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
A86183	Deliramenta catarrhi: or, The incongruities, impossibilities, and absurdities couched under the vulgar opinion of defluxions. The author, that great philosopher, by fire, Joh. Bapt. Van Helmont, &c. The translator and paraphrast Dr. Charleton, physician to the late King.	Helmont, Jean Baptiste van, 1577-1644.; Charleton, Walter, 1619-1707.	1650 (1650)	Wing H1398; Thomason E601_6; ESTC R202434	67,180	88

Schools concerning the use of the Midrife confirmed by 8. Arguments 47. 7. Conclusions ensuing thereon 48. Why the remedies of Physicians are inefficacious and barren 49 That the means vulgarly used for the prevention and restraint of Catarrhs are meer fopperies and dreams worthy onely the heads of old women 50. Galen wholly ridiculous in his Books of the conservation of health 51. The Ignorance of the Schools right worthy our pitty and tears 52 The dissection of a living Dog hath deceived the Schools 53. A new Error concerning Lohochs or Lambativ medicaments 54. They depend on the supposition of a Falsity 55. Some probations 56. Whence the delusion of Catarrhs was first introduced 57. The refutation of an unreasonable and wild persuasion 58 What that is which imposeth upon our sense under the delusive disguise of a Destillation 59. What the second and succeeding matter 60. Mens ignorance of the Latex or fountain o● serous humors hath been the basis to the opinion of Catarrhs 61. Preoccupation 62. The torture of night 63. The inconstancy of Paracelsus 64. Those liquid parts which are not yet made communicants of vitality in our bodies hold no correspondence with the starrs 65. The marrow not accountable amongst the liquid parts of the body SEasonable it is for us now to declare that the large Catalogue of Diseases imputed to a destillation of Rheume from the head even to the extremity of the toes without any obstacle impeding the descent is an old wives fable invented by the common adversary of mankind on purpose lest the Causes of Diseases being known their Remedies might at the same time be revealed However it may be yet at lest is it hence manifested that the Schooles are even to this very day seduced by the errors of the Gentiles in the point of the Generation of Rheume its defluction manner way matter means places and organs as also of its Revulsion and Remedies For false and absurd must that superstructure be which is founded on an absurd and impossible Principle For which reason the vain and ridiculous hope which is erected upon Cauteries and Fontanels is in like manner staggered and ruined as I shall in convenient place demonstrate Nature herselfe is the sole Aesculapius of diseases and the Physician no more but her Adjutant according to that worthy Maxime of Hippocrates But the sense of that relates onely to such diseases which nature by her own single power usually cureth But when she hath been so fataly foyled that she cannot by her own strength arise again to maintain the conflict the Physician elected by the immense benignity of the Almighty Lord of Nature and in whose balance all diseases carry the same weight i. e. are equaly curable such is he who hath among a multitude of others of the same order obtained some one Vniversal Medicine remains no longer her servant but is become her Interpreter Rector and very potent Lord Let the name of my Lord Jesu be exalted to eternity who ever vouchsafeth his munificence to Little ones abjected in their own humility For the Nature of a sick man being the chiefe receiver of Morbifick impressions and the sensitive mover towards the contrary the Patient must then at least when the diseases entertained become prevalent yield to their conquering sword or at best in the future live a Calamitous death unlesse he shall be relieved and restored to his primitive integrity by the auxiliary hand of the Physician Yet is it not in the lot of every Physician to arrive at Corinth to ascend to that excellent knowledge but his onely who hath the happy qualifications of a Vocation Election Exercitation and Commission For in the lesse accomplished dayes of Hippocrates the transcendent virtues of Catholique medicines remained in the darknesse of undiscovery and in truth even in our brighter dayes they continue but jejune and eclipsed with prejudice and derision amongst vulgar Physicians upon which consideration he is deservedly to be excused in that he conceived the whole businesse of the conquest of diseases to lye upon the shoulders of Nature as being the sole protectresse of life Again I have elsewhere shewed that even from the first moment of the conception of an Embrion there is assigned to every peculiar member one Implantate or Originary Spirit as immediate president and Governour thereof and another Influent Spirit deradiant from the heart as the excieator and assistant of the former which yet is not determined to perfection nor individually disposed unlesse first subdued to a qualification requisite by the praeparatory power of the Implantate I have also taught in another place that every member enjoyes the capacity of Vegetation according to the virtue of its peculiar Ferment originally inoculated into its principles and that for this reason there can be no expectance of any transmutation conductive to a new generation unlesse by the mediation of that Ferment And from hence by naturall consequence we may understand that all vegetation is made by the spirits and that so all debility of digestion in the members doth depend upon the diminution of the spirits and their peculiar Ferment according to that in sacred Writ My spirit the involucrum or conservatory of the Ferment shall be attenuated and therefore my dayes shortned So that a member which in its integrity affords no visible excrement must produce a large and constant source of unnatural humor when once wounded injured diminished or impeded in the vigour of its appropriate Ferment And finally it follows from hence that according to the degrees of the injury and variety of Causes inferring that injury there must be generated a difformity and dissimilitude of excrements respectively Diseases therefore have their origine not from one fountain particularly from the Head from whence the Schools wildly imagine all Catarrhs to drop down but from a single Idiopathy or proper indisposition of every part superinduced upon the topicall or domestick Ferments Thus to example Wounds long after their sanation break forth again and frequently introduce durable Vlcers and Apostems and upon change of Weather many years after their perfect consolidation fall into a reincrudescence and freshly renew their torture Thus Coughs Pleurisies Spittings of blood and Erisypelous tumors or inflammations have their set vicissitudes and after considerable intermissions reinvade For some excessive montain Cold or other Damp suddenly surprising the nightly Aer marish or uliginous Fog or malignant Fume belched from the acide bowels of Mines doth frequently with one assault so violate and ruine the Ferments of the brain or Lungs that from thenceforward during the whole after-life they become the too fertil magazines of various excrements After this manner also in the eyes ears teeth jaws c. Excrements not such as the mucous or slimy excretions of the brain are ordinarily occasioned by the irregularity or diminution of the Ferments peculiar to those parts So Coughs and Asthmas or difficulties of respiration first begin and persever by a

continued Ferment Not in sooth by reason of a viscid Phlegme dropping continually from the head but engendered in the womb of the Lungs by a violation of their domestick Ferment For the Lungs more easily submit to the invasion of any forraigne injury then the other parts of the body in regard the Lungs is of all members the first that grows old decayed and dies As is manifest from the Cough generally infesting old men and from the rattling in the throats of all dying men though they perish by any other disease and not by affections of the Lungs For this is proper to the Lungs in this respect that they continually suck in crude Aer and being neer to the heart oppressed lavishly expend their own strength and by reason of that exhaustion decay much the sooner In the first place I dissent from the Schools because I very well know this kind of vitiosity in nature to belong to the parts containing and not to the humors contained For excrementitious humors of this kind contained are certain productions which are begotten by the Archeus or vitall president of the particular parts depraved by some noxious inquination precedent In the second I dissent from them also in this point that I stand assured that this evill is topicall and primary and not communicated by Deuteropathy or consent with the head For the Coughs of old men which for the plurality discourage all hopes of restauration arise from this root that in the lowest and smallest branches of the Respiratory Artery or pipe of the Lungs there doth constantly reside such a quantity of excrement generated in the Lungs which doth not onely obstruct the tubes or conduicts but also by the contagion of its presence deprave and diminish the Local Ferment whereupon there is hourly produced a new source or supply of excrements as the plentifull maintainance of Coughs which in men once entered the calamitous confines of old age are hardly cured by remedies known to vulgar heads in regard such remedies neither arrive at the part affected nor in troth are they endowed with any restauratory faculty These kinds of excrementitious humors therefore are no other but topicall defects of the parts misaffected and every particular part hath its particular debility whether innate or acquisite from a diminution of its vegetative Ferment And thus it is evident that the various streams of excrements flowing from the various parts of the body are all derived from this one fountain On these firm grounds I apprehend first That all repetitions of Purgations in these affections are frustraneous and hurtfull in respect they levell their power onely against the productions or Effects and not against the Causes and chiefly because such viscid excrements seated remotely from the stomack are too stubborn and refractory to yield to the laxative operation of Purgers You may pleas to adde that although Laxatives may seem to have afforded ease and relief for a day or two after their use insomuch as the masse of crude and inconfected blood in the mezaraick veins being voided by stool there must of necessity succed the more sparing dispensation of blood through the body and penury of nourishment in the Lungs and by consequence a lesse quantity of excrement be rejected yet do they by substracting from the necessary aliment of the whole and by leaving behind them an evill tincture in the instruments of common digestion every day more and more infringe the universall oeconomy of the body and impugne the conserving vigour of nature This when Physicians darkly as through a veile discover and remain ignorant that they have afforded no benefit to their Patients by the exhaustion of the laudable juces of the body and the diminution of naturall vigour they at length remit them to the sober rules of Diet and kitchen physick as the onely hopefull means of their recovery and so leave them by the painfull use of Fontanels and reiterated moderate Purges to run out their remaining sands medicaly i. e. miserably By which Concession first they insinuate that wholesome and moderate diet is to be preferred to most of those unfaithfull medicaments of the shops and upon the testimony of their own unhappy experience conclude that the Patient ought to abstain from them as hurtfull and at best but rarely to be used Our wish is that now after so many destructive exhaustions of sick mens strength they would sit down contented and in the future no more attempt by the same fruitlesse means to dreigne the hopes bodies veins strength and purses of the sick At lest I wish that they would be mindfull of their own Axiome wherein they unanimously consent That the chiefest indication of the cure is to be desumed from the benefit or harme which things already used have introduced Which rule although it be worthy the blushes of learned men and onely fit for the conformity of Empyricks yet it may be wished that by the instruction thereof they would be reclaimed from the practice of their former errors and no longer in Coughs and Consumptions return to those inefficacious remedies which they have observed never to have been beneficiall to any For then would all Purgatives Phlebotomy Errhines * Apophlegmatismes * Lambatives drinks of China Zarza Sassafras Cauteries in the Coronal suture and other deceitfull remedies of the same order be wholly layed aside which are brought into use by Physicians that they might not appeare to have received their fees for nothing It is also to be wished they had suffered themselves to be instructed from their own practice that while they pointed their endeavours directly against the Ablation Revulsion Derivation and precaution of secundary Effects viz. the Excrements wept from the injured Archeus of the particular part they at the same time tacitely confessed that they neither understood their originals nor set about the Cure of them according to the just method of beginning at the remove of their primary Causes And they had farther discovered that a medical Course of Diet is but a wild languid invalid and indeed desperate kind of remedy and Kitchen Aphorismes too contemptible a militia to encounter so formidable an Adversary already entered upon the borders of life and ready to dissolve the discordant Harmony of the whole Composition by the generall diffusion of its tyranny No wonder therefore if the Common people observing the vanity of such Cures have taken occasion to create this proverbe The best physick is to take no physick More then once have I lamented out of a deep Commiseration of the hard Condition of man while I read over whole Centuries of the Councels of Physicians and chiefly their Commentaries on the 9. Rhas ad Almansorem where they run over all diseases of the body from the Crowne of the head to the sole of the foot that digging into the Center of each disease as they believe and glory and there exploring the Grandfather or procatarctick Cause thereof

pervert the sunctions of the digestive Faculty and by this means doth not onely generate a plentiful harvest of Excrements but also stigmatize or impresse this depravity upon the Implantate spirit of that part so deeply that it can hardly be expunged during the whole after life All which the Schools like mendicants precarious desume from the brain erroneously impute to their four imaginary Humors and the defluxion of Rheums On which Consideration my Theory stands point blanck in defiance to the doting tradition of Catarrhs as positively denying and wholly subverting their material Cause receptaries or places of concretion efficient Cause and manner of Generation and Defluxion and separating the true Causes Effects and method of Sanation far from the ridiculous fictions of a Catarrh 61. By this time we believe it is plain and unquestionable that no salt acid sharp phlegmatick or Cholerick humor can distil from the brain but that whenever the Influent spirit polluted with some alien and putrefactive impression doth arrive at any part of the body then doth nature without delay send thither the Latex or sourse of serous humidity to expung this impression or at least rinse away the Excrements there growing from the depravation of the digestive Faculty For the Spirit once vitiated by any forreigne Contagion wildly rangeth at pleasure through the nerves arteries yea and the very habit of the body whereupon the sick seeming to feel as it were the defluxion or trickling down of a cold rheume the brain is immediately accused as treacherous and the grand author of this ryot and irregularity in nature Now since the Latex is sent to the part newly invaded by this malignant impression not as the primitive Cause of the evill though frequently by accident it doth foment and aggravate the mischief and so make the vitiosity more durable but as a relief or stream to wash away the impression hereupon have the Schools to this day remained doubtful and durst never go so far as positively to determine whether in the Gout the Catarrb is derived from the head by the Nerves or whether transmitted from the Liver onely by the Veins And thus evident it is that the Phlegme and Choler of the Schools flow not from one fountain or Cataract as though the brain were the Common sewer of all these impurities Again as for the last refuge whereunto the Schools flye for protection of their impossible dream of Catarrhs namely the Declivity or downwardnesse of the situation of the members as in relation to the brain and the facility of the passages it may easily appear to be too rotten and fragile to afford them shelter Since as in dead bodies there are none of these respective situations but onely in living so also all motion of humors in the body is immediately caused by the Influent spirit as the onely impetum faciens and mediately derived from the Principle of vitality in whose occonomy the Ascent of humors is of no more difficulty then the descent For in living bodies no humor oweth its motion downward to the declive tendency of its Gravity but in impartial truth to the aim or direction of that missive power which levelled it at this or that determinate part Hitherto concerning the impression of an External depravity upon the Influent spirit it follows that we declare the probability and manner how the same spirit may conceive and as it were batch an internal Character or domestick tincture of corruption It comes to passe not seldome that the Latex contaminated by the admixture of some forreine Salt doth therewith infect the Influent Spirit so that it instantly becomes degenerate from its requisite simplicity and purity though not by reason of any external injury of the aer offensive odor sulphureous Fume c. but from a breath or blast of Contagion conceived in the part affected yea that taking a dislike or abhorrence from the Latex as being polluted and so uncapable of its vital irradiation it grows enraged and forgeth within itself a character of anger and reuenge After this the uncivil Latex like a rude souldier that intrudes himselfe into quarters against the will of the Landlord forceth itself into the society of the offended Influent spirit and though unfit for its conversation as well in regard of its Acidity as immoderate quantity yet it still followeth and hangs upon its skirts In which relation the most hopefull remedies for most of these diseases which cause erratick paines as also for internall Ulcers must be Baths Sudaries and Stoves or Hot-houses for by procuring liberall and profuse sweats and by that means exhausting the Latex as the secondary and fomenting materiall Cause they seem more directly perpendicular to health and conducible to the pacification of Archeus his worship then the more ineffectuall and languid Solutives and Exsiccatives of the Schools Vaine therefore is the story of a Catarrhs arising originally from the stomack into the head and its Condensation Concretion and Congregation in the ventricles of the brain Vaine are the descriptions of its Defluxion between the coats of the spinal marrow or between the skull and skin upon the Muscles And of necessity vain and deplorable must such Remedies be as are administred when the Causes of the Diseases are wholy unknown Vain also are Cauteries and Fontanels for the Revulsion and Exhaustion of Humors that have no real existence in nature And to conclude vain are the Decoctions of China Guajacum Sassafras c. exsiccating Drinks since the evill ariseth at least is occasionally aggravated by the Latex and must be fomented by any immoderate quantity of humidity From whence we have a faire opportunity to collect that sober and parsimonious drinking doth very much conduce to health nay to the cure of Vlcers in the Lungs as also of the Goute Since the Latex which according to the Primitive institution of nature ought to be insipid upon the excessive drinking of eager Wines such are French Rhenish and Sherry doth acquire a manifest Acidity or sowernesse and instantly communicate the same to the blood from whence proceed Corrosions sharpe Spasmes and Convulsions errattick paines and chiefly the Gout But of the history and necessity of this Latex we have written a particular Discourse 62. You may please to remember that the primitive Material of all concreted substances is onely Water * and all fruits or productions of mixt bodies arise from the same principle Let us therefore grant that the Latex being naturally insipid doth upon the accesse and fermentation of any seminality or fructifying tincture instantly grow Acide By example in the beginning of the Spring if you make an incision in the rind of a Vine or Birch tree neer the root there will distill forth a very great quantity of thin insipid liquor which is nothing but the water freshly attracted out of the earth but if the incision be made higher in the stock or branches then will the liquor be a little Acid. The reason is

nature and causes of such Diseases as are in vulgar practice confidently referred unto the Distillation of Rheums from the head upon parts of inferior situation with such cleare and uncontroulable reasons as not to have left very large gapps for the easie illation of these scruples and objections raised by Helmont against them In brief whoever shall so far contribute towards the advance of his own knowledge as to receive the Arguments here opposed to the traditional Theory of Catarrhs with that equal justice of improving them to that height with which they are offered will I doubt not afford us his concurrent vote that the chiefe impediment to their prevailing upon the beliefe of many dissenters will be their Novelty For hardly doe we part with those Doctrines which instilled into our tender and unwary yeers have grown up together with our understandings and hold our credulities enslaved to an implicite conformity by the tyrannous title of Praescription A deplorable remora to the timely exantlation of Truth long since discovered and complained of by the grave and yet most acute Stagirite in these words * {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} Quemadmodum enim consuevimus ita judicamus dici debere quae praeter haec non apparent similia sed quia non consuevimus ignotiora magis peregrina Consueta enim notiora sunt I shall here so far exercise your Candor and Patience as to tolerate a short Digression though pertinent and material concerning this Cardinal cause of {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} or Indocibility The Description of this vice of the minde since most ample and elegant I shall borrow from that Noble Enquirer into Truth Mr. Hobbs in his inestimable manual of Human Nature If the minds of men says he were all of white Paper they would for the most be equally disposed to acknowledge whatsoever should be in the right method and right ratiocination delivered unto them but when men have once acquiesced in untrue opinions and registred them as authenticall methods in their minds it is no lesse impossible to speak intelligibly to such men then to write legibly upon a peece of Paper already scribled over The immediate cause therefore of Indocibility is Prejudice and of prejudice false opinion of our own knowledge The Naturall Reason of it I shall adventure to deduce from the slender stock of my own Philosophy We judge of the truth or falshood not onely of things subject to the apprehension of sence but also of Philosophicall and Religious opinions as we have been accustomed from the minority of our Vnderstandings and although many times we are greatly deluded yet cannot the arm of the strongest reason bend us from our accustomed judgement The ground of this is that not onely the Images or bare Ideas I mean not those intentionall species so much talked of in common Philosophy for I believe I could prove that there are no such in Nature of those things have an existence in the brain but certaine Notes or marks of Rejection or Approbation are also superadded unto them and deeply impressed upon the brain These Images therefore being again offered unto the mind we perceive not only the things themselves but at the same instant even without any haesitancy or accurate examination yea though most convincing and firme arguments are sometimes brought to the contrary with great violence we approve or reject them according to the conformity or disproportion of those Notes formerly registred The remove of which obstruction shall be the constant businesse not onely of my studies but also of my earnest prayer Quae in Schola Cathedra aliquando praeter tationem plerumque ad acuenda ingenia juvenrutis in theoria proponuntur sunt toleranda quae vero in praxi in perniciem aegrorum praescribuntur potius execranda damnanda quam admittenda esse existimo Quid verum atque decens curo rogo omn is in hoc sum Condo compono quae mox depromere possim Ac ne forte roges quo me duce quo lare tuter Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri Quo me cunque rapit tempest as deferor hospes Nunc agilis fio mersor civilibus undis Virtutis verae custos rigidusque satelles Nunc in Aristippi furtim praecepta relabor Et mihi res non me rebus subjungere conor Poeta Philosophus ad vada Maeandri concinuit VV. CHARLETON The Errors of Physicians Concerning DEFLVXIONS The Summary 1. WHo is the Lord paramont of Diseases and Nature 2. Some suppositions by way of premises 3. The conclusion 4. Proved from experiments 5. The explication of the Position 6. The Lungs the part which first dyes 7. Why the Author deserted the Schools 8. The forerunner of miseries to old men 9. Purging medicaments why destructive to old men 10. The testimonies that Physicians give of their own ignorance Fatall because too late 11. That Axiome of Physicians desumed from the use of things beneficiall and hurtfull worthy their blushes 12. Errors of Physicians 13. The ground of Paracelsus his inconstancy 14. The Generalogy of a Catarrh or Rheume like an old wives fable 15. Diseases imputed to Catarrhs 16. How great calamity arifeth to mankinde from thence 17. By what means they make the sick their perpetuall slaves 18. The ordinary subtersuge of the Schools 19. Thirteen Positions 20 Nineteen Conclusions emergent from those Positions 21. By a sufficient enumeration of Parts 22. A Dilemma 23. Some Absurdities 24. Ignorance in the Schools the sole Mother of Catarrhs 25 The same Ignorance the fountain of Absurdities in their method of Cure 26. Shame the Cause of the Schools instability 27. A deniail of principles granted in the Schools 28. Whence heat is de●ived to the Liver 29 The proof from unsuccessefull remedies 30. the Tooth-ach examined 31. The digestion of the Tooth and Nails different from the Digestion of all other parts 32. A Catarrh upon the inward parts demonstrated impossible 33. The Pose or Cold in the head described 34. Absurdities dependent on the opinion of a Catarrh falling upon the stomack 35. An enquiry concerning the dropping of Rheume upon the Lungs 36. What distills from the 〈◊〉 in the beginning of a Cold and what in the continuance 37. An Argument ab im●●ssi i● against the Cause of the Cough delivered by the Schools 38. The originall of the matter causing affections of the Lungs declared 39 The vanity and infertility of remedies from want of knowledge 40. The decoctions of China Zarza c. neither dry up excrementitious humors nor prevent their generation 41. Some Absurdities growing upon this root 42. What s to be observed in Affections of the Lungs 43. The doctrine of the Schools concerning the motion of the Lungs false 44. The use of he Lungs not yet knowne to the Schools 45. 21. Peremtory reasons against the vulgar opinion of the use of the Lungs 46. The error of the

they ever and anon lay the blame on some one singular distemper either naturall or acquired but yet with such a reserve of uncertainty that they dare not precisely determine whether they ought to account that distemper for the disease or onely for the Antecedent Cause of the disease about which they Consult But to prevent mistake and to be sure of the right generally in all infirmities they accuse both heat and cold For example in most they cry out upon a Frigidity of the stomack either solitary or combined with an excessive Heat of the Liver whence they foretell Catarrhs to be engendered and maladies of those parts upon which such rheumes shall be rained downe and this hint they pursue unto the exploration of the nature not onely of very many Internall but also of most Externall and Cutany defects And with such Theorical and Practical decretals do the schools season the brains of their Disciples For thus are infirmities of the eyes ears jawes tongue teeth chest arms loyns and thighs charged upon the account of Catarrhs Thus have Coughs Consumtions difficulties of respiration Pleurisies Inflammations of the Lungs Apoplexies Palsies suddain Deaths Impostumes Spittings of blood found their pedigrees deduced from Distillations Thus finally is the stomack infested with Vomiting Nauseounesse dejection of Appetite and debility of Concoction as also the Liver and Spleen become misaffected For crude and indigestible Phlegme being dropped downe from the retort of the Head Obstructions Hardnesses Dropsies Apostems Schirrous tumors Fevers torments of the bowels c. are listed under the conduct of Catarrhs To which Epidemick tradition of Catarrhs Paracelsus though otherwise above modesty triumphing in his invention of Tartars and the 3 first Hypostaticall Principles * doth frequently subscribe and alwayes openly acknowledge the name of Defluxion flussen staggering into self-contradiction under the drunken guidance of that great Lady Incertitude And this fabulous scene of Defluxions which indeed is very well worth our serious tears do the Schools so polish and trim up and deliver from hand to hand down to posterity that it now dares plead prescription and usurpe the sacred dignity of truth yea common Idiots by their own infirmities made passive Physicians tire my ears with a tedious lecture of their Catarrhs Whereupon since it is a taske extremly difficult and such as my Genius abhorrs to root out a customary doctrine from the minds of men unacquainted with more rationall wayes of learning and in the place thereof implant the seeds of solid truth chiefly when vulgar heads are of that temper that like new vessels they hardly part with that odour wherewith they were first seasoned it is my custome even among persons of honour to affect silence not to preach upon the disease or its Causes several kinds and remedies but quietly concealing my detestation of the easie theory of the Schools and dissembling an ignorance of all go away as consenting to whatever hath been said Yet in some places I adventure to leave a hint that I am otherwise instructed that Fools are not constellated to a capacity of medicinal Principles nor my selfe to be their Paedagog At best I cannot but admire that no man hath hitherto after so long a revolution of time ever discovered and made animadversions on the palpable and superlative ignorance of Physicians but that the grey-haired dreams of the Grecians have drawne the whole Christian World after them into a servitude * that is ridiculous lying and pernicious to humane society To particular they generally conclude that the head from whence their Nilus of Defluxions doth originally spring is a Cold Distemper of the stomack and an hot distemper of the Liver and that the greatest part of mankinde is in subjection to this tyranny The manner of its generation they deliver thus That the stomack incessantly during the whole act of Concoction receiving an accesse of immoderate heat from the Liver must of necessity all that while send up whole clouds of vapours into the braine and that by reason the brain is by its native temperament Cold and set like a cover over a boyling pot or the head of an Alembick in the highest region of the body all those vapours that ascend into it are againe condensed into Water Which since according to the propensity of its nature it must tend downwards doth afford an ample source to distillations and a generall maintainance to most diseases That if this torrent fall down upon the eyes ears palate teeth c. those parts have very good reason to bewaile and with plenty of rheume lament their unkinde destiny in being so neer neighbours unto and lying within reach of this tyrant the Brain but if upon the Lungs it is quickly the inevitable occasion of Coughs Difficulties of respiration and in fine of Consumtions of palpitations or tremblings of the heart and so of immature death But if the stream be turned upon the stomack then doth the stomack suffer the just punishment of its former distemper by admitting debility of Concoction Crudities Vomits Orexies * or insatiate Appetites Swounings fainting Pains of the mouth of the stomack Obstructions Laskes durable Fluxes of the belly violent ejections of Choler upward and downward fits of the Colick Atrophies or universall leanesse from decay of Nutrition Dropsies Schirrous tumors and all other defects of the instruments officiall to common Digestion yea Fevers Putrefactions of the blood in the veins as also stones of the Spleen * Kidneys and Bladder have their ordinary materials from the slime of this Defluxion That if these rivulets creep into the inmost closets of the brain then suddain death Apoplexies and Palsies immediately ensue but if in the hinder part of the head by the neck they chanee to wander into the Nerves Arteries and Muscles then must Gouts Palsies Pleuresies and Convulsions of the receiving parts unavoidably be introduced yea all Chirurgicall defects as Pains Apostems and the numerous progeny of Vlcers do they father upon Catarrhs That if this deluge be not evacuated and dreigned by some of the forementioned sluices but becomes a standing pond from whose oppression the brain is not able to deliver it self neither by the Aquaeducts of the nostrils nor the laborious pump of Coughs Oh! then instantly follows a stupid drousinesse an inexpugnable propensity to out sleep Endymion * Catoches a Lethargy Vertigo Apoplexy losse of Memory and perdition of Sences For besides these forementioned distempers of Heat and Cold and Defluxions necessarily resulting from thence the Books Orations Councels Conversations Chairs and Practices of Physicians sound of nothing and so the whole bulk of the Art of healing seems now a dayes to be moved upon the slender hinges of Purgations Phlebotomy Scarifications Baths Sweatings Cauteries and in short upon no other then the diminutions of strength and emaciations of the body or exsiccations of Rheumes To which end they impose upon their Patients the decoctions of the roots