreased so afterwards that Soul growes to ripeness as wrothful furious and wholly symptomatical the which otherwise would far more safely perform all things under meeknesse or mildnesse than as by reason of furies to aspire into Diseases and now and then unto its own death which is frequent and most manifest in Exorbitances of the Womb and in the Symptomes of some Wounds and of other Diseases Anger therefore and Fury in this place are not of the man but of that Sensitive Soul brought into the Life which begetteth the animosities of a natural Sensation and the which therefore doth oftentimes ascend unto a great height that it burns to an Eschar and blasts the part with a Sphacelus or mortifying Inflammation like fire Pain therefore is an undoubted Passion of the Sense of Touching wherein the sensitive Soul expresseth a displeasure with the Object according to the differences of the conceived Injury brought on the parts Furthermore Whether that Passion be the Office or Performance of a judicial power from whence the Soul is by a proper Etymology named Sensitive no otherwise than as the motive faculty moveth only by the beck of the Soul without an external or forreign Exciter Or indeed whether pain be a Passion immediately produced from a sensible paining cause the Schools might have sifted out if as great a care of diligent searching into the truth as of receiving a Salary from the sick had ever touched them But with me that thing hath long since wanted a doubt For truly Seeing the Sense of Pain is the Judgement of the Soul expressed by the act of feeling in the Sensible Faculty whereby the Soul bewails it self of the sensible hurtful and paining Object Therefore both of them being connexed together do almost every way concur and both also stand related after each its own manner unto pain For indeed the cause being a sensible injury is the motive of pain But the sensitive Soul it self gives judgement of the painful Object with a certain wrothfulnesse and impatiencie of Passion The which indeed in a wound Contusion or Bruise Extension or Straining Burning and Cold as being external Causes is altogether easie to be seen But while the motive Causes of Pain are neither applied from the aforesaid impression of external Objects or from a proper Exorbitancy within and the Sensitive Spirit is from thence made wholly sharp gnawing biting degenerate and forms the blood like it self Then indeed the Sensitive Soul in paining doth not only give a simple judgement concerning Pain But moreover she in her self being wholly disturbed brings forth from her self a newly painful product no otherwise than if that Product proceeded from an external occasional Cause And although both these do in a greater Passion and more grievous Sensation for the most part concur yet in speaking properly Pain doth more intimately respect the Censure brought from the Sensitive Soul the Patient Or Pain doth more nearly reflect it self on the property of the Soul than on the paining cause Because many are grievously wounded without manifest pain even as also a furious man shewes that he scarce feeleth Paines from hurtfull Causes Some things also do oftentimes delude the paines of Torture and Unctions do also deceive paines although the parts are beaten with injury Wherefore Sense doth more intimately and properly respect the Censure of the power of the sensitive Soul than the injury of the painfull Cause But truly I am diverted elsewhere as for the cause of the aforesaid unpainfulnesse in the Leprosie and unmoveablenesse in the Apoplexy c. The Schooles indeed contending for the Brain as the chief Organ of Sensation and pain do therefore take notice that the Brain being by its own property of passion immediately and as it were by one stroak touched doth lose even both sense and motion at once yea that it doth contract either of the sides But the manner of making they thus expresse The fourth bosom of the Brain it being a very small little bosom beginning from the Cerebellum the beginning of the Thorny marrow is stopped up by phlegme from whence ariseth an Apoplexy in an instant For Nature being unwilling or not able to draw back or reduce that phlegme once slidden down thither being diligent is at leastwise busie in laying aside that phlegme into either side of that pipe from whence consequently a Palsie of that side begins These things indeed we read concerning the Apoplexyand Palsie yet nothing of the contracture arising through the stroak of the Head Paracelsus also not being content with this drowsie Doctrine of three Diseases is also tumbled in unconstancy For sometimes he saith That the Apoplexy and Palsie following thereupon is bred for that the sensitive Spirit in the Nerves or Sinews hath from the Law of the Microcosme after the manner of sulphurous Mines contracted like Aqua vitae a flame from the fire of Aetna Through which inflammation the Sinewes and Tendons being afterwards at it were adust burnt and as it were half dead are dryed up together with the muscles and therefore they do thenceforth remain deprived of sense and motion To wit he Constitutes these two Diseases considering nothing the while of the Contracture or Convulsion from the stroak not indeed in the Case of the Brain but in the utmost Branches of the Nerves as though they were affects hastening from without to within But in another place he judgeth not a certain sulphurous or inflamed matter to be the cause of the Apoplexy but he accuseth Mercury onely to wit one of the three things which he calls His own Beginnings of Nature as being too exactly Circulated and affirmes that through its abounding subtility or finenesse it is the conteining Cause of every sudden Death Elsewhere he recals the Apoplexy unto the Stars of Heaven And in another place again being unconstant he teacheth That every Apoplexy is made of gross vapors stopping up the Arteries and restlesse beating Pipes of the Throat and that there is also an Eclipse of the Lunaries or Moon-lights of the Brain in us from a Microcosmicall necessity Therefore hath he in like manner whirl'd about the causes of the Vertigo or giddinesse of the Head unto uncertainties To wit himself being wholly Vertiginous But I have otherwise proceeded Whatsoever doth primarily feel
less suddenly leap on it unless through a passage of the sinewes common with the thorny marrow But it is like to a dream that in a sound body but not in a complaining one the sense of a finger doth forthwith fail through phlegm which was noâ before perceived in the more nigh sinews or otherwise by a Vapour bred after an irregular manner being not dismissed or descending thither as neither presently bred in the part when as otherwise all hospitality of a forreigner is even from the beginning manifestly troublesome to nature But hath that Phlegm or that Vapour perhaps crept sideways into the utmost nerve of the finger But then the Maxim of of the Schools should perish which ascribeth the dispensations of any Humours unto the Spirit making the assault For those Humours are not in us or in the nature of things and if there were any an ambulatory or walking power should noâ therefore belong unto them and much less in those being now excrementitious because all natural motions in us hearken unto the faculties of vital things For if Phlegm and the gross Vapour thereof were in nature at leastwise in this place as they are diseasie they are reputed by the Schools to be Excrements whereof there is not a going noâ voluntary Motion or Progress Therefore they should of necessity be driven away by some other Not indeed by the Archeus who seeing he acts all things and that well should not therefore drive that unto the sinews which he was otherwise accustomed regularly to drive unto the skin Doth therefore Phlegm perhaps being extenuated into a Vapour by heat proceed upwards But then not downwards into the steep finger At leastwise according to the Theoreme of the Schools concerning Catarrhs That Vapour should presently again grow together into drops but it should not wonder about in the shew of a Vapour unto the utmost parts of the Nerves as neither should it hasten through the Palm of the Hand unto one only finger But why should it rush on a sudden like a weight into a small nerve more flender than a thred Into one I say and not into another But if the Vapour doth enter sidewayes why in one only instant is it imbibed without a foregoing trouble Why is it not rather dashed into the flesh than into the extream part of a small nerve which is encompassed with its own membrane Why doth the cause which begat one only Atome of Phlegm or of a gross vapour continuall produce no other besides that one only Atome For that sudden stupefaction doth oft-times begin from the little finger and ceaseth at length in that when it hath reached to the third or fourth Now and then also all the fingers do suddenly assume the paleness of death unto the half of their length or beyond even when it is without astonishment a drowsie motion c. If therefore that were from a vapourie matter at least that matter shall not be made in the brain or thorny marrow For truly then also it should portend an universal passion Therefore that Vapour shall be bred in the sinew or tendon but then they would be all stupified at once but not successively Neither am I perswaded why that Vapour existing without the sinew in the tranquility of health should be pressed inwards unto the sinew or tendon when as after another manner there is in us an uncessant transpiration outwards At leastwise why this should not continue seeing it hath the same Workman Matter and shop within it Wherefore doth that astonishment presently cease if a matter should subsist such as should be one of the four Humours everywhere swimming together with the venal blood If the cause now defluxeth from the common Nerve of the Palm of the hand into one finger already vanquished Why therefore doth it afterwards flow down unto another healthy finger and not stay in the first Why if it be ptopagated from one only little Nerve into all of them doth it not also molest all of them at once but subsequently and a good while after Wherefore is the feeling hurt and not the motion if they are from one only and a like cause if it be brought down through one only small sinew the Author as well of Motion as Sense The cold of the hands alone causeth an astonishment from without and a pain within without any falling of vapours or humours thereinto At length the sinews are not inserted into the fingers but into the tendons Why therefore is the feeling hurt and not the motion Why is not the Stupefaction extended throughout the whole palm of the hand at once which is covered with one tendon If the Tendons suffer this threatned Palsey now that is to have departed from the communion of the Nerves unto the thick not bored nor pip-iâ trunks of the Tendons Not passable ones I say if therefore not subject to the Incidencies of Phlegme A certain man had retained his Spleen affected from a Quartan Ague and likewise a stupefaction of his left hand together with a mortal paleness frequently returning in hast But what community of passages doth the Spleen hold with the Nerves of the fingers to wit that it may transmit Phlegm and gross Vapours unto the fingers alone For doth the Milt send vapours into the Brain which with the substitution of authority and action it will have to be from thence assigned unto the fingers of its own side or unto those opposite thereunto Shall therefore a stopped Spleen evaporate more unto the Brain and Marrow of the back than an healthy one not being hindred and burdened with continual black Choler Certainly I have prosecuted the unsensibleness and astonishments of particular members that we might the more rightly understand a total Apoplexie In the mean time I pity the Schools that they have not more exactly examined their own fictions of Humours and Vapours and the so speedyed and ridiculous falling down of these neither that they have once considered that as the cold of the encompassing Air is stupefactive so that they have not distinguished the nature of the Palsey and the colike positive passions of the sinewes from co-like privative ones That from thence they might have learned that positive effects can in no wise consist without a stupefying dead matter and quality The which if it be sufficient for creaâing an astonishment when it shall have touched at the Sensitive parts from without what may it not be for effecting if it locally stir the sinew it self Truly if that which toucheth thereat in manner of a Vapour according to the Schools shall presently afford an effect about to perish the Senses Why have they not likewise once considered that through a more tough matter it shall be able to stir up a stubborn and durable Palsey Moreover Wheresoever such an anodynous matter is enclosed in the Duumvirate of the body I understand the Stomack and Spleen it shall stir up a sudden swooning and positive Apoplexie But the Palsie is for
oft-times also to destroy them Therefore in the termes proposed concerning the disease of the stone the womb of Duelech moves at first great paines only by a convulsion of it self the which at length become more mild unto those that are accustomed thereunto to wit by reason of a less indignation of the soul For from hence children make water afar of but old folkes nigh Because the bladder of children being impatient of the pain conceived from the retained urine naturally contracts and presseth it self together But the bladder of old men being now the lesse sorely smitten with the accustomed chance suffers the urine of its own free accord to slide forth otherwise the muscle of the bladder being loosed there is no reason why children do pisse far of and old folks nigh unless the already said childish contracture of the bladder and painfull and voluntary pressing together thereof behind were as yet unaccustomed Through occasion of pain the Cramp or convulsion is not to be neglected First of all I will not repeate what I have taught concerning gripings or wâingings of the bowells in the treatise concerning windes the part that is contracted doth not grieve by reason of the contracture as is manifest concerning the cod it being contracted without pain but by reason of an offence brought on the spirit and life For the contracture is an effect of sensaâion or pain although it happens that the pain is also increased by the comming of the contracture My age because it is fruitfull in perverse wits will laugh at this paradox with many others The which notwithstanding following posterity will willingly embrace The Schooles indeed have thought that a convulsion is made by the execuâive instruments of voluntary motion in that respect because they say that there are the healthy and diseasie functions of the same faculty although they are stirred up from diverse occasional causes A Muscle therefore seeing it is the only executive member of voluntary motion and a sinew the derivative organ of the command of the will it followes as they teach that a Muscle although it be acted in the Cramp against our will yet that it is never drawn together unless by the very same voluntary motive faculty it self which moveth that muscle while it is in health wherein the Schools do erroneoosly contradict themselves while as they define a Convulsion to be indeed the symptome of a voluntary motion yet to arise from a fulness or emptiness as it were its immediate and containing causes Yet it is sufficiently known that fulness and emptiness are natural causes but not arbitral or voluntary ones which natural causes if they shorten or contract a sinew as they manifestly teach at leastwise the attraction of the sinews shall not be made by an arbitrary motion I admire also the hitherto famous stupidities of the Schools in this respect For first of all a sinew differs from a Muscle no otherwise than as a vein doth This indeeed carries blood unto the Muscle and that motion And then besides the two causes of a Convulsion perhaps invented by Hyppocrates Galen hath moreover added a third which is admitted in the Schools to wit a poysonous quality For Galen had seen the Convulsion to follow from the stroak of Serpents neither yet could he as yet believe although the strucken member was swollen that fulness caused the Convulsion He being defectuous first of all because he was ignorant whether a nerve ought to be smitten that it may be pull'd together or indeed a Muscle Then because mortal Convulsions are made in gripings or wringings of the bowels and Hellebour being taken without any hurting emptying fulness of the sinews or a colical poyson Thirdly He is also defective because that seeing in a Convulsion there is made a drawing back of the member and a shortning of the Muscle he hath not discerned as it otherwise beseemed the Prince of Medicine to do why a poyson doth contract or shorten the Muscle thus leaving the former obscurity For truly Galen saith That the name of a Physitian is the finder out of the occasion which name he hath not lost in this place Again In the fourth place if a Convulsion happens from an empried and filled nerve that is from a proper Passion of the nerve Ought therefore a poysonous qualiry to be imprinted on a sinew or on a Muscle that a Convulsion may from thence happen Fifthly Galen hath remained defective and together with him the Schools his followers why the stroak of a Serpent the poysonous quality of a Medicine c. are made the proper Passion of a voluntary motion and of its own Organs For if the poyson ought to be imprinted on the Muscle therefore the sinew shall cease to be the proper subject of the Cramp and by consequence the emptiness or fulness thereof is vainly supposed and required But if the poyson dasheth against the nerve it self after what manner shall Hellebour wandring through the bowels primarily affect the sinew After what manner shall a Medicine being as yet detained in the stomack cause a Convulsion and give a freedom therefrom by the vomiting thereof At leastwise it is ridiculous that the successive alteration of the affected Muscles shall effect the shew of the Malady if the essence of the malady dependeth on the affected sinews And it is a foolish thing That an Emprostotonos or a Convulsive Extension of the neck forwards a Tetanos or straight Extension and an Opistotonos or an Extension thereof backwards should differ specifically by reason of a changing of the Muscle For a Muscle draws its tail always after the same manner to wit towards the head Truly such childishnesses do of necessity proceed from the ignorance of a Disease and the rashness of a childish judgement wherefore nature hath distinguished of the Specie's of Diseases according to the Specie's of occasional causes but not by reason of the difference of scituations And so seeing emptiness and fulness are terms plainly opposite they could not produce one only kind of Convulsion And it is a hard matter to believe that the emptiness of a sinew being wholly privative is as equally occasional to the Cramp as a fulness of the same sinew Even as it is alike blockish that a nerve is filled for so long a time until it shortens that nerve and that from a small nerve being extended in its breath by repletion or filling the Muscle is shortened As if all the sinews could be suddenly emptied and likewise filled and extended unto a hugeness in every fit of the Falling sickness to wit by feigned humours as if the Convulsion were only a shortning of the Muscle following upon the abbreviating of a dried or moistened sinew and indeed as if in regard that the unaccustomed repletion of a sinew did shorten that sinew even as the other which by its drying of the sinews did diminish the sinews no less in their length than in their breadth the nerves did suffer an unexcusable Palsey
to be from the errour of a convulsive Retraction and not rather from that of both the supposed causes To wit as well through a stoppage of the netve from Phlegm filling it as they say as by a pressing together of the dryed sinew and as if so great a sudden drying up thereof were credible or possible to be in a live body Yea after what manner doth a nerve being now once withered suppose thou by too much insolency as they say of laxative Hellebour presently again admit of a restauration of its own radical moisture being dryed up Why hath it been necessary to feign and admit of a filling or emptying of a sinew if a poysonous quality can afford the Convulsion without either of them The received opinion therefore of the Schooles concerning the causes of the Convulsion or Cramp registred to be from the emptinesse and fulnesse of the sinewes is ridiculous For although they with Galen acknowledge also a third Cause which is that of a malignant quality Neverthelesse they stick as convicted in the two former Causes For they err in the Matter Object Efficient and manner of making That is in the whole As if a small Nerve being extended unto a Muscle which oft-times scarce equalizeth the grossenesse of a threefold thred being moistened more than is meet and dryeâ than is fit to be should be made by so much shorter than it self by how much a muscle drawes the members together perhaps to to the length of a span Yea as though as well the be dashing of an hostile Humour as the emptying of a Nerve should cause the paines of a Convulsion They bring hither the ridiculous Example of dryed Clay when as in live Bodies drynesses are impossible and they also afford impossible Restaurations While as notwithstanding those Cramps do oft-times cease of their own accord The Schooles have thought that those feigned Moistnesses and Drynesses of a little sinew which could scarce effect the latitude of a straw do contract the Muscle even into the Convulsion of a foot-length Neither likewise is that Example of value That the string of a Lute being wet with the Rain of Heaven leaps assunder as broken in regard that it is cut short by the imbibed Liquor For first of all it might have been extended longer by twofold than the feigned extension thereof in its breadth had shortened the same The Schooles do not take notice that a moist membrane is brickle as also a dry one and therefore also that Lute-strings are kept fat in oyl lest they should become wet or wax dry Away with their examples which have no place in a live body For in a living body the sinews cannot be so dryed that their witheredness can cause any abbreviation 2. They being once dryed can never afterwards receive a moistening any more than drie old age it self 3. They deny a Convulsion arisen from a laxatâve medicine to be made by a poyson For if they should acknowledge a poyson to be in a solutive medicine they should cut off their own purse A Convulsion therefore arising from a solutive Medicine as from only an emptying but not from a poysonous Medicine should be indeed from an emptiness or dryness of the sinews But a Convulsion or Cramp arisen from a loosening Medicine is oft-times restored Therefore it is not bred from a dryness of the sinews 4. Every lean old person should be drawn back by a perpetual and universal Convulsion 5. Seeing a sinew is not the executive member of motion therefore the shortening of at sinew proves not a Convulsion of the joynts as though an arm or leg ought to follow upon the cutting short of a sinew 6. Seeing that a nerve being moistened so that it were made by so much the shorter by how much through a forreign humour being imbibed it should be extended on its breadth such a humour should be plainly contrary to nature it should effect a Palsey rather then a Convulsion But a Palsey is Diametrically opposite to a Convulsion it self as well in Sense as in Motion 7. How could a stroak of the Scull presently at one moment dry up the sinews of one side but by moistening the other sinews opposite unto them forthwith enlarge them on their breadth that they may cause the Convulsion and Palsey at once And seeing as well Emptying as Filling are feigned for the cause of the Convulsion the stroak of the Scul ought to produce the Cramp on both sides 8. It is no wonder therefore that so unsuccesful remedies have been applied to the Convulsion if the Universities are hitherto ignorant of all the Requisites of Diseases For they ought to have known that every Convulsion is a vital Blas of the Muscles stirred up from the in bred Archeus The occasion whereof is a certain Malignant matter rushing on the Archeus as laying in wait for the life of the Muscles What if Hippocrates hath referred the cause of a Convulsion unto emptiness and fulness he hath had respect unto the occasions of the foregoing life To wit that there was a frequent Convulsion to riotous persons and likewise through much emptying of the Veins And Galen not apprehending the mind of the old man hath waxed lean at the humoural filling and emptying of the sinews by a succeeding and that his own device Such old wives fictions therefore which have been perswaded by the Schools unto credulous youth being despised I say that there is in the Muscles a twofold motion to wit one as it is the Organ of a voluntary motion and another as being proper to it self whereby although it draw back it self towards its head yet it nothing hinders but that the spirit implanted in those motive parts doth retract or draw back and move those parts even as was already said before concerning the âod For neither is it repugnant to nature for the parts to leap a little by a local motion of their own the soul being absent to wit for the parts which are moveable by another Commander to be furiously contracted through a sorrowful sensation seeing that another conspicuous motion is singularly wanting to the Muscles whereby it may denote the hurt brought on them besides that whereby it executes the voluntary motion of the Soul And moreover it is altogether natural to all the members and proper to the common endeavour of the parts for those to be drawn together by reason of the sorrowfull sense of an injury brought on them which place the Schooles have left untouched Wherefore I have accounted it an erroneous thing to believe with the Schooles That the Convulsion is an affection of the Head For now they depart herein from their own Positions whereby they suppose the Cramp to be from filling or emptying or from a poysonous quality of the Nerves unlesse they had rather the Case being now altered that the Convulsion should arise from the filling or emptying of the Head But the Cramp is an accident of the sensitive Spirit Which thing first
inherency is the very same power nor the exciter or spur of its own self or that that power subsisteth alone without a root which stirred it up But every power hath a nourishing causing and directing Being of it self far more spiritual and abstracted than is the Case of its inhesion More abstracted I say than is the mean it self whereinto the motive power is received yea more formal than the very quality of the power it self is Truly there is a master-work man-like image of evil or good the Effecters of effects as well in diseases as in other seminal Beings But that image takes its Original beginning from the cogitation of man or from the conception of the Archeal spirit surrogated in its absence I now speak of Diseases For the Sensitive Soul is in the spirit or Archeal air after the manner of the Receiver And although the Archeus be not vexed after the usual and humane manner of the soul yet the Inn of the sensitive soul which is the Archeus himself arising enjoyes the Idea's as well from his own conceptions as from the exorbitances of his conceptions after the manner proper to his receiving For neither doth the Archeus alwayes fish those passions out of his own conception but also from things undigested badly digested and transchanged Even so also from excrements not being rightly subdued or separated And so also not only from our faculties being estranged or erting but besides from the in-bred endowment of things Even as in the spittle of a mad dog there is a poysonous Ideal property which alienates the imaginations of the sensitive soul in us at its own pleasure There is therefore in things a certain accidental power which if it can perfect its own contagion and propagation it wants a formal and seminal power which may be the Governess of the action For seeds as they utter the figure and similitude of themselves in their products of necessity they have this Image engraven on them if they ought to act out of themselves or to erect another thing like to themselves in the thing produced seeing such a likeness presupposeth a forming Idea In the next place the occasional matter of Fevers if it were of the essence of Fevers or if it should not precede at leastwise it should alwayes accompany the proper effect to it self Wherefore since a quaternary of Humours and the existence of these are feigned things it must needs be that the feigned humoural cause doth neither fore-exist nor follow the Essence of a Fever neither that there is any respect of Humours unto a Fever nor likewise of a Fever unto feigned Humours Again neither can the blood the treasure of life after any manner be the constitutive cause of Fevers yea nor indeed the occasional cause thereof except it be hunted out of the veins and first corrupted that is unless it first cease to be blood For truly there is no other reflexion of the out-chased blood than that it is a dead Carcase in a living sheath that in the mean time it undergoes divers transmutations according to the variety of the Idea of the Archeus governour of the stern of the family-administration in the nearest kitchins For this vitiated blood is now a cadaverous excrement and an occasional cause whereby the Archeus being excited frames an Idea of fury Lastly any other excrement whatsoever being defiled by a succeeding digestion transfers the right of an occasional cause it self and occasionally brings forth a Fever no otherwise than as I have already said concerning the blood And such an excrement is heaped up by a vice digestively and distributively or by degrees or at length is produced by a Fever or by forreign things breathed into the body However it shall be at leastwise in respect of Fevers it alwayes remains external neither doth it ever enter into the Essence hereof They are indeed only accidental considerations which do most nearly respect the degree of Fevers for if the action of diseases proceedeth immediately into the life and takes its beginning from the life verily it is necessary that the essence of diseases do also wholly pierce the very essential marrow of life But other external things of what sort and how great soever do only regard whether the occasional matter be greater or less in quantity Whether the efficient cause in a young man be stronger than in an old man in the beginning of the disease than in the end thereof in a malignant Fever than in a more mild one c. But such degrees of powers are only the Correlatives of the efficient being compared unto the strength And they teach indeed how much it is to be feared from an accident occasionally rushing on the sick But I here have regard unto the formal essence of a Fever Therefore the essential power of the internal efficient or of the life it self is alway present and remaineth and the denomination thereof drawn from a term of Relation although it may change the hope of the Physitian may vary the superiority of life and the proportion of the Agent yet the life it self is alwayes the intimate principal formal and essential efficient of Fevers and the occasional matter every where remains without the true and internal material cause For a Fever is oft-times taken away or ceaseth a remnant of its occasional matter and efficient as yet remaining For a Quartane oftentimes ceaseth of its own accord and perhaps returns again a month after and so it keeps its occasional matter in the mean time untouched and without action as it were sleeping And the same occasional Being is elsewhere of its own accord wholly consumed the storme of the Archeus being first appeased Oft-times also Fevers leave weaknesses and local diminishments of the faculties behind them being durable for life as the life of the implanted Archeus was curtailed and suffered his own too many tribulations CHAP. XVII A narrow search into the Essential thinglinesse of a Fever 1. An erroneous speculation of the Schooles 2. The Authour differs from the Schooles 3. The manner of making a Fever is enlarged for betokenings 4. The center of a Fever 5. An examination of thirst and cold 6. The Doctrine of its center is confirmed 7. Why a Fever is sometimes terminated by the appetite of unwonted things 8. The family government of a Fever in the Pylorus 9. The Quartane ague is an outlaw and the unheard of seat of strange Fevers 10. Why vomiting looseth not these strange Fevers 11. The definition of a Fever is rent 12. An examination of remedies 13. The vanity of hope from whence it is introduced HItherto as well the modern as more antient Physitians have considered the nature and essential thinglinesse of Fevers from the speculation of heat as well internal as that of the encompassing heat of Summer And also they have measured that essence by the sharpnesse cruelty multiplicity of the occasional matter or from the malignity of one or more of the four feigned
is hitherto unknown by those who have had respect only unto the contingencies of nature I rather believe that so many apparitions to Saints were not in vain and shewn unto them without their scope or purpose I therefore believe that the beginnings of the venereal plague was drawn and planted into nature from a dart of divine anger violently cast and no otherwise than as at the pouring out of the phials the third person of mortals shall at some time perish Not indeed that I will have the plague of lust to be accounted altogether miraculous in its beginning because it began from a hainous offence For I know as in nature it now hath so also that in its beginning it found a ferment and root therein And moreover a certain Layick and holy man being wont at some hard questions to receive dreaming visions and oft-times also through the abstraction of his minde intellectual notions or knowledges perhaps from too much curiosity narrowly searched into these questions 1. Why that venereal plague had broke out in the fore-past age and not before since that in the fore-past daies of Pagans any wicked impudent wantonnesse was never wanting 2. From whence if not from the Indians it came into Europe 3. What may be the cause of its continuation and mitigation and changing if it were come from God For Miracles do seldome pass over by way of contagion and unlesse a command be delivered obtain their cause in nature But neither is God wont to punish the guiltlesse even as the Lues veneris oft-times infecteth the innocent The Layick said that he saw in an intellectual vision an horse which flowed almost all abroad with a stinking ulcer which disease being proper to the horse kinde our countrey-men call Den-worm but the French Le Farein whence horses do by degrees perish with a corrupt mattery rottennesse but he saw this horse as it were designed for meat to dogs having his whole back vitiated also about the vessel of nature neither had he any other answer besides that vision wherefore he said that he supposed that at the siege of Naples where this cursed contagion at first arose some one through an horrible sin had carnal copulation with such a horse-beast At leastwise from thence I conjecture the rarity of a disease not before seen because I cannot easily believe that ever such a sin was in the like terms committed from the beginning of the world and it is a disease like unto the Lues Venerea and akin and familiar unto the nature of the horse And therefore it might God the avenger so permitting it have naturally transplanted its own ferment into the family of man although it was before divinely threatned That the Mares contagion I say might have mixed in the act of lust not to be spoken of it then propagating the Gonorrhea or running of the Reines the Cancer and venereous Baboes c. even so as at this day the Pox it self is attracted from a filthy whore even into the testicles of a man But I cease to be the more curious as oft as a thing being known is of no use unlesse happily thou hadst rather meditate from hence that horses thus ulcerous are cured by the remedy of the Pox and on the other hand this by Quicksilver most exactly prepared At least wise the consideration of the Lues serveth for a degenerate and at this day multitiplyed plague and many of which are threatned in the holy Scriptures under the coming of Antichrist I adde That it is infamous and hath infected every corner of the world it hââh also manifestly shewn by the effect that it is a common satisfactory punishment of the flesh and creeping unto a further and as yet a commonly unknown mark For indeed at its first beginning it not only stood a good while unknown but also its healing was unsuccessefully attâmpted and at this day is commonly unknown whence it follows that the life of mortals being enraged by uncertain and cruel medicines ââ now humbled even before the youth of every one which weaknesse promiseth a certâââ lasting continuance of perpetuity and in abstinent persons unto the fourth period of generation at least yea although a large company of men have never contracted the Pox Neverthelesse since the Lues is scarce ever well cured and the reliques therof have remained surely there do those survive who having experienced the rashnesse oâ Physitians are made far more weak then themselves were For there is a radical part oâ poyson which hath remained in their possession besides the horrid tortures of oyntments perfumes and salivations and it must needs be that in that respect their successors are diminished with a notable weaknesse For the Lues is not indeed a disease consisting of a matter whereof but onely a poysonous ferment is affixed to the solid or liquid parts of our body like an odour And so the which is singular to the Pox it incorporates it self not onely with the constitutive parts but also with the excrements or with the matters of other diseases which it toucheth at because it affecteth them and is co-mixed with them and since it is easier to defile a matter with poyson which is newly appointed for an excrement then a part as yet alive and so also for this cause resisting Hence it comes to passe that whosoever have the manifest or hidden beginnings of any diseases whatsoever they do easily contract the Foul disease and therefore also it transplants it self into various masks of diseases by an association for in many it produceth ulcers and wheals in others it gnaws rottenesses in the bones it stirs up hard swellings also it causeth Buboes about the groyn phlegmones or inflamed apostemes and corrupt mattery apostemes as also wounds stubborne in curing elsewhere also it hath brought forth palsies gowty fits the jaundise or dropsie c. For that thing deceived Paracelsus he thinking that the Pox was not a disease in it self because it adhered to other diseases For a curse now coming upon nature impure from its original doth not proceed by an accustomed generation but it findes its own body pre-disposed in the body of other diseases so that the likenesse of conception nativity subsistence and effects in a strange body to wit that of man do produce a likenesse of the rise of the Pox as of other diseases because they in a like manner issue from the fall Diseases therefore that from the rise of the Pox are become degenerate for the future those do for the most part imitate the right or customary manner of some poyson neither hath any one sufficiently searched into the causes of these wherefore indeed most diseases have become contagious more cruel more frequent and more slow and difficult of flight than in times past For the Pest is undoubtedly more frequent then it was wont to be it catcheth hold on us upon the least occasion it cruelly infects us and is the more readily dispersed because it is
age but not that there is any conjoyned material cause of a man besides his body it self which is the very product of generation to wit from a material cause and seminal internal efficient which things have hitherto been vailed from the Schools and so they have reputed the internal occasional causes of diseases to be the immediate and conjoyned ones being as yet plainly distinct from the disease produced Wherefore that is also next to be repeated in this place which I have taught in my discourses of Natural Phylosophy to wit that there are six digestions in us For in the three former that there are their own Retents and their own excrements the which seeing every one of them are in themselves and in their own Regions troublesom yea by a co-inâolding and extravagancy they have become hateful they degenerate into things transmitted and transchanged and do from thence induce divers diseases occasionally But in the fourth and fifth digestion I have shewn that not any perceiveable excrement is admitted But in the sixth digession which is that of things transchanged that very many voluntary dungs do through the errour of the vegetative faculty offer themselves Moreover that some are transmitted from some other place as also that not a few do degenerate through a violent command of things suscepted or undergone which things have been hitherto unknown by the Schools and therefore also have been neglected and the which therefore have wanted a proper name and the diseasie effects of these have been ridiculously translated and adjudged unto the four feigned humours of the Liver Wherefore although I as the first have expelled the diseasifying causes of Tartar yet least I should seem to make new all things from animosity I will here call these filths the Tartar of the blood although by an improper Etymology because for want of a true name Such excrements therefore whether they are brought into the habit of the body from elsewhere or next made under transchanging by a proper errour of the faculties or lastly through a violent command of external things being there degenerated I name them the Tartar of the blood ãâ¦ã that in very deed they are Tartars in the matter and manner of the Tartar of Wine but because of good nourishment being now defiled that which before was fruitful and vital hath afterwards become hostile And these things I have therefore fore-admonished of that ye may know that the Tartar of the blood is the product of the plague and that that is easily made from efficient pestilential causes And moreover it is not yet sufficient to have said that the Tartar of the blood is the product of the Pest but besides I ought to prefix the place thereof For I will by and by teach that the Plague is a poyson of terrour and therefore I have noted that the Seat or primitive Nest thereof is in the Hypochondrial or Midriffs to wit where the first conception of humane terrour is whether it happen from external disturbances or next of its own accord from the motions of things conceived Wherefore there are present in the plague vomiting doatage headach c. the which in its own place I have decyphered in the Commonwealth of the Spleen Therefore if the Schools had put this Tartar of the blood for a conjoyned cause we had as yet notwithstanding been differing from each other as that which with them had been a connexed cause is with me a product of the plague for the Pestinvades us after an irregular manner neither is it s conjoyned matter a certain solid body or visible liquor as neither therefore any putrefaction plainly to be seen but only a Gas separated and degenerated from the substance of the Archeus But whatsoever visible thing offers it self as vitiated in the Plague is not of the matter of the plague it self nor of the matter whereof but it is either the occasional matter of which before or it is the product or off-spring wherein the plague sits as it were in a nest Wherefore the Carbunole Bubo or Escharre are not the original matter of the Pest but the effect and product which the Pest âath prepared to it self For the plague is for the most part so cruel and swift that as soon as it is introduced into the Archeus it cannot omit but that it subjecteth some part of the nourishable humour unto its tyranny and dwells therein Wherefore if the putrified humour should be the immediate cause of the plague truly it had been putrified before it had putrified To wit seeing the Pest it self prepares that vitious product for it self which the Schools call humours they being as yet undefined For Fernelius would be a little more quick-sighted than the Schools and therefore he knew that the plague was not bred or did conâist of the putrefaction of four seigned humours as neither of the heat of the air or of the cold thereof but of a certain poyson the Foster-child of hidden causes Again we must take notice that when the ãâã of the blood or dross of the last digestion being vitiated hath received a pestileââââment it hath a priviledge of exhaling through the pores no less than other transchanged excrements without any residence left behind it or remaining dead-head So the Chymists call the dreg which remains after distillation to wit if the humours shall be alimentary but not if the substance it self of the solid parts be scorched into an Escharre or Carbuncle for so the much more hard dungs of the Lues Venerea being as it were equal to bones the counsel of resolving being snatched to them do wholly vanish But although the Tartar of the blood doth also rejoyce in the aforesaid prerogative as oft as it is banished as infamous out of the family-administration of life yet while it is transchanged into a corrupt mattery or thin sanious poyson it gnaws the skin into the shape of an Escharre before that it can sweat thorow the pores in manner of a vapour And that indeed by reason of the imprinted blemish of a strange ferment whereby it degenerated into a formal transmutation But if indeed the Tartar of the blood shall draw the odour of the ferment but is not yet transchanged Glandules Buboes c. are made which are oftentimes ended by a plentiful Flux of sweat without opening of the skin whereas the other aforesaid products cannot obtain that and almost all these are by the Schools banished into Catarrhs The whole Tartar of the blood therefore is indeed bred at home but it is a Bastard which is intruded by force destruction and errour But since the remedies of Nature are subject unto so many Courts of digestions and bodies of so eminent an excellency do possess a violence and strength of acting and likewise have filths admixed with them or difficult bolts truly the art of the fire is never sufficiently esteemed which now and then graduates one Simple to that height that it persecutes with revenge all the excrementitious
all other Falcons which are brought that way for three dayes after Whence thou shalt conjecture what the dead Carcasses of men as well of those that are hanged as of those that are carelessely buryed may do by their odour For a Dog eats not a Dog unless he be dried in the smoak to wit while the mummy hath lost the horror of death through the estrangement of its tast in preserving from corruption but a Wolf eats a Wolf newly killed but not a putrified Wolf Whence there is a suspition that there is something in a Wolf which is superiour to a mumial appropriation Perhaps Paracelsus supposed that that was it wherein the first act of feeling of an applyed object sitteth Peradventure also for that cause they have thought the Tongue of a Wolf hung up to be adverse to the plague And moreover the dead carkasses of souldiers are at this day to be buried deeper than in times past because the Bullet of a great Gun or Musquet makes a contusion and then it takes away some part with it wherefore it produceth an open hole and at length also it begets a poysonous impression of smoak from whence the flesh round about presently looks black with a certain Gangren and it readily receives a poyson into it if not in life as leastwise soon after death to wit while as through a speedy putrefaction of the flesh being combibed into the earth a cadaverous hoary or fermental putrefaction doth arise unto all which is joyned in the Archeus of the dying-souldier an Idea of revenge which is prone to putrefaction From thence into the air a monstrous Gas I say is pouted out into the air which smires the Archeusses of the living with terrour For it is with a dead carkass just even as with horse-dung which doth not putrifie so long as it is hot But when it grows dry and the Salt-Peter thereof hath departed from thence the dung also inclines to be transchanged into the liquor of the earth For otherwise if the dung be restrained from putrefaction through the be-sprinkling and stirring of horse-piss on it and into it it produceth much Salt-Peter For behold thou how powerful a nourishment the mushrome of one night is for indeed a Mushrome is the fruit of the juice Leffas or of plants being coagulated and near to its first Being the which I have elsewhere shewn but after it hath assumed the putrefaction of the earth through continuance how cruel a poyson for choaking doth it bring forth We must therefore have a diligent care that a fermental putrefaction doth not arise in the reliques of the last digestion For indeed the plague privily entred my own house through a Chamber-Maid she forthwith recovered Both my Eldest Sons being sore troubled in their mind shew an undaunted courage and concealed that they were vexed with a continual combat of sighing at the mouth of their stomach and when as through the wiles and framed deceits of my prevalent Enemies I was detained at my own house under prevention of an Arrest both my Sons also would not by forsaking me go into the Country and since they had observed at other times that they were refreshed by swimming in the midst of Summer they swam thrice without my knowledge whence transpiration through the poâes being stopped up both of them being forthwith devolved into a Fever together with a dejected appetite pain of the head and a Catochus or unsensible detainment of the Soul with a pricking of the whole body they died among the Nuns swearing that they would admit of my remedies but after that they had received my Sons they refused forraign remedies The Eldest indeed perished without any mark or signal token even after death because his skin being cooled by swimming nothing outwardly appeared But the other shewed only a small black and blew Pustule in his loyns and the loss of these my Sons I frequently behold as if it were present and thou mayest suppose that it gave a beginning unto this Treatise I leave vengeance unto my Lord whom I humbly beseech that he would spare my Enemies and bestow upon them the light of Repentance CHAP. XV. The Signs I Have hitherto written unwonted Paradoxes my understanding being without the Moon was drowned in tribulations there was a matter most full of terrour horrour and of difficulties present a great Reader uncapable of the best things a darksom brevity of beginning and a hateful novelty although a very necessary one But that which chiefly blinds us in the Pest is the want of an exquisite and unseparable sign to wit through the admonition whereof we may be able timely enough to prevent or withstand it by remedies Nevertheless whatsoever created thing is in any place it hath its own discernable signs by which it may be fitly distinguished from other things and these those which do precede the plague do accompany it or soon follow after it But those signs which go before it do make for its prevention but whatsoever signs do afterwards follow serve more for others than for the miserable sick But the accompanying signs alone do discern of the cure And moreover the signs of a plague to come are decyphered in the heavens if the Firmament sheweth the handy-works of the Lord in the earth That the signs thereof are badly referred by Astrologers unto twelve divisions of causes I have already before sufficiently manifested But Gaffarel hath lately described an Hebrew Alphabet from the scituation of the stars and authority of the Rabbins by an argument ridiculous enough whereby the Hebrews devise such wan signs as if God had now the Rabbins only as his servants unto whom he may communicate his secret counsels For Christians do not consider the shamefulness of those positions who suffer such kind of books to be printed For neither do the fixed stars change their places that they may sometime describe these and sometime other things to come the which in the first place is contrary to all Astrology Comets also the Meteors Trabes Dragons Darts and other monstrous signs of that sort being oft-times popular have foreshewn popular plagues but not by a rational discourse or Theories of the Planets and much less by the Alphabet of the Hebrews for irregular lights do not obey set rules For the Astrologers of Jerusalem although most skilful in their art yet they were altogether ignorant of the signification as also of the apparition of the star of Bethlehem For the Lord will not do a word which he will not reveal to his Servants and Prophets Amos 3. But of these things Artificers have no knowledge because new lights have been oftentimes mortal and oft-times have directly signified prosperous things For monstrous signs do in the hand of the Lord make manifest his secret judgements neither doth he manifest those but to whom he will For truly the Conjunctions Oppositions and Quadrants of the Stars likewise their Eclipses Retrogradations Banishments Combustions Receptions and other impediments are
long life of Fishes 684 93 History of a young ãâã that cat much and ââded litle 243.15 Of the Egyptians dead bodies 245.20 802 Two Histories of children troubled with the stone 251 History of a Toad 730 History of an old man dying of the strangury 1060 History of a man that lost his nose 764.22 History of the Authors examining of poysons 274.12 Severall Histories of drowned persons 281.47 48 49 50 Several Histories of Asthmatick persons 359.360 History of amatron that could not swallow 361.31 History of an Elder whose lungs were like a stone 362.42 History of a man suddenly strangled by an Asthma 363.46 History of a man of sixty years of age troubled with an asthma withdivers observations thereon 364.50 365 366 367 History of a Maid cured of the Leprosie and how it budded again 1091 History of a Bursten man 301.21 Of a Lawyer that took Henban seeds for dill 302.21 History of the Authors getting the Itch. 317 2 History of a snorting old man 370.70 History of one dying of the Plague 1157 Hony yields no ashes 404.18 583 38 They that eate Hony must abstain from Rye bread 798 A quaternary of humors why suspected 945 Of the weights of Humours in diseased bodies 946 Of the deceits of Humours 1041 1042 1045 It is rashness to suppose separation of Humours the ground of health 133 Hippocrates distinction of diseases 530 Hippocrates described in a Letter to Artaxerxes 1081 Artaxerxes Lievtenants Letter to Hipocrates with his Answer thereto 1081 His Letter to the men of Cooâ and their Answer thereunto ibid Hippocrates compared with Galen 1083 Hippocrates potion commended 1143 Hippocrates revived Of his remedies against the Plague 1154 The several kinds thereof 1155 1156 I. OF the occasional matter of the Jaundice 217 The Jaundice not from yellow choler 1057 Jaundice demonstrated by Anatomy 1058 A double vice in the Jaundice 1059 â The Jaundice iâ not from the Gaul being stopped 1060 The efficient cause of the Jaundice and the cure ibid There is an unnamed poyson in the Jaundice 1062 33 The seââ of the Jaundice 1063 35 The Jaundice by a venom proper to it produceth a dry Asthma  Iâe how caused 72 13 75 33 It is lighter then when resolved into water ibid. 35 Of the Idea's of diseases 539 Their piercing 541 Eight Propositions concerning Idea's of the Archeus ibid Silent Idea's do prove an Archeal Idea 550 Regular Idea's are planted in the seed by the corruption of the Generater 548 The birth and original of a diseasie Image 552 Idea's brought into the venal blood 554 The powerful Idea's of diseases are framed in the Duumvirate 563 Of Soulifi'd Idea's 607 Exorbitancies imprint lasting Idea's 608 The original of diseasie Idea's 1004 The necessity of Idea's in a fever proved 1005 Of the different effect of Idea's 608 12 1121 Idea's of the soul pierce the womb 609 18 The progress of Idea's 611 Of several Idea's the cure 612 Archeal Idea's cured by Opiates 621 What Idea's are most lasting ibid Of a mad Idea 278 35 The force of mad Idea's is from the spirit of the midriff 279 37 The extinction of mad Idea's 280 45 46 281 Of the Iliack passion 421 30 Cured 31 The Illiad of Paracelsus what 690 20 695 22 The Image of terrour sifted 1159 The Image of the mind 262 The Image of God 714 Of the immortality of Adam 745 Imagination how it comes to be 270 To what to be attributed 341 And where seated ibid The distinction of Incliâations 124 36 c. Remedies against Inchantmens 605 The Intellect is a formal light 269.34 The nourishing of an Infant for long life 797 799 The property of Irish Oak 150.5 The faculties of a vein of Iron and what it performs 700.7 How it profits in the stone 701.12 Issues how they sometimes profit 372.74 How the Author got the Itch with his practise on himself 317.3 319 9 Thirteen conclusions from the same 318.7 Iuyces how preserved uncorrupt 461.21 15â 172 45 K. OF the wandring Keeper 254 Why so called 257.10 What he performs 256.6 258 24 259.27 How he Erreth 260 His Restoring diââicult 261.43 How the Kings-evil is bred 251.24 A Remedy for the same 252.26 Kidney Judge of the Dropsie 512 It conceives the dropsie 514 Kidneys differ the urine from the Latex alone 558 What it is brings peace to the Kidneys 709 52 Kermes Examined 972 L. LAtex is not the urine 509 Latex seperated from the venal blood Receives the disposition of an excrement 512 Its ordination 518 Latex what it is 373 2 The distinction of the Latex from urine and sweat 374.5 The absurdities that follow the Ignorance of the Latex âbid 9 370 Of the several uses of the Latex 375.12 14 18 The necessity of the Latex 377.28 The vices of the Latex Ibid. 31 Latex easily receives a Forreign guest 378 36 Diseases arising sometimes from the Latex how cured 448.61 Laudanum without Opium cures several distempers 543 Why the Land of promise hot 86 27 Lead how reducible into Gas. 102.23 Leprosie what 895 What the Lâprosie infects by 900 Difficulty of its cure 901 Of the buâding of the Leprosie after curation 1091 What Leff as is 116.31 Of the manifold life of man 735 Of the middle life of things c. 150.8 c. Impediments of life 754 How the life of things is changed 154.28 The middle life of things abides with us 150 158.53 379 43 1124 Of the spirit of life 191 What life is 740 What Resembles life 752 Of light c. 135.24 Its beams being united is true and actual fire Ibid. 26 T is to be understood of the Suns light 139 40 130 36 It is No element Ibid. 37 The difference 'twixt it and the formal light 144.73 Of its being retained in a flint 147.95 155 35 Of the extinction of life 159.59 What places most conduce to long life 723.806 810 Light in us is hot in fishes cold 734.747 Of short Life 747 What may occasion it 754 Harmony of life from the Duumvirate 306 52 The Liver never hotter than needfull 438.27 Liver not the seat of the Dropsie 510 The shop of sanguification is not in the Liver 214.42 It performs its digestion by a fermental Blas Ibid. Of the different operation of the Loadstone 762 The Medicinal faculty of the Loadstone 763.19 Loadstone dirâcts it self but is not drawn 773 64 774 67 775 68 The properties of the Loadstone laid asleep by Garlick 774 67 The same performed by Mercury Ibid Why glassmakers use the Loadstone 787 143 Logick deciphered and Condemned 32.5 c. 67 Long life Impeded by Milk 797 What Love is 719 722 Love is before desire 720 The excellency of love-desire 314.19 21 23 A Lunar Tribute 7â0 Ludus its preparation and where to be found 881 882 The original of the Lues venerea 1092. 1903 1094 Lues venerea consists not of matter but of a fermântal odour 1094 Carnal Lust not from the Reines 305.42 But from the stomach