Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	action_n	body_n	soul_n	1,426	5	5.4689	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A28142	Matæotechnia medicinæ praxeōs, The vanity of the craft of physick, or, A new dispensatory wherein is dissected the errors, ignorance, impostures and supinities of the schools in their main pillars of purges, blood-letting, fontanels or issues, and diet, &c., and the particular medicines of the shops : with an humble motion for the reformation of the universities and the whole landscap [sic] of physick, and discovering the terra incognita of chymistrie : to the Parliament of England / by Noah Biggs ...	Biggs, Noah.	1651 (1651)	Wing B2888A; ESTC R20474	151,011	267

through an impression made by the medicine For a virulent force is not wanting in the biting of a Serpent although sometimes it doth not shew its effect by reason of some impediment so many have so accustom'd themselves to purges and laxatives that at length they work not a whit not because heat is wanting in the man or that the laxatives have lost their pristine strength but the Anima hath contracted a certain familiarity by the frequent use of them insomuch that at length it doth more slowly inflame by those poisons then by the first Course Lastly it 's true and perpetual that all sensation consists rather in action and vitall judgement then in a passion Whether that sensation happens in the exteriour sense or in some passion of the mind or in the natural and sympathetick sense of inanimate things At least it is clear that medicines do not need the praegression of our heat that they may act simply but a sensitive power which is the principal actor hath need of agents and sensible objects that she may perceive and in perceiving may act Therefore the action of sensible things doth occupy her self on both sides by the mean of an occasional cause in respect of the sensitive Anima For that cause neither do medicines work in a dead body by reason of the defect of the principal and immediate agent which is the life or soul Whence also it is sufficiently manifest how preposterously hitherto the vertues of remedies are attributed to an agent or principall and vital efficient and how neglected the principal agent hath stood as well in healing as effecting diseases Verily if a medicine should be actuated by our heat as such it must come to passe that every medicine alwaies and everywhere should equally worke in every humane object actually hot But a laxative exhibited in the same dose loosens in one terribly in another not a jot and yet on both sides sufficiently excited by our heat yea the same which in stronger bodies is without effect in weaker bodies for the most part rages most violently But we passe lightly over this scene and resigne it to others Thus by this plain and evident demonstration we have good encouragement to trust where it shall meet with intelligible perusers some stay at least of mens thoughts will be obtained to consider and promote this prudent and manly expostulation and not give away their birth-rights for a messe of this cold pottage of not daring or not willing to speak We now willingly come according to our promise which is due to arraigne and examine the naturalities of the other universal main pillars of curing namely phlebotomy fontanells or issues and Dyet as three other props of healing which being shaken the whole edifice falls downe of its own accord as rubbish and being taken away Physitians do desert their patients having no remedies but such as purging and bloud-letting the only publicans which by an insupportable excise impoverish the whole body and make Nature bankrupt by exhausting the stock of aliment from the vasa and viscera All which we will touch particularly These things are practis'd and prescribed as designed for the evacuation and consuming the stock of morbisick distempers We have done then with one manner of evacuation of evil humours purgation and that by a twofold Instrument viz. Cathart●cks or purges taken in at the mouth the Arctick pole and a laxative Clyster at the port Aesquiline the antartick pole The second manner of evacuation followes which is the going out of the tide of bloud by the sluice of phlebotomy or bloud-letting which also weares the Fools Coat or Livery of the Lady Ignorance and well may be reputed free of the Company of Physitians other not more erroneous then foul mischeivous practises As the Invention of Clysters was learn'd from a Bird so bloud-letting from a Horse Good Teachers Maids children and Horses schollars shall be well disciplin'd better fed then taught Verily by the consent of Galen In every feaver the hectick excepted phlebotomy is requisite To the schools therefore and the destructive custome of this giddy-headed Age we do frame this syllogisme and that from feavers the most acute Index of all their grounds for bloud-letting Phlebotomy is unuseful wheresoever it is demonstrated not to be necessary or where the indication proper to it is wanting But in feavers it is not demonstrated to be necessary Therefore phlebotomy in feavers is unuseful The major is proved because the end is the first director of causes and disposer of the meanes unto it self Therefore in what thing soever the end doth not point out a necessity of the meanes they are in vain fitted and related to it not being requisite thereto especially where it is clear by reflection from the glasse of Contra-indication That bloud is not drawn out of the rivulets the veins without the fall or losse to the whole ocean of strength Such meanes therefore are badly instituted which the end shewes to be in vain unusefull and to be done with the diminishing of the strength The minor is proved by Haratius Augenius de moute sancto in his three books Ex Professo Teaching with the consent of the Academies That a plethora alone or too great a plenitude of the veins that is a nimiety of redundance of bloud is the only Gn●mon in the table of directions for phlebotomy And that it doth not run in a direct line to the sanation of favers but to the oblique angle of slackning the full blown sails of abundance of bloud and becalming the puffs and gusts of too much plenitude by the Trident of phlebotomy the Midwife to deliver onely the ingravidate and bigge-bellyed veins from the Tympany of a Plethora But a Plethora hath no subsistance under the torrid Zone of Feavers Therefore in the hot spur of Feavers the cooling card of phlebotomy is never turn'd up and consequently is not trump is not requisite but dealt about as alwaies unuseful The conclusion indeed may seem to come out of the Eutopia of novelty and the Arabia of paradoxes yet liveth in the Eden of sober verity Which shall therefore be further proved Galen himself proveth the subsumption teaching That there is more choler sattered in every poroxysmo of a feaver then in two daies space is generated In the mean time the rest of the members of our publick state adjourn not nor supersede from receiving according to the Isonomy or pari-formall lawes of Re-publiques nouristment of the accustomed bloud That is besides the lavish expences and exhaustion of the common stock of aliment that is expended by this new Tenant and Inne-houlder the Feaver who hath now taken livery and seisen they consume their own patrimony the fat of the ordinary bloud Wherefore then from this advantage it genuinely and necessarily followes that if in a healthy person there be an allowance of eight ounces of bloud for a daily portion that then so many also should be transmuted into nutriment or

an atrophy or aridura membrorum Unlesse it be with their waterish parts and in analogy to common well-water Can they exsiccate or dry up the superfluous humidities of the body Yes even as if dutch Wind-mills should drain the fens upon New-market heath so as little power and vertue have they to do any of these for nil dat quod non habet The propounders themselves seem to have mills in their brains that thus grinde the grift of the dotages and dreames of their predecessours turn'd about with the epidemick vertigo the current of distill'd waters of vegetables As if our bread would be dough and the whole batch of medicines spoyl'd without the unsalted and unlea'vned prescriptions of simple waters Ah! alas can these as well real as nominal simple waters serve as a breast-work or pallisadoes to stake out the hostile invasion of a disease Or barricadoe and dam up the receptory vessels and all the passages of the body from the least entrance or footing of any malignant distemper into our Common-Wealth or drive out any Goliah or Pigmey distemper with these pebbles taken out of this shallow brook of waters Once more will the radical indisposition of the Lungs Liver or any other more or lesse noble part be hereby rectified or defended from a second assault by this poor contemptible Chamber-maid militia No sure their forces are scatter'd totally routed never more like to ralley again March boldly on then the enemies and invaders of our health be not retrograde nor stationary but with a full career charge nature through and through while your adversaries forces are weak and routed For their General and Lord Nature cannot receive any recruit or assistance from her auxiliaries or make any safe retreat back to her primitive strength but must be inforced to resigne to the tyranny of the Conquerour and cry for Quarter And to me seriously by this and such ammunition if the whole train of artillery be no better nor those mortar-pieces and granadoes of Physick Herculean actors so accounted I make no doubt the providence and power of that grand Archiatros the Almighty not resisting but such a devastation and depopulation may be quickly made as shall unhinge this huge fabrick and calcine the world to ashes by the Chymistry of death All these things some Physitians with whom I have talked I have observ'd have both seen known confess'd and contended for and yet in their practice and among their prescriptions are so negligently forgetfull or desperately obstinate and wilful as to commend and command in their Recipe's the Apothecary to mingle some of these simple distill'd waters in a leaden still and that with such serious gravity as if they were to be saluted Doctor with four feet Nay what Physitian is there almost that by his practise does not confes his incogitant infatuation whose easy and incircumspect credulity can drink down even to a deluge this torrent of simple distill'd waters Nor could I hitherto sufficiently admire how possibly our Europaean world could be so grosly circumvented by the grey-hair'd traditional dreams of their predecessours in a businesse so vain simple and inefficacious that men whose clear reason doth entitle them to plenipotentiaries should thus prostitute their credulities to the legends and Romances of ignorant paperstuffers and scriblers See then with what a full and swelling tide the insolent torrent of custome bears all afore it when even the best and understanding part of man the crown and strength of all his faculties floats like a dead drown'd body on the stream of vulgar apprehensions drinking down even to gorging this puddle of simple waters and other ridiculous fictions and how possibly they should inhabit thus long unlesse they be the lowest lees of an epidemick infection liver-grown to their sides which perhaps will never uncling without the strong abstersive of some heroick magistrate whose high office dares lead him both to know and to do without any frivolous case-putting We will now at length come to shew the fallacy of the schools and their ignorance in the prerogative of simples and medicines in their proposing such a tedious interval of time between the reception of the medicine and the working or demonstration of his activity by which meanes they have cloaked their defects and more lightly set off among the common people their large time of curing diseases The schools teach that the cadaveriety and dull lethargy of medicines is contracted by the Opium of a frigidal temper and constitution and that they are altogether idle fruitlesse and dead unlesse first by our heat as by a Cook they are prepard and being excited are by it acuated This they have concluded and ratified in as much as medicines taken or apply'd do not by and by explode their faculties in us instar ignis but they have need of a certain space of time whereby to produce their effects by praevious disposititions Neverthelesse if a space may be requir'd that an alteration may be made which is an effect of the medicine that truly doth not a whit argue the action of the medicine to be by our heat otherwise then necessary that the medicine might acquire the donation of his activity or liberty of working which he hath obtain'd and was granted him from the creation whole and sound full and free Moreover the effects of medicines are not produced unlesse first there be a diligent and skilful preparation and due application and then with a more exquisite appropriation they imprint their powers in us Wherefore be it foolish that pepper vinegar c. ought to borrow their activities and gifts ad agendum suscepta from our heat as if the monarchy of one alone heat should be the fountain and primary cause to give life to so diverse and manifold effects Wherefore in good sooth that matter may act in us as touching this she hath no need of any other extrinsecal thing extrase but as primarily so also without delay she puts forth her powers by the importance of dispositions if it be duely apply'd But because the sensitive Anima which the schools have basely confounded with their Calor doth apply the receiv'd powers and then doth make a certain new and proper action to her self and truly vitall Therefore the powers which the sensitive Anima hath received from the medicine are onely occasionall effective causes and she can if she will passe them by and neglect them which is manifest in robust bodies who digest without trouble violent laxatives tanquam Cibos And in dying men in whom there is an application of medicines but not an appropriation by reason of the neglect or defect of the sensitive faculty For in strong bodies the exciting heat is not wanting and yet no effect Moreover if delay must intercede between the medicine that is apply'd and his effect that doth not happen because of the defect or exigence of the activity of things but by reason of the necessity of the vitall emergent and subsequent activity