Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	body_n	disease_n	humour_n	3,248	5	8.1860	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A60272	Zenexton ante-pestilentiale. Or, A short discourse of the plague its antidotes and cure, according to the placets of the best of physicians, Hippocrates, Paracelsus, and Helmont. By W. Simpson, Philo-Medico-Chymic.	Simpson, William, M.D.	1665 (1665)	Wing S3839; ESTC R221491	29,432	107

length they worm out the life this like a nimble Arsenical combustible Mineral Sulphur sets roughly upon the vital Taper and with a quick malignant Blast extinguisheth it and that as it were it devours ore operto 2. This contagious Ferment is conceived either from within or from without the body from within as when an Idea of fear impresseth it● character upon some more then ordinary putrid excrementitious matter residing in the Intestines or in the ultimate digestion and the Idea clothes its self with corporiety in the putrid excrement of the body and the putrid matter becomes spiritful in the Idea and both together become by irritating and invigorating one another a fermental poyson which makes its on-set upon the vital Archeus entring the lists of contention therewith and by this virulency that they have one wrought the other into it becomes contagious so that every spark and vibration of this fermental fire retains the Idea and platform of the whole pestiferous contagion Vnica prava pecus c. For though one who is infected with this pernicious and most-what mortal Disease doth infect another yet doth it rage never awhit the less in the first nor is it in the second or he who is infected at the second hand any thing less though but a spark of the first or original so that every vibration though as to conception never so little of a fermental contagion retains the seed and that the whole platform of the Disease it self inasmuch as every ferment is as an Imp or Scion of a Fruit-tree which hides in it self the image of the whole Tree and wants but time and the conspiring of seasons Art having Nature for its ground-work to shew forth the Idea of the same Tree it was taken from both as to leaves flowers and fruit so that seeds are small in bulk even scarce imaginable and yet these according to the appointment of God in Nature have ferments annexed to them whereby the Idea's of things assume to themselves the elemental water for a body wherein they display the lively images of what lay dormant and not perceivable before in their minute corpuscles of Seed All which solves us this Medical Phaenomenon viz. How it comes to pass that those who most fear having the small Pox spotted Feaver and such like diseases which have a degree of virulency in them and therefore are a kind of Pest in an inferior manner how such I say who are most afraid are the soonest infected as I knew a Physician who had such an inbred fear against the small Pox that he would scarce if at all venture into a house where any was troubled with that disease and yet for all his curiosity of avoiding plates was snatch'd with it at length even in the flower of his years and ●ied I say it appears to me from what is laid down afore what may ●asily loose this knot and that is The Idea of fear or terror may so work upon an excrement even of any of the digestions for every digestion has its way of separating the impure from the pure which is nutrimental as to cause that excrement yet to degenerate further even to a putredness and in that ●ntred matter the Idea becomes corporeal and the putrid matter in the Idea becomes active and pestiferous and both become fermental and so work upon the blood and spirits defiling them with that inherent inquination and spreading Miasm whereby the vital flame burns dimly and at length becomes through the prevalency of the fermental Miasm quite extinct Hence it also appears that every Disease that has any thing of a venenum or venome in it as all manner of malignant Feavers are also fermental and therefore apt to propagate themselves by contagion o● infection some more some less according to the degrees of the conceived virulency And as the noble Helmont saith whom I confess to have given the greatest light to these conceptions that every Disease as other natural Beeings are constituted of an efficient and a material cause which two make up the complexion and essence of a Disease as well as of other positive Beeings for every Disease saving some casuall obstructions which may also fore-run other more complex Diseases has a root or beginning either in the digestions liquid juyces of the body as blood and other nutritive humors spirits or solid parts and after that a growth or spreading into branches or symptoms which carry along with them the Idea of the efficient and procatarctick or irritating cause which was forg'd in the Minera morbi so that the symptoms are proportionate to the efficient and bears the badges thereof as receiving its signature therefrom even as the fruit of a tree is answerable to the Idea lodging in the root a Pear-tree bears the Idea of the whole both in the root and in every Scion and the fruit thereof is Pears answerable to specifick difference of it from other trees and fruit For the outward natural life of the body if considered as in health and its integrity is as a flourishing Tree that puts forth grows florid and fruitful Which has all the digestions in right frame every one in their order and all its organs depurated and free from obstructions and offending sordes the blood freely circulating with its crimson hue in its own twisted Meanders of veins and arteries the motion of all the parts brisk and lively and all conspiring in that one point of co-incidence the health and flourishing of the body But if the seeds of Diseases as commonly through the evil access in nature they do become sown and grown up together with the life then they break the former harmony of health and life and shoot forth branches or symptoms answerable to their seeds or roots which disturb the oeconomy of the natural digestions and pervert the order and method of nature and at length subvert the whole frame of the Microcosmick fabrick and that much the sooner if the inseminated morbid seeds prove acute as in all sorts of common Feavers venomous fermental and contagious as in small Pox spotted and camp-Feaver and all other malignant Feavers the greatest of which the Plague these presently put to flight the vital forces and strangle Nature with her own cords by baffling the digestions and stifling the vital powers As from within the body so likewise from without may that unwelcom guest take ●nne which appears by the many ways that contagious Disease may arrest the body as for example the pestilent odor may lurk in old rags garments paper sweepings of houses stone-walls or any other body whose texture renders it capable of retaining those contagious Effluvia's which rebound either from infected places or persons and for ought I know even in the body of common Salt it self may the pestilent odor reside because that Salt in its coagulation acquires an impure halicuous sordes whereby it exasperates the Scurvy and may be retentive of a malignant fracedo or contagious hogoo

in mad people cannot better be rooted forth than by the super-inducing of a more powerful Idea which of all the Idea's the Archeus is impress'd with that of Fear seizeth the most deeply and so rooteth out those who are more loosly implanted Therefore such persons though some kind of madnesses more than others are curable most probably and not only so but has been found experimentally by almost drowning of them in water keeping them so long under water as that they but hardly escape with their lives and so they lose those morbid venenal and madling Idea's by the great Idea of Fear which furpriz'd the Archeus lest it should forthwith be destroyed which makes it quit those former and more sleightly impressed Characters By which means the Archeus sometimes gets quit of some Ideal Diseases characterized in the very spirit of life as the Gout sometimes cured by a sudden fright as that instance of a Sow invited by the smell of a Pultiis laid to a Gouty mans feet she endeavouring to take her prey threw him and frighted him out of his Disease as the learned and ingenious Esquire Boyle in his experimental Philosophy makes mention occasionally So sometimes an Ague has been known cured by throwing the party upon the access of the Paroxisme into a deep water whereby as in the former the Archeus being impress'd with a strong Idea of Fear le ts go all those inferior and looslier hanging Idea's and so returns to its primitive simplicity For the fewer Idea's the Archeus is amuz'd with especially of those careful and perplexing ones the more quiet free and calm it is from troubles and diseases I remember to the confirmation of what I have said a pretty Story out of Helmont in his Demens Idea where he mentioneth something remarkable that he was an eye-witness of which was of an old man naked and fastned with ropes in the Ship and weights to his feet at the Stern asking what that uncoth sight meant One of the Mariners told him he so bound was a Hydrophobus being bitten of a mad Dog and therefore fearful of the water which that madness brings along with it He stood to see the Experiment they hois'd up the man on height and let him fall suddenly down fastened in ropes that he could not be carried away into the Sea and kept him under water for the space of Miserere which they repeated twice more for the space of Salutationis Angellicae then rowl'd forth the water out of his body he reviv'd and was cured of his madness Also of a Carpenter who from some horrid Spectra's was struck mad by chance broke his bands and leap'd into a Ditch was drawn forth for a dead Carkass but reviv'd and liv'd eighteen years after free from madness of which manner of cure he made several trials himself and they were always cured unless that some were drawn forth too soon through fear of death other passages he hath that might further illustrate the present Theme but that I hast Now the same reason that salves these Difficulties how these Ideal venenal Characters which have real Malady either of mind or body hanging upon them are rais'd forth by the intervening of more powerful Idea's of another stamp which center so deeply into the Spirit as above all that of Fear as that it blots out all other pre-existent diseased Idea's I say the same reason comparing efficient causes gives us light to our present inquiry of a Zenexton that may powerfully both blot out the conceived Idea's of Fear and prevent the impressions of the same which is the efficient of Pestilential Diseases The ingenious and quick-sighted Van-Helmont saith That there is an Ingenit or in-bred Idea of hatred in a Toad against a man which if it be exasperated by hanging them up in sight becomes so highly exalted in its own venom as that it 's able to root out another pre-existent Idea of Fear in the humane Archeus being first approximated by a mummial Ferment to act upon our Archeus wherein are impressed all kinds of Idea's some having deeper rooting than others The manner of preparing them he had from the famous Butler of Ireland the same as had the highly graduated Stone of Salt which cured most diseases by a sleight touching of the tip of the Tongue therewith or by dipping it in Salet-oyl a spoonful wherein it was but dipt being poured into a bottle of more Oyl made it all become a Medicine for all or most outward diseases who as Helmont relates cured some thousands of the Plague in London to his knowledg He commanded Helmont to take a great Toad in an After-noon in June to hang him up neer the fire-place and to place a waxen Platter underneath and after three days it vomited up Insects viz. moving Flies their wings shining with a green color which done he told him that now he had enough Mecine to cure 40000 infected with the Plague he promised to shew him the hinge of the matter but being banished presently after he did not therefore Helmont was left to make Experiments of what he knew He took therefore those rejected sordes and together with the exiccated Cadaver wrought them into Trochy's which he used happily both for the preventing as also the cure of the Plague he orders them to be old Toads whose eyes abound with white Worms and are almost wholly transform'd into Worms these he commands to be hung at the left brest which both drive away contagion and being bound to the infected place draws forth the poyson Now the ground of this Medicine he supposeth thus viz. That the in-bred Idea of hatred in the Toad is by hanging in the sight of a man so exasperated against the humane Archeus as that it becometh a stronger impression than that in-bred Idea of Fear in us and therefore being determin'd to act upon our Archeus by the intervening of a mummial Ferment roots out the pre-existent Idea of Fear and the consequents therefore all contagious Ferments For as the primitive cause of the Plague is a frightful Idea of terror in the Archeus which it may conceive in it self though we know not thereof as the Archeus of him that is offended at the presence of such or such an object though the person himself neither sees nor knows its presence so the curative Idea must be such as may also reach the Archeus so that the peccant Idea may be blotted forth just as in the foregoing instances I hinted That is that as the humane Archeus is subjugated and brought under bondage by the foreign Idea's of some toxical Plants and inveterate Ferments of Animals as of Napellus and the Tarantula at whose whistle it danceth and is not at liberty to stand in its own calmness without the assistance of some counter Idea which in Nature one is always set against another So likewise in this Disease the efficient being Ideal I mean that of Fear which suddenly catching hold of a contagious Ferment wandering