ariseth from the weaknesse of the spermatick vessels so there is also another vice contracted by venery and contagious copulation when men lye with whores For a corrupt filthy matter distill's from the secrets sometimes of a wan colour and sometimes green as Copras or Leeks that smell most filthily Whence it comes that the vessels are sometimes corroded The Dutch call this the fowl dropping and the secrets are hurt But that moisture and dropping of a moyst fowl humour is more virulent in women and when it is corrupted it is like the whites of Eggs whereby the guts are vexed with an intollerable pricking as if they were wet with Allum or salt They that have the French Pox are alwaies leacherous and by this means all that are diseased with the Pox are extream letcherous by reason of the acrimony of the corrupt humour and they think to abate it and hinder it by copulation and to ease themselves of the greatest part of the disease Wherefore when they desire to rub rheir scabby matter upon all yet the bawdy Letchers chiefly seek and hunt after such as they know to be of a wholesome and sound constitution For they powre forth their filthy matter upon these and corrupt them with their polluted seed for they can contract to themselves no contagion by such copulation For since they are troubled with the flux of seed contracted by whoring Sharpnesse of urine is proper to this disease and filthy copulation with Harlots It is not a seminal and fruitfull excreement that runs from them but a contagious filthy matter flows from their groins that stinks ill favouredly not of a white but green wan colour that causeth ulcers in the secrets and in the fore-part of the yard so that their urine can hardly come forth and is now and then stopt by the purulent matter Who have their urine stopt And if at any time they begin to lust and tickle and their yard to have erection they suffer intollerable pains For this part seems to be stretched as it were with a cord by reason of the nerves that are wet with a biting acrimonious humour whence it comes that they have now and than a dropping of their urine that comes not forth upon heaps and freely but by little and little with intollerable pain This disease is taken from pocky sick people and by lying with whores whose privities are infected with bubo's other contagions Which disease being it consists about the privities and secret parts Swellings of the groins not to be repressed and from putrid humours causeth filthy tumours it is call'd the gowt of the secrets or a Winchester-Goose But if the contagion doth spread it self as it useth to do when the body is not presently purged after the disease contracted and where outwardly discussive cataplasms that may represse the matter and not such as may ripen it are applied to draw it forth the whole masse of the body together with the blood and spirits is infected and the whole collection of humours is carried to the nerves panicles membranes muscles Whence pains of the Nerves and causeth intollerable pains The Dutch call this disease in their language Pocken met de Lempten because all the parts are rent and pierced with cruell pains and the symptoms that accompany the disease and come from the fiercenesse of it cause as great anguish as the disease it self For they are not racked with one kind of pain onely but with many kinds of torments that rend and tear and prick the nervous parts that are of most exquisite sense and motion placce = marg Those that have the Pox feel all sorts of pains as if they were wounded with bodkins pincers and other Instruments And since they wander all over the body and possesse all parts none excepted from the continual pain without any Intermission our Country-men call this disease de Mieren a name that signifies an Ant that is an active and unquiet Creature that runs continually to new places and from that the Physitians call one kind of pulse the Ant pulse The Ant-pulse for the slender motion of it when the forces are spent and cast down so that a man hath but a little of life left when such a pulse is felt like to this is the worm-creeping pulse because it moves as a worm doth A Worm-creeping-pulse and this promiseth but little hopes of recovery And as there is a disease where men seem to be rent as it were What disease is Verminatio and what formicatio and eaten with worms so is there a disease wherein men seem to be stung with Ants for the body is deformed outwardly with filthy bloches and pushes and inwardly they feel as it were Ants that bite them and vex them so that they are still forced to scratch and rub to find some ease So those that have the French Pox can be no where at rest but must alwaies scrub themselves Fornication comming upon the French-Pox Wherefore our Country-men do fitly apply Formication to this diseased body not that this disease should be so called but because it affects the body as that disease doth Hence Plautus because many in that time were polluted with most foul diseases as filthy running sores on the face scabs leprosie and many more that shew themselves in the most comely part of the body calls such Ant-bitten Ant-bitten men mouldy lither putrid ulcerated men and these as our Country men say if you do but shake them they will come in pieces and their flesh will part from their bones and they commonly deride them with this jeer Vanden grate Schudden The comparison is taken from stinking fish The common proverb comes from stinking Fish and rotten salt fish that with the least shaking will fall off from the back bone Wherefore they that have contracted pocky swellings about their secrets and groins either from venerous copulation or by keeping company with one that hath the Pox and lay in bed with him for of former times this contagion was easily taken from others either from their breath The incredible contagion of diseases or eating or drinking in the same cup with them though now it grows feeble by degrees I advise such first to wash their privities with sharp Wine or Vineger and all parts near putting a little salt thereto then if it be requisite bring the swelling or apostume to maturity and when the corrupt matter is come forth The cure of swellings in the groins to wash the hollow ulcer with abstergent remedies before they close it up And as for the biting of a mad dog that is sometimes more gentle than to be bit with a whore men keep the wound along time open least the virulent matter kept within the disease should increase again and grow worse yet before you open the Impostume you must purge the body well and for this use Epithym Fumitory Polypod Sena A short
by an inset faculty propagates and maintains it self there is nothing in so great an Universe that is barren or idle nothing was made rashly or by chance or in vain Every Plant hath its imbred vertue there is given to every living creature it s own disposition and natural inclination In a word whatsoever is contain'd within the compasse of the world and of the Heavens is indued with an imbred force for its peculiar operations and all things are disposed in their places and times and by an admirable viciscitude they all perform their offices and courses Wherefore when God the Efficient and Moderator of so great a gift had view'd all things that he had made in six dayes they seemed to him exceeding good That is Gen. 1. so wrought as art could require as the order and series of things could demand that all things might serve for use and tend to that end they were ordained Whereof Aristotle seems to speak wisely in these very words De part Ani. l. 1. c. 5. There is nothing in Nature so small or contemptible that may not make men in some things to wonder at it And what men report that Hieraclitus Tarentinus said when he turned aside into a Bakers house Enter here are the Gods also the same must we suppose of Natures works For in the smallest works of Nature the Diety shines forth and all things are good and beautifull For this is an adjunct to the works of Nature that nothing is done rashly or by chance but for a certain end And as when we talk of Houses magnificently built we speak not of the Lime or of Bricks or Wood and the other materials but of the form and shape and structure of the Edifices and for what purpose they were built An Example from Buildings so he that searcheth into the works of Nature he discourseth not of the matter but of the form and of the whole substance and finally the use and profit So the body was made for the Soul but the limbs for the offices they are to perform conveniently and to fulfill their functions For what use End Man was Created But Man was brought upon the stage of this world for Gods cause who ought to take pleasure in him and acknowledge his bounty may repose himself in God trust in him and rest upon him In therefore so great multitude and variety of Things existing we must not onely admire the force of Nature and Efficience but his Majesty and Immensity from whom all things are produced and do proceed and by whose bounty the works of Nature subsist and are kept from corruption Which consideration doth somewhat raise our minds otherwise too much fastned to the ground and brings us to know and acknowledge God Natures force must be referred to God Rom. 1. Tusc 1. For though God be invisible yet by the things created as St. Paul testifieth and from the world so wonderfully created and so wisely governed he may be both perceived and understood And as Cicero saith By the memory of things subtilty of Invention and quicknesse of motion and by the exceeding beauty of Vertue we know the force of the Mind though we cannot see it with our eyes so we perceive God and that eternal Mind clearly by the works he hath made How God is known to Man and effectually do we apprehend his force and influence for his vertue is diffused through all things Act. 17. and gives heat spirit and life to all things St. Paul preached learnedly at Athens of this matter from the sentences of Aratus which Lucan expressed elegantly lib. 9. We all are held in God and though no noise Be heard we do his will he needs no voice God is in Sea and Land and Ayr and Sky What would we more all is the Diety What ere we see or where so ere we go We must see God whether we will or no. Who then would not love him whose forces he manifestly perceives with whose benefits he is abundantly replenished If we do most justly honour and admire Emperours and Princes and we esteem them highly and present them with great presents A similitude from the works of Emperours because they do govern those Kingdomes they got without blood in great equity because they have Magistrates unblameable who in executing their offices and publike charges take great care and pains whereby they may hold all men in their duties and all things may be kept peaceably and the Commonwealth not rent by any Civil broils or seditions how much more ought we to admire and adore God who without any care or businesse or pains Governs so vast and large an Empire of the World by his will Of the world To this belongs that of Apuleius a man that was far from our Religion but he drew it from the Hebrew Fountains A Simile from many offices That which the Pilot and Steer-man is in a Galley a Coach-man in his Coach the Choragus in acting Comedies the Precentor in Dances the master of Games at all Games a Consul amongst Citizens a Captain in an Army a Companion in undertaking or repelling dangers that is God in the world but that it seems to be a toilsome thing and full of innumerable cares to be the chief in any office but the care of his Empire is neither troublesome nor burdensome unto God All Natur 's works must be referred to God Yet I would not have Physitians my adversaries or that Philosophers should be offended that in asserting the dignity of Nature I refer her to the Fountain and her first original for by this means all things are reduced to their first being and to the Archetype of all Nature And though the word Nature be of large extent and every man at his pleasure may invent secundary definitions yet they are all reduced to one So by the Physitians Nature is the imbred and inset quality in things Nature is the mixture and temper of the four Elements Nature is the force and propension of every ones mind Nature with Philosophers is the beginning of motion and rest Nature is that which gives the form to every thing with its specificall difference The proper definition of Nature Nature is the force and efficient cause and the conserving imbred cause of the whole World and the parts thereof Nature to speak more neerly is the order and serious of Gods works which obeys his power his words and commands and borrows forces from him The principall cause and original of all these descriptions and as many as learned men may invent proceeds from that eternall mind as from a most plentifull Fountain It behoves all men to know this and much concerns them to observe and to fasten it well in their minds that so the chief Work-master may be better known to us all and his majesty and immensity may be seen by us For the sight of things and contemplation of nature will draw brutish
love their children very little or but from the lips outward when as poor dumb creatures ordained for the slaughter shew such great love toward their young CHAP. IV. Of the likenesse of Parents and Children whence it is that outward accidents are communicated to the Children and the Mothers Imagination is the cause of the production of many Forms The force of the Seed is a reason of similitude IT is a constant opinion amongst Physitians and confirmed by many reasons that if the Woman afford most seed the child will be like the Mother but if the man afford most then it will be like the Father but if they both afford alike for quantity and force then will the child be like to them both or one part will resemble the Father another part the Mother Lastly if it fall on the right side of the Womb and proceed from the right Testicle by reason of heat it will be a Manchild but if it proceed from the left and incline to the left side by reason of cold and moisture it will be a Girle Libro de opifice Lactantius his mind of the likenesse of the seed Lactantius saith that sometime when the mans seed falls on the left side of the womb a male child is begotten But because the conception is perfected in that part of the womb that is ordain'd for the procreation of females there will be something in it that is but half man and will be fairer and whiter or smoother and lesse hairy than is convenient for a man to be or the voice will be small and sharp or the chin will be bare and bald and the courage will be lesse Whence is the name Virago Again if the seed be cast into the right side of the womb it may be a girle may be begotten but because she is conceived in the place ordained for the male she will be more viraginous than ordinary women as having strong limbs very tall a swart countenance What woman is most imperious a hairy chin a ruder face a strong voyce and a bold and man-like courage whence it falls out that such women will cast off the yoke and rule over men and will take so much power to themselves in governing that men dare not speak or stir for them Though these things and many more might be alledged for the similitude of the form which are very probable and for the most part they so fall out yet the principal cause of this effect seems to me to consist in the tacite Imagination of the woman For if she conceive in her mind or do by chance fasten her eyes upon any object and imprint that in her Mind the child commonly doth represent that in the outward parts The womans Imagination what it doth So whilest the Man and Woman Embrace if the woman think of the mans countenance and look upon him or thinks of any one else that likenesse will the child represent For such is the power of Imagination that when the woman doth intentively behold any thing she will produce something like that she beheld so it falls out that children have the forms of divers things upon them as Warts Spots Moles Dashes which cannot easily be wiped off or taken away So some of our women seeing a Hare bring forth a child with a Hare-lip Hare-lip so some children are born with flat Noses wry mouths great bubber lips and ill shaped of all the body because the woman when she conceived the child and in the time she was big of it had her eyes and mind busied upon some monstrous creature Art can change the shape and colour of Animals Men use to effect the like by art in other creatures setting before them when they are to conceive the colours of divers things Jacob used that stratagem who was afterwards called Israel laying rods he had pilled off the rinds from before them every where Gen. 30. and so he made the greatest part of the flock spotted and party-coloured So we make painted birds dogs and horses dapled and with divers spots Which Artifice of Nature and all the reasons and causes of similitude Pliny exactly comprehended almost in these words Similitude in the mind is a diligent thinking of a thing L. 7. c. 12. Pliny his opinion of the cause of similitude wherein many accidents have great force as sight hearing memory forms taken up at the very instant of conception and a sudden thought rising of any thing is supposed to give the form and similitude hence some are like their Grandfathers others like their Fathers or some other kindred Hence there are more differences in Man than in other Creatures because the quicknesse of his thought and nimblenesse of his mind and variety of his wit imprint divers marks because other creatures have their minds fixed almost and unmoved and all of the same kind are alike Hence it is that a woman may cause her Child to have a strange form and nothing like to the father So a woman that had layn with another besides her husband fearing lest her husband should come in the mean time after 9. moneths she brought forth a Child not like the party that she lay with but like her husband that was absent There is a very witty Epigram written of this Sir Tho More 's witty Epigram by that most ingenious Man Sir Thomas More Those four boys Sabine Which thy Wife brought forth Thou think'st are not thine Unlike thee naught-worth But that Boy alone That she lately bore Like thee for thine own Thou tak'st and no more Four as bastards born Rejected are in scorn Yet wise men suppose That the Mothers mind Doth the Child dispose For likenesse in 's kind Four were begot When that many miles From home thou wert not Feared nor thy wiles This last like to thee Was begot in fear Thy Wife was not free Thou wert then too near This I think was it That thy likenesse hit Hence it followes that the argument is vain to assign the Father from the likenesse of the Child Likenesse can confiâ—m no child to be the Fathers own For neither the Law of Nature nor the publick consent of Mankind will suffer a child to be laid to any man because it is like him But what concerns Wit and Manners and propensions of the mind daily examples teach us that Children which have all force and vital spirits from the faculty of the Seed are commonly of the same condition with their progenitors and of the same nature But there is much in this whether Venery be used with great or weak desire For many are lesse venereous and not so hot and do not with any great desire use copulation but rather decline from it and that they may pacifie their wives they pay their due benevolence as St. Paul calls it very faintly and drowsily 3 Cor. 7. whence it happens that the Child falls short of the Parents nature manners and
in the seed force and vertue deservedly saith Galen the child receives its sex rather from the Mother than from the Father though his seed do afford something to the material principles but more weakly But similitude though Imagination be of great force therein is referred rather to the Father than the Mother for there is more force in the mans seed But the womans seed receiving faculty from the menstruall blood for 9. moneths doth as much exceed the man's as the man 's did the woman at first copulation For it is proper to the womans seed to strengthen and increase her own substance more than the mans So the woman not onely affords matter to make the Child but force and vertue to perfect the conception though the womans seed be fit nutriment for the mans feed by reason of the moysture and thinnesse of it and is more fit to frame and make up the conception thereby For as of soft running wax and moyst clay A Similitude from wax and moyst clay the workman can work what he will with his hand so the man's feed mixed with the womans seed and the menstruall blood helps effectually to make the form and perfects the parts of a man Or if you would have a comparison of these things from Natural things as the Earth is to plants so is the womb for conception A comparison of the Earth and the Womb. For as the seeds of Plants need the Earth to nourish and increase them so the seed of man requires the womb which is affected with a desire of an off spring For by the moysture thereof and by blood running forth at the veins to water the child it doth grow and increase Hence you may conjecture what art nature useth in conceiving and framing a child which by an innate force growes up by degrees and secretly increasing comes to its full strength wherein I think that worth the Enquiry by what force the nature of the woman makes a man or a woman what faculty seems to be ascribed rather to the woman than to the man by reason of more matter coming from her which consists in the blood and seed of the woman whereby the Child all the time it is in the womb is nourished and increased For as mans seed is the chief cause of motion and the Instrument and Artificer whereby Man is made yet the womans seed with the plenty of her menstrual blood affords more matter than the man doth and by help thereof the child is perfected and is distinguished for its sex for that is it makes a child a male or a female CHAP. VIII Of prodigious and Monstrous Births and by the way what is the meaning of the Proverb Those that are born in the fourth Moon THe Nature of Man and his parts destinated to the Generation of man if they be rightly disposed and there be no defect in them will beget a perfect man But if they be defective or faulty or the feed be confusedly mixed Whence come Monsters or the principles of Generation be otherwise involved than they should be it falls out that prodigious and monstrous births are made Some fay that these things happen from the influence and aspects of the Stars and as just judgments for sins And I think it very consonant to truth For they commonly happen from a faulty constitution of the Womb from filthy corrupt seed A simile from Founders and disorderly copulation For as in the art of melting meâ—â—als if the matter be not pure and well cleansed if the vessel or receiver be oblique full of windings ill joynted hath conners is set awry or is full of chinks or plains is unloosed or holds ill together we see that men cast ridiculous and improper figures so if the places be ill appointed if the womb inclines to one side or the matter be unfit or ill tempered nature shall never make a fit and decent form So the Low Countrey Women chiefly those that live near the Sea-side being restlesse and troubled in copulation A Mola of the Matrix they have strange mishapen Embrio's and do not onely bring forth rude and deformed burdens not made up that no sword will cut but also something deformed that pants and is alive and is like the imperfect draught of a figure that Artists use to draw with a rude Pensil For Marriners which they commonly marry when they come from long voyages run mad upon their wives with full sail Intemperance of Venery burts the child never regarding their menstrual courses nor the Conjunction or new Moon at which time by reason of their terms copulation useth to be hurtfull for the seed cannot stick together nor be fitly united with the womans blond whence it comes to passe that the seed either runs forth or if it chance to stick together nature cannot make up any thing rightly of a confused matter that sticks not so as it should do And not onely the mens incontinence is to be found fault with but also of the women who having waited so long in their absence do voluntarily put themselves upon their husbands and snatch the seed from them as hungry dogs do a bone or Cerberus his bait Whence it comes that the faculty of the Womb loseth its force to generation and successe of breeding a child Or if it try to do any thing it makes some monstrous form that is nothing like to the shape of a man sometimes after three Moneths space that filthy matter runs forth and an undigested heap comes out by pieces as filthy water out of a Ship by the Pump Not unlike to this is an efflux that troubles women with many heavy torments our women because this conception begins in the fourth Moon when she is in Conjunction by whose force the terms flow down call it a Moon birth or Manekinds A birth not natural is cast forth Sometimes this false conception is made without the help of man by Imagination onely in those that are very lascivious so as by often seeing their Husbands and but touching them the womans seed will mix together with the blood and the neat of the Womb will begin to frame something like to a living Creature But the formal cause the mans seed being wanting that is like the Work-master the matter the woman affords Mans seed is the former of the child obtains a strange deformed shape sometimes the like is made by the help of the man when in the sourth and silent Moon he copulates with his wife and on the fourth day after the Moons Conjunction when her courses run not observing natures rules for he strives against the flux and sails against the stream A common proverb to pisse against the Moon Our people by a Proverb call it pissing against the Moon the Latines call them Born in the fourth Moon Because they have unhappy beginnings of their life and had their first entrance by generation contrary to natures order whence it happens
them a barren womb and dry breasts their root shall wither and they shall bring forth no fruit and if they do bring forth I will destroy the most dear of their Children Which must teach us all that if God be offended all means are vain and the successe will be unprofitable Ch. 8. Idolatry and super stition causes of barrenness God threatens the like in Ezekiel to superstitious women because they wept for Adonis Venus's Lover who was rent by a Boar about the privities and his Statue was set up and they adored him But if God be not angry with men and lets Nature have her ordinary course we may use outward means and help Natures weaknesse if from any secret cause one be hindred from Children What perfects genetion Wherefore there are two things especially that perfect copulation and that help to beget Children First the genital humour which proceeds partly from the brain and the whole body and partly from the Liver the fountain of blood Then the spirit that comes by the Arteries from the Heart by force whereof the yard is erected and growes stiff and by the force whereof the seed is ejected To this may be added the appetite and desire of copulation which is excited either by Imagination or by sight and feeling of handsome women Whosoever wants these helps or hath them feeble must so soon as may be use means to restore nature and to correct this errour and repair the forces as when there is a luxation or disjoynting in any part A Similitude from Husbandry For as we see barren fields grow fruitfull by tilling and mans industry and unfruitfull Trees and Plants by pruning and dunging grow very plentifull in fruit So in dressing this ground the Physical art is much to be observed that with great skill cures the defects of Nature and restores this barren field to bring forth fruit again as it were by dunging it when the heart of it was almost quite worn out So it restores the faint heat and the weak spirits coldnesse and drinesse of the genital parts and reduceth the weaknesse of the nerves to their temperament and it doth farther do all things that may serve to remove all impediments of procreation of Children But since that dyet may change the Elementary qualities and may alter the unhappy state of the body to a better it is necessary that such people should eat onely such meat as will make them fruitful for propagation What meats cause seed and stir up venery Amongst such things as stir up venery and breed seed for generation are all meats of good juice that nourish well and make the body lively and full of sap of which faculty are all hot and moist meats For the substance of seed as Galen saith is made of the pure concocted and windy superfluity of blood Matter of heaping up seed There is in many things a power to heap up seed and augment it other things are of force to cause erection and drive forth the humour Meats that afford matter are Hen-eggs Pheasants Thrushes Blackbirds Gnat-sappers Wood-cocks young Pigeons Sparrows Partridges Capons Pullets Almonds Pine-Nuts Raisins Currans all strong Wines that are sweet and pleasant especially made of grapes of Italy which they call Muscadel But the genitals are erected and provoked by Satyrium Eryngo's Cresses Erysimum Parsnips Hartichokes Onions Turneps Rapes Asparagus candid Ginger Galanga Acorns Scallions Sea shel-fish And Rocket that is next Priapus set Colum. l. 10. That makes the man his Wife with Child beget A sit Similitude from Guns These as many more will make men lusty For as we see Guns first charged with powder and then with bullets and lastly some fine powder is put in the pan and fire is given with a Linstock and the bullet is forced out with a violent noise so in this work two things must needs concur that our labour be not lost namely that there be plenty of seed and a force of a flatulent spirit whereby the seed may be driven forth into the Matrix But if these Engines be broken or nothing worth or the Gun-powder be adulterated and naught they can have no force to break down walls and Trenches and Ramparts not do they roar horribly but make a small hissing and empty noise as bladders of boys at play do when they are blown up Hence some of our lascivious women will say that such men that trouble their wives to no purpose do thunder The Womans Proverb but there follows no rain they do not water the inward ground of the matrix They have their veins puffed up with wind but there wants seed Wherefore if husbands will win their wives love by especiall service they must be well prepared to enter this conflict for if they fall short How Wives are pleased they shall find their wives so crabbed and touchy that there will be no quiet But when they are well provided they must take the opportunity of doing their businesse well And that is when the monethly terms are over For that sink hinders their seed from coagulating and fermenting and makes the womb unfit to conceive When therefore the Terms are over and the womb is well cleansed they must use no unlawful copulation or violent concussions in begetting children and when the work is over the woman must gently and softly lye down on her right side with her head lying low her body sinking down and so fall to sleep When a Boy is begot For by this means the seed will fall to the right side and a boy will be made Yet the time of the year the Climate the age of both parties the heating dyet are of great concernment here For the Summer if it be not too hot is fittest for the conceiving of boys because the seed and menstruall blood receive more heat from the Ayr about them Also a hot Countrey ripe years and lusty and hairy bodies are fittest to beget boys Also there are many things that by a speciall and hidden quality are fit for this purpose So Mercury What herb Mercury can do that is divided into male and female is held to be most effectuall in producing Children of the same kind with it so that the decoction of juice of the Male drank four dayes from the first day of purgation will give force to the womb to procreate a male Child but the juice of the Female drank for so many dayes and in the same manner will cause a female to be born especially if the man lye with his wife when the Terms are newly over I think it is because the one purgeth the right side of the matrix and the other the left and fosters it with heat So it comes to passe that the cold humour being taken away the woman is made fit for conception A Similitude from the Earth For as in boggy and watry grounds the seeds of Plants are drown'd nor do they easily grow
they draw themselves in not without great detriment to ones health so that the blood sometimes forsakes the heart and sometimes by coming too much unto it it strangles it So many have died suddenly by overmuch joy and others by sudden frights and fears Who are fearfull and faint-hearted which happens chiefly to such as cannot regulate their passions by reason as are commonly weak men women infants old men Anchorites who in their youth go from the company of men and lead a solitary life who have but weak heat and a thin slender animal spirit and therefore they have but small courage and are fearfull and faint hearted and cannot be valiant in resisting of dangers Moreover each mans age the temper of the climate influence of the stars education and course of life Many things change the sâ—ate of the body and course of the Country are of great concernment in the differences of the passions and manners For if you regard all nations and their several natures studies and inclinations you shall find their wayes of living to be divers as also their wits affections and manners are Wherefore it is much to be considered what age a man is of of what education under what climate he was born and bred what temper and constitution his body is of lastly whose company he keeps what diet he useth and what is the abundance and quality of the humours The manners arise from the humours at that time For these generally cause mens manners and fashions of their minds So they whose bloud is thick are commonly fierce cruel inhospitable unhumane and never regard the stings of Conscience never fear and are without all Religion they care not for godlinesse or humanity of which kind are Marriners Pipers Carters Potters Carriers and Souldiers who by reason of the thicknesse of their bloud and their grosse troublesome spirits have their Consciences ruff-cast What men are inhumane and their minds darkned with most grosse vices And if any spark of a better mind chance to shine forth or if they have any vertues that are given to these courses of life they either overwhelm them or stain them with great faults For when they have spent their whole time upon all mischief L. 1. Belli Punici their wicked course of life becomes a second nature to them So Livy saith that inhumane cruelty and more than Carthagenian perfidiousnesse was to Hannibal he made no reckoning of truth and holinesse he feared no God made nothing of perjury or Religion For as Lucan hath it Souldiers neither Faith nor truth regard L. 4. All 's venal that 's right where is most reward By which variety of wits manners and affections it seems to me that the passions and propensions of every mans mind are to be referred to many causes For though the objects and the heart it self and the parts ordain'd for nutriment and to ingender spirits are the organs and receptacles of the affections yet the humours within the body What things sharpen the passions immoderate heat influence of the Stars faculties of the Alements qualities of the Ayre about them immoderate use of Wine kindle the fire and are the Seminaries of troubling the mind and stirring the passions Hence consider what hurt may come to reason and to the mind of man where the organs spirits and humours have contracted any vice For so a man falls from his dignity and becomes a beast Which the kingly Prophet complains of Man being in honour is like the beasts that perish Psalm 48. For his reason is extinguished and the light of his mind is overwhelmed with vitious affections For as lights and Candles give lesse light A Simile from a Torch when they are set in a Candlestick that is fowl and dirty so the mind of man darkned by the grossenesse of the body shines lesse and is more slow in putting forth her self It is indeed natural for sanguin people to be merry for melancholique to be sad for flegmatique to be dull and drowsy for cholerique men to be angry When passions are mildest But all these passions are moderate and lesse faulty where the humours are moderate and are vitiated with no strange quality But if their quality or abundance be augmented or overpasse moderation a man is affected many wayes and turn'd off from the use of reason And though the Elementary qualities The Stars and humours are violent yet cause no necessity and humours and spirits impose no necessity upon any man to do this or that nor yet do the aspects of the Stars Yet they have so much force in moving the passions that men though reason strive against it are run upon rocks by the tempests of their passions For as is the distemper of the Ayre and of the Sea and as the violence of Wine drank overmuch is great such is the violence of a melancholique or cholerick humour if it be overmuch augmented All men are subject to passions And what man if he look nearly into himself and search his own nature will not presently perceive turbulent motions and passions so that sometimes he will be more angry more froward more envious more lascivious or more inclin'd to one or another passion according to the distemper of the humours And if the mind of man endure such changes where the humours do but a little degenerate from their natural tempers that in a moment the mind is hurrried with divers affections what shall we think will become of it when they are proceeded to the height of mischief and have seised forcibly on the principal parts Examples and sad spectacles of these things are mad-men lunatick frantick enraged Soul and body are affected with mutual diseases melancholique people and such as their minds are alienated or do dote or are in a delirium for the diseases of their bodies seizing upon their minds do torment them with terrible and fearfull torments Wherefore they that desire to live in good health and to be free from such mischiefs must live temperately least their minds be darkned with the thick smoak of the humours and so disquiered with strange and absurd Imaginations That all Scholers must shake off melancholy and removed from their proper places But this lesson most concerns those that manage publick employments and such as are much given to their studies because these men commonly are troubled with melancholy which humour though it sharpen the mind as Wine doth that is drank moderately yet if it be overmuch increased or vitiated it much offends the mind That Cicero chose rather to be dull of wit than to be witty and melancholique Tusc 1. Some are by nature melancholique and most men have contracted it from divers causes that were by nature free from it Melanchâ—â—y whence it breeds Many have come to this temper by long continued studies and unseasonable watchings Others fall into it by fear care sorrow sadnesse Many from the stoppings
some think they know them not So Calathiana in Autumn Erauthemum blew-Bâ—ttles that grow in corn appear not onely of a blew colour but also white red purple divers colour'd so that yellow Marigold Virgil describes on the several Calends of each moneth with a double row of flowers growing thick together delights our eyes growing in a roundle So Jove's flower and Rose Campion is with a sparkling scarlet colour and died with a thin purple sometimes Oculuâ— Christi and sometimes it recreates our sight with a colour white as snow growing round with a various heap of leaves after the same manner do stock Gelliflowers Daisies Hesperis and all the Winter Gelliflowers bring forth their flowers Virgil shews that in former Ages Gardners did take pains in them Some I have seen their seeds to sowe prepare With Nitre and oyl lees Georg. l. 1. for they by care Will grow far greater and be sooner ripe And though the Industry of the Gardner cease and the art how to sowe them the herbs themselves do naturally change their fashion if you consider their colours form stature forces And that is partly done by the secret force of the Stars partly by length of time that such things as appeared as though they would last alwayes De ration Concionand are turned to another habit as if as Erasmus saith Natures curiosity would not have the fashion of herbs truly known that might passe currant to posterity but would have a continual search to be made for them that we see are changed or renewed daily So Nature sharpens man's Industry and shakes off drowsinesse For the first cause and spring of Husbandry Would not that this Art without Industry Should ere be learnt Virg. l. 2. Georg. thus sharpning mortal hearts And with great pains teaching to find out arts And within furrowes for Plants to enquire And hid in flints for to discover fire To this we may adde the state of the climate and nature of the Ayr Places changeth Plants and Country that will change even the hairs colours and habits of mens bodies For Plants according to the nature and quality of the place and for variety of the ambient ayr grow sometimes more tall sometimes lesse some have many branches others come forth without any stalks at all some as the earth is are watry or milky white 〈◊〉 from 〈◊〉 â—â—aâ—h of A Simil the stom Children others are very green tending to black For as children that the Nurses keep the breasts from or seldome feed them do grow lean and starved and look pale or not very lively so plants that grow in lean hungry barren ground are ill-favoured and not so pleasant to behold Whence you may see plants that grow on walls and stony grounds scarse a hands breadth in heighth and if the same be set in a fruitful ground they will grow a cubit a half high and will send forth their branches long and broad So Bugloss and great Comfrey are oft-times seen with white flowers so Clove-gelliflowers either by art or fruitfulnesse of the ground will yield a white red various colour'd flower upon the same stem and stalk So the purple violet colour decayes sometimes and turns blew The flowers of herbs are changed into divers colours By the same reason some leafs of Plants are not so jagged and nicked and prickly plants grow more gentle and smooth according as the ground is higher or lower they grow on To this refer what daily experience teacheth that herbs and fruits of Trees do not onely change their shapes if they grow in a place and climate fit for them but will also grow better and be more wholesome when as before they were deadly and not edible 2. de Aliment et 3. de Sympto caus Which Pliny and Galen speak of the Persian plant transplanted into an Egypt and Columella hath writ the Experiment thereof in these words With Damask Prunes their Cups are compass'd round And such as in Armenia are found And Apples which in rude Persia grow Full of their imbred poyson but we know That now they yield a wholesome nourishment And all their venome is consum'd and spent And of their Countrey they the name retain Peaches that on small Trees do grow amain For this kind of Apple unlesse it be exposed to the Sun beams over against the South and is of a cold and moyst juice and therefore corrupts quickly and offends the stomach Galâ—de Alimen facult unlesse it be eaten before meat Wherefore Nature attempts many things which the art of Man perfects and directs For grapes will grow without stones if you cleave the stalk and take out the pith yet so that in taking it forth you hurt not the bud For the sides will quickly grow together again if they be accurately joyn'd How some grow without kernels So Medlars Peaches Dates Cherries Prunes and Cornelion berries that are full of stones grow without stones by the care and Industry of Man if you cut off the young Tree two foot above the ground and then cleave it to the root and take out with a rasp the pith of both parts then straightwayes bind both the parts fast together with a band and cover the top and the partitions of both sides with loam clay or wax and put a wet paper about it when the year is over you shall find that a scar is come upon it and that all is grown fast together graft this Tree with grafts that never bore fruit and they will bring fruit without stones which by Theophrastus's direction I tryed upon a vine and it proved true Also Inoculation Insition Emplastrisation do shew the cunning of Nature and the Industry of Men. For by these means Plants will put off their own nature and get another form and fashion and one will easily change into another Three kinds of Insition A Simile from the Nature of Man and education For as we see men for the variety of their wits and care of their education not onely to grow different in their knowledge and to follow other manners and studies and to obtain other inclinations of mind and one body is more slender than another or taller or more pale and bloodlesse or more rough or hairy yet all of them have the shapes of men though some look more rudely so it useth to fall out in herbs which for the same causes are not of the same shape and vigour alwayes though they be not so changed that their whole kind and species perisheth For they alwayes are like the thing they are called by in some part and they have the effects peculiar to the earth they grow in and fit for the nature of the people of that Countrey For many plants are brought forth of the fortunate Islands which Men call the Canaries which being used in our climate do not hold the same forces in all things nor do they grow of the same form and magnitude yet they
the belly so I find by experience that mans bones grated given for the dysentery in red wine will stop it by a binding quality and drying force which also is excellently performed by artificial Pissaphaltum that is Arabian Mummie if you mingle but a little sea-Amber which is called Sperma Coeti Misselto a Plant what force it hath against the Epilepsie Misselto is next to these if not before them and it is called viscus because there is a clammy humour in the berries which if you rub it with your fingers is like birdlime for by that word is not meant venemous glew and snotty matter called Ixia that will inflame the tongue and glew all the Entrals together But a shrubby plant that the Priests and Druides of France as Caesar calls them held most sacred Comment l. 6. It never growes on the earth but is alwayes green upon the Oke and Holm Tree nor of any seed but from the excrement of the wood pigeon and blackbird I have often seen that shrub a cubit in height green as a leek within brownish without and the leaf like box leafs almost Saffron colour'd Which Virgil the Father of all Learning and who was as well versed in the knowledg of all things as any man sets down in elegant verse Talis erat species auri frondentis opaca â—â—â—id â— Ilice sit leni crepitabant bractea vento Quale solet silvis brumali tempore Viscum Fronde virere nova quod non sua seminat arbos Et croceo foetu teretes circundare truncos Latet arbore opaca Aureus foliis lento vimine ramus Auricomos generans acinos atque arbore soetus Whereby the Poet intimates that the deadly assaults and terrible diseases of the brain will yield to nothing sooner than to the use and medicament made of this golden colour'd shrub For it discusses extenuates and dryes clammy humours and by a wonderful force it cures the Falling-sicknesse if sand or the powder of it be drank in wine The Elk. Now we shall speak of the force of the Elk. Cajus Caesar in his Commentary saith it is a Creature of a Goat kind but greater in bulk Bel. Gal. 6. Deut. 14. In the Bible it is called a stone buck like to the wild Goats that the Jews might seed on The claw of this Beast is a present remedy against the Epilepsie as I have proved by many Experiments though the reason seem hard to me In the Low-Countries there are many subject to this disease because this Country is cold and moyst The South wind raiseth the Epilepsie and the South-wind blowes most commonly which is the most unhealthful of all winds so that you shall see them in the publike wayes and streets miserable spectacles and they fly to this remedy as the cure of it It chanced that in my Entry twice a woman fell down suddenly as if she had been thunder-stricken A true History which when I saw I came near and I put a Ring on her finger next her little finger that had a piece of an Elks claw set in it She presently arose and drank and went merrily on her way Another woman when I was not at home cryed out strangely and fell down on the earth and knockt her head against the ground One of my family laid a piece of the Elks claw on the palm of her hand and so shutting her hand because it was not set in a ring How things applyed outwardly can abate diseases the disease presently left her I think this is done by some special hidden property or because it dryes and discusseth mightily Were it not a solid substance some might say a vapour goes forth of it as from flowers and herbs which yet I think may be done though the spirits that come forth be very thin and dry and not windy so that they are not so sensible and cannot be perceived but by a secret operation So Stones Jewels Gold Iron and all brasen metals breathe forth a hidden force but they must be heated by rubbing for when they are on fire they smell more manifestly and insinuate themselves into the body A Simile from Wheels heated and spakling flints As we see when wheels grow hot with a quick motion or when a horses shoes strike fire on the pavement For presently a smoky burnt sent is raised into the Ayr. And if the cause of this Effect is not evident enough and no probable reason can be thought on yet we may say that these things are effected by that force by which the Unicorns horn put into wine or water dispels the poyson Unicorns horn resists venom and kills spiders by touching them I shall speak of stones taken out of the mawes of Swallowes and by what vertue they cure the Falling-sicknesse in another place CHAP. IV. Whence comes it that diseases are long and Chronical and will not easily be cured Whence come Feavers to revive again and to be with intermission and truce for a time which all men ought to know that they may not easily fall into a disease or being fallen may soon cure it LOng diseases may be well compared to long and tedious voyages that a weak man A simile from a journey that is difficult or one that carries a great burden is forced to go on his feet He by reason of the difficulty of the way and weight of his burden goes forward the more slowly and is more pressed than if he were carried in a Chariot or had some loving partner to help him carry his pack But since there are many causes that lengthen out diseases amongst the rest this seems to me to be the chief because so soon as diseases take hold Withstand in the beginning they neglect to call a skilfull Physitian who by prescribing a wholesome diet and fit remedies in time may help nature and by his Art may underprop her when she fails For the Physitian is Natures servant and takes care for her preservation with all his might The Physitian is Natures servant Whence it comes that they that know not what may do them good or ill feed on naughty meats even when diseases are seizing upon them and make no choice of diet and so stoppings and corruption is augmented and the disease gathers strength and all force of the body fails But if diseases fall in Autumn For diseases are like unto the year Turning about the same way like a sphere Now there riseth together a double cause of duration partly from the abundance of cold clammy matter and partly from the toughnesse and clamminesse of it For Autumn and Winter parts of the year cool and thicken the humours and cause a continuance that diseases are longer for the diseases cannot be discussed because the humours are thick and fast together and the skin is not so full of transpiration For as Wax Pitch Tallow Rosin and all fluxible matter grows hard in winter season
and will not be so easily handled and made pliable A Simile from a fluxible thing so when the weather is cold the humours are hardly melâ—ed and dissolved and it is proved because in winter men sweat lesse wherefore we must give such medicaments as will wipe away forcibly and open the pores For the filth and rubbish of the humours stick no lesse to these mens bodies than the lees and dregs do to vessels which must be soked with salt water or pickle A simile from rubbing of vessels and rub'd with beesoms to make them clean and take away all ill smels from them Otherwise whatsoever is put into them will grow sowre and be spoiled Wherefore Hippocrates seems to me to have spoken very right Impure bodies the more you feed them the more you hurt them L. 2. Aphor. 12. For the food corrupts being mingled with vitious humours and so the disease lasts the longer or if at any time by the Physitians skill or force of nature the disease begins to abate it will grow again by the least occasion For new corruption is bred in the body and a filthy smell accompanies it as we may perceive by the breath and this diffused in the body vitiates the spirits and extinguisheth natural heat for want of transpiration To this belongs that sentence of Hippocrates If there be any remainders in the body or reliques L. 2. Aph. 12. the diseases will grow again for the nutriment taken in doth not strengthen the sick but corrupts by mingling with ill Juice and increaseth the disease as we see in quartans and bastard tertians when the Patients will not be ruled by the Physitian not use a good diet Now these Feavers are with Intermission because the humour is without the veins and farther from the heart Whence comes intermission in Peavers But in continual feavers men are tormented constantly by reason of the sharp biting vapours of blood and choler inflamed within the veines which when they cannot freely get forth and breathe out they immediately offend the heart and liver and do more hurt by their corruption arising from stopping Blood subject to corruption than if they were without the veins For when there is great plenty of humours and the corruption is vehement and the proportion of this is great for putrefaction for blood is of a hot and moist quality and soon corrupts it falls out that these feavers alwaies rage and soon come to their state Whence Hippocrates maintains that such diseases dure not above fourteen daies L. 2. Aph. 23. and sometimes where the matter is surious and swels they end on the fifth seventh ninth or eleventh day The causes of Feavers that come by circuits and at set times are contrary for they come from some force bred in the humour and by reason of place and time whence it happens that they come with intermission that they anted are the time or come slower and later that they are unstable and unconstant and the fits last longer sometimes Feavers grow stronger and come sooner where the humours are increased and more inflamed Anticipating Feavers or where some errour hath been committed or there hath been some intemperance in meat and drink Feavers that come later But Feavers come later and more gently when the matter decreaseth and the stopping and corruption being discussed it abates and decayes sensibly Instable wandring feavers But when one humour takes upon it anothers nature or changeth its place or is mingled and confounded with another the fits come in no order but with uncertain motion and no certain time is observed by them Long Feavers A long fit is made by a plentifull humour and vapour and that is diffused all through the body and that which is clammy and grosse For as moyst green wood is long a lighting and burning A simile from green wood and old flesh and as Ox beef if it be old requires long seething so a clammy humour must be longer a steeping and grow soft by concoction and made fluxible that it may be fit for excretion But since we shew'd before that humours corrupting without the veins and when they are inflamed in any other part of the body Intermitting Feavers cause intermitting feavers than give us time to breathe yet of times we observe that these will more continually though they be without the veins both by reason of plenty of humours and from the sharpnesse of them As we see in parts that are inflamed as in carbuncles bubo's Carbuncles without the body cause continual feavers and all contagious and pestilent Impostumes In which a continual feaver and not an intermitting is kindled though the venome break forth without the veins and be far from the heart for the pestilent venemous force penetrates to the heart and hurts the principal parts infecting both the naturall and viral spirits Whence it is that these diseases are numbred amongst acute diseases because they soon come to their state and the change to health or death is very sudden For the like befalls those bodies as happens to a City besieged A simile taken from a City besieged which is so stormed without intermission by the Enemy with Guns and other engines of war that it can hardly stand out any longer against the violence of the enemy and looks every moment to be subdued unlesse it can with Ordnance and Engines make opposition or can sally out and beat the enemy away For to yeild and to make an agreement for life and safety as they do that fight faintly against an enemy or a disease were ignoble and commonly very hurtfull for the Conquerours of times will not stand to agreements but will break their words so in acute diseases it used to fall out that the sick cannot endure violence of the disease and cannot live above fourteen dayes if they can hold out so long unlesse nature be strong and well assisted by the Physitians art and can conquer the disease which being obtained she can hardly recollect her forces As the assaults of enemies so diseases must be driven off and cannot presently recover what she hath lost by violence but recovers her forces by degrees and to reedifie and fortifie her batter'd walls CHAP. V. Of those that come forth of their Beds and walk in their sleep and go over tops of Towrs and roofs of houses and do many things in their sleep which men that are awake can hardly do by the greatest care and industry IT happens that some in their youth and flourishing years for old men want vital spirits and are to weak too undertake such things Whence it comes that some men walk and cry out in their sleep and are slow in venerious actions will leap out of their beds at mid night or about break of day and do such things that men that are awake can hardly do and to do it with so little danger that all that see it admire
it Which if you do not hinder them and call them back they will by degrees go to bed again But when they do these things if you speak to them in a known voice or call them by their christian names You must not call night walkers by their proper names they will fall being frighted thus their spirits being dissipated and their natural force discussed whereby they perform these things Wherefore you must let them go as they will and to retire again at pleasure But they that are troubled with the night-mare The night mare and are toiled in their sleep which happens when smoky fuliginous grosse vapours offend the heart and brain they must be pulled and called by their proper names for they are presently wakened if you speak but low and they come to themselves the fumes being discussed and the blood sinking down which is diffused through the conduits of the veins But for the most part this disease comes at beginning of the spring upon those that have alwaies a crudity on their stomachs Ill to ly upon the back and that lie often on their backs Whence it comes that they ly with open eyes and mouths which is great inconvenience to their health For suddenly as if some great weight came upon them they feel that streightnesse that they cannot cry out but mourn and lament but so soon as one calls them by their names they will presently turn on their side and shake of those hags they thought oppressed them But our night walkers are clean contrary to these for they with their eyes shut walk in the dark and make a great noyse every where and sometimes they are silent and go upward and downward and clamber up to the tops of houses without any help which I believe is done by them by their swelling and frothing blood and by their hot fiery spirit which being carried into the seat of the mind drives on the force and faculties of the soul whereby she perfects her functions and the instrumental parts to these actions and moves them to these effects Hot spirits cause of motion in sleep Whence it comes that the body by the force of the animal spirit which contains the strength of the nervs and muscles that is the office of feeling and moving in the brain and maintains it is carried upwards and by the force thereof in sleep is provoked to such actions Such condition'd men are of fine and loose woven bodies and of little stature but full of active spirits and hot minds whence it is that if they lay hold of any thing with the outmost joynts of their hands or feet they will ballance and stay themselves and stick fast to the planks For it falls out with these bodies as it is with those boys A simile from vessels of boys the sea that are cast into the mouth of the Sea in the Low-countries whereby Marrieners know how to ride safely and sail to their Ports avoiding fords and rocks they cannot see For these though they be covered with plates of Iron and bound with chains and fastned to a mighty great stone yet they flote and swim in the Sea nor do they fall to the bottom unlesse they come asunder because they are filled with winds and blasts bellows being joyn'd to them for that purpose So they because they are swoln with wind and are full of aereal spirit are carried upward A simile from Snails with horns and with a slow pace like snails that want their eyes they try their way their horns thrust forth and creep upon all high places and walk in the night But they do this without danger or hurt to their bodies and fall not because they do it leasurely and without fear or respect unto danger which will sometimes drive men that are awake from earnest businesse dangerous attemps For they go about these things no otherwise than men that are drunk or mad who inconsiderately and with great rashnesse and boldnesse fear not to adventure upon any danger which if the next day or when they come to themselves they think upon and what danger they were in they will really professe they have forgot all and be much frighted at the relation they hear from others And if the humours be not so not in such kind of bodies and the spirits are not so much stirred and troubled they will onely cry out and leap a little but they will stay in their beds for the spirits are not so violent as to raise the body Lib. de Comit. morb For whosoever as Hippocrates saith hath a hot brain as cholerick and not flegmatick persons have these will cry and brawl in the night especially if they do unquietly perform their dayes labour and have care of their businesse having much to do As are some busie-bodies unquiet boasting people that thrust themselves into all businesses and run here and there and use strange gestures and you may know them by their eyes countenance gate cloathing and whole habit of their bodies all which they compose divers wayes and change them taking upon them another person as of a Player Fencer or Mountebank that runs up and down and calls the people together to see idle sports Men quiet in the day are clamorous in the night Hence it comes that they rise in their sleep and make a great noise and clapping of their hands by reason of phantasms that are represented to their sense and that agree with their wills and diurnal actions So all of us when we do any thing seriously in the day-time the species and representations of such things will trouble our minds in the night and make is cry out and tosse up and down Which Lucretius sets down in verse thus We see that many in their sleep will walk Will do what they did waking Lawyers talk And plead their causes strongly and Lawes write And Generals wage war and fiercely fight Saylers will strive with winds and every man Useth the same profession that he can Or what he hath long used or that kind That is most pleasing to his troubled mind For what hath tryed us and employed us all the day when the day is at an end flies to the brain and causeth distempers in the night or at least holds the mind with Employments that the sleep is not sweet but interrupted by dreams CHAP. VI. Of those that are drown'd mens bodies will flote on their backs and womens will flote on their faces and if their lungs be taken forth they will not swim IT is found by experience in the Low-Countries L. 7. c. 17. which Pliny also testifies that mens bodies when they are drown'd lye on their backs with their faces upwards toward Heaven but women lye with their faces groveling downwards and flote with their faces toward the ground In which Nature is thought to take care of their chastity that their secrets may not be seen but be decently concealed But I think it
at that part where the passages of the body are open a bloody liquor will run out namely by the eyes nostrils ears or nether parts So commonly we see in a fluxible and loose body when it hath layn unburied two or three dayes that a liquor will run forth mingled with blood when the bearers with much motion carry the bier on their shoulders Also Oxen Bulls when they are slain and hang'd up to the beams in houses make the pavement bloody with drops of blood wherefore I conjecture it comes from some such cause But this seems to be most likely A man will bleed suddenly from a fright that the friends of the party slain or he that killed him will bleed at the nose by a sudden fright when they behold the dead carkasse because the natural faculties and mind happen to be vehemently moved and shaken and the humours do not stand still but flote here and there For we see them strangely affected and troubled both in their speech and thoughts and sometimes they blush sometimes look pale and tremble for fear whence it comes to passe that by long looking on and being troubled the blood will break out of their nostrils whether they will or no. As we see the same will happen to those who suddenly chance to see and think on some sad objects or lamentable things If any man say that sympathy that is mutual consent of Nature drawes blood from kindred and Antipathy and secret disagreement makes the murderers bleed I am not against that Blood will wax hot again in dead bodies But I shall more easily grant this that blood will run forth of the wound though it be bound over with swathbands if he that did the murder stand by For so great is the force of secret Nature and so powerful is Imagination that if there be any life left or the dead body be warm the blood will boyl and wax hot by choler kindled in the dead body CHAP. VIII Of the Helmets of Children newly born or of the thin and soft caul wherewith the face is covered as with a vizard or covering when they come first into the world An old Wives opinion of the caul of children THere is an old opinion not onely prevalent amongst the common and ignorant people but also amongst men of great note and Physitians also how that children born with a caul over their faces are born with an omen or sign of good or bad luck when as they know not that this is common to all and that the child in the womb was defended by these membranes Three Membranes defend the child For there are three coverings or membranes that involve the Infant in the Mothers womb The outmost is called by the Greeks 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or in Latine the Secondine because it comes forth presently after the birth there are two other membranes under this the first whereof from the figure of a pudding-gut is called Alantorides and it is bred of the womans seed that is put upon the head buttocks and feet and lyes upon the eminent parts and the use of it is to receive the urine of the child formed The last is a very thin skin or membrane that drinks up the sweet and vapours that come forth of the child when it growes up and compasseth the child round about it is called Amnios from its thin lamb-like tendernesse Which fences and helps in child-bearing provident nature hath provided lest the Infant should suffer any inconvenience by bruising or be hurt outwardly The last of these sometimes come forth with the child being fastned to the parts they are appointed for especially when the passages are open and the secrets of the woman and genital parts are loose and open wide in bearing But if the child can hardly with great strugling get forth of these streights and the woman be of a narrow passage When the child comes with a helmet those membranes stick by the way and those kins are wiped off as any small skin is wiped from the face or other parts of the body when we creep through some cranny or narrow hole What signifieth a black covering of the child Wherefore old Wives say this skin when it covers the face is a helmet of which they speak many fabulous things and frigâ—t or cheer the child-bearing woman If this cover be black they speak as from an Oracle when as they do but dote and know not what they say that such children shall suffer many sad accidents and that many misfortunes hang over their heads and that ill spirits will haunt them and shall be vexed with dreams and night visions unlesse this be broken and given in drink which against my will many have done to the great hurt of the child The red helmet what that signifies But if this cover be red or the skin that is fast to the crown of the head they prophesie that he will be a notable child and shall have great successe in all his affairs And this superstitious old opinion was held also by the Antients Antoninus had a Diadem on his head For Aelius Lampridius in the life of Antoninus Diadumenus whose head was crown'd with a Diadem and a Garland that children were wont when they were born as a sign of good fortune to have a cap on their heads by nature which the midwives catch away and sell to their credulous Advocates For Lawyers think they shall find great help from them The superstition of Lawyers in keeping childrens Helmets But since those membranes are seen of divers colours I think that onely comes from the humours that flote about in the matrix for those vary the colour of them When therefore the Womb is wet with a fowl and vitious moisture which grows together with the seed of both Parents the membrane is of a dark brown colour and the childs skin of a smoky dark colour also But if the seed and bloud be pure clean and subject to no fault the cover is red and the child is of a pleasant and lively colour And these membranes are not onely different in colour but in shape also either by reason of some internal or external effect or from some object of the eyes or mind For when some men are so lascivious and given to pleasure that without choice taking no heed of the flowing of the terms they will use copulation with women it falls out sometimes that when the terms have run three dayes or thereabout and there is not much behind onely a day or two that they have to run more the natural time is hindred and some part of the excremental flux is kept back by unseasonable copulation but yet sometimes this perfects the conception When therefore a woman is in the act of generation and knows that her terms are not yet quite staid and that she should not yet copulate the parts being still wet she secretly blusheth at it and her eyes are
covered with blood which affect when it passeth to the child that membrane becomes of divers colours and fashions Whence comes beauty or foulnesse This also makes children to have chins and cheeks red as a rose Which then useth to happen when the great bellied women blush or are angry their blood being raised by natural heat and carried aloft For such as are frighted or suddenly put into fear they are the cause of a pale colour and frame the child with an austere and sad countenance CHAP. IX Why in Holland they say that such as have unconstant and weak brains have been conversant amongst beans IF at any time the Low-Countrey people will set forth a man of an unconstant brain The Proverb to wander amongst beans and unsetled mind who in his manners gestures words and deeds and all his actions is like a mad-man they will say he hath been amongst the beans and it is their common Proverb the beans flourish he wandreth amongst beans and this is applied to weak brain'd men that want judgment and reason For we see in the spring-months when bean-stalks begin to flowre that some men will grow mad and speak many ridiculous and absurd things and sometimes they grow so mad that they must be bound in chains For at the begining of the spring the humours begin to overflow and to choke the brain with grosse fumes and vapours which when bean flowrs do exasperate if they smell to them the mind begins to rave and to be troubled with furies For though bean flowrs smell sweet and pleasant Why bean flowers hurt the brain yet they offend the head and will at great distance send forth an offensive smell especially to those that have weak brains and are filled with a cholerick and melancholiqve humour Whereupon some of these are disquieted and wander then they grow clamorous and full of words and others again are pensive and alwaies musing Their head stands stiff Pers sat 3. their eyes sixt on the ground They mumble silently and eat the sound Their lips thrust forth their words they do confound And as some things dissipate fumes and discusse what is hurtfull to the brain and raise the fainting soul and spirits that are sleepy as Vinegar Rose-water wherein Cloves are steeped new bread wet in well sented wine for these breath forth a thin and pleasant ayre so other things cause pain and make the head heavy as Garlick Onions Leeks Elder Worm-wood Rue Southern wood What things cause the headacâ—â—e and many spices that send forth strong heavy fumes and offend the brain violently affecting the Nostrils Which Hippocrates shewd in this Aphorism The smell of spices draws the secrets of women L. 5. Aph. 28. and it is good for many other things but that it offends the head and makes it heavy For all things very odoriferous hurt the head and draw the heat and moysture to the upper parts even the very smels that evaporate from cold plants especially in those that are lean and decayed in their flesh For they cannot endure the smells of their meats and of boil'd flesh and when they faint and swound they will suffer nothing to be put to their nostrils that is of a sharp and piercing nature so that they seem to be suffocated by a grosse thick vapour as those that sit down in a dinining room that is filled with smoak whose breath is stopped and intercepted An example from smoaky houses unlesse the dores be set open and fresh Aire be let in the windows that the house may be Ayr'd and the wind may passe in and our Those that dwell near lakes are of another temper than these tender bodies and such as are made to empty Jakes and make clean sinks For these men reject all sweet smels as offensive unto them So Strabo writes that amongst the Sabaeans L. 6. those that are offended with sweet odours are refreshed with bitumen and the smell of Goats hair on their beards when it is burnt Aridiculous thing of a Countryman A certain Country-man at Antwerp was an example of this who when he came into a shop of sweet smells be began to faint but one presently clapt some fresh smoking warm hors-dung to his nose and fetched him again CHAP. X. Every strong filthy smell is not hurtfull to man For some of these will discusse contagions and resist corrupt diseases By the way whence came the Proverb that horns are burnt there MAny things are of a most filthy smell which yet do no ways hurt the body nor cause any corruption in it and they will resist some diseases and discusse the faulty troublesome Ayre and vapours as Castoreum Galbanum Sagapenum the dregs of Masterwort called Asafaetida Bean Trifoly Brimstone Gunpowder the fumes of burnt horns and skins Ill smells sometimes usefull For these are of a strong filthy sent but they cause no contagion but they represse and strike back the filthy sents and pestilent vapours which lakes and standing waters and the hearb Camarina and stinking earth send forth Also by the smell of these they raise young maids that are in a swound when they are troubled with the strangling of the mother when being fit for marriage they are forced to stay for Husbands But filthy smels that rise from dead carcases and muddy waters cause corrupt diseases and infect the Ayre by reason of heat and moisture but not the vapours of those that tend to drinesse Hence our Country people cast snips of leather horns and wet bones into the fire Ill smells sometime resist the Plague and with those sents they Ayre their houses to dispell the contagion of diseases and keep themselves and their cottages free from pestilent Ayres Hence came the Proverb that Horns are burnt there A Proverb that horns are burnt Whereby they signifie that places infected with contagious diseases must be avoided Such a kind of remedy in former times was used about Tourney when the Plague cruelly raged all the Town over A history that is true done about Tournay For the Souldiers of the Garrison in the Fort fill'd their Guns with Gunpowder without bullets and shot against the Town and they shot them off with a lighted match about the evening and morning whence it hapned that by the great noise and strong smell the contagion of the Ayre was removed Fire dispells contagions of the Ayre and the City delivered from the Plague For this is as powerfull to dispell contagions of the Ayre as Hippocrates remedy by making bon-fires and burning many fagots in the streets could be CHAP. XI The excellency of the finger of the Left hand that is next the little finger which is last of all troubled with the Gout and when that comes to be affected with it death is not far off By the way wherefore it deserves to wear a Gold Ring better than the rest PHysitians grant that all parts of the body that are affected
13. c. 1. when men drink in expectation of sleep For sleep helps to discusse and to take off the fumes of the wine The use of Bread But since bread is a great part of mans nourishment and all meats without it are unsavoury and not very healthful I think fit to speak something of the use thereof For some maintain that to eat much bread is hurtfull to the stomach and that eating of it immoderately and to repletion doth as much harm as wine drank in too great abundance I think their reason is because it stayes long in the stomach and binds the belly But my opinion is that choyce and a difference should be made For wheaten bread well moulded and made with leaven and well baked is the most commendable and healthful food for sound bodies Wherefore I would have all men perswaded that it is not good to joyn too little bread with their meat They that eat little bread their breath stinks For they that eat bread too sparingly and flesh or fish plentifully their body growes spungy and their flesh loose and their breath stinks and corrupts Wherefore eating of fish because they soonest corrupt requires most bread with them We see that all meats will suddenly corrupt and stink in three days or a little more unlesse you salt them And Egs Fish Flesh and all such meats will be unsavoury But bread never corrupts or smells amisse Being over long kept it will grow mouldy but it putrifies not Wherefore such as cram themselves with meats and eat little or no bread send a stinking smell from their very entralls and offend all that are near them Wherefore those that desire to be of strong and firm constitution of body let them eat bread with moderation at least chiefly when they must exercise and labour hard For unlesse Ditchers Porters Marriners Charriers Fencers Wrestlers should eat bread in abundance they could not subsist and endure such labours But I prescribe the use of bread more sparingly to tender weak sickly constitutions and to such whose stomachs are faint and the passages narrow It is best to refresh them with liquid meats and to restore their strength for these will soon enter the veins For such bodies are too tender and delicate for to receive hard meats And the kingly Prophet David seems to me to have observed and considered all these things very exactly Psalm 103. God the maker of all things causeth the Grasse to grow for the Cattle and hearbs for the service of man both sick and well So that his body anointed with oyle may shine and anointed with ointment may be refreshed That the heart of man may be cheered with Wine and sadnesse being driven away may be made merry and that bread the staffe of life may confirm and strengthen him CHAP. XXII A Nutmeg and a Coral-stone carried about a man will grow the better but about a woman the worse A man excels a woman THat a man excels a woman and that his condition is fat better than hers besides the noble gifts and endowments of his soul and body whereby he abundantly goes beyond her inanimate creatures and such as have left growing and increasing do testify and prove by experience For a Nutmeg if a man carry it about him doth not onely keep its force but will swell and become more full of juice For since among these the best weighs most and is most full of juice and being pressed or pricked with a needle How to try Nutmegs will sweat forth an oyly substance with an excellent sweet smell the heat of man preserves these properties and which is wonderfull will make it more pleasant to behold and to swell more with this oyly juice especially if young lusty men carry it about with them For so pleasant and sweet smell comes forth of such bodies Comment l. 2. Aph. 14. and such excellent vapours by reason of the temper of their natural heat and so gentile and pleasing that the Nutmeg will draw them to it and so it being soked with them grows more clear and sweet sented For it is fed and delights in an aereal vapour and a warmayre inclining to heat and such youthfull bodies do breath it forth as a thing that is most familiar and agreeing with it Why the cloths of Alexander the great smelt sweet So it is written that Alexander the great King of Macedonia had his cloths perfumed not by any external perfume put upon them but from the natural breathing forth of his imbred heat But a woman abounding with excrements and sending out ill smells by reason of her terms makes all things worse and spoils their natural forces and imbred qualities Hence it is that a Nutmeg by her touching of it will grow dry light rotten pale and blackish and so she will corrupt and spoil hearbs destroy seed and take off the Lustre from a Looking Glasse The like reason serves for Coral Coral grows redder if a man wear it for this made into round pieces and polished smooth if a man carry it it will grow more red than if a woman should wear it about her For by being long with a woman it will grow pale and wan A woman makes Coral worse and lose its natural heat partly by reason of the fuliginous thick vapours that breath from her and partly because she hath but a weak heat and is cold and moist of constitution What makes Corall led which qualities can keep and preserve nothing but a man hath a gentle sweet vapour that proceeds from his substance by naturall heat and he is allmost aromatised by it To make mustard seed or Corall red For which cause Mustard-seed will make Coral more red if it be covered with it namely by reason of its heat whereby it grows hot as by a thing that is on fire CHAP. XXIII For the most part such are barren and unfruitfull whose seed runs from them of its own accord and they pollute themselves and how that comes to passe IT is so foul a mischief that amongst the Jews those that were polluted with it Levit. 19. were driven out from the Temple and all mens company The Greeks call it Gonorrhaea the Latines Seminis profluvium both men and women are troubled with it For their seed runs from them against their wills almost without any pleasure or desire or erection and it is watry and thin Wherefore it is unfruitfull and unfit to beget children For as a Willow that loseth its fruit A Simile from unfruitfull Trees casts off his seed for lack of heat before it be ripe So these have their generative humour too cold and moyst and it runs away from them For the natural faculties are not able to perfect the seed and make it prolifical Whence it comes that the humour is altogether excremental and is the rudiment of seed newly begun and imperfect and wants the power of generation But since this disease
the body For it hath been observed in our dayes that a certain woman being dissected some beasts were taken out like to rats and mice that it seems were bred from some foul excrements that came from the food she are For natural heat being busied in digesting that matter could make no other shape of it than such as the matter would bear it had to work upon wherefore the inward force of nature frameth a living creature of that kind and endeavours it that moist substance being fit and ready to obey the efficient cause For it is found by experience that house-creatures as whelps cats mice rats flitter-mice toads and frogs when they wander up and down in Cellars and Butteries do sometimes leave upon meats an excremental seed Creatures bred of filth which when men do not wash clean from filth or do not wipe clean the outsides of fruits or pare them from that moist foul matter that pollutes the meats some such things are bred And if snails and mice breed from corruption and beetles drones and wasps from dung and from dew and moist Aire caterpillars butterflies ants locusts grashoppers who can think it strange that in the bodies of men from such like causes such things should be bred Since here is a more effectuall reason that yeilds a seminary cause for this businesse For those breed of corruption and not from seed though it be answerable thereto for force and vigour and next kind in faculty But those things that are bred alive in the secret parts of mans body Animals bred of their own accord from no seed proceed from a vitall humour and a living Creature Therefore this must not seem against reason or a Paradox of some old women when as we see so many things bred spontaneously without any copulation or incubation of living creatures and that from a humour enlivened by the heat of the outward Ayre For besides those creatures that are bred on the wide earth what an infinite number of fish are thus produced in the vast Seas and waters for mans use and commodity For there is nothing more fruitfull than the Sea Why the sea is fruitfulll with fish because the substance of it is grosse and is full of a vitall heat in all parts In which as many things are bred from seed so a great many of themselves without seed or help of any living creature So all Shell-Fish are first bred from some muddy and slimy moisture and all glib fish as Eels in speciall which afterwards by copulation breed whole sholes Spearing or Groundlins Groundlins very small fish in Holland are bred abundantly from the froth of the Sea when after long drouth rain falls in great quantity For when the Mouths of the Rhine and the Mare are very Salt by the Seas continuall influence especially in Summer those Rivers being supplied with a great deal of rain and watred very much abound excedingly with these small fish who when they grow great do procreate and breed exceedingly Since therefore Nature attempts many strange things whose force by the guift of God is spread every where let no man think it an old Wives dream that some prodigious Creatures are framed in mens bodies since in corrupt rotten wood and many dead things Teredines and many nimble Worms are bred as we see them in Cheese and many other meats in Summer season where Wormes breed in abundance Add to this that from filthy Ulcers and Impostumes pieces of Nails Hair Shels Bones Stones are taken forth that grew from the concretion of putrid humours Impostums send forth rubbish and hair and I have known Worms with tails and little Creatures of strange forms cast up by vomit especially from such as were sick of contagious diseases in whose Urines I have often seen small Creatures to swim like to Ants or especially like to those that in Summer use to role in the dew Goat-worms in Summer bred in dew and none of these persons but was foully peppered with the French Pox. The intent therefore of this discourse is to this purpose that no man should without care cram in foul meats and not well wash'd and cleansed from outward accidents which when Country people neglect they use to be scabby and full of Pushes that itch and to be deformed with many fores and vices of their skins For they are not of so good habit of body and sound constitution nor so comely and ingenious and of such excellent naturall parts nor yet so healthfull generally as some Noble men and Gentlemen are that will suffer no meat to come to their Tables no not the purest White-bread untill the outside and crust of it be finely chipt off and the rest of their provision must be curiously and accurately provided with all decency and cleanlinesse Cleanlinesse in diet is joyn'd to health And this I find no fault with so long as all is done farr from luxury frugally and temperately in respect of diet For great men and Courtiers should have such a manner of diet and Life that all may tend to health comlinesse honesty and unblamable Manners that the splendour of their fortune and prosperity and abundance that God hath given them may not serve for luxury and prodigality but for moderation and temperance The most illustrious Phillip the most powerfull King of Spain and England The prayse of King Phillip and Prince of the Netherlands giveth us an example of this who for his most large endowments of Nature doth represent a divine patterne unto mortalls who hath so many valiant Peers to assist him by whose authority and counsel so many flourishing Kingdoms and so many large Dominions that came to him by succession from his renowned Father Charles the Emperour are governd and preserved CHAP. XLI The force and Nature of the Sun and Moon in causing and raising tempests And next to that what change may be made in the bodies minds and Spirits of men by the outward Ayre By the way whence proceeds the ebbing and flowing of the Sea that is interchangeably twice in the space of a naturall day The effects of the Sun and Moon upon inferiour bodies THe Beams of the Sun and Moon do afford us certain and notdoubtfull signes of fair weather rain and winds and they thereupon represent unto us divers colours either from the scituation of the place and the compasse of the Heavens they are wont to passe or from the Nature of the object or some other matter that staines them which if they would observe well that write Almanacks and deceive the common people and foolish old women with their predictions they would not mistake so often and be deceived nor deceive the credulous people with false hopes For tempests and winds may be undoubtedly foretold by these when they are not farr off and what shall be the condition of the Aire whereby we shall have a plentifull or penurious year and many more rare things which Virgil
is in Capricorn at Berg an hour and half or two hours later at Antwerp and Dort when the Moon inclines to the Equinoctial Westward when the West-winds blow gently about six of the Clock at Mechlin about eight of the clock yet so that the Sea flows in sometimes sooner sometimes later when the weather is calm or the wind blows strongly And when in the space of six hours she moves toward the West she causeth the Sea to ebb and sink down as many hours untill the Moon being gone out of our sight riseth to those that are Antipodes to us for then the Sea flowes again but when the Moon comes to midnight and comes to our hemisphere the flouds fall back again Wherefore the scituation of places must be observed and to what part of the heavens they are inclined and the coasts of the Countries must be regarded and we must fit the course of the Moon rising and setting thereunto For thus it will be easy to know the ebbing and flowing of the water at all places But let no man think the horns of the Moon are to be taken notice of for on that side it hath no operation but we must regard the bunchy and convex part of it which is enlightned by the Sun The aspects of the Moon cause the floud in all places For that part of the Moon that is against the Sun and toward the earth draws the water and fills those Ports and Havens with a flowing water which she directly respects with her beams For the Sea runs that way the light of the Moon drives them Yet let them that are Sailers take notice of this that when the Moon riseth and shews her self first in our hemisphere if the part of the Moon that is enlightned by the Sun send her beams Eastward that in those parts that are Eastward the waters have risen to their height again if the Moon look Southward or Westward in those places the flouds rise and fall in the Eastern parts Wherefore if any man sail from the East or Winter aequinoctial from whence the South-East or East winds blow toward the West countries it will be the time to sail forth at high water when the flouds are greatest to passe into the Lower-Countries As for example From Mechlin Antwerp Dort Berg Breda Bolduc Delph Gand and other places that are scituate farther off it is good to set forth when it is full Sea and the waters begin to fall Again if any man sail from the West Southward or Eastward he must set forth and Sail into the deep at low-water when the Sea is comming in and the flouds begin to come back So that he must alwaies take notice of the Moons motion and to what part of the Heaven she enclines and what Coasts and Ports she respects CHAP. XLII Of the force and nature of Lettice and whom it is good or ill for THose that eat Lettice in sallets often unlesse they eat Rocket or Cresses or Tarragon which is next kind to Snees-wort What corrects the coldnesse of Lettice it will hurt their sight and make them blind for it thickneth and condenseth the visive spirits and troubles the Crystalline humour unlesse you drink wine to correct the force of it The Antients did not eat this at beginning of supper or for the first course but last of all as Martial shews Tell me why Lettice is our first repast In our fore-fathers dayes it was the Last Which I think they did it not without good reason for since it is of a cold and moist nature taken after supper it causeth sleep more effectually and restrains the heat of Wine and hinders drunkennesse by moistning the brain Whether Lettice should be eaten before or after supper But in our daies it is thought best to eat it first at supper For since after a long dinner we have no great stomach to our supper the custome is so soon as we sit down to supper to whet our stomachs with Lettice seasoned with Oyle and Vinegar Also Lettice is good for that if it be carried into the veins before all other meat it cools the heat of the bloud and abates the hot distemper of the Liver and of the Heart so that the immoderate use of it will bridle venereous actions and extinguish the desire of lust as Cucumbers Pompions Purslane and Camphor do Wherefore it must be used more largely by them that would lead a single life and live chastly for this will take away their venereous desires but such as are bound in the bonds of Matrimony may nor totally refuse the use of it because sometimes their brains are dried by too much venery But the coldnesse of it must be corrected with heating hearbs Lettice who it is good for least it weaken the generative seed too much and make it uneffectuall to beget children and altogether unfit for it CHAP. XLIII Of Patience commonly call'd or the great Dock Of the hearb Patience or Monks Rheubarb SInce there are many kinds of Sorrel or Dock two of them specially are fit to be eaten that which is commonly called Sorrel that in Sallets whets the appetite and takes off loathing and that which from its greatnesse is called Horse-dock It is a Pot-hearb with a great top with long broad leaves and the stalk when it is ripe is red and the root is yellow I find this hearb to be of such faculty that if you boyl any flesh or meat with it be they never so old they will be tender and fit to eat For being it is of a slippery moist nature it will soften and temper the hardest Oxe-flesh or old Hens Wherefore the Antients used it often because it will make meats easy of digestion and it loosneth the belly Orage is of the same faculty with it which from the prickly seed is called Spinach and is like to Lampsana Dioscorides speaks of which I think Martial meant when he said Use Lettice and the Mallowes soft And Horace Epod. L. od 3. Fat Olives pulled from the boughs of'th Tree Or sowre Docks that Meadows love Or Mallows that with costive bodies best agree CHAP. XLIV Of the operation of Mans spittle The force and effects of fasting spittle DIvers experiments shew what power and quality there is in Mans fasting spittle when he hath neither eat nor drunk before the use of it For it cures all tetters itch scabs pushes and creeping sores And if venemous little beasts have fastned on any part of the body as hornets beetles toads spiders and such like that by their venome cause tumours and great pains and inflammations do but rub the places with fasting spittle and all those effects will be gone and discussed moreover it kills Scorpions and other venemous creatures or at least hurts them exceedingly For it hath in it a venemous quality and secret poison that it contracts from the foulnesse of the teeth in part and partly from vitious humours For to the mouth and
Jaws fumes rise from these and infect the spittle with a contrary quality Whence it is that sometimes we perceive a salt sowre sweet Sweat and spittle have their forces from the humours or sharp taste in our spittle as there is in sweat also Hence it is that when men are fasting their breath stinks exceedingly and the unsavourinesse of the breath offends all near us that talk with us For some foggy ill smells evaporate and boyl forth of the body as out of some muddy lake and these being of a venemous nature infect the fountains of spittle And this moysture that swims in the mouth and moystneth the tongue and waters our meat is nothing else What spittle is than a flegmatique excrement that ariseth from the stomach from the nutrimental juice received in and flees to the brain and so is sent down to the tongue and Jaws Hence it is that those whose stomachs abound with flegme are alwaies full of spittle in their mouths and is overwet with immoderate moisture but such as are hot about the entrals and dry with a feavorous heat their tongues are not wet at all Who have a dry or moist mouth but crack as the earth doth when it is over-dried and parched by the heat of the Sun Since therefore the qualities and effects of Spittle come from the humours for out of them is it drawn by the faculty of nature as fire draws distilled water from hearbs the reason may be easily understood A simile from distilled hearbs why spittle should do such strange things and destroy some creatures And if the spittle of a sound man be effectuall for many uses that it will not onely destroy many creatures but kills Quicksilver also and fixeth it what shall we think of such that are sick of the Leprosy the Pox and many other contagious diseases I know many that have catcht the small Pox and measils by onely putting their mouths to the cups whereon the spittle of those that were infected did stick by reason of the clamminesse of it and venemous mud that fastneth to the teeth so that for the same cause the bitings of all creatures are dangerous by reason of the contagiousnesse of their spittle except the nerves and muscles be not hurt by it CHAP. XLV Of the use of Milk Beestings Creame The dutch call the first Beest the latter Room also what will keep these from cloddering in the Stomach Milk Who it is good for THe use of Milk is not alike wholsome for all people for those that have cold Stomachs it grows soure in them and fills the body with wind and those that are very hot of temper in them it burns and sends forth stinking vapours and offends the Head And since the nature of Milk is so that it will thicken and be condensed by heat Milk is thickned by heat and melts by cold and melted by cold it follows that it is soonest clottered in a hot Stomach and nothing will hinder this more than Honey and Sugar adding a little Salt to it But since I have known many strangled by clottered Milk coagulated in their Stomachs their breath being stopped when they began to vomit I think some wanton young men and lascivious suiters do very ill who at their afternoon meetings use to stuff themselves with Creame and Biestings and other Milk-meats and drink Wine abundantly with them to the great detriment of their health For Wine makes Milk curdle Wine and milk mingled are naught and become like to Cheese wherewith the Stomach being offended and is not able to concoct it all turnes to corruption and these are the foundations and seminaries of great diseases Milk corrupts Fish So fish and Milk and all soure things mingled with Milk and drenched with Wine cause Scabs and the Leprosy For all things cramb'd in thus promiscuously corrupt and are made subject to putrefaction Those gluttons that when a Cow hath new Calved love Beestings Beestings shall find nothing more hurtfull to man so that Children that within three dayes after they are born do suck their Mothers Milk are very ill by it and onely escape Death For it coagulates and clotters in their bodies and stops the Channells of the blood and the Veins so that nutriments cannot passe fitly and without hurt But these things dissolve Milk and Clottered blood also Cummin-seed Oyxmel and Vineger of Squils Angelica Master-wort CHAP. XLVI Why Gouty people are Lascivious and Prone to venery and as many as lye on their backs and on hard beds Gowty people are very lascivious SUch as have the Joynt-Gout are most commonly Lascivious and lust exceedingly partly because they have been used to it by long custome by the immoderate use whereof they came to have that disease partly because their Nerves are grown stiff and stretched out by it and by lying often on their backs the humours flow to the generative parts They also that ride much or lye along on Ship-boards and lye hard on their backs are very Prone and given much to Venery For the Nerves destinated for mans generation that run to the genitall parts grow hot so that by the agitation and influence of humours the loines are provoked and there is erection made thereby By the same reason if any man hurt or bruise his great Toe of his foot immediately from this effect the groin and cods swell that is that wrinkled cover of the Testicles is in pain by it arising from consent and by reason of the interweaving of Nervs and Veins As if any man puts into a fire that is very hot a pair of Tongues or other iron A simile from Smiths not only the part put into the fire will be red hot but also that part which is farr from the fire grows so hot that it cannot be handled so pain is communicated to the parts that are on the same side and the sickly affect is conveighed to the neighbouring part So from the Stomach Intestins Matrix Spleen Liver the head is affected and when the brain is hurt or troubled with any distemper the mischiefe is derived from thence to the parts that are under it And therefore Mid-wives though they know not the cause of it The generative parts are signs of good health or sicknesse use to search and see the Testicles of Children when they are sick and their privy member by the observation whereof they can judge young men also may perceive certain signes of recovery of death of health or sicknesse For if the cases of the Testicles be loose and feeble and the Cods fall down it is a signe that the naturall faculties are fallen The Testicles hanging down or close up what signs they are and the vitall Spirits that are the props of Life But if these secret parts be wrinkled and raised up and the yard stands stiffe it is a signe all will be well But that the event may exactly answer the praediction we
which because I purposed to handle them with a convenient brevity I have bound them up together in one bundle DIstilled water that we draw from green and fresh hearbs never corrupts because all earthly matter is concocted in them and wasted and there is in it a kind of aereall substance whence it comes that it will endure no boyling For if you set it to the fire to boyl it loseth all its vertue for it being pure and purged there is nothing that can be taken from it and thence it is that it putrefies sooner and grows mouldy on the top than fountain water boyled doth So Ale boyl'd or fountain or pond-water though it be thick and muddy is of a better taste and not so sowre as that which is made of rain and clear water For troubled water being boyled if there be any corruption in it it is boyl'd away and grows better In Corol. Dioscâ—r It is a memorable thing that Hermolaus Barbarus speaks off that water that hath been corrupted seven times and purged again will never corrupt more Because as I think all the earthly substance is taken from it and voided away and it is wholly purged of all its dregs that were the cause of its corrupting So it is observed that that kind of drink the people call spruse Beer at a certain time of the year will grow sowre and afterwards strangely come to its former vigour the same happens in that outlandish wine called Bastard and black Spanish-wine that stains ones hands and napkins and makes all linnen of a deep red colour as the Actian Cherries do which we commonly call Morellen There are two liquours no lesse delightfull than healthfull for mens bodies that is wine within oyle without Wine Oyle the use whereof if it be moderate keeps men in sound health and makes them green in old age But as hard Boots and skins that grow stiff A simile from a skin oyled and are mouldy will grow soft being oyl'd So mens bodies chiefly old men liquoured with wine are made more gentle and not so rigid and froward But oyling and annointing though they are out of use almost with most Nations and the custome is lost yet is it healthfull for the bodies of both young and old people for they will condense bodies that the outward ayr and winds cannot penetrate into them or else they serve to loosen them that they may not be smothered by fumes within Also the skin anointed with oyl resists poyson that if any man set on causticks to eat the skin Oyl resists poyson and first annoint it with oyl he shall lose his labour for corroding medicaments applied will not stick nor penetrate Also taken inwardly it dulls the acrimony of poyson and will not let it enter the veins but casts it forth by vomit Oyl powred on any liquor preserves it Oyl powred on wine or any other liquor doth preserve it that it shall neither grow dead nor corrupt for it drives away the Ayre and shuts out all vapours that might corrupt it Amber draws unto it straw and all dry light matter but if they be anointed with oyl it will not touch them Amber whereupon it doth drive off Basil from it So a Loadstone smeered with Garlick will not draw Iron because there is a fat substance in Garlick that blunts the vertue of it that it will not cleave so much to it Cucumbers desire water but refuse Oyl Cucumbers and Gourds being they are full of moysture and are fed by it they do so avoid and refuse oyl that being put to it they will fall back and contract themselves For all plants sprinkled with oyl will corrupt To make a Vine fruitfull If Vines grow barren and bring forth nothing but leaves and unprofitable boughs if you water it with sharp old urin it will grow fruitfull for being choked with too much moisture it being thus heated and the superfluous moisture consumed it will bear fruit abundantly the same is performed by wine-lees powred to the root of it But our Country-men do very ill who make a great pit about the root of the Vine Soot is very hurtfull and fill it with soot of a Chimney to make it bear fruit for though soot seems to have a fat substance in it yet by its hot burning quality it destroyes the vine and makes it wither by its corroding quality The Apothecaries call Clary Centrum Galli Clary the seed of it hath an attractive vertue and draws forth chaff dust and other things that fall into peoples eyes For that put into the eyes is roled about in them every way and draws the humour to it and discusseth blindnesse and comes out swoln and covered as it were with a thin membrane But the plant it self bruised will draw forth thorns and splinters and will hasten hard and difficult child-bearing when women cannot be delivered in time put into wine it rejoyceth the mind and drives away sorrow and provokes lust yet taken too much by its strong sent it makes the head ake The decoction of Mallows and marsh Mallows will make chapt rugged hands smooth To make the hands smooth but the seeds of fenigreec and Linseed will do it better by their oyly substance With us men make lees of oyl by bruising the Linseed and pressing forth the oyl they are made four-square Cakes that are fit to make Cattell fat and if you steep a piece of this in rain-water and wash your hands with it it will take away sensibly all scabs of the skin and make the parts smooth and delicate also the dregs of Linseed and Lees of oyl will make smooth and comely the flagging breasts and wrinkled forehead To make the forehead and wrinkled breasts smooth and white if you add to it a little Gum Arabick and Tragacanthum and Mastick with a little Camphir that will help also red eyes and such eye lids as are bleared with drinesse and such as are chapt and will restore them to their former comelinesse Why some do not thirst in Feavers It seems a very strange matter to some people to see some men in hot feavers and their whole bodies allmost burnt up with them which yet are not thirsty at all but the cause is because the heat diffuseth it self to the external parts and sticks not in the heart nor in any principall part whereby sweat breaking forth and the heart being ventilated and that vapourous heat being discussed which did possesse the internall bowels they cease to be thirsty but contrarily they whose heat doth not break forth to the outward skin but lies inward secretly they are extream thirsty though outwardly no signs of heat appear and these kind of Feavers are the most dangerous of all The white of an Egg beaten and mingled with quick-lime will sodder broken glasses To sodder and will so glew together all earthen ware that they cannot come assunder by reason of their clammy
some cause of corruption and inflammation to the bloud But in Winter it causeth extream cold weather East South-East is most cold in Winter that is commonly attended with snow and bitter frosts so that such as go forth when this wind blows can hardly defend their noses faces eyes cheeks from the piercing and deadly cold of it and the same force is ascribed by some to North-East wind The nature of the North-East wind that is a very fierce blast and differs something from the East South-East The South-East wind is next the South which in Summer for the most part is calm though sometime it not onely troubles the Ayre with clouds but the minds of men also For this wind being turbulent makes the mind melancholly but it lasts not long for it is no sharp bitter wind to stir the humours as some winds are But as the waves of the sea by the violence of the winds A simile from the waves of the Sea tossed with the winds swell and are lifted up so in mans body the humours are moved and rage by the same force the vapours and sumes whereof carried upwards trouble the mind and make it peevish froward angry hard and untractable The winds distemper mans mind also that whilst that distemper of the affections last you shall hardly obtain any petition from those men especially from women or covetous old men who as they are jealous and suspitious they think that men craftily come to delude them Opportunity to be taken and therefore they will repell them with great incivility and give them ill language unlesse they come very seasonably and in good time that is the chiefest of all things For those that take opportunity by the forelock Do prove their passage Virgil Aeneid L. 4. and consider when It 's time to speak and hold their peace agen Since therefore there are many things that are apt to change mans condition especially the concourse of the winds and unstable motions of the Ayre can do it by whose violence not onely our bodies but our animal spirits suffer wrong and the mind it self is somewhat distemper'd that as the Ayre and winds vary so is it calm or troubled though the diet and Intemperance in meats and drinks is of great concernment to constitute the habit of the body and to foster our affections The South Wind is unstable The South wind amongst them all is most hurtfull and offensive to mans health being by nature and operation hot and moist For when that wind blows the rain wets the earth abundantly What diseases the South wind causeth whence it is that our bodies and humours are soon corrupted and Catarrhs and defluxions fall upon our throats vocal artery and Lungs Whence arise Poses hoarsnesse Coughs Epilepsies Vertigoes Lethargies Apoplexies Blear-eyes deafnesse noise in the Ears and many more diseases that scatter every where when the South-wind blows I have observed oft that when the South-wind blew long The South wind causeth abortion great bellied women did miscarry and by an immoderate flux arising to have been in danger of their lives For when the parts of the body that serve to carry the burden begin to flag namely the ligaments Nerves Muscles Membranes Flaps Cauls and the Matrix from too great moisture begins to grow slippery and to be dilated by degrees it cannot be that nature should carry the burden to the full time especially when after a dry time moist weather falls in which as it is not hurtfull for dry and cholerick people The South wind not ill for cholerick people so is it extream ill for women and children and flegmatique constitutions and such as dwell in boggy and fenny lands The South wind naught for flegmatique people Hence Infants and children are troubled with an implacable cough the Low-dutch call it Kindthoest that comes forth with a kind of Hiccop and will give them no time so much as to take their breath For when they cough continually and painfully and never stop at all A cough ill from liquid humour yet all their straining is in vain nor do they prevail a whit so that their breath is stopt and they are ready to be strangled and all their Pipes of breathing being shut A cough that strangleth children their breath that goes and comes will come forth behind and break out not without great danger of their lives if you do not hold their buttocks close pressed together with both your knees that so the breath that strives to come out behind the wrong way may be forced to return back and come forth at the wind pipes as it should This kind of cough comes by a thin fluxible humour that doth not clot and grow together but falls into the receptacles of the Lungs so that the faculty and power of nature cannot cast up so moist an excrement that is not compacted together A simile from a moist running matter For as a drop of water or any other liquor powred on a table doth not cleave together but runs all abroad so that you cannot take it up with the tops of your fingers so the humours falling from the head upon the throat the vocal artery and Lungs and fibres cannot be taken away though nature by a continuall cough strives to drive it forth yet all in vain and yet it is so thin that it cannot be touched but it will slip away also grosse flegme that sticks to the Lungs like Birdlime troubles men as much as thin matter doth but it doth not endanger to strangle us Wherefore it is the South winds that are the cause of these diseases and inconveniencies in our health and are the seminary of many more infirmities For the humours being melted and flowing up and down The South wind causeth the joynt-Gout to move the Gout and joynt aches are stirred up whereby all the parts of our bodies being afflicted they become unapt to perform their duties But as for the internall forces and offices of the mind the mind when the South wind blows The South wind hurts the mind is feeble stupid dull dejected and cast down and sleepy that she goes drowsily about all her businesse And this force puts forth it self in inanimate and dead things For we see that when the South wind blows all things in the house are moist and flagging Linnen Clothes Sheets cover-lids blankets Paper skins pictures Geographical The South wind over-clouds all and the North clears all up and the rest of the houshold stuff Also Lakes and Moorish places Rivers Ponds Seas are muddy and troubled and dark But when the Northwinds blow all things are clear lightsome pure and cleansed that you may see the bottom and all things that are on the ground under water The like happens in our bloud and humours the dregs whereof swim up when the South wind blows and darken the mind but when the East wind or West blow they hide
choak the seed and Plants if they be not carefully pulled up by the roots Next to these is the North wind Italians call it Tramontano bending a little towards the East North North-East and North-East holds the middle place between the Summer or Solstitial Sun-rising But East North-East is environed by the North-East The nature of the Northern Wind. The North wind is by nature and effect cold and dry commonly clear yet sometimes rainy but it abates the violence of North-West and of vehement Southern winds For when they have raged as much as they can and are almost weary they commonly conclude in a North-wind so that presently the Ayre grows calm and the tempest ends wherefore the Inhabitants desire onely that those winds might be changed into this for if they turn toward the South the Tempest grows more raging and collects new forces whence it is that many great Ships and vessels are endangered The North and South winds cause Catarrhs by a diverse reason and almost in the very havens entrance and fall upon shelves and Quick-sands and fords where they are broken in pieces to the Merchants incredible damage and losse of his Merchandise Wherefore the North wind is not onely more healthfull than the North-West or South-West but also more calm and more mild in raising of tempests though in winter sometimes it be fierce and blow violently whence it causeth Catarrhs Pleuresies The North and South winds cause Catarrhs by a diverse reason Quinses but by a different reason from the South wind For when the South-wind blows the humours are melted and dissolve of themselves and so run from the head to the parts that are under it But when the North wind blows because the Muscles are thereby bound and so are the Membranes flegme is pressed forth as when we crush a sponge of water between our fingers A simile from pressing of a Sponge clinching our hand together to wring it our But what time soever of the year these winds blow they make the body cold they stop the pores they dissipate contagions of the Ayre and keeping in natural heat they help concoction The Southern winds by dissolving the frame of the body and affecting the limbs with faintnesse and idlenesse make men sleepy dull slothfull nauseating and unfit to perform any duties or function But the North winds as Hippocrates saith L. 3. Aph. make men active lightsome merry lively stirring and fit for all employments especially such as are of a more moist temper for they better fulfill the gifts and functions of Nature and all things proceed more healthfully with them as a moist state and condition of the Ayre is most wholesome for dry withered bodies South and North winds the chief in moving the Ayre For so they are the lesse chill'd with cold or burnt with heat Since therefore these two winds North and South and those that border upon them do constitute almost in all Europe the yearly changes I think that these two should be chiefly regarded For no wind through the whole course of the year blows more constantly For one of them having done blowing the other begins and keeps its station yet the other winds I spake of before keep their turns but they sooner leave off and give out Wherefore we must have respect to these two winds not onely for preservation of our health and driving away inconveniencies but when we undertake a voyage by Sea or land exposed to the open Ayre For I have found this by long experience that the North-wind rising in the night will not last long and stand nor keep that point for three dayes together which Aristotle confirms and Homer shews whil'st he taxed the errours of Ulisses The North Wind for three nights doth never blow When the North wind lasts not very long The reason is because it hath but a few exhalations and little plenty of matter for to subsist by and to blow longer For the motion and agitation of the Ayre that makes the wind and receives from it force and augmentation is feeble weak thin small that it wants forces by help whereof it might proceed and endure For as in diseases and Feavers A simile from the fit of an Ague the abundance of humours makes the disease longer and the fit more violent and lasting so a violent agitation of the Ayre and a frequent and thick concourse of exhalations and vapours that come forth of the earth exasperate the winds and make them both violent and long lasting A simile from the fires fuel And as the fire is presently put out where there wants dry iâ—â—l and wood to feed it So the North wind rising in a dark tempestuous night or about the twilight of the evening vanishâ—th presently and leaves its station and thence it is that experienced Marriners will not easily trust the North wind at the first rising and will attempt nothing till three dayes be over Pilots and Ship-Masters are most observant of the winds and yet they will trust the South wind the first day it riseth that it will continue and blow a long time and this the Italian Pilots and Masters of ships make a Proverb of The first South wind the third dayes North wind Andreas ab Aurea an expert Pilot. Andreas ab Aurea being addicted to that opinion who was Admiral of the Caesarian Fleet amongst the Genuenses gave this counsell to Charls the fist who was Emperour to take notice of that For when he intended an expedition into Africa and the Emperour thought at the first appearance of the North wind to go against the Morts Andreas ab Aurea his counsell to Charls the Emperour Andreas admonished them that the Galleys must not stir nor the Fleet adventure to Sea unlesse the North wind had continued blowing three daies but if the South wind blew to Launch forth presently at the first sight without any delay if all things were ready and the Navy fitted to set to sail for there was no fear that the South wind would presently give over and not last long being commonly supported by thick clouds and vapours and compassed with grosse darknesse that give hopes that it will be constant and continue a long time The North-East wind and its nature The North-East is next the East at very little distance on the right hand it is not so violent as the North wind or so loud nor is the cold so piercing and extream because it is nearer the Sun but it heaps and wraps up the Clouds How the North-East draws clouds and draws them to it because they being driven by meeting with some mountains or clouds they flye back again which I have oft observed in Rivers and flouds and flowing of the Ocean it self wherein the floud runs not in a constant channel but on both sides of the shores and banks it turns back and is retorted the course of it being diverted and turned on the right
thin and die The Vine loves the Olive But the Vine loves to grow near the Olive and will be content to have it engrafted into it desiring to joyn with it The Oak hates the Olive But the Oak and Olive Tree are at very great ods and hate one the other so much that if one touch the boughs of the other they will grow crooked and turn to the contrary way The Baytree an enemy to the Vine So the Vine endures not to grow near to the Baytree because this is shady and by its heat hinders the growing of it So is it affected to Coleworts Cabbige hates the Vine that suck up the juice of the earth and the Vine wanting that dries and withers for both these plants cover after moysture So some plants are delighted with the affinity and nearnesse of some other Plants and are refreshed by the mutual embracements of their boughs and tender stalks others are averse and withdraw themselves and will by no means unite Pitch is taken out with Oyl So some things that are rosiny and of a fat substance agree well hence it is that Pitch is washed out with Oyl if the Garments be Silk or Velvet or Fluwel or Skarlet Purple or Chamlet Butter and Oyl take out dirt or the most precious dyes that are stayned by it For all these kinds of stains and filth are taken off and made clean with butter or Oyl so handsomely that it cannot be perceived So soap wherewith linnen is wash't is made of Oyl How Soap is made fat Soot rant Butter and the ashes of the Pitch-Tree And as there is so great Concord between so many kinds of Plants that they will embrace one the other so amongst hearbs of the same species there is observed to be a difference of the Sex Sever in plants For there is a conjunction between them and a kind of matrimonial society so that these plants growing one near the other will grow the more beautifull and both their leaves and fruit will be more gracefull and they will decay and grow lesse and sometimes dy when they are taken asunder And hence it is that some plants are called the Male What plant is the Male and which the Female others the Female the Females are those that have lesse force and vertue and are full of a cold and unfruitfull moysture Whence it comes that they will bear flowers in their season but for want of heat and by reason of their debility they bear no fruit Berries Kernels or seed Wherefore they that after their flowers are fallen yeild no such thing Plants bearing no fruit but some empty and vain rudiment of fruit which for want of heat and impotency of nature they cannot bring to perfection are called Female Plants But those are called Males that are more beautifull and comely and bear great leaves and boughs full of them and grow up very gallantly and bring their fruit and seed to maturity whereby they may be propagated and grow again which thing is denied to the other sex unlesse perhaps by the nearnesse of the Male and gentle embracements it grow fruitfull and being wedded with it swels forth into seed and fruit In plants there is a venereal affection L. 3. c. 4. The natural force of the Palm Tree which Pliny saith is done in the Palm Tree For the Female by the vapour and influence of the Male conceives and brings forth fruit the Female bowing down her top and branches towards the Male and fawning on it and when the Male is cut down she grows barren therefore the Arabians say that the Females will not bear without the Males the flowers and down of them and sometimes the powder and dust being strewed upon the Females For the like happens to these plants A simile from Hens and Females that want the Male. as doth to hens that will lay Egs without the Cock but these Egs will never bring any Chicken though the Hens sit on them never so long The reason is not unlike in women in whose capacities of the Matrix Women will bring forth Lumps without form by a mixture of seed and bloud flowing thither sometimes lumps are heaped together without any mans cooperation but because mans help was wanting and the efficient cause that affords life and form and vertue was not used all that masse and heap is without form and life Wherefore plants that have a vegetative faculty no lesse than animals that are bred of a moist and slippery seed do send a generative force and vital spirit one into the other and enjoy a mutual copulation and that by a secret consent of nature and a hidden inspiration that they have from the heat of the Ayre and the Sun and the generative spirit of the world The spirit of the world makes all things fruitfull whereby plants do flourish are fostered do bud are quickened and enlivened and conceive and bring forth seed and fruit which vertue is infused into the world and all the parts of it whereby all things are continued and subsist in a constant order L. 3. c. 9. Wherefore Theophrastus and other searchers into the natures of plants have wisely divided them into Males and Females by the reason that some are fruitfull and bear seed but others are barren and bring forth none So Piony called the Male the crooked bladders and husks opening by degrees Piony seed very comely to look on is very beautifull here with black shining seeds there with red and Scarlet colour'd and it refresheth the eyes with a present efficacy in curing the Epilepsie the Female wants this comelinesse So the Female Mandragora is either barren or bears very small fruit But the Male bears a lovely pleasant and sweet sented Apple Cantic 7. like to the yelk of a Hens Egg by the enticement whereof Rachel being allured Gen. 30. suffered Leah to lie with the Patriarch Jacob whereby as some Ecclesiastical writers suppose she might be made fruitful Augustine on Genesis But I can see no natural reason for it nor is it likely that Mandragora should cure barrennesse since it cools extreamly unlesse it chance to be good for a hot fiery and torrefied Matrix Whether Mandrugora cause conception which being unfit to conceive as is also the Matrix that is exceeding moist as Hippocrates saith may be helped by and brought to its due temper or else because it is of a sleepy quality it may help the retentive faculty of the womb to hold the seed We observe the same distinction of sex in the Bay-tree Corneil-tree Olive blew Violet Oak and many more whereof such as are called the Males are fruitfull with flowers fruit and seed but the Females are barren and bear nothing Also amongst wild plants and Garden plants that are cultivated by mans industry we alwaies see such a difference yet so as that the wild plants which come up of themselves
words in treating of the motions of conscience because this argument be longs to Preachers and professours of Divinity whose duty it is and by vertue of their office they are bound to pacifie and settle mens consciences and to free them from all feares But since these affections do overthrow mans health that proceed from the stings of conscience and the Spirits and humours vitiated do afford nutriments for it it is the Physitians part also to remove these perturbations out of mens minds that those being taken away the body may be in perfect health For it it a laborious and very difficult matter to restore the body that is fallen sick where the conscience is polluted with the spots of sinns where the Organs of the senses and the Spirits vitall and animall are vitiated And it is no lesse troublesome for a Church-man to give comfort to the soul when the body is full of vitious humours for by reason of the narrow consent and union of both parts the vices of the mind fly upon the body and the diseases of the body The sympathy of the Soul and body are carryed to the Soul As we have for example all mad people and such as are melancolique or frantique such as rave or dote or are drunk Apoplectick paralytick forgerfull stupid Lunatick and many more whose sick distempers proceed from the distemper of the brain wherefore we must carefully look to the head which is the seat of the mind and use all meanes to preserve both parts in health CHAP. XXII How many months doth a Woman go with Child and which must be accounted a seasonable birth By the way of the framing of the body of man and in how many dayes or months the Child is made perfect and comes to live In which narration all things are handled more accurately because from hence bitter quarrells arise not onely betwixt marryed people but others also that use unlawfull copulalation SInce there use oft times great contentions and quarrells to arise amongst many people concerning the time that the woman goes with Child and some complain that are jealous of their Wives that they have formerly marryed to keep them company that they have not gone their full time to be delivered so that somtimes they suspect that they have play'd the Whores and that some other men have secretly made use of their bodies I thought it not amisse to write something to this purpose and the rather because Lawyers that end controversies referr the judgment of this matter to Physitians and leave the resolution of it to them to decide So Paul The judgment of inspection is referred to Physitians Digest Tit. 2. Of the state of Man the Counsellour lib. 19 Respons It is now a received truth that a perfect Child may be born in the seventh month by the Authority of the most learned man Hippocrates and therefore we must believe that one born in lawfull matrimony in the 7th month is a lawfull Child Gellius handleth this argument but rather after mens opinions than according to the truth of the businesse or from natural reason who supposeth that there is no certaine time set of bearing Children and that from the Authority of Pliny who saith that a woman went 13 months with Child L. 7. c. 5 A Child at seven months is full of life But as for what concernes the 7th month I know many marryed people in Holland that had Twins who lived to extreame old age their bodies being lusty and their minds quick and lively Wherefore their opinion is foolish and of no moment who think that a Child at seven months is imperfect and not so long lived and that a Child cannot be borne perfect in all parts untill nine months be past So of late there arose a great conflict amongst us A History of a Child born and it was cruell and bloody and a most deadly and desperate fight by reason of a Maid whose chastity was violated that had no ill Name or doubtfull report but she had a weak head and a feeble judgment and these of all others are soonest overcome and do not so valiantly and corragiously resist and stand against either threats of flattering inticements other wise than some fierce clamorous maids use to do who will bite and scratch and compell one that shall assault their chastity to forsake them But in this Tragedy the conflict grew again more violent and bitter because the Father who was reported to have gotten her with Child or to have ravished her denyed the fact which his enemies charged upon him so bitterly that he might be torturd and racked till he should confesse it but he confidently avouched A deniall of a rape charged upon one that he was ready to forswear it upon the Bible he himselfe being wont to be President in judgment and to handle sacred matters that he never so much as entred her or broke the membrane of her Virginity nor penetrated into her body Wherefore he would by no means be taken for the Father of the Child or that it should be accounted his amongst other arguments he alleaged for his innocency this was one that the Child was born in the 7th month and hardly so late for the month was rather then new begun than ended and all the parts of it were perfect except the nails which we observe sometimes to be wanting in a Child born in nine months especially where great bellyed women use salt fish too lavishly or lick salt as that sex is most prone to desire salt and sharp things When a Child wants nails Wherefore he strove to prove it was not a Child of seven months but nine months and that by making that account of the months and by observing the reason of time they must seek for another Father who had formerly lain with her and got her with Child But when the Judges gave Judgment that the Infant should be viewd and searched by the Physitians a Midwife being called some honest women one was a noble woman who was the Mother of 19. Children and who severall times had been delivered at seven months and the seven months not fully ended They all pronounced not examining the cause of the fact nor respecting the Father whether they should reckon this man or some other to be the Father that this was a Child born in seven months that was carried in the Mothers belly 27 weeks and if the Mother could have gon nine months the child's parts and limbs would have been more firme and strong and the structure of the body would be more compact and fast and not so loose For the brest bone that â—yeth as a buckler or fence over the heart the Dutch call it Borstplate and the sword-like gristle that lies over the stomach were higher than naturally they should be and did not lye down plain but crooked and sharp pointed like the brest of young Chickens that are hatched at the beginning of Spring or