Natures order and progresse and the Skies of Heaven have their motions and changes and move by a certain order The humours are under the like law for they have certain motions and effects and periods in mans body that every humour keeps its turn according to the variety of the four parts of the year and exercises it faculties and forces on mans body so it is that the blood in the spring is in force and breeds feaver and diseases of its own nature so choler every other day in summer with cholerick burning causeth a tertian Flegm The humours keep their times corrupting in the winter quarter causeth a quotidian intermitting and melancholly when Autumn comes makes a quartan So a diary ends in one day or a little more because that consists not in the putrefaction of humours but with an aereal spirit enflamed And all these are effected by the same law as the rising and setting of Stars are as also is the flux and reflux of the Sea and the pleasant change of hearbs and plants springing forth But that is admirable that the four humours make choise of certain hours and times of the day The motion of the four humours in the body and divide the artificial day and night amongst them by twelve temporal hours which to be true I have found by experience for by observing them I use to pronounce certainly when the feaver will come For the blood is vigorous as Soranus Ephesius testifies Math. 20. which like the Evangelists measure the times and spaces of day and night by equal hours from nine at night till three in the morning Mans mind more lively in the morning from the vapour of bloud in which time the blood is concocted and elaborated in the Liver Hence it is that the mind before day break is more chearfull and all people both sound and sick are more light-hearted by reason of the sweet vapour of the blood but yellow choller hath its turn from three in the morning till nine in the morning in which time the natural faculty doth part the choller from the blood and sends it to the Gall bladder hence it is that a man is then more prone to anger and will be easily offended but black choler or melancholique juice doth its office from nine in the morning till three in the afternoon and sits at helm In this time the Liver is cleansed of this grosse humour which is sent to the Milt by nature hence it is that in those hours the understanding of man is clowded and his mind is sad All the humours are vigorous at certain hours by the dark grosse fumes that arise from thence Flegme moves from three at night till nine at night for then supper being ended concoction begins in the stomach to be perfected and the meat to be boyled and turned to juice Hence it is that flegme swimming on the stomach and carried to the brain makes a man sleepy Now if you exactly count the manner of all these you shall find that the very hours that the several humours take their turns Feavers begin to assault the sick and as the spaces are ended that serve for the several humours if they be simple and without mixture the diseases are terminated also So continent Feavers and as many as proceed from blood come upon us in the morning tertians about nout noon that is at the sixth hour which is to us the twelfth hour both of day and night Quartans come about the ninth hour which is to us three in the afternoon The quotidian comes from flegme about the first watch of the night But if the humours overflow and are mingled one with another as they are wont to be then they keep not their lawfull times and orders for they are more sharp A simile from the concours of the Winds and continue longer For as winds coming together raise more grievous tempests When East and West Aeneid 1. and rainy South do roar Roling the mighty billows to the shoar So a disease is more violent by concours of humours and diseases joyned to cruelly torture mans body For in one body Ovid. Metam l. 1. cold hot moist and dry Soft hard light heavy strive for victory It is frivolous to refer the causes of these things to ill spirits For all these things consist in the corruption or inflammation quality or quantity of the humours For it is these things that make the fits shorter or longer Why blood causes continual feavers But when bloud much abounds in the body it causeth but one continual fit because that putrefaction and inflammation is in the receptacles of the veins in which the bloud runs as through Conduit Pipes Wherefore nature like a wise and faithful consul in a Civill and intestine war is alwaies at work and without intermission to cast forth the disease But flegme A simile from the Wisdome of a Consul yellow choller and black because they are not in so great quantities and are without the straightnesse of the veins they do not constantly molest but with intermission and diseases that arise from these humours are not so deadly because they have not so open a passage to the heart and principall parts and therefore cannot easily do so much hurt Yet some of these Feavours last long partly because the humour abounds and partly because of the clamminesse thereof that it can hardly be melted and concocted Wherefore Melancholiqe men are seldome merry Melancholique people not easily drunk unlesse they drink deep and of strong wine for that humour is wonderfull cold and dry Men of this constitution are like Iron that must have a great strong fire to make it hot A simile fit for melancholique people from burning Iron that it may be hammer'd For they want much strong Wine and they can well endure it and when they are well whittled they will play the mimicks and make sport and dance like Camels For being crabbed by nature when they are in drink they desire to seem very merry Melancholique Natures when they are hot with wine and pleasant And as they are hardly overcome with drink so they can as hardly be recovered of drunkennesse For when they drink abundantly and eat excessively it falls out that the thick grosse vapours stick faster to the brain so that the day following melancholique Imaginations grow more upon them For from the Wine the day before not digested and discussed their whole body sends up stinking vapours For it happens to them as it is with houses set on fire which though they are not wholly consumed by fire nor quite burnt up yet a burnt smell affects our nostrils and brain A good Simile from houses on fire so making ill favoured sents and vapours arising from the drink the day before are very offensive unto them and trouble their brain and minds and when they cannot discusse these and that they perceive their phantasms to increase they fall
to drinking again to expell those vapours of the former wine Crudity hurts Melancholique people and imagination rising from thence as one nail with another since therefore the causes and original of diseases are so and the nature and condition of the humours is such that no reason can be thought on for the accesse and coming on of feavers than from the quantity or quality of the humours Let no man think that evill spirits do raise these tempests or distempers I know Ill spirits offend our minds and bodies and raise winds also and shall easily grant that the Divels or aereal spirits are very knowing and find out all things for their purposes and do not onely mix themselves with the humours but also they entice and urge the minds of men to all wickednesse and that the good Angels help men in all good things and are companions and assistants unto them So Raphael travelled with Tobias his Son So the spirit of the Lord came upon Sampson and he rent the Lion like a Kid. Tob. 14. Also a divine spirit came upon Saul 1 King 10. and he Prophesied with the other Prophets But after wards an evill spirit troubled his mind and stirred him up against David So they thrust themselves into tempests and cause thundrings and lightnings So that with their help we see Towers and Mountains are rent in pieces Corn Cattel and flocks of Sheep are destroyed yet the violence of the winds can do this without them So those winds Saint Luke speaks of are very violent upon Sea and Land Act. 27. and by the breaking and clashing of clowds fire is cast forth that sail-yards and sails are burnt with it A simile from the violence of Guns and Ordinance The like violence is wrought by great Guns upon Ramparts be they never so strong that not onely the ball strikes those that are near but the very wind and noise of them hurts some that are farther off These and many such like things though they may be done by natural reason Job 12. yet the Divell by Gods permission or grant may intermingle with them and make all worse So Satan exasperated Sauls melancholy and provoked him to commit many murders and to lie in wait and to commit many horrible things But because this affect of the mind and errour may be referred to natural causes therefore it appears that the Musick of the Harp took away the fury of him and his mind grew more calm For as when strong winds blow upon the Sea A simile from the flowing of the Sea the waves are more frequent and the Sea rages and as melancholique men grow more sad by losse of their estates and other casualties and cholerick people grow angry by drinking Wine or by being jear'd and mock'd So evill spirits or witches drive on such men headlong to wicked actions that though the will be ready and desires it yet can it not moderate the actions and force of counsels Which our Saviour seems to intimate when he said to Peter by way of reprehension Math. 16. Get thee behind me Sathan For Christ cal'd him so because he was against him and strove to divert him from our redemption that he was about And unlesse the great good God by his singular favour should bridle the fury of the adversary against us 1 Pet. 5. man could not subsist or defend himself against the fury of this Monster For he tryes all waies and searches all passages that he may set upon us and winnow us as Wheat Wherefore as Job saith God sets a sword against him that is Luk. 22. ch 40. A place of Job explained sets him his bounds that he cannot passe and limits Satans rage for he can go no further then God will give him leave and God will let no man be afflicted beyond his strength By which Antidote St. Paul comforts all that are in danger 1 Cor. 10. or in calamity but shews a way to escape from the tentation that the affliction may be no more then we can suffer or that we may be suddenly delivered I have been the longer in this that the Reader may understand that the humours are the cause of diseases principally But the divells the Stars and the quality of the ambient Ayre and other external causes are but accidental For since all passions of the mind are quieted by reason but the diseases of the body are cured by fit remedies who can refer the causes of diseases better than to the quantity and quality of the humours And if a man please to examine the humours of the body What manners come from bodily humours and what force they have he shall find that they do not onely constitute the habit of the body but the manners also of the mind yet so that manners and Religion are set above them in the uppermost place For blood or if you regard the qualities heat and moysture produce men of a flourishing constitution but as for the mind they are lascivious merry truly honest without dissembling and they are something above Fools But yellow chollerbrings forth men of a dry and swartish colour but they are hot deceitful ingenious of a fierce angry constitution wise industrious cunning inconstant false Who naught but a fair countenance reveal Pers sat In a false heart a crafty Fox conceal Melancholy juice makes men stable and constant and that will not easily depart from what they once undertake or forsake their opinion that if they happen to addict themselves to any sect they will hold it tooth and nail and not be easily drawn off This affect is milder in cholerick people for they by reason of their unstable floting humours and thin spirits are quickly transported and though they be very hot and clamorous yet they are soon pleased and not so obstinate Flegme is unprofitable to form mens manners and therefore flegmatique people are dull and unfit for any great matters CHAP. II. Melancholique Mad and Frenzy people and such as are furious from other causes will sometimes speak strange Tongues they never learned and yet not be possessed with the Divell The wonderful force of the humours in stirring the mind A Great force troubles the humours and a great heat troubles the mind for those that are in strong feavers will speak some tongue they never learned sometimes elegantly sometimes im perfectly and confusedly which I do not much wonder to be done by those that are possessed with the Divell because they have the knowledge of all natural things As Wine so humours trouble the mind Now the humours are so violent and forcible where they are inflamed or corrupted that the dark smoak of them ascending unto the brain as we see when men drink too much strong Wine will make men speak languages they understand not should this come from the Divell these diseases would not be cured with purging medicaments nor opiats by procuring of sleep For by
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
diseases have wasted or what is burnt to ashes or is passed into the first principles or into the substance of some other body For the flesh shall be restored to that man it was taken from as his Due A Simile from borrowed money that was borrowed from him They that are men shall find this to be true and those mousters that are bred from them and have the same nature with them shall be partakers of this divine gift CHAP. XVI The humours and food do change the habit of the body and state of the mind apparently And hence arise the affections and stings of conscience And by the by what Melancholy can do and how it may be cured THere is no mortal Man that is not led by his passions and perturbations but one is more driven by them than another and is more easily forced by the motions of his mind All men led by Passions Why Socrates was lesse subject to them For they that are of a good bodily temper and lead a temperate life and sober diet are lesse wont to be troubled with passions So Socrates is reported to have been of that constancy and calmnesse of mind that both at home and abroad he was alwaies of the same countenance and alacrity of mind though he had a very scolding Wife to vex him which he obtain'd no otherwise than by his frugall life and great temperance Hence it is that Cicero saith that Intemperance is the fountain of all the passions Tusc 4. which is a departing from the mind and from right reason So that the desires of the mind cannot be ruled or kept in order Temperance As therefore Temperance abates all disorderly desires and makes them submit to right reason and preserves the judgment of the Mind entire so Intemperance that is contrary thereunto inflames and disturbs every condition of the Mind and urgeth it Whence it comes that all diseases of the body and errours of the Mind spring from thence For as when blood and flegme abound or both cholers are increased sicknesses arise in the body so the disturbance of ill opinions and the jarring between them spoyls the Soul of her health The difference of passions amongst themselves and draws the body into mutual destruction For so anger rashnesse fear envy forrow emulation when they seize upon the veins and marrow and are possessed of the inward parts of the mind are hurtfull also to the body and cause many terrible diseases thereof Also the diseases of the body by sympathy and way of company affect the Soul And though objects and many outward causes stir up many troublesome motions in man yet the principall cause and original is from the heart and from the humours and spirits which if they be moderate and not infected with some strange quality the mind is not so hot The original of Passions and is more calm So if the bloud be clean and pure if the temper be equal and the body be well men are slower to be moved nor are they so exceedingly vexed with fear anger or revenge and if they be somewhat in passion as no man is without all passions presently reason being call'd to counsel and Judgment of the mind admitted all heat of stomach abates and is asswaged Examples of moderation are David and Pericies We have examples of this in David and Pericles who when a naughty fellow reviled them and upbraded them they did not revenge or hate him for it but used him with great humanity The heart receives divers motions of the mind from outward objects Yet oftimes when there are no outward objects presented it breaks forth into violent passions and some secret thought entring the mind of a contumely offered or by indignation by reason of some inconvenience received the mind it self grows hot and is disturbed within Wherefore it is of great concernment in the difference of passions to know what temper every man is of what humours are abounding in his body and what is the quality of the spirits that arise from those humours For those that are of a hot and dry temper of them bodies are soonest angry especially short little men who are presently enraged upon some trivial businesse of no value Which anger by reason of the narrownesse of the place wâ—y little men are soâ—â— angry and the small distance of the organs presently seiseth on the mind and fires and burns them as low cottages and sheep coats For the same reason these little men exceed others for wit and judgment of mind because the spirits are gathered together and not so much dispersed and so perform their forces more closely A Simile from fuel on fire and sharply But as some fuel takes fire sooner than other combustible matters do and some are sooner put out than others are so it useth to happen in spirits and humours whereof some breed long and during passions others sudden passions and fading presently whence it falls out that cholerick men are hot and presently angry The 〈◊〉 of cholerick men and as straw and stubble presently takes fire so they by the thinnesse of a hot humour and sudden inflammation are more weakly angry for their anger suddenly grows cold and they are pacified But me lancholique people are slower before they grow angry Melancholique natures but when they are provoked they are ill to be calmed again and they are so mindfull of in juries that they will hardly be friends any more Flegmatique But flegmatique people as they are cold and moist are scarse ever moved with passions of the mind and are never greatly troubled with any thing whence it is that they are slothfull and sluggish and not fit for any noble actions on them the Proverb may be verified He hath no mind that hath no anger A proverb against sluggards Sanguin complexions But sanguin people are of hot and moist constitutions and are held with no waighty or serious businesse of cares but are wholly taken upon with sports tales songs and jears and complements and take care for nothing but pleasures and delights which conditions and differences of men alter according to the quality and mixture of the humours according to the climate and Ayre they live in and they do variously affect the minds of men and therefore I am perswaded that the humours are the causes of Passions For the heart being affected the spirits are raised and the humours boyl and the minds of men by their agitation are more inflamed as if a torch or fire brand were put under For as when the General or Prince is moved in an Army his guard of Souldiers A Simile from a Captain of an Army and all that are to defend him presently make themselves ready to fall on upon the enemy So when any passion ariseth all the humours are suddenly stirred with the heart and the spirits break forth as in anger shame bashfulnesse immoderate joy but in grief sorrow fear
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
comprehended in excellent verse Virgils praise for his great knowledge who being he was most versed in the knowledge of things and had so exactly sought out all the works of Nature he did also in some measure subject the 〈◊〉 of men to their forces and effects For men are diversly 〈◊〉 and otherwise constituted according as the time is according as the Starrs set or the Ayre varies The condition of the sky changeth mens minds and the four seasons of the year differ So when the skie is clowdy and dark and the aire grosse and thick men are sad and sour countenanced and sleepy but when the sky is clear and in the spring-time when all things flourish men are cheerfull and lightsome and very much given to mirth For the pleasant aire dissipates all foulnesse of humours and grosse vapours that darken our minds and makes our Spirits cheerfull and our minds quick and lively which Virgil expressed in this elegant verse But when the season and the flitting Ayre Grow moist L. 1. Georg. and Southern-winds begin to blow Things are then thickned that before were rare And a great change is made in things below Mens minds do alter as the times go round When Tempests are they do not hold the same As in fair weather sometimes birds abound And sing beasts skip Crows a hoarse note do frame For the Spirits that were before kept in break forth when the ayre is calme and pleasant A simile from smoky houses and when they are recreated with the West-wind For as Smoke and vapours when the houses are unlockt and the dores set open the ayre and wind entring use to be dissipated and blown away and all Galleries and Chambers that were full of filth begin to be more lightsome so in mens bodies all soul vapours and all stinking sents that were in them and all dullnesse of Spirits are discussed and ventilated Wherefore not onely internall causes and imbred humours are helps to health or diseases but the outward conjunction of the Starrs and constitution of the outward ayre and breathings and qualities of the winds breed divers and sudden mutations in the bodies of men The body is subject to the constitution of the ayre which every man may find true in himself every moment almost of time For who is there to passe over the affections of the mind who when some tempest is at hand or distemper of the Ayre three days also before it comes doth not perceive some pricking in his limbs and some beating pains contractions of the nerves palpitations or some other sensible pains For Watts Corns Horny substances Cicatrices Knots Kernells or if any thing be strain'd or disjoynted or broken torn or dissolved in any part of the body all these will foreshew a tempest coming which doth not use to come but with most bitter torments to such that have any secret touch of the Whores Pox. For these when cold winds begin to blow are soonest sensible of their pains for their Nervs are stretched and their Muscles grow stiffe Sick people perceive the change of the aire and the vitious humours in their bodies being agitated do trouble them grievously For there is under those parts a kind of distemper like to the weather that tortures them strangely in their inward parts But such as are of a sound habit of body and in good health feel no inconvenience or distemper by it For as patcht broken leaking ships are sooner swallow'd up in a tempest A simile from Ships that are shaken so diseased people and such as are of a decai'd and uncertaine health are expossed to all injuries and subject to all inconveniences for upon the least distemper of the Ayre arising they use to feel most terrible pains or when the Sun or Moon cause any mutation in the inferiour bodies For these Planets put forth their forces The force of the Sun and Moon upon inferiour bodies not only upon mens bodies but upon all terrestriall things the force whereof is so great and is extended so wide that all things contained in the circumference of the Heavens have their order Ornament and Glory from them and the whole course of things and times of the yeare are governed by them And though the power of the upper Starrs be not ineffectuall yet by the help of the Sun all things of greatest concernment are brought to passe For the Sun chiefly adorns this World and disposeth and guideth all things very decently For by the Suns operation seeds are propagated and corn grows ripe and all things increase and proceed And thus the year doth trace it self about Georg. 2. Also the works of the Moon appeare very great in the Nature of things but not so great as the effects of the Sun For she enjoyes the benefit of the Sun and borrows her light from him Opposition makes a full◠Moon Conjunction a new Moon that so much of the Moon is light as the Sun shines upon but she fails and hath no light when the earth comes between and causeth an ecclips But then especially she shews her forces upon earthly things when she is full the Sun being right over against her and makes her round or when she is in Conjunction with him for at these times Corn grows and augments shell-fish swell the veines are full of blood and the bones full of marrow whence it is that copulation at those times offends least And because she moisteneth all things flesh that are subjected and exposed to the Moon-beames corrupt and men that are drunk dead asleep allmost Wax pale and are troubled with the Head-ache and are affected with Epilepsie for it looseneth the Nerves She causeth the ebbing and flowing of the Sea and moisteneth the brain over-much and by its chilling force it stupefies the mind Also no man may doubt but that she is the cause of the ebbing and flowing of the Sea For being that we fee that when the Moon is dark and silent or a halfe Moon or crooked with Horns or increaseth or diminisheth the waters do not run much together nor are there any high tides The Moon moves the Sea upon any shores whatsoever but again when she is in Conjunction with the Sun and begins to be a new Moon or to be round and a full Moon the tides are very great and the waves rise exceedingly who then can ascribe the flowing and ebbing of the Sea to any thing than to the motion of the Moon For as the Loadstone draws Iron A simile from the Load-stones forces so this Planet being next the earth moves and draws the Sea For when the Moon riseth the Sea roules about those parts namely the Eastern parts and leaves the Western parts but when she goes to the West and sets the flouds increase in those parts and abate in the Eastern parts and this more abundantly or sparingly as the Moon increaseth or decreaseth in her light that is conveighed by the
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
with the greatest presents you can give them Whence Solomon compares their yawning and wide open dores to the Jaws of hell and the grave that are never satisfied Proverb 30. Wherefore if they that are married will take good counsel when they recover of a disease and begin to be well let them not presently fall to lying with their wives to be milked by them but let them moderate their affectiâ—â—s and put reigns on their pleasures that are exorbitant for they have then nothing to spare as young tender trees that must not be lopt nor have their branches cut off from them An example from young Trees For if the disease thus chance to revive and a man fall into a relapse they either dye suddenly or very hardly recover And if lusty and stout men when they first marry can hardly hold out when they too frequently use venerious actions and to speak in Tullyes language enter their wives too often how much more must weak and sickly men be dejected and cast down Immoderate venery spoils beauty And such as are uxorious will make this appear by their Weesil-colour for being too much given to venery they look yellow burnt or like Box or bloudlesse Lead-colour'd their limbs and joynts are feeble and weak whereas others that use this action moderately all fuliginous vapours are discussed by it and they appear fresh in their countenances and lively and their faces so comely red as if they were painted There is indeed in every part an imbred force and vertue as sight to the eyes Eath part hath its imbred faculty hearing to the ears smelling to the Nose to the Tongue taste and savour which is of all the senses the most voluptuous the bladder and its muscles serve to make water and the Intestins to void other excrements the genitals to procreate children and for copulation so other parts have other offices they are designed for and in all of these there must be temperance and moderation used For the eyes with continual poring are toyled and grow dim The Ears with too great noise grow deafe What is to much is alwaies naught as we see that Smiths are thick of hearing The Taste is abolished with immoderate eating or drinking Why Smiths are half deaf and all things become unsavoury and unpleasant so that the stomach loaths and refuseth the meat The Nostrils that have a smelling faculty when they are full of snot cannot swell the most fragrant sents All parts have their distinct offices Also the generative parts that all the parts do service to and if by chance they fail or be exhausted other parts will assist them in their courses for from the whole body humours and spirits flow thither and are derived unto them and if they be tired with immoderate and profuse lust not so much they as the whole body decayes and suffers Wherefore in preserving the forces of nature and corroborating the state of the body all things must be used temperately and with moderation that every man may seasonably and maturely grow old without trouble for lustfull youth will when old age comes leave a froward and peevish mind and a decayed and feeble body CHAP. III. Of the effect of the Ayre and gentle blasts and of the names of the winds with their forces and natures to cause diseases and to stir the humours which being agitated sometimes move the mind and molest it THere are two external accidental things that are no lesse hurtfull than they are healthfull to our bodies Which do support our health and sometimes make us sick The Ayre and winds sometimes make us well and sometimes sick namely nourishments and the Ayre that surrounds us by the agitation and motion whereof there ariseth wind and blasts to which our bodies are exposed every moment and thereby suffer manifest changes But winds and windy vapours breed in our bodies Whence come winds in the body partly by reason of the external beating of the Ayre and partly from meats and drinks that being taken in cause winds and stretch the belly as are Beans Peason raw hearbs Rapes Radishes fruits of Trees sweet wine new beer and Ale and Winds rising from these trouble the stomach and are offensive to the Intestines and the hypochondres and Middriff These To drink greedily fills the body with winds as also those blasts that use to enter when we feed greedily or drink in haste abundantly either come forth by belching or by breaking wind backwards But if they stay over long in the body or fasten upon any part they cause pains and must be excluded by applying hot remedies outwardly and inwardly by such things as dispell winds as Cummin What things expell winds Bay-berries Anniseed Fennel-seed Carway-seed strong Wines as Malmsey and Candey Wine For these will force and make the winds to rore Aeneid And to flye out where they can find a dore But since outward winds are commonly offensive to us and by their penetrating force do us much hurt I shall chiefly speak of them here For they sometimes get secretly into our bodies and sometimes openly and by violence they rush in and do great hurt to men heards of cattle Corn hearbs Trees The original of winds The wind proceeds from the Ayre and small blasts moved and tossed whence it is that sometimes it is gentle easy and pleasant sometimes strong violent and vehement as the Ayre is calm or moved What the wind is Wherefore the wind is nothing else then an effusion and flowing form of the forces of the Ayre troubled which receives strength and nutriment from the exhalations and vapours of the earth Or as Vitruvius saith The wind is the flowing sourge of the Ayre moved by uncertain and unstable motion John 3. A place of the Gospel explained Which when our Saviour speaks of he saith The wind bloweth where it listeth and thou hearest the sound thereof but canst not tell whence it cometh nor whither it goeth For taking a similitude from the outward blasts he instructs Nicodemus by what force and what secret operation the spirit of God affects the minds of men For as the aereal blast is not quiet nor obedient to any mans command but is restlesse and unquiet and is carried by its own violence and driven here and there so that being diffused all over it shews it self by the effect and noise of it and not by sight sometimes wholesome for the earth Gods spirit compared with the winds and sometimes hurtfull so the Spirit of God by a secret and unspeakable blast beats upon the minds of men drives forces inflames stirs up transforms and makes spiritual of carnal men But as the mind of man subsists and is supported by the spirit of God so this animal living body of ours is no lesse refreshed with the whole some outward Ayre than with meat and drink For the use of Ayre and breath that we draw into our bodies is
that hectical people that is such as are lean and consumed dry for want of nutriment and old decayd decrepit people will dye when the tide goeth forth and the Moon is hid And the greater or lesse cause there is in the body of fullnesse or want of humours they dye the sooner or laâ—er So they that are swoln with water or have full and fat bodies if they lye sick of a dangerous disease that comes from fullnesse of humours they dye presently when the floods rise and the Moon is either new or in the full some when the waters are in the mid'st between both Sound people so well as sick feel the force of the Moon and others dye when it is full high water On the contrary dry bodies lean stravlings wan bloodlesse wasted people dye easily when the tide goeth out and the Moon hasteth to the West Some of them as they fail in strength dye about the middle of the tide others when the flood is gon and the Haven is empty And not onely sick mens bodies are affected with these externall causes but also those that are sound feel the forces of the Moon 's effects but the more any man declines from a sound temper the more is he subject to pains and to the change of the Ayre and of the Moon especially when in such bodies there are vicious humours So when the Moon is in the first quarter or when she is full and a cold wind blows the Muscles Membranes Nerves Pannicles tendons Wax stiff and being contracted and wrested they endure sharpe pains Thus much of the Moon 's force and efficacy and of the motion of the Sea which let no man think to be vain or old Wives Fables and so reject it for there is nothing more certain than this or more consonant to truth for experience confirms this and reason makes it good even in things inanimate and that want sense For the hairy skins of seal-Calves taken off The Nature of some skins in raysing up hair will grow stiffe and the haire will stand upright when the Sea comes in and when the Sea goes out they fall down againe and this Pliny speaks of We observe the like in some land Creatures that have four feet whereof most of them hunt for their food upon trees for Sabel and Ermins skins if they be layd in the bottom of a Chest and other Cloaths laid thick upon them after three days more or lesse they will come to the top especially the Sabel skins for that Creature being active and restlesse the like motion up and down almost remains in the skin taken off chiefly when it is pulled off the North wind blowing and it is exceeding cold and dry in Winter When skins must be taken off from living Creatures For if you take off any living Creatures skin in Summer as from Coneys Panthers Leopards Lynxes Hienas Cats Foxes Squirrils Weesils Ferrets Pole-Cats and many more of which we make coverings to use in Winter for the most part the hayrs fall off because the roots of them do not stick fast the skins being loose and the pores open hence it comes that Cloaths lined with such skins are sooner spoiled with Moths because they were taken off at an unseasonable time of the year Wherefore they do not wisely who in summer when the South-wind or South-West-wind blow lay forth their Mattresses Coverlids Hangings Tapistry and their best wearing apparel laid up for festival days and for bravery which St. Mathew calls marriage garments to be ayred in a Southern ayre Ch. 21. and not by the North-wind and expose them in a moyst season What will hinder Moths from breeding in Cloths For covers and skins and Cloaths grow hard in a cold dry time and become better because this way are Worms Moths and all Creatures that destroy Cloaths or that eat and wear them abolished and consume For cold and dry is good to preserve things and often shaking and beating of them to shake off all dust and filth from them And whatsoever is kept in Chests or Trunks and is never moved nor ventilated and ayr'd will stink and grow for did and musty and suffer wrong and be much worse continually Heat of the bed makes skins the worse Also they must not at night be laid upon ones bed for the sweat that comes from our warm bodies that are wet with it in the night when we sleep is sucked up by our Cloths and Garments that cover us so that being moystned by this warm exhalation coming forth they receive matter for corruption For hot and moyst is fit to breed filthy vermine What quality breeds Worms hence in Summer when the ayre is warm our Chambers Houses Parlours Dining-rooms Kitchins Chests Cellars Butteries In Summer houses and bodies are troubled with vermine Gardens abound with Snails Worms Wiglice Flyes Gnats Catterpillars Hornets Wasps Beetls and our bodies with Lice and Nits and Fleas which are lesse seen in Winter and do not trouble us so much Wherefore all those ruffe and hairy Beasts and such also as have a tender and soft skin whereof rich skins and coverings are made live rather in cold than in hot Countryes and thereupon their haire sheds the lesse because their skin is more contracted and their hide is more condensed and bound up by the cold so that it holds the hayr 's the faster that they will not soon fall off or flye away Zeland full of Conies So in Zealand in the very entrance all most of the Ocean there are abundance of Coneys to be seen wherewith all Brabant is furnished after the Winter solstice till the beginning of the Spring and there is no small number of Hares of an unusuall bignesse the flesh whereof is sweet and wholesome and as some ridiculously triflle will never take Salt But they run here and there in the small mountains and amongst the sandy hills some part whereof lies opposite to the North or Western Solstice not by Art but naturally so that by reason of the cold Ayre and drinesse of the sand they are most wholesome and very nimble far beyond those that are fed and fatted in coops Conies fed with mans bloud are not wholesome especially if they be fed with mans bloud as I have heard that some Chirurgions have done in divers Nations that when they opened a vein to bleed the sick they gave the bloud to such creatures and this will wonderfully feed them and fat them but they are unwholesome and hurtfull to eat Wherefore wild ones that run up and down as they list wandring here and there are the most wholesome to be eaten and their skins are thicker and their hair grows faster and closer to their hides CHAP. II. Of the Islands in Zeland and of the nature of people there and their Conditions Manners Original and what great benefits the land of this fruitfull Countrey affords to strangers in a short and clear description
of both Sexes Page 25 Chap. 10. Whether the Child be nourished with the menstrual excrement and whether Maids may conceive before they have their Terms Page 29 Chap. 11. The Soul comes not from the Parents Seed but is infused by God and can neither dye nor corrupt What day of Child bearing it is infused Page 32 Chap. 12. The Soul though it be incorporeal not made of matter or Elements yet is it subject to passions and perturbations and such affections as redound upon the Body Page 36 Chap. 13. That the Souls of Men are not equal in all things nor of the same condition and dignity but one is better than another Page 42 Chap. 14. Of the immortality of the Soul and certainty of the Resurrection Also how that may be done Lastly how much our minds are raysed toward God from so great a benefit and what great confidence we may have when we die that we shall be saved Page 47 Chap. 15. Whether there be a reasonable Soul infused into monstrous births and to abortives and whether they shall rise again to life And by the way from whence Monsters proceed Page 57 Chap. 16. The humours and food do change the habit of the body and state of the mind apparently And hence arise the affections and stings of conscience And by the by what Melancholy can do and how it may be cured Page 59 Chap. 17. Herbs are subject to change and will lose their forces and form unlesse they be dressed continually Page 67 Chap. 18. How manifold difference and variety there is in the nature of grounds Page 79 Chap. 19. Clusters of Grapes augment but grow not ripe by the Moon beams Page 81 Chap. 20. Why Hesiod dislikes soyling Page 81 Chap. 21. How Weezels and other Creatures that hurt Corn may be driven away or killed Page 82 Chap. 22. The cunningnesse of Worms in Mans body and what it portends when they come forth by the Mouth and Nostrils Page 83 The Contents of the Chapters contained in the Second Book Chap. 1. THat humours and not bad Angels cause diseases yet the aereal spirits do mix themselves therewith and increase the diseases by adding fire unto them Page 86 Chap. 2. Melancholique Med and Frenzy people and such as are furious from other causes will sometimes speak strange Tongues they never learned and yet not be possessed with the Divell Page 91 Chap. 3. Of the Epilepsie's violâ—nce which disease the common people both now and formerly ascribe to certain Saints lastly how it may be cured And by the way that such are not to be buried presently that die of the Falling-sicknesse Lethargy or Apoplex Page 93 Chap. 4. 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 Page 97 Chap. 5. 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 cage and industry Page 99 Chap. 6. 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 Page 102 Chap. 7. The bodies of those that are drown'd when they swim up and come to be seen as of those that are murdered when their friends are present or the murderers they bleed at the nose and other parts of their body Page 102 Chap. 8. 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 Page 105 Chap. 9. Why in Holland they say that such as have unconstant and weak brains have been conversant amongst beans Page 106 Chap. 10. 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 Page 108 Chap. 11. 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 Page 109 Chap. 12. Some things will not burn but are invincible in the midst of flames and how that comes to passe Page 110 Chap. 13. The native heat of Man is fostered and increaseth by the heat of other Creatures but espâ—cially by the heat of children if they be laid to that part of the body that is weak For this fomentation doth not onely help concoction but easeth all joynt pains but amongst whelps which do it most effectually Page 112 Chap. 14. Why the French-Pox is more gentle now than it was formerly and rageth not so much and into what disease it degenerates Page 113 Chap. 15. How it is that Men dying though they have their mind and understanding firm yet they make a hoarse noise and a sound that returns back which the Low Dutch vulgarly call Den rotel Page 114 Chap. 16. The death of man and destruction of things that are is against Nature and is very improperly called natural Yet the mind must be resolved not to fear death though not without cause all men are afraid of it Page 115 Chap. 17. The Inconveniencies of Tippling and drunkennesse and what things will resist and cure it Page 116 Chap. 18. Intemperance of drink is worse than of meat Page 118 Chap. 19. Wine makes a man drunk otherwise than Beer or Ale doth Page 119 Chap. 20. Men that are tall and grosse bodied are sometimes not so long-lived as those that are slender and cannot so stoutly struggle with diseases But commonly litâ—le men will drink more wine than grosse men and will be longer before they be drunk Page 120 Chap. 21. They that eat a moderate breakfast in the morning will eat more freely at dinner and if they drink much wine it will offend them lesse By the way whether it be wholesome to eat much bread Page 121 Chap. 22. A Nutmeg and a Coral-stone carried about a man will grow the better but about a woman the worse Page 123 Chap. 23. 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 Page 124 Chap. 24. When men are sick they grow tall though they eat lesse but they lose in breadth Page 127 Chap. 25. Whether it is best to open a Vein when one is fasting or after meat and whether it be lawful to sleep presently after blood-letting Page 129 Chap. 26. Physiognomy that is the reason how to look
into the Nature and manners of men and with which by the marks and signs of the body we may judge of the motion and propension of the mind is not to be disliked Moreover I shall prove by Testimony of Scripture what is most convenient to be observed hereby Page 130 Chap. 27. Whether it be more wholesome to sleep with open mouth or with the mouth and lips shut close Page 132 Chap. 28. That the curses of Parents and the ill wishes that they wish against their Children and ban them withall do sometimes take effect and fall out so and their good wishes whereby they desire all good to happen to them are a means to make them prosper and to obtain what their Parents desired might happen to them Page 133 Chap. 29. How comes it that according to the common Proverb scarce any man returns better from his long travels or from a long disease and to lead a better life afterwards Page 134 Chap. 30. Stones or Jewels dug forth of the Earth or taken out of the Sea or out of the bodies of living Creatures what vertue they have and by what means they perform their operations Page 138 Chap. 31. Of the events of dreams and how far they ought to be observed and believed Page 140 Chap. 32. Of the Climacterick or graduall year namely the 7. and 9. in which years the bodies of men suffer manifest changes and of old Men especially 63. is the most dangerous Likewise of the reason of Criticall dayes that is of the judgments of diseases whereby Physitians undoubtedly foreshew whether the sick will live or dy Page 142 Chap. 33. How a Looking-glasse represents objects and what good the polished smoothnesse of a Looking-glasse can do to Students and such tire their eyes in reading and how it may restore a dull sight Page 144 Chap. 34. What force and vertue Aqua-vitae hath or the spirit of Wine distill'd and who may safely drink it by the way some admirable effects of this made-wine are set down Page 146 Chap. 35. The prodigious force of Quicksilver and the nature of it the Dutchmen call it so from its quick motion Page 148 Chap. 36. How when we want Salt may flesh and other meats be preserved from corruption By the way Of the wonderful force of Salt and Vineger Page 150 Chap. 27. Pale Women are more lascivious than such as are of a ruddy complexion and lean Women than fat and do more lust after men Page 152 Chap. 38. Whether a man should drink greedily and plentifully or by little and little and sparingly at severall times when he is thirsty or is sat at Table Page 153 Chap. 39. All such things as hastily come to maturity or rise to their full length do the sooner fail and cannot last long as we see it in children and some kind of plants Page 155 Chap. 40. Sometimes our meats are hurt and contract a venemous quality by the siting of some venemous creatures upon them Likewise in mens bodies from filth abounding in them some things are bred as Frogs Toads Mice Rats Bats and an example of this is set down Page 156 Chap. 41. 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 Page 158 Chap. 42. Of the force and nature of Lettice and whom it is good or ill for Page 163 Chap. 43. Of Patience commonly call'd or the great Dock Page 164 Chap. 44. Of the operation of Mans spittle Page 164 Chap. 45. Of the use of Milk Beestings Cream The dutch call the first Beest the latter Room also what will keep these from cloddering in the Stomach Page 166 Chap. 46. Why Gouty people are Lascivious and Prone to venery and as many as lye on their backs and on hard beds Page 166 Chap. 47. Whether the Small-Pox and Measils may be cured with red Wine or with Milk that women use to administer when such Pushes shew themselves Page 168 Chap. 48. Wine is spoil'd by Thunder and Lightning and so is Ale and Beer and how this may be hindred and the force of them restored Page 168 Chap. 49. Predictions of Tempests by the touch of Sea-water and what Winter Thunders fore-shew Page 170 Chap. 50. Children are delighted with beautifull things and cannot away with the sight of old wrinkled women and therefore they are not to be put to lye with old women in their beds and much lesse to lye at their feet in the bed Page 171 Chap. 51. How it comes to passe that children women with child Priests and such as lead a solitary and sedentary life are of all people first infected with popular diseases and with the Plague Page 171 Chap. 52 Divers documents of Nature and a fit conjunction of several matters which because I purposed to handle them with a convenient brevity I have bound them up together in one bundle Page 172 The Contents of the Chapters contained in the Third Book Chap. 1. HOw children are forced to endure the reproaches and disgraces of their Parents and the faults and wicked actions of their Progenitors are so far imputed unto these that by reason of them they lose their reputation or substance and goods of fortune or sustain some dammages in their bodies or minds Page 180 Chap. 2. Wherefore when men grow well after a disease do their genitall parts swell and they naturally desire copulation and of this matter here is a safe admonition and wholesome counsel set down Page 184 Chap. 3. Of the effect of the Ayr and gentle blasts and of the names of the winds with their forces and natures to cause diseases and to stir the humours which being agitated sometimes move the mind and molest it Page 187 Chap. 4. Of the Marriners Compasse which Plautus calls Versoria by observation whereof Marriners sail to Sea and by what vertue and for what reason it alwaies points to the North. Page 198 Chap. 5. What it is makes Dogs mad and at what time of the year chiefly and what are the best remedies to cure them Page 201 Chap. 6. Of the Nature and force of Gold and what effect it hath if it be at any time used for the health and defence of Mans Body Page 205 Chap. 7. Of the Meazels of Hogs and other diseases of this Creature that are next kin to the Leprosie and are commonly called Orighans or contagions from the unwholesome and sickly habit of the body And how this disease may be cured in Men. Page 207 Chap. 8. Wherefore do the Low-Dutch when they have had a tumbling and unquiet night that likes them not say they have had Saint John Baptist's night Page 211 Chap. 9. Of a singular new way how to make Salt and of the Nature Effects Force Use and
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
imbred generosity and hence it is that wise men sometimes beget stupid slothful Children Why wise men sometimes beget fools and that are of a feeble mind because they are not much given to these delights But when the Progenitors are hot in venereous actions and do liberally and abundantly employ themselves therein it oft-times happens that the children are of the same manners desires and actions of mind that their Parents are A Simile from Birds For as Birds are of the same Nature with those they are bred from and are of the same colour'd Feathers so Children exactly imitate the manners of their Progenitors and are essentially the same in nature with them And the same native signs that are printed on the Parents are found also commonly upon the Children For Horace Carmin l. 4. od 4. speaks thus Good and strong beget the same Calves and Colts their Sires ' present From stout Eagles never came Birds like Pigeons impotent And because Education perfects the gifts of nature corrects errours and frees from vice he added very fitly Art amends what Nature is Good Manners mend what 's amisse Chremes in Terence concludes from the Mothers Manners what the son is for thus he brawls with Sostrata Heauton-timerum Act. 4. Scen. 3. His manners shew him born of thee In that in all he doth agree He hath thy vices to a hair None but thee then could him bear Ill Crows ill Egs. And truly it is so by nature and we see it fall out most commonly that Children will imitate their Parents conditions and tread upon their heels following dicing whoring tipling yet some by their Parents care and benefit of education come to good manners wherefore every man ought to strive so to moderate his passions and so order his course of life and dyet that he may not hurt himself or infect his posterity For from the fathers seed and the mothers blood many things use to descend to posterity for the same force and vertue that is in the Parents sperm is poured forth into the children as from one vessel into another So saith Catullus Cat will ever follow kind And Children are of Parents mind Parents diseases faults descend to their children Seeing that the seed flowes from the principall parts and contains in it the force and nature of all the members it comes to passe that what disease is in any part descends by right of succession to the Children So the Leprosie Epilepsie feet-gowt hand-gowt and other diseases and defects are hereditary And because the Mothers blood is the chief nutriment for the Child Women derive most part of mischief to the children and the secondary beginning of procreation it oft-times happens that Children take more mischief from the Mother whether you consider their bodies or minds So wicked drunken foolish women commonly with us bring forth just such Children and that are subject to the same vices The Mothers fault doth more wrong to Children if she be unchaste and play the whore than the Fathers fault doth so likewise if she be given to drunkennesse or any other vice For if a man of ripe years or when he is young and unmarried should get a Maid ☞ with child he deserves almost to be commended for it and not to be disgraced For it is commonly said that one may safely marry his daughter to such a man who is not unfruitful and barren but hath proof of his Manhood already in getting of a child But if a woman or a maid that is marriageable should do the like or suffer any such matter to be done when she begins to fall in love she would so lose her reputation and honour that no Cobler nor any mean fellow whatsoever but would scorn to marry her and if one should marry her he would quickly hit her in the teeth with her whoredome So as soon as any maid is overcome and hath lost her maidenhead and those cloysters of Virginity are entred that fault can never be washt away nor can those closets be ever lockt again For so the Poet describes it Virginity once stain'd Can never be regain'd So Plautus in Amphitruo I do not think that to be the dowry which people call so but chastity and bashfulnesse and a moderate desire a fear of the Gods love of Parents and concord with kindred Wherefore besides others Ecclus. that wise Hebrew doth earnestly warn Parents that they should be very careful to look to their daughters chastity and honesty that they may not be polluted with wicked company or be stained by them For women-kind are naturally frail and more subject to be abused Since therefore there are many things that hinder manners and good life as also there are many things that defile the body and the decent frame thereof care must be had that nothing may pollute the mind with ill manners or disgrace the body by any monstrous deformity And because the beauty and decent form of the body is very acceptacle to all Men we should observe exactly by the progresse of natural causes what things will make one beautiful or deformed and ugly since these things principally consist in womens Imagination and in such things as proceed from without care must be had that that Sex may see nothing A woman with child is subject to passions that may move their mind to think absurdly which in framing the child may bring any hurt For if any mischief happen from without if any fear or trembling fall on them when they meet any terrible thing presently all this fright falls upon the child the natural spirits and humours being turn'd thither and all the faculties of the woman are busied in framing such a thing For a vehement and fixed cogitation whilest it doth tosse the vehement species of things and turns them often over it doth imprint that form and figure which it so often thinks on upon the Child For the confluence of the internal spirit and humours paints out the Image of the thing thought on Whence comes deformity of body It is not for nothing and for no cause that some have such ill shapen bodies ill and uncomely cruel countenances swoln blabber'd cheeks wry mouthes wide chaps for these things come to passe because their mothers being great with them thought on such deformed shapes and representations or fastned their eyes too much upon them So I dislike nothing more than lascivious women that use to delight themselves beyond measure with Whelps and Apes and to carry them in their bosoms to foster them to kisse and hug them For by the company and sight of these creatures the imperfect Nature of women may take some strange impressions and they may frame in their minds such forms as may make their children deformed Maka Dogs So the great women of the Low-Countroys love Malta dogs they are commonly called Camusii from their crooked nostrils their bodies are but small they are white as snow their noses are flat
in the middle and pressed down they have a crestiâ—urining upward their tail doth not turn under their belly as we see it doth in mungrels but it stands upright and bends like a sickle he hath very great eyes and that stick forth and they are both blear eyes weak legs and that are crooked about the joynts but the hinder part of his body is smooth without any hair and their tail is seen very uncomely by those that are present and they will turn their tails on purpose for people to look on This small creature because it is ridiculous for its parts and manners and hath many things that may hurt a woman when she is with child and cause the child within her to be ill formed I think not fit to keep least Women with child should be wronged thereby But this monstrous form and limbs so crooked are not naturall but artificiall Women love dogâ— too well For men shut them up in small Cages and taking their food away they make them grow small as in Terence they took away meat from maids to make them grow small as bulrushes least if any of them should grow corpulent she should seem to be a Champion See your Juglers that passe the Countries use to wrest the limbs of young boyes that they may leap and dance the better Lately A History there was a notable Knave who carried a child to be seen from Town to Town which had a very great head all the other limbs bore no proportion with it This deformity when it is naturall and not by art Physitians call Hydrocephalon Very great heed what disease by reason of the head swoln with a watry humour When a woman great with child had looked on this picture she was so frighted with this unusual sight that when her â—â—â—e came to be delivered she brought forth a child with a spongy vast bead and it had like to have cost her her life And this mischief followed it that it grew greater in the Nurses arms till it became monstrous great The woman a â—e to me and made this complaint bringing the child with hot and when I pressed the head of it with my fingers it would sink down like to a cushions and come forth again These spectacles are not onely to be a â—oided by Women with child but also by all those that may beâ—â—roubled and frighted in their sleep by such frights as it commonly happens to children sick weak old melancholique people Whence Children have ill marks yet monstrous sights will hurt them lesse that they will women with child For they by the sights of such things will frame 〈◊〉 like in their Children For since all their forces and natural faculties are wholly employed to form the child it happens that when the woman is any way offended all the humours and spirits run downwards to the womb And when the imagination of a thing that sticks fast in the mind joyns with these it frames the like fashion on the child that the mind conceives A Proverb from Imagination For it is not said in vain Imagination makes fashion For by the same reason if a Mouse a Cat a Weasel leap suddenly on a Woman or Strawberries Cornel-berries Cherries Grape-stones fall on any part of the body When a Woman doth remove marks from the Face to the Thighs or hinder parts they presently leave their mark and the print of this thing will be printed on that limb unlesse the woman at the same time that these things happen to her body do presently wipe the part and put her hand behind her back or on some remoter part of her body For so the mischief is suddenly cured or the mark is made on that part she touched all her Imagination and natural faculty being turn'd thither CHAP. V. Of the strange longing of Women with child and their insatiable desire of things And if they cannot get them they are in danger of life THe order of the former narration seems to require me to speak something concerning the longing of Women Longing a Disease For they are both all most from the same cause About three Moneths after conception a disease troubles Women which the Greeks call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Latines Pica when by reason of cold vitious humours and sharp â—â—â—gm that lyes in their stomachs they earnestly desire coles parings chalk shels and other things unfit to eat this mischief prevails most when the childs hair first begins to grow and they are with child of a Girle For by reason of want of heat flegmatique humours are lesse concocted Hence it is that winds and often belchings frequently trouble Women Of kin to this is the daintinesse of Women wherewith men and Feavourish people are oft troubled But child-bearing Women that are tempted with this disease are so insatiable in their desire that if they cannot obtain what they long for they bring both themselves and their Child in danger of death Mayst Women long for strong things This disease for the most part troubles the Low Country Women because they are of moyst cold constitutions and feed on ill Nourishment There have been some in our dayes that when they saw a corpulent well â—â—d man they desired to bite at this shoulders A History and there was a man who that he might satisfie a womans longing granted her leave to bite least she might take any hurt whereupon she bâ—t out a part with her teeth and chewd it a little and then she swallowed it raw When she was not yet satisfied she desired to bite again but the man would not endure her But she presently began to languish and to be delivered She brought forth Twins the one living and the other dead for want of a second bite I can see no other reason for it than that the woman grieving in her mind the vitall spirits are lessned A Woman with child suffers if her longing be demed her and the humours appointed to nourish the child turn another way and are not carried to the womb so the child wanting the food which the mother longed for grows feeble and dies For when the passages and receptacles whereby food useth to be derived to the Matrix are stopped it must needs follow that the child will want nutriment and die But if the teeming woman be strong of nature and knows how to moderate her passions the child doth not die but grows sickly By these you may see abundantly what a womans Imagination can do and what outward objects conceived in the mind can print upon the child that is then to be formed When we must please sick people with diet Wherefore I suppose they do not much transgresse the bounds of Art that are not so rigid but do sometimes indulge to sick people such meat as they long for though they are not so proper for them in case they are such as will bring no great hurt to their bodies
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
forth so by the superfluity of a cold humour the seeds of men are choked that the force and faculty of the womb can make no sex nor form of them Seseli of Marsilea is of the like effect Sage Nutmegs Cinamon Cassia Lignea Zedoary Lignum Aloes Masterwort Calamint Clary Dittany Elecampane Orris root juice of Motherwort and innumerable things of this kind that discuss winds What things purge the watrinesse of the womb and wipe away superfluous moysture and prepare the womb as till'd grounds for to sow the seeds on So other things by other forces cause that the matrix be not so slippery that the seed may stick the faster Of this kind are Amber shavings of Ivory Storax Calamita Harts-horn Sumach Blatta Byzantina Myrtil seed Witwalls Cypresse Nuts Frankincense with the bark Mastick Spoonwort Avens Cinquefoil red Roses whereof some applyed outwardly others taken inwardly strengthen the womb and consume superfluous moysture bind close the gaping of the matrix and make it hold the Seed and because the women on this side the Alps for the most part are subject to fits of the mother and such diseases of the womb they had need use these things before others But if the parts be overdryed and burnt they must use moderately moystning means both Meats and Physick A dry matrix what is good for it But they that would be commended for their wedlock actions and not be without Children they must observe this rule to lie with their Wives at distance of time not too often nor yet too seldome for both these hurt fruitfulnesse alike For to eject immoderately weakens a man and spends his spirits and to forbear longer than it is convenient makes the seed ineffectuall and not manly enough Also we must consider the opportunity of this matter when it is best to copulate and what sex you conceive in your mind to beget Avicenna his Counsel for Copulation Avicenna no base fellow nor an Authour of the lowest rank describes the time and manner of procreating a sex When saith he the terms are spent and the womb is cleansed which is commonly in five dayes or 7. at most if a man lye with his Wife from the first day she is purged to the fifth she will conceive a Male but from the fifth to the eighth day a female Again from the eighth day to the twelfth a male again but after that number of dayes an Hermaphrodite Though he brings no probable cause of these effects yet methinks it seems to be very probable Avicenna his opinion explan'd For the first dayes the womb being cleansed and the fordid humour perfectly purged forth the matrix hath more heat whereby the man and the womans seed stick faster together and is directed to the right side of the womb by the attractive force of the Liver and the right Kidney from which also in those dayes hot blood is derived for nutriment of the Child that shall be For the left parts as being cold and benummed and void of blood cannot contribute any thing so soon as the terms are purged but blood is drawn later and more sparingly from the veins of the left side which are called the Emulgent veins Emulgent veins that creep about the Milt and the left Kidney so that at length after the first day untill the eighth day some blood comes forth of them whereby the Child is to be nourished So that when those parts perform their office and the right side parts do cease by reason of the scituation and cold nutriment a female is begot After the eighth day the parts on the right side do their office again and blood comes from them to nourish a male After this circuit of dayes because the menstrual blood flowes without distinction from all parts and the matrix is made too moyst with cold humours flowing unto it and the seed joyns to neither side but flotes in the midst of the womb betwixt both What begus Hermaphrodites The seed of both Sexes confounded make an Hermaphrodite which conception takes its form and forces sometimes from the left sometimes from the right side and useth the help of them both Hence Hermaphrodites are begot which name is so call'd from Mercury and Venus Irregular copulation is detestable Sometimes this vicious and infamous conception is begot by undecent copulation when the woman besides Natures custome lyes uppermost and the man under her sometimes times to the great hurt of their health for by that copulation turn'd the wrong way they become subject to Ruptures and Herniaes especially if they be full with meats CHAP. X. Whether the Child be nourished with the menstrual excrement and whether Maids may conceive before they have their Terms DAily Experience proves that some have been married at 12. years old and some to their great hurt and damage of their health have had no terms at 19. years old The Courses is an argument of conception Whence many ask Whether when a Maid is fit for a Man and she never had her courses she can conceive some are of opinion it cannot be that one can conceive but after her terms are over and this seems to me to be the truth For when the helps be wanting that further conception and the matrix wants the humour should feed the Child how can a woman conceive A Similitude from flourishishing shrubs But our Matrons especially Midwives reason thus from Trees as no Plant wants fruit that bears flowers and no Tree is barren that yields blossoms but every Tree is unfruitfull that wants flowers so young Maids that have no courses conceive not nor do their wombs swell though they receive the seed When the courses stay then stayes fruitfulnesse But women in years bear Children no longer after their terms are stopt For since the flux of this excrement affords matter to generation of Mankind the seed of man like runnet and leaven heaping this up within it self it follows that a woman cannot conceive either before that humour begins to run nor after that it leaves off to run any longer because the nutriment for the Child is wanting What use of the terms But here ariseth another question whether the menstrual bloud be a profitable Excrement and fit to seed the child or onely a filthy matter which at set times is voided as a sink I know that Pliny and many more think so who suppose that the menstruall bloud is venemous and monstrous and they do wonderfully rayse this opinion So Juvenal taking an argument from hence to speak against women stirs up men to hate them Sat 6. and doth purposely write a whole Satyr against them that despising them they should never marry I know indeed that the flux of the Terms is a fowl thing and what harm may come by it if this sink be stopt longer then it should be and that Moses did well Levit. 18.20 Deut. 29. as God commanded him to forbid all
no man living shall be justified If thou Lord shouldst observe what is done amisse who might abide it but with thee there is mercy and plenteous redemption Despair must be cast away CHAP. XV. Whether there be a reasonable Soul infused into monstrous births and to abortives and whether they shall rise again to life And by the way from whence Monsters proceeed ALl those that are like men and according to the order of being born received from our first Parents by that way and means proceed from both Sexes though they are monstrous in shape and deformed in body Deformity unmans no man have notwithstanding a reasonable soul and when they have run the race of this short life they shall be made at last partakers of the Resurrection But those that are not from man but by mixing with other Creatures and exercise their Actions otherwise than men do shall neither be immortal nor rise again So the wood-gods Satyrs houshold gods Centaurs Fairies Tritons Sirens Harpies and if fabulous antiquity hath invented any other things of this nature they have neither rational souls nor enjoy the benefit of the Resurrection There are indeed amongst so many millions of men many that are deformed in body and are of an horrid aspect with hogs snowt and uncomely Jaws yet all these though they are far from the natural shape of Man are referred to the number of men For they speak discourse judge remember and perform other offices of the Soul and perfect their actions after the manner of men though they somewhat degenerate from mans dignity and his imbred force of Nature Whence monstrous shapes proceed Now a Monstrous habit of body is contracted divers wayes For fear frights influence of the Stars too much or too little seed Imagination of women with child and divers phantasms which the mind conceives deform the body and cause Children to be of a shape not proper to the Sex Sometimes the whole course of Nature is changed either when the seeds are vitiated or the Instruments be unfit so that the natural faculties to propagate and form the Child cannot perform their offices exactly A Simile from the Industry of an Artificer For as the most Industrious Artist cannot bring to perfection a work happily begun where the matter is naught or the Instruments are dull so Nature wanting the forces of her faculties or not having a fit matter doth all things ill and fails of her end Some there are that by their operation do make some parts of the body otherwise than Nature made them So in Asia as Hippocrates testifies Of Ayr and places there were great heads that the Nurses made their heads to be long figured for that they thought was a sign of a noble and generous spirit as a Hawk nose was amongst the Persians whereby at length it came to passe that though the Midwives ceased to presse the childrens heads yet nature whilest she was forming the child agreed with the ancient custome and what they did by great Industry Nature did of her own accord Also nutriments and the qualities of the outward Ayr make some parts deformed So they that dwell in cold moyst Countries have great heads great bellies fat bodies Countries change the conditions of Soul and Body babber lips swoln cheeks Many Countries produce Pigmies and little men very short Other Countreys produce people with great throats and scrophulous tumours with flat noses crooked legs Yet though many things be wanting in these people and the parts be either ill framed or wrested amisse yet because they are born of women and some force of reason shines in them and they are led by the same Laws of Nature Orthodox Divines say There is a rational soul in them and that they shall rise again The Resurrection will restore bodies deformed to their right shape And by rising again they shall lay aside all deformities of their bodies that were ill favoured to behold and be well formed like as men are and all lame crooked imperfect limbs shall be made perfect And though in some the force of reason shines lesse because of the unaptnesse of the organ as in children old men drunkards mad-men in whom the force of the Soul is hindred or oppressed Yet every one of them hath a reasonable soul and what is defective shall be made up at the resurrection But imperfect and abortive births and all mischances where the limbs are not fashion'd or very imperfectly because these want the reasonable soul they cannot be call'd men nor shall they rise again Difference between abortion and a mischance Physitians make a difference between abortion and a mischance For a running forth of a mischance is when the seeds were for some dayes joyn'd in the womb but by the slipperinesse and smoothnesse of it they run forth again before they come to make a perfect shape so that a rude unframed mass runs out that was the rudiments of a Child that should have been and a shadow of what was begun but it was cast out untimely as seeds and buds from trees that bear not fruit to maturity But Abortion oft-times shews the parts of the Infant perfectly made up which when it is 42 dayes old is endowed with a rational Soul and is alive Whence if it chance to be cast forth by some sudden accident it shall one day rise again For though many things be wanting in it and it is not come to its full magnitude yet in the Resurrection all shall be made up that time would have produced A Simile from children increasing And as children have many things in possibility that with progresse of time and increase of years do shew themselves as teeth nails hair and full stature of body which by faculty of the seed increases by degrees and come to perfection so in the Resurrection all things wanting in the body and parts that are imperfect shall be made perfect Whosoever therefore is born of the seed of man and not from some foul matter or vitious humours concurring though he be of a monstrous body and ill favoured shape yet shall he rise again from death to life all faults being repaired by vertue of the Resurrection and framed decently for that Omnipotent Work-master of all things Makes nothing weak Prudentius who doth the body raise For were there fault it were not for his praise What is by chance or sicknesse or by care Or otherwise decay'd he will repair Nothing is impossible to God For that is easie for him who made all things of nothing For as Augustine saith It is more easie to create men than to raise them when they are dead It is more to give that a being that never was than to repair what was before And the earthly matter never is perished in respect of God who can easily restore to its former nature what is vanished into the Ayr and other Elements or what leannesse or hunger hath consumed or
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
of their Emrods and monthly terms or from some usual evacuation restrain'd who when as their brain is filled with a black and dark smoke their mind is vexed with absurd Imaginations and is so changed and forced that sometimes men of good lives and of great esteem have been brought to fearfull ends thereby That a man would wonder there should be such great force and violence in a melancholique humour that it should overwhelm reason and take away a mans understanding A simile from a dark Cloud But as a thick dark cloud shadows the Suns light so a melancholique humour darkneth the mind and drives it on to many mischiefs The evil spirits also mingle themselves with ill humours and especially with black choler Evill spirits mix with melancholy because that humour when it exceeds Natures bounds is most fit to move us to any wickednesse For men of this constitution conceive grievous and sharp passions and that last long for the contumacy of the humour that will hardly melt and be dissolved Whence it followes that evill thoughts and apprehensions stay long in their minds Whence melancholique people Imagine absurd things which sometimes break forth into action that they fall foul upon those they know and those they know not making no difference and do mischief both to others and sometimes to themselves So the humours do afford fire-brands to cholerick men but when they are angry they hurt others and not themselves But that the cause of these things consists in the humours and not in the wicked spirits though they help to trouble the humours may be collected from hence for that mad melancholique and frantique persons are wont to be cured by opening the emrods that are stopped and so are reduced to better minds those fuliginous smokes of the humours being removed that did vitiate the imagination and animal spirits L. 6. Aph. 21. as may appear by Hippocrates his Aphorism If the melancholique veins or emrods run in those that are mad they are thereby cured nature deriving the ill humours from the principal part to the parts more ignoble Again II. Aph. Ill vapours hurt the brain the Emrods are healthfull for mad people and such as are troubled with diseases of the kidneys For when that humour whether it be in the Hypochondres or the Spleen or be heaped up in the whole body or in any part fills the brain with an ill and filthy exhalation it causeth fear sadnesse sorrow heavy groans astriction of the heart ringings in the ears and reason being oppressed and the light of the mind extinguished they begin to despair sometimes desiring death sometimes fearing and abhorring it How Melancholy may be driven out Wherefore as Galen saith when the Spring and Autumn begin that humour must be gently and by degrees purged out by vomit belching purging downward breaking of wind by opening a vein and by causing the Emrods and courses to run And whosoever is subject to this disease he must earnestly and with great care resist it and must by no means entertain Imaginations that falsly creep into his mind at first pleasing and amiable but afterwards as they grow strong they can hardly be resisted A fault by hiding will the stronger grow Virg. 3. Georg. Physick can cure that onely which we know But if adversities and misfortunes have brought on this mischief you must oppose against it an undaunted courage of your mind and support your self with Gods Word and with confidence in him and so with the lesse labour you shall overthrow those terrible phantasms and representations that assault you The Mind must be underpropt by Gods Word For by these helps the most noble Heroes have stood firm who when all was come to be almost past recovery and they desired to put an end to their miseries by death yet the greatnesse of their griefs could not overcome them 3 Kings c. 19. So Helias in his afflictions desired to die So David so often assaulted by his enemies began to distrust So Job even in despair chose rather to die Ch. 7. and to end his life any way We must not do violence to our life than longer to endure so great miseries Lastly Christ like one in despair and taking our cause upon him complains that he was forsaken by his Father But all these by the hope and assurance of better things cast away all trembling and distrust looking unto God with a steadfast mind In Som. Scip. But this as Cicero saith all men should be perswaded of that the Soul must be kept in the custody and watchfulnesse of the body nor must it leave its station untill God command that gave it lest we should seem to reject so great a gift of God Bel Judaic l. 3. Wherefore Josephus seems to speak excellently that what evil soever comes to us we should bear it with a cheerfull and undaunted courage And let no man think it lawful for him to end his life basely beneath the worthy condition of Man appointment of nature Melancholique people worthy to be pitied But if any man by reason of a disease or alienation of his mind do come to an unhappy end let no man trample on men of such a condition or censure them too severely but let every one rather pity their case and grieve for their mishap for since they were not well in their wits and had lost their reason understanding their mind was turned upside down and they were deceived and blind in the choice of things For when the vertue of imagination is corrupted absurd things present themselves to our minds and we judge confusedly of things and discourse erroneously For the like happens to our minds as doth to our eyes A simile from Glasse where glasses are looked through that are of many colours for through them all things seem to be blew or green or red or yellow or of the same colour alwaies as the Glasse is so that the objects appear in their species otherwise then they are in themselves Why feavourish and drunken men dote Hence men that are drunk or angry think they see double objects when there is but one So those that are doting in Feavers think they see divers Hobgoblins and the corrupt Imagination and organs vitiated present strange fantasmes to the mind by reason of the agitation of ill humours and the spirits that passe here and there and wander up and down in the brain Corporeal spirits stir the mind wherefore the spirits and humours are of great efficacy in troubling the mind and moving the affections and wounding the conscience But if they be sincere and no way defiled men are of a pleasing disposition and not complaining and touchy But if they be once stain'd and troublesome many passions of the mind arise and turbulent affections Since therefore both Soul and body are affected together first care must be taken to sweeten and abate the troubles of
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
many veins running up and down in them and with many strikes and turnings are very beautifully chamfered as garments made of Goat-skins and Noblemens Robes that are wrought Camelot damast variously woven And many such things that are dug forth of the bowels of the earth wrought so curiously as if some Graver or Carver had wrought them into that form Coral is a shrub So Coral in the bottom of the Ligurian Sea bears leaves and fruit and being drawn forth with nets it presently hardneth like a stone and becomes black or red or if the moisture be lesse digested white So in that part of Gallia Belgica where the Eburones Menapii and Sicambri lived there are stone-cole dug forth Stone-cole that are of the Nature of hardned bitumen with which the inhabitants not onely melt Iron but make good fires in their houses and if they be quenched once and again they will revive if they be put near the fire And whereas all other fires are inflamed with oyle Pit-cole is quenched with Oyle but burnt with water these cole burn more if you cast water on but are quenched with oyle Other Countries have also their mines and minerals under ground some afford Brimstone Lime Gyose Ocre Alum pieces and clods of Gold and Silver through which fountains tun in the secret passages of the Earth and they impart their qualities to the waters and so are made fit to cure diseases So Mines near the Sea are of a bituminous nature For the clods dug forth thence smell so much of brimstone that those that fit by faint and swound away and pit coles and such as are made breed the same inconvenience unlesse you sprinkle salt upon the fire Salt strewed on Fiâ—â— coles abates the stench For by this means the venome that offends the brain is discussed The venome and offensive humour boyleth forth Li. Georg. Some ascribe this generative force of the Earth to the Stars which doubtlesse do effectually operate upon inferiour bodies because we see many things decay The effects of the Stars upon inferiour bodies and new things come in their places never seen before that are far better But as I deny not this so I believe especially concerning plants that many of them fail and degenerate chiefly by reason of the negligence or ignorance of Gardners So Wheat as Theophrastus saith Of the causes plants is changed into Darnel Basil into wild Marjorum water-Mints into Mints in smell but in form into Calamint and many kinds of herbs if care be not taken do commonly not onely change their form but lose also their imbred vertues Which as in many herbs All things better by dressing So I have observed in the Violet called Altilis a most beautifull flower which unlesse it be yearly transplanted it degenerates into a mean low flower that is not so sweet Virgill confirms this I see the best plants will degenerate If not transplanted L. 1. Georg. for all things by fate Decline and fall unto a lower rate On the contrary if you dresse wild Plants they will grow like those of the Gardens and lay aside their wild natures as Virgill also observed All Plants by Nature rise up strong and fair Though barren from the ground L. 2. Georg. yet these by care Transplanted and manured will grow mild And better for our use than they are wild Wherefore Nature brings forth continually new plants unheard of before A simile from base animals and their proceedings and the influence of the Stars produceth many also but the Art of Gardning produceth most of all And as Rats Dormice Eels Lampreys Shell-fish Snails Earth-worms do not alwaies breed from seed but oft-times from slime of the earth and from filth and corruption So in sandy grounds such as are the sandy Mountains in Zealand Theod. de caus plant L.c. 1. which the people call the Dunen many shrubs come forth naturally by the confluence of nutriment and because that place lieth open to the Sun and is fit to breed plants which once bred from the moysture of the Earth do afterwards grow up from their own seed and increase abundantly Wherefore let no man admire that plants are subject to be changed and to lose their forces and figure when as that unlesse it chance that they be confounded by affinity one with another may proceed from the scituation of the place the quality of the ambient Ayre and the Art of the Gardner So Pepper Cardamon large Cummin Rhapontick sowed in our climate are changed something and are not so hot yet let no man say they are other plants Herbs change both their force and form For it is the faint heat of the Sun and the distemper of the climate that makes them weaker and that they grow not so great and come not to so much maturity Wherefore it is clear that plants have a double change For sometimes they change their native forces and keep the same form sometimes their form is changed and their native qualities remain That comes to passe partly by the influence of the Stars and partly by the nature of the ground and the ambient Ayre For since the earth is of divers qualities it happens by reason of the Ayre and the nutriment of the earth that plants are changed and receive other qualities So Hasel-Nut-Trees Cherry Trees Wild-Cherry Trees if they grow near banks that stinking Waters run by or Salt waters wet their fruit will tast salt So men as their food is and the Ayre they live in obtain another temperament of their body other manners and qualities So Danes by long constance and comerce change into Spaniards Germans into French-Men or Italians so you shall see a pleasant and delightsome tree set on salt ground to degenerate by reason of the nutriment it sucks in For Salt and bitter ground is ill for Trees Virgil. Georg. Fruit will grow worse on them and by degrees Decay though drest for Vines and Apples change Their former goodnesse cause the ground is strange If you add to this that there is a fatall change and vicissitude of things you shall find that plants though you do manure them will grow old and feeble Old age makes all things worse or barren and will onely live unlesse you graft and inoculate them or pull of their slips and branches and set them again Which variety of Plants and vicissitude makes many think that this part of Physick is unfruitfull and that Diâ—scorides and many more Herbarists have lost their labour who have studied to write the descriptions of Plants Truly I think that no man hath adorned this art yet as it ought to be and the largenesse of it deserves who hath not known the Plants themselves Iresh as they grow and seen with his eyes their native delineations For there are some men amongst us that having scarce seen the hearbs will pronounce at randome strange things of them De simp Medic. l.
of drives away Caterpillars and it kills Moths and cloathflies as Wormwood Rue wild Mints Southernwood Savory Walnut-leafs Fern Lavender Gith Coriander being green Fleawort Bean trifoly kills fleas and Wiglice either put under the beds or sprinkled upon the bedsteads with the decoction of the vinegar of Squils It is observed that in our times and also in our Ancestors days the seed of Navews that the Low-Countrey factors make so great profit of hath a wonderful force in killing Weezels not by any venomous quality but by the sweetnesse of it For it is sweet and oyly and the Weezels will leave the Corn and eat greedily on this till they be killed with Sweet things sometimes kill Worms And the same thing happens to them when they get into frails of Raisins So I know by experience that eating many Raisins will kill the Worms in Children if they eat them fasting without any thing else eaten with them For as bitter so sweet things taken abundantly will kill worms For they swell and burst with eating too much sweet meats So the stomach of a man will swell and be tortured if he cram in too much sweet things CHAP. XXII The cunningnesse of Worms in Mans body and what it portends when they come forth by the Mouth and Nostrils IT hath been seen sometimes miraculously that long and round Worms especially have crambled upwards and crept forth at the mouth and the nostrils and they do this by an imbred natural motion if a man be long fasting For then they bite the stomach Worms creeping out at the Nostrils and seek for meat and when they find none to satisfie them and preserve their lives they creep upwards and hunt for meat as far as the very throat For they by their natural instinct perceive that the food comes in that way and the nostrils being open to the very throat almost they creep thither and tickle the part or else they are cast forth by sneesing or are pulled forth with ones forefingers I have oft-times observed this in sound people and when I shewed them the cause of it I gave them content I have seen this also happen in sick people but not without some imminent danger foreshew'd by it For so great is the putrefaction and inflammation of humours in such bodies that the Worms cannot endure the deadly force of the disease wherefore they break forth of themselves not urged by any Crisis or naturally but from the malignity of the disease But when the violence of the disease abates and they are carried downwards with other excrements Hippocrates holds that to be healthfull but to come forth of their own accord L. 2. Aph. 18. and not forced by any faculty as we see in people that are dying is ill for the patient for by a sagacity of nature they find the body ready to fail and that they shall want their food and therefore they leave their habitation Mice forsake old houses So it is observed that Rats and Mice will forsake ruinous houses three moneths before they fall For they naturally perceive that the frame of the house begins to part and that the house will shortly fall So Lice and Fleas where they find mens bodies decay and that the blood fails in every part they either leave the body or lay hold on those parts that the blood and naturall heat stay longest in Experience from the sagacity of Lice For it is approved by those that search and bury the dead that they will hide themselves in that pit of the stomach where the breast blade ends or in that grisle that lyes upon the vocal arterie For those parts being next the heart are hot untill the last breath which when some related unto me that were employed about sick people I said presently That it was a certain sign of death and that the Soul was ready to breathe forth But since we formerly made mention of Worms I thought fit to add this That many things will kill all worms and drive them forth But nothing is better than Worms dryed upon a tile at the fire and the powder given to those that are full of worms will presently drive forth all within the body As Pliny and other searchers of Natural things assert that a man being stung by a Scorpion L. 10. c. 2. the remedy is to drink in oyl or wine the ashes of Scorpions So our Countrey-men say that the biting of a mad-dog is cured by the burnt hairs of the same creature drank in wine For it drives forth the venome and keeps off all the danger of it and makes the body that is bit that it is of force to attract and overcome the venome So sometimes two contrary poysons mingled do cure and not kill As Ausonius wittily sets down in an Epigram concerning a woman that would have poysoned her husband with Wolfs-bane A whorish Wife her jealous Husband to Gave poyson yet she fear'd it would not do Wherefore Quicksilver intermingled shee Thought for to hasten death which set him free For if apart these poysons you shall give They kill but joyn'd together make him live Laevinus Lemnius a Physitian of Zirizea CONCERNING Hidden and Natural Questions The Second Book CHAP. I. That humours and not bad Angels cause diseases yet the aereal spirits do mix themselves therewith and increase the diseases by adding fire unto them THere are some amongst us that are but moderately versed in the Works of Nature and know not the causes of diseases their original progresse and symptoms that follow or accidents and because they cannot attain to the reason of them they refer all to evil Angels and say they are bewitcht since the Devils do constantly employ themselves to hurt us Plenty and malignity of humours is the beginning of diseases So they that are sick of a Tertian Ague the humours entring the veins every third day are said to be troubled with an evil spirit and the like is said for quartans and continent feavers as quotidians diurnals and all burning Feavers But how unreasonable and absurd this is any man can tell that is moderately versed in the Secrets of Nature For since man's body consists of the mixture of the four Elements and hath as many humours which from the faculty of the seed partake of four qualities hot moyst cold dry what can be said more than that diseases arise from the distemper of these by defect or excesse and from thence they take their original It is proved because we see they grow mild and quiet by vomit sweat opening a vein cupping-glasses set to the part affected by the opening of the Terms and Emrods also by the giving of Glysters and Suppositaries But God for his inestimable Wisdome hath appointed orderly motions in the nature of things and would have nothing done rashly or by chance but all things in a decent order and continued series So the Stars the Elements the Sea the times of the year
these and many more wherewith the Art of Physick abounds being rightly administred we see such persons restored and to be the same they formerly were When therefore the humours very frequently boil and the spirits are much troubled thereby and the exceeding swift motion of the mind brings forth some language not known before as we see sparks fall from striking of a flint A simile from striking sire with a flint Now it is natural to mans mind to be fit and ready to learn and it is endowed with Arts before it hath the use of them so that Plato's saying is not unlikely that all our knowledge is but remembrance The mind is endowed with Arts before we learn them In Phaed. For the mind of man contains in it self the knowledge of all things but it being oppressed with the weight of the body and thick humours cannot easily illustrate it self and as fire raked up in ashes it must be stirred and fostered A simile from fire racked up in ashes though imbred sparks and light of nature may shine forth When therefore this diviner part of man the Soul is shaken with diseases she brings forth such things as lay hid within her and useth her imbred forces An excellent simile from the sweetnesse of plants For as some plants smell not at all till you crush them in your hand so the imbred faculties will not shew themselves unlesse they be tried like Gold on a Touchstone By the same reason Jet Amber will not alwaies draw chaff and straws and such other things as are driven with the wind A simile from the effect of stones and plants but onely when they are rubbed and heated So when you whet daggers often and swiftly you make sparks fly forth Also the force of nature may be known in plants and Jewels For Piony Misseltoe Fruticulus Vervain Corall bloudstone Pearls Emrods Whence there is force in raysing spirits and other Amulets that is such things as drive away things hurtfull applied to the body or hanged about the neck by a present force either discusse diseases or stop bloud and do other things according as their natural quality is But all these are of more force taken inwardly A simile from the efficacy of wine You may make experience by strong wine that if you smell to it it refresheth the mind and spirits and heart but when you drink it down into the body for it doth nothing in the vessel but when it comes into the veins then it shewes its force and will make dull fellows very eloquent in speech For the heat of the wine sharpens the mind and brings forth what lyes hid in the brain Just so do the humours affect men when the whole force of the disease hath filled the cranies of the brain and the mind and spirits both vital and animal begin to be stirred We see some in burning Feavers that are most vigorous commonly in Summer who will discourse very well and speak very eloquently and in that dialect which when they are recovered they cannot perform which I said were not troubled with the devil and that they did not this by the devils instigation but from the force of the disease and violence of the humours whereby the mind of man is inflamed as if a firebrand were put under it I have recovered some of these by Opiates in potion and fomentations applyed to their heads and so brought them to their right minds when the disease was gone they forgot all they spake or did and when I told them of some things they were ashamed of them and wondred they had so much forgot themselves So those that are dying because there is an ardent force of the mind rais'd in them and some divine Inspiration comes into them before their Souls depart use to prophesie and to foretell certainly what shall follow hereafter and that so considerately and handsomely that the standers by admire at it Why a Soul departing will foretell things to come But that the Soul as it partakes of a heavenly original can foreknow things to come especially when death is near shall be shewed by me in its proper place CHAP. III. Of the Epilepsie's violence which disease the common people both now and formerly ascribe to certain Saints lastly how it may be cured And by the way that such are not to be buried presently that die of the Falling-sicknesse Lethargy or Apoplex WE have shewed elsewhere what effects the humours work in the bodies of men but since they do diversly affect us according to the diversity of places I thought good to speak of those also that are inherent in the brain For those diseases that are in the highest part of the body do not onely afflict us with pain but also take away sense and motion and hurt the mind as we may see in the Apoplex Lethargy and the Epilepsie that is weaker in children and women To whom the Epilepsie must be ascribed The Falling-sicknesse against Hippocrates mind was ascribed by the Antients to some special Saints for when those that stood next saw the diseased so suddenly tortur'd and pull'd We must not ascribe to Saints the torments of diseases they thought some Saints that were their Enemies or some ill spirits must be the cause thereof and sent such mischief wherefore they made vowes to them and set up Tables for their deliverance Hence our Age hath distinguished the Epilepsie into many sorts and one they ascribe to St. John the Baptist another to Cornelius and Hubert but as no man should deride the folly of these men so I think by degrees we should perswade them better to understand that these things should be referred to natural causes For they are of divers sorts in respect of the habit of the body or largenesse of the passages or abundance of clammy humours hence some howl and bark like dogs some hiss and gnash their teeth some cry loud and terribly Differences of Falling-sicknesses some are wholly mute especially their brain being stuffed with grosse humours and their midriff oppressed and the conduits of breathing stopped Whence it comes that they cannot freely draw their breath and these are most tormented of all men in my opinion But the symptoms increase most at the full and new Moon or when she is in those signs that respect the brain or heart For then the humours abound most especially when after North winds the South winds begin to blow for as these winds are turbulent and unwholesome so are they cold and moyst The Moon exasperates moyst diseases For moyst bodies that use moyst meats and are in a moyst climate are more fit and subject to this disease which is evident because children and women are most subject unto this and if it cease not about the 25th year when the natural heat is augmented Aphor. 7. Com. 5. and causeth a dryer temper and if it continue beyond that age it useth to
accompany one untill Death that is it never ends till death put an end thereto Since therefore the cause of the Falling-sicknesse is so Evident The habit of Epileptick persons terrible I would perswade the ignorant people to think of no other cause of this disease than the motion of the humours that men may not fear so much when they see their mouths draw awry their cheeks swoln and strutting forth with a frothy humour and should not be dismaid to come near them and lend them their help For so are all those that stand by and are fearful amazed when they see them rending themselves and beating their heads and bodies against posts that they think there is no hopes of them and so cause them to be buried before their Souls are departed from them For I have found it in our own dayes and in former Ages also that some have broken the Coffin and lived again Wherefore it is fit a Law should be made that those who are to take care of the dead bodies should not presently put them into their coffins whom they think to be dead Apoplecticks are not to be presently buried especially those that are strangled by the Apoplex Epilepsie or rising of the Mother for oft-times their soul lies within them and they live again But when the Plague and pestilent Feavers rule Men dead of the Plague must be presently enterred I think it not necessary nor fit to observe this so strictly because the contagion will presently spread when they are dead and infect those that are near For there is lesse danger to stand by those that have the Plague and to attend upon them when they are alive than to stand by them when they are dead A fit Simile from Candles put out for then the contagion spreads and infects as it goes For it is with bodies newly dead as with Torches and Candles that whilest they are lighted they do not stink but when they are put out they fill the room with a stinking savour Wherefore the danger is greater to be present when a man dies of the plague than when he is yet alive or dead and grown cold and stiff But if you keep these bodies a little too long unburied they become stinking Carkasses and they do by little and little send forth filthy exhalations and corrupt filthy matter runs from them which happens but seldome in the Apoplex and other cold diseases of the brain The motion and revolution of humours in such as are dead unlesse it be very hot weather or the bodies be very fat And if there be no such matter to hinder they need not be buried till three dayes be over For when seventy two hours are over the humours cease to move and stir not because in that time the Moon hath passed one sign in the Zodiack by force whereof the humours run in the body which some say was the reason that Christ took occasion to raise Lazarus miraculously that was dead four dayes John 11. lest any man should say he was not dead but onely in a trance and come to himself again Why Christ raised Lazarus no sooner Also when he by his Death and Resurrection wrought mans salvation he took the same occasion For besider that he had a mortal wound on his side he lay three dayes in the Sepulchre to take away all objections from them who would speak irreverently and not as they ought concerning his Death and Resurrection but calumniate all he said or did In which errour and madnesse the Jews continue even to this day But since those diseases are so formidable that bereave a man of his understanding that all the standers by are frighted at it I shall do a considerable work to add some present remedies and those not ordinary whereby every one that is unskilful in Physick may preserve himself and his family from them And because all diseases of the brain especially such as proceed from a cold humour are near of kin these remedies may be used to them all indifferently as to losse of memory vertigo's panting of the heart trembling Epilepsies Lethargies Apoplexies and for the hag and night mare and other diseases of the night which disease is called by the Greeks 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Amongst innumerable remedies against these diseases I have found four especially to be most effectuall Remedies for the Night-mare not so much approved by experience as by reason The round black Piony seed for the corner'd and red colour'd seed is uselesse herein the round bulbous root of Squils the shavings of mans skull and Misseltoe I should shew severally how they perform these effects The force of Pionie and by what reason they perform it Galen eryes up Pionie as much as Cato did Coleworts which not onely by an Elementary quality but from the whole substance of it and secret property resists this disease And it will raise children that fall because it is not so strong in them if it be but banged about their necks For it discusseth and consumes the flegmatique humour that is the seminary of this disease Also the seeds of this given inwardly will do it more effectually in such as are of years For it drinks up the windy venemous miosture and brings the body to a hotter and dryer temper Some say this seed is the best that comes from the first increase of the male Pionie For a long time it brings forth unprofitable shoots without seed But when it is of perfect growth the husks cleave and in one part you shall see berries very smooth and black in another kernels of a shining scarlet red colour The black seed must be kept for use Yet not so superstitiously as to hold that the seed of the next year is uneffectual for that seed that comes after ten years is a present remedy if it be not rotten and decay'd What sorce Squills have in the Epilepsie Squills are better than Pionie and have a wonderfull force and faculty not onely for the Epilepsie but also for all diseases that proceed of a clammy viscous humour in what part soever of the body For it hath an abstergent force to dissolve all clammy things For which use I use to give a spoonful of an oxymel that I make of it which because it is exceeding bitter I use to mingle it with syrup of French Lavender and I put in a little Nutmeg to it also I command them to wash their mouthes with vinegar of Squills so as to swallow it down by degrees Also I find that the shavings of mans skull are a present remedy to dry up those humours that cause those diseases if some part of a mans skull scraped off be given to a man or of a womans skull to a woman and that in wine or Oxymel of Squills not by any hidden quality but because it dryes exceedingly for which cause the runner and blood of a Hare stayes the bloody flux and other fluxes of
and is healthfull for the body by the vertue that proceeds from it and that not onely by a hidden and secret faculty which it hath from the stars as Marsilius thinks but from a vertue that proceeds out of it A similitude from Jewels that recreates the vitall spirit For as Jewels are clowded by the ambient ayre and receive in a grosse vapour and abundance of fumes so they do send out of them a thin and invisible vertue For though a Jewel be a solid body yet natural heat and touching and rubbing it draws forth the force within it and communicates it to the brain and heart For a Jewel called Erananos vulgarly a Turquois doth change often and wax pale and lose its natural colour as I have often seen it where he that wears it is sick or not in good health and as the body grows well so will this stone revive and will represent a most amiable sky-colour as in the clearest day from the temperament of its native heat Polluted people desile Jewels And there is scarce any Jewel but will change colour if a man be intemperate or not continent as he ought to be For their inward vertue perisheth and all their beauty and lustre is defiled Whence it is that he that commits adultery or defiles the marriage bed and all that run a whoring can never keep their Jewels beautiful and perfect but they are clowdy and dark by the foul vapours they contract from those that wear them and from whores whose company they frequent For they draw some venemous qualities to them from corrupt bodies that exhale such virulent vapours and infect them as women when they have their courses will foul a clean looking-glasse But if Jewels were ineffectual and of no vertue Exod. 28. Moses would not so accurately and diligently have commanded to adorn the Priests vestment which they call Rationale with twelve Jewels whereof both Ezechiel and St. John in the Apocalyps make mention wherein he would not have men to observe the beauty and alluring rarities of the colours but the wonderfull force and effects of them also concerning which because other men have spoken so largely I shall speak of stones that are taken out of the bodies of Animals birds and fishes whereof many of them stick in the stomach and some in the head of them When Autumn begins and the Moon increaseth there is a stone taken out of the belly of a Swallow The Swallow-stone called a Swallow-Stone or Chelidonius from the bird it comes from this is a present remedy against the falling sicknesse for it dryes exceedingly and drinks up the viscous and clammy moisture that is the root of this disease For the swallow whose dung blinded Tobias's eyes Tob. 2. is of a hot and dry nature whence it is that they make their nests so artificially of moyst and soft mud and hang them up in arched and vaulted places For by touching of it they consume the moysture and make the mud hard Hence it is that Physitians make Cataplasms of them and find the powder of burnt swallowes to be most effectual in dissolving the quinsey and other swellings of the throat Also snails that are very great yield unto white something long rough The Snail-stone what vertue it hath and hollow stones in their lower part which I use to take out of their heads and to keep them for many uses For they cause one to make water that hath the strangullion and being bruised and their powder given in wine they make the urinary passages slippery and give ease That kind of stone grows of a clammy matter and slippery humour which makes an easie passage for the humours and so do these stones help in childbirth for they dilate and loosen the places and cause the matrix to open wider but one or two of them put under the tongue hath a strange force to cause salivation Wherefore I advise such as are thirsty and dry to role one of them in their mouths For it will make the tongue moist and run with humour and stay both heat and drieth Crystall is of the same vertue if a while steeped in cold water it be put into the mouth Amongst hearbs Purslane Cucumbers Housleek commonly called Jupiters beard do the same Also Toads yeild a stone that sometimes represents the picture of that Creature but they are very old A Toad-stone and have layn hid a long time amongst reeds or amongst thorns and bushes before the stone grows in their head or comes to any magnitude And there is a Toad stone kept and preserved in the family of the Lemnians that is bigger than a small nut which I have often proved that it will discusse swellings and tumours arising from venemous beasts if you oft rub the places with it For it hath the same nature the toad hath that it will draw forth and consume all venome For if a Rat Spider Wasp black Betle or rere-mouse fasten upon the part and hurt it our country folks presently run to this remedy and by rubbing the place with this stone the pain is abated and the swelling allayed There are also many kinds of Fish that have exceeding hard stones in their heads as the Sea-wolf the Coracinus Umbrae the river-Pike the Muller and Haddock whereof there is great plenty in winter The Low-Countries call them Schelvisch from the rough scaly skin it hath For those that are called from the form of their body and ash-colour Asells or Coo-fish are for the most part without these stones especially the females for out of the head of a male I took a white stone that was like the keel of a ship on the lower side All these kinds bruised and given in wine ease the cholick and break the stone of the reins not onely by their weight and heavinesse as some think but by an imbred property whereby they discusse and dissipate the collection of humours A stone is taken out of the head of a Carp The triangular stone of a Carp powdred will stop the blood that runs out of the nostrills by its great astriction which you may perceive also by tast CHAP. XXXI Of the events of dreams and how far they ought to be observed and believed SInce of old time men were wont to observe dreams with incredible vanity and superstition and to credit and believe them The great and good God that would have no man troubled in undoubtfull and uncertain things that disturb the tranquillity of the mind forbad that no man should be curious in observing them and make rash interpretations upon them Levit. 19. Deut. 13. and fain doubtfull events For by these impostures many have fallen from God and turned to false worships And if God when we are asleep doth warn our minds that are dull to seek out what his will is and doth put into our souls such things as were good for the salvation of them and are agreeable to his word and doctrine
as Pome Citrons Oranges Lemmons The juice of Lemmon corrodes for the Lemmon that is commonly Ovall hath a juyce so sharp and corroding naturally that if you put a peice of Gold some hours in a Lemmon you shall find it lighter and not so ponderous when you take it out But as it doth that by its excessive and penetrating cold which burns as well as fire So Spirit of Wine is most effectuall to preserve things Aquavitae for flesh and fish wet in it are safe from putrefaction and will never breed Worms But Commin if there be plenty of it Commin Carway-seed and carway seed next Salt are present remedies to preserve meats if you rub the meats with them and lay them up by reason of their drying quality so that such as use them often wax pale and wan for want of blood because they eat up all the naturall moysture Honey Syrup Also Honey and Strope as they call it from its last like honey though it look somwhat black and sod Wine which the Spaniards call Aroba have a virtue to preserve especially Cherries Prunes Peaches Grapes and all wild fruices Verjuyce which I have tried in sowre Grapes But most effectually if you place in order any kinds of fruits in an earthen-pot and cover the pot well with a cover and smeer the same with Pitch that no Ayre nor Water can enter it and so let it down into the bottom of a Well Fruits laid in a pot and sunk in a Well will last very long after a yeare is over you shall find them all fresh and of an excellent tast For when they are so farr removed from the ambient Ayre and all corrupt vapours they cannot corrupt For moysture makes all things subject to corruption which being removed and driness put in the place things will not easily consume So stock-fish as we call them in Latine Merlucae Stock-fish for Salpa is another kind and many more hardned and dried in the wind may be kept many yeares as also bisquit that will never mold because all the moysture is baked out of it Wherefore extream heat or cold because they both equally cause driness will keep things from Corruption Hence you may collect whence it comes to passe that in Winter and hard frosts Frost is apt to break ones legs a mans leg will break with the least touch almost For the bone will easily grow brittle and break by reaon of the drinesse of the outward Ayre whereas when it is a moist season it is more tough and flexible the which thing also we observe in Candles and such things are made of fat CHAP. XXXVII Pale Women are more lascivious than such as are of a ruddy complexion and lean Women than fat and do more lust after men THose Women are more hot and prone to venery and more mad after pleasure that have more imbred heat which is commonly found in pale lean Women such as are of a brown colour for their genital parts are full of a sharp salt biting humour therefore they require to be more moistned hence it comes to passe that women are more lustfull in Summer more desire mens company Women more salacious in Summer because at that time heat increaseth in them but in men it flags and grows more weak Wherefore Rue and Thime and many very hot things extinguish lust in men and sharpen it in Women For in men they consume and dry up the naturall moisture but they heat the Matrix of Women by consuming the superfluous mixture and so make them Lustfull Wherefore it is that that Sex desires to be filled with strong Wine but fat ruddy Women that are full of moysture and that have their generative seed very wet are of a faint and very sedate appetite in their Lust Wherefore men must make a good choice and not presently take what comes next to hand rashly For he that hath got a lean slender woman of declining years hath such a one as is alwaies itching and will never be satisfied let him know that he hath got a perpetuall torment that is continually lusting and is daily more and more exasperated she will stick to her Husband like a Horseleach and she will never let him rest though he be tired out quite nor give him so much respite as to recover his strength CHAP. XXVIII Whether a man should drink greedily and plentifully or by little and little and sparingly at severall times when he is thirsty or is sat at Table THe principall way of preserving a mans health consists in his temperance and moderation in eating and drinking But because I have spoken elsewhere abundantly of eating dry food and of bread I shall here speak of drink and in what manner and measure it ought to be used First it cannot be prescribed certainly and absolutely to those that are in Health Because some are accustomed to divers wayes or doctrine which no man may presently break off but he will be in danger to fall into some sicknesse The best and safest way of drinking is to be judged of according to the age of people and difference of times as also the customes they have long used and as their strength is and as the Wine is strong or weak So Beere or Wine or other drink must be prescribed to quench a mans thirst and that the meat may not be dry nor flote but be moderately wet Wherefore the body must be refreshed by times and at moderate distances and the meat must be now and then steeped with moisture that it may the more commodiously goe into the veins by concoction and be digested into the body But all drunkennesse Dioscorides detests drunkennesse L. 50. c. 7. especially continuall as Dioscorides saith is pernicious because the nerves being soked continually with much Wine are softned and the whole frame of the body is dissolved Wherefore a man ought to drink moderately all drinks that cause drunkennesse and in that we ought to imitate all Fishmongers and Butchers A simile from Butchers who when they store up their fish or flesh cut into peices they poure in brine upon every row as they lay it and season it with Salt in order So we if we will take care of our health must water our meat in order as we eate it by drinking moderately When digestion begins we must not drink But it is hurtfull to tire the stomach with drink when concoction is begun for it hinders and stops the faculties and functions of Nature that she is about and will not let the meat boil and concoct A simile from the Kitchin For as pots leave off boiling and cool by powring in cold water So the stomach hindred by drink powred in ceaseth to digest what it hath begun and is longer about it nor doth it concoct it so well for so the meat is driven into the narrow veins undigested or into the capacity of the
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
as needfull for us as our nourishments for without them mans nature can subsist a while Hunger when hurtful for some have pined away seven or nine dayes for hunger but without the outward Ayre and gentle blasts no man can subsist one moment but he would be strangled Now the purer and the lesse contagious the Ayre is Ill Ayre worse than ill dies the more wholesome it is for the body For if the Ayre be pestilent and contagious it is more hurtfull than venemous and faulty meats for such meats may be vomited up again or digested by the heat of the stomach but pestilent and contagious Ayre cannot be easily conquered or altered when it is once taken into the body for it presently infects the heart and vitall spirits Wherefore this common Ayre that serves us to live in and by help whereof we draw out and put in our breath must be carefully regarded And no lesse respect must be had in preservation of our health unto the winds that proceed and are diffused from the Ayre and that not onely in regard to an open and free Ayre that we are exposed unto but also in building of our Houses Observation in making our dores Galleries Porches Windows Dores and all prospects by which the Winds without may enter into our Chambers and Dining-rooms that we may be refreshed with wholesome blasts and great and unwholesome winds may not offend us Hippocrates counsel in the Plague Which Hippocrates carefully observed in the Plague-time that wasted almost all Asia and Greece and thereby he freed many thousands of them from it Also Marcus Varro when he was at Corcyra Varro's Counsel in the Plague-time and the sick people generally lay to sleep in all sorts of houses he caused them to stop up their Windows that looked toward the South and to make new ones looking to the North and to change their dores and by that means he secured his company and family So in the Low-Countries near the Sea because many Cities and Towns are exposed to the South and South-west Men are sick the greatest part of the year and subject to flegmatique defluxions To this belongs that of Victruvius In the Island of Lesbos there is a Town called Mytilene L. 1. chap. 5. built most sumptuously and bravely but not prudently scituated in which City when the South wind blows the men fall sick for that wind causeth corruption when the North-west that is neighbour to the South-west blows from the Western solstice men are subject to Coughs but when the North-wind blows they are well again Whereby it appears plainly that the unstable moving of the winds bring sicknesses to mens bodies and makes them have their health worse which if we could avoid and shut out every man would lesse fall into diseases or if by any cause a man do fall sick if you bar out ill winds he will recover the sooner Cardinal Winds are sour The Antients because there are four quarters of the world divided the winds into as many and Ovid elegantly described them Metam L. 1. The East wind went where first the morning Sun Doth shine the West where the Sun sets the North Invaded Scythia when they begun The Cloudy South from Southern parts came forth Others that thought to do it more exactly number twelve winds But in our dayes the Art of Navigation by reason of the vast and spacious circumference of the Ocean and the long voiages in the Mediterranean Sea hath found out thirty two winds The Marriners Compasse shews 32. winds and the Pilot and Steerman do continually behold them in Marriners Compasse and in the darkest and most tempestuous night they steer their course by it and come to their desired Haven And this compasse is no new invention for Plautus makes mention of it But do you think that it is lost Trinum act 4. scen 3. Take the compasse But Politick men that are not used to the Sea do not so much regard the number of the winds as the nature of them Of the Ayre and places For every man that would take care of his health by Hippocrates rule must observe the four quarters of the year and also cold and hot winds that we are exposed to The Ayre and winds change our bodies For the concourse of winds and Ayre have great force to preserve health and drive away diseases For not so much the bodies as the minds of men are changed by reason of the Ayre and winds The mind troubled by distemper of the Ayre So that men in health are otherwise affected when the Ayre is tempestuous and troubled and otherwise when the weather is calm and the sky clear otherwise when the West-wind blows otherwise when the South or South-west that not onely mens bodies are more active but their minds are more ready and more tractable all fullennesse and frowardnesse being cast off when the Ayre is pleasant and the calm gentle winds blow as in the Spring of the year But that all things may be done by rule I shall set down the conditions effects forces and Names of all the winds that are known both to learned and ignorant men Whereby every man may decline what seems to be hurtfull and may safely expose himself to such winds that seem to be healthfull and harmlesse The East-wind the High-dutch call it Oost The effect of the East wind that comes from the East the Italians Levante is most commonly wholesome and drives away sorrow of mind but it is cold in the morning before the Sun rise at noon when the Sun is Southward it is moderately warm we call it Luke-warm when our bodies are not troubled with over-great heat but saint with a mean heat that makes them to nauseat L. 1. Cor. Celsus and Ovid call it neither hot nor cold The cold North the Lukewarm South But at Midsummer when the Sun is hot the Eastern wind causeth heat and kindles yellow choller and from the inflammation thereof burning Feavers spring up But in the winter it is somewhat milder and not so sharp and cold as the North-wind The East-wind called Eurus is kind to the true East-wind The place of the East wind and effects and declines a little on the left hand towards the South it is called Eurus from Aura because when the Sun first riseth it causeth gentle blasts they commonly call it East South-East East South-East causeth the Plague sometimes for it is in that point of the world next to the East In Summer it is very hot and causeth burning Feavers And I have oft observed it in the Low-Countries that when any popular disease spreads as it doth when that wind blows it causeth Carbuncles and contagious swellings to rise in the groin and under the Arm-pits and the Measils and small Pox that boil forth to the outmost skin For this wind partaking of a warm beat namely some moisture being mingled with it it affords
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
with the other thence comes the attraction as if the Loadstone did scent the Iron in the Northern Mountains out of which the Loadstone was dug even as vultures do by quicknesse of smell A simile from the sagacity of Vultures by nature discern dead carcases at huge distances and that two daies as many think before any battel is fought or men slain It is evident that many things are done by secret and hidden properties that it will be hard for us to give reasons for we see the effects of things but we know not the causes So Râ—eubarb and Scammony purge out yellow choller Epithyme Polypod Senna the Melancholique humour Agarick Flegme Amber Jet the Diamond draw chaff and straws Quicksilver loves Gold and will delight to joyn with it Whence hearbs have their purgative vertue Which vertues we see also in hearbs for some desire to grow together and embrace one another some again disagree and cannot endure to be near By the same affection and inclination doth the Loadstone do these things in the Mariners Compasse and Solar minuts A Sun-dial because it shews the Sun by which when we enter upon our volage we try these hours by the Sun where the utmost end of the needle is polished and not rusty being rubbed with this stone and it ever turns to the North and shews the pole Sea-men call this Leyt which is a word borrowed from conducting for Leydtsman is a conductor A Marriner or companion in the journey by whose help we steer our course The little Bear callâ—d commonly by Marriners Leye The little Bear as the Antients called it is by long use and experience observed by those that go to Sea because it is fixed and unmoveable but the great Bear is called Helice which Cicero speaks of in his Academicks almost in these words L. 4. I do not direct my thoughts to that little Bear but the great Bear called Helice or Charls-Wain those famous seven North Stars that is These reasons are larger and not so narrow and therefore I must wander and exspatiate a great deal farther whereby he intimates that he cannot be bounded in so small a compasse but must have leave to proceed and go farther out yet the more certain course and not so wandring is that is performed by looking upon the little Bear As Aratus declared In Phaenom Here shines Joves nurses Great and Little Bear By the great Stars the Grecians ruled are But the Phoenicians do the least respect And Sea-men on those Stars do most reflect Their course is short and certain and perfect Cicero his simile from the Pole This figure Cicero borrowed in speaking from Marriners whereof some that are exact in their observations have respect to the little Bear but others that are not so curious nor in any danger look on the great Bear A place of Cicero in his Academicks explain'd So Cicero who would not follow narrow and straight waies but walk over the large and broad fields of Rhetoricians takes the great Bear for his Pole-Star for so he hath room to wander in at pleasure and is not shut up in any certain bounds but the safer and more certain sailing is and the Ship takes not so great a compasse where the lesser Bear which is called the Pole and by our men the Leye that is the guide is regarded But our Marriners besides the Pole which they do not carelessely regard look to the Compasse constantly by the use and commodity whereof in the darkest and most tempestuou's night they stand at the helm and steer the Ship Whether the Compasse were a new Invention I dare not certainly say whether this be a new invention of our age or that this instrument was of Antient use Yet I perswade my self that Marriners compasse Plautus speaks of was the same with ours or very like it And yet I think that our Compasse is more compleat and brought to a greater perfection and shews things more exactly But since the Carthagenians The Carthagenians well skill'd in Sailing very skillfull in sailing for above two thousand years did not onely frequent the Ports and havens of the Mediterranean Seas but went farther into the Ocean and with a very great fleet sailed into Mauritania round about It is very likely that they wanted not this invention to say nothing of the Tyrians and Sidonians Chap. 27. who as Ezechiel speaks had great skill in Navigation and used much Merchandise and besides these Solomons Marriners sailed with a great fleet by the Red-Sea 3 Kings c. 10. and the Persian Gulph whereby there lyes an open passage into India the Jews call it Ophir and brought a vast treasure of Gold Apes Peacocks Elephants Jewels from thence as the Portingals do now and can hardly make their voyage in the space of a year Wherefore I think no man ought rashly to believe that in those times they wanted these helps for sayling Many things in nature grow out of use especially in so happy an age that was abundant in wise and painfull Artificers But it may be by reason of the incursions of the Barbarians who wasted killed destroyed and depopulated all such a noble instrument might be lost and the Artificers all slain and dead but when peace grew on again and all wars ceased by the care and industry of man whose wits are ready to find out things it was brought into use again strangely So some say that in former years many things were in use that we think to be new Inventions which Solomon constantly affirms What was Eccles 1. saith he afore-time is now and what is past shall be renewed and there is no new thing under the Sun and if any thing seem to be new Solomon held nothing to be new it was in the dayes that were before us and the things that now are shall be forgotten because they shall perish and decay with age So some think there was some Art of Printing formerly used as they conjecture from some Antient pictures Whether the Art of Printing be old seals rings medals in which there are seen some Characters of Letters as though they were printed for in that age they wanted not Seal-cutters and Engravers and such Artificers yet if any of the Antients had invented any such matter as no man ought to lose his deserved commendation we must confesse it was not so perfect exact and compleat nor were the Letters so artificially set and directed Also Guns and Ordinance of Brasse and Iron Whether Guns were of old and Pistols and Musquets that are more tractible than the great Guns because by putting the hand to the trigger as to the helm of a ship and by the snap of the flint with the sparks of fire they are discharged against the Enemy are thought to be inventions of former ages as appears by these Verses of Virgil. Aeneid L. 6. I saw Salmoneus tortur'd cruelly Whil'st he Joves
provide for him a clean sty and wholesome food if you would have the meat of him to be wholesome for you to eat for if you feed this creature with husks and fat him with beastly food he will grow Measly and full of kernels and hard swellings so that his flesh will be unwholesome and naught and infectious to the whole body And this was the principal cause the Jews were forbidden to eat Hogs flesh Levit. 11. Deut. 14. and it was a great wickednesse for them to taste thereof But these hard swellings and kernells come chiefly about their necks because they are greedy and devouring and eat all things upon Dung-hills without making any difference By the name of Measils is meant that disease that pollutes the whole body with a foul matter What is the Measils iâ— Hogs because the flesh and inward parts are tainted with little white knots like hailstones For some kind of whitish swellings are in all parts scattered here and there and the certain tokens thereof are seen under the tongue when Hogheards put Irons into their mouths that they may try whether they be sound to be killed and cut forth for meat Those that have the Leprosy do shew forth some such matter in their faces and all their bodies for the pushes that break forth in the ourward skin grow white from melancholique burnt to ashes The flesh indeed of this creature when it is Measly is sweet and well relished to the taste but it is very unwholesome and next kind to the Leprosy Flesh that partakes of melancholly juice is savoury by reason of the mixture of melancholly juice So flesh next the bones is not unsavoury or of ill taste to the Palate because it partakes of Melancholly juice for bones are made of such juice and grow together of it But what the Leprosy and the French-Pox doth to a man the same doth the Measils and scrophulous tumours to a hog for these diseases are of kin and very near allyed one to the other their names onely are different but the matter is the same What Aetius saith of diseased Hogs as also Aetius the Physitian observed in his chapter de Elephantiasi Wherefore that men might suffer no hurt by the use of eating this unclean creature with us there is a wholesome Law provided by the Senate that no Sow nor Hog shall be killed unlesse his Tongue be first pulled forth and searched whether he be sick of this disease for if warty pushes shew themselves in his Tongue and Jaws and the veins are of a wan colour and blackish these are signs that the internalls are of an ill constitution and therefore it is thought fit not to kill them or if they be killed ignorantly that they must be buried under ground And if no such thing appear they that are appointed Judges of this businesse do pronounce that the Hog is sound and fit for to be eaten But because oft-times this creature may be faulty though he be sound in that respect Wherefore our Countrey people when they kill a Hog The brisly skin of the Hog is to be burnt cover him with straw and burn the hide rather than scald it with water For if there be any defect or ill matter under the skin the fire will draw forth the contagion and consume it which hot water cannot do so well and to purge away all filth This way are polluted Sows cured if the styes wherein they lye be daily made clean and that they may walk up and down in them For those that wander up and down in woods and Copses Hogs wandring in Woods are the most wholesome and feed on Acorns for the most part are more wholesome than those that use no exercise but are shut up in their styes for they are lesse exposed to diseases Moreover they must have abundance of water given them to wash themselves withall and some Salt mingled therewith and when they eat Barly or any solid meat Bay-berries bruised must be put thereto And that kind of shell-fish the Dutch call Mosselen whereof there are abundance on our shores and Sea-coasts Hogs are wonderfully refreshed with if you give them the decoction of them in great quantity Also the Lees and dregs of Wine and the feculent swillings that are left when the juice is pressed forth of the Grapes are a present remedy to expell this disease especially if Bran and the lump fermented commonly called Mout be mingled therewith But our country people neither take care of these creatures nor for the health of those that must eat them for they give their hogs the sowre corrupt Lees of Beer and Ale and stinking wash that is at the bottome of their Tubs and all filthy things as rotten and mouldy Apples and Pears whereby those kernels and Measils and inward contagion is not dissolved but rather increaseth and gathers force For all very sowr things Vineger naught for melancholly people sowr things good for Cholerick people by reason of their cooling and thickning force and because they compact and thicken the humours more and for cholerick people they are as much commended So Vineger will augment a quartan Ague but it appeaseth and corrects a Tertian because it tempers the heat of choler and as water allays Wine The low Dutch fat their Hoggs with fish In the Low-Countries some live where there is abundance of fish and water-Creatures and they feed their Hoggs with fish and as they will grow wonderfull fat with them so is their fat and flesh more flashy and not so firme yet with this food The eating 〈◊〉 Frogs for whâ—â—â— good Hoggs will grow great and tall yet the meat of these Hoggs is unwholsome and the tast very strange and loathsome I know that for men that are sick of the Leprosie that the eating often of Frogs that are in fens hath cured them for this water-Creature mitigates the heat of their blood and tempers the adust melancholly But those that creep on the ground and nest amongst shrubs and bushes and do not leap but goe slowly are venemous our men call these Padden but the Froggs that have green backs and white bellies Toads venemous are called Puyen oft Vorschen they use to cry in the Spring but Toads that creep make very little noyse They therefore that are active and leap frequently are proper for these diseases Things that have shels are healthfull for consumptions and to use them with Capon-broth is principally approved for lean decaid consumed hectick people as also the broth of Turtles which from the form of their shells are called Schelt Padden and crevis Lobsters Shrimps Sea Crabs Mussels Oysters Shell-fish Cockles and all those that have an outward crust do cool and asswage hot adust humours but River-Muscles and Crevish are more effectuall than Sea Shell-fish are River Crabs who good for because these are saltish whereby they cause appetite and please the palate but they dry more
the City of Zirizea abounds exceedingly well with all things which are usefull and commodious for mans life and no lesse than when it was famous for negotiations with strangers and frequented with goers and commers of all sides For the concourse and merchandise of forraigners and celebrity of a place may sometimes be lost suddenly either by the rising of some war from without or seditions at home or popular tumults for presently all strangers withdraw themselves and take care for their own safety But that negotiation that is performed amongst the Citizens and Inhabitants shutting out all usury and traffique in a compendious way made with strangers or the Inhabitants and is a liberal gain is stable firm solid and not so much subject to envy But if calamity come from some other place then the Citizens and natives Mediocrity of felicity is commendable stand firm and undaunted and do not easily forsake their Country their Churches their houses wives and dear children nor do they go away yeild what they have to strangers to enjoy Yet the men of Zirizea All things are governed by divine providence in so great mutation of humane things and change from one to another which is all wrought by Gods providence seem wisely to have consulted for their own profit and to have exchanged uncertain things for certain For their people being most skilfull Marriners when their trading at Sea did not succeed very well in forraign commodities they altered their course of Trade and began to fall to fishing which is a very great gain and hurts no body and here they fear no shipwrack nor losse of traffique no disgrace for usury or increase upon money and the rest of the Citizens follow saving wayes of gain such as are honest and envied by none out of those things that the earth yeilds abundantly for mans use wherewith they recreate themselves liberally besides a laudable education they provide a very large patrimony for their children and leave them an inheritance to preserve their Parents names by But that strangers may understand in what part of the earth and under what climate the City Zirizea is and under what elevation of the Pole I took the height of the Pole-artick or North-Pole above Zirizea's Horizon and I found the elevation to be 51. degrees 47. Minutes and that was the altitude of that verticall point the longitude is 25. degrees whence it comes that since the Sun is not far from them and departs not very far from the Island but doth moderately shine upon them in the two Equinoctials and two Solstices the Inhabitants by the benefit of the Sun have no dull and stupid wits but they are witty civill merry yet many of them by the reason of the Sea that hath its influence upon them will speak very scurrilous crabbed and brinish language sometimes of which subject I lately held a pleasant discourse with Job Nicolais a discreet man and industrious who carefully labours for the publick good and doth what he can to promote it and desireth that the Citizens should be men of sound and good manners and if they have contracted any fault by the Salt vapours of the Sea that are so near to them that it might be mended with good education CHAP. III. How comes it that such as are old men or far in years do beget children not so strong and oft times such as are froward and of a sad and sowre Countenance and such as are seldome merry THey that marry when their age declines and their youthly heat is abated for the most part beget sorrowfull children and such as are froward sad not amiable silent and of a sowre and frowning countenance Youth is full of juyce because they are not so hot in the act of venery or so lusty as young people that are full of juice For the heat of our age is fittest for to act this Comedy Old men being feeble their spirits small and their body dry and exhausted of bloody humours the natural faculties are weak and that force that comes from them to beget a child is uneffectuall and invalid having very small ability so that they cannot perform the marriage duty so manfully and there wants many things in those they do beget Which is intimated in that dispute that the Angel is said to have had with Esdras Esdras 4. Ask saith he thy Mother and she will tell thee why those she bears now are not like those she bore before thee but are lesse in stature and she will say unto thee that the rest were conceived and born when she was young but these when the Womb decayed hence it is that such as are born in old age are slender small weak Why some are not so strong feeble not tall and have not so much strength because natures forces are decayed with age and the natural and vitall spirits are diminished Why some are dejected in mind whence also the mind is more dejected is not so nimble lively merry and jocant because these have obtain'd all things sparingly and not so largely unlesse perhaps their Parents were pleasing and merry and moderately heated with wine when they were begot For sometimes old people wil shew themselves young and lascivious together to be so wel pleased that in the spring they wil one embrace the other A Proverb from Horses that are worn out For that time of the year serves for Horses also that are decaid and worn out as the Proverb saith for to make them neigh whereby the Hollanders mean that there are none so old but at that pleasant time of the year when nature puts forth all her forces but they will shew some tokens of a mind raised also whereby it falls out that if a woman thus chance to conceive when they are merry The affects of Parents go to the Children after nine months she will bring forth a mild beautifull pleasant flourishing lively generous active Child And if their Parents in their young years were of a clowdy and impleasing disposition as many froward people be when they get their Children all falls to the worst all those affections and tumults that use to arise amongst married people and all their distempers will be derived to their Children so that neither the conception nor time the woman goes with Child nor her delivery not nutrition can be performed decently and according to Natures order and the Children contract many ertours and faults of bodies and mindes from the disturbed motions of their minds of all which the fault is to be imputed to the parents who were the cause and seed plot of all these imperfections of nature The faults of Children to be imputed to the Parents Wherefore such as would take the best care for their Childrens good and would have them tractable and pleasant and sweet of behaviour must take especiall care for this that in matrimoniall embracements all things may be moderately performed that nothing happen
to his sight and he can see at the first glance but cannot exactly distinguish things for grossenesse hinders sharp sight which may be observed in a cold or moist complexion which is the flegmatique A moyst and small spirit what sight it makes But he that hath a moist and mean animal spirit to serve the organ or sight he can neither see things near hand exactly nor at all things afar off for a few spirits soon vanish and are dispersed but grosse ones hinder the function of sight since the rays that proceed from the sight of the eyes are not carried to the object nor do they receive the species of things that come to the eye from without A thin and rare spirit binders the sight when spectacles are good But a rare thin slender dark spirit such as is in old decayed people and such as are wasted by sicknesse doth make a weak sight and almost none at all wherefore they do well to help their dull sight with spectacles for by them all things seem bigger and the visual spirits are restored and collected into one they do not vanish and disperse so much but I advise no man to use them too soon for when they want them they will be quite blind For that these are dark and grow blind comes from want of spirits Wherefore spectacles refresh the sight because the rays are reflected and retorted by them Spectacles refresh the sight and the spirits gain strength new ones continually coming thither from the brain But there are besides these things spoken of many more that darken the eyes and either hurt or hinder the sight For if the pupil chance to be moved from its place How many things hinder the sight or be dilated too much contorted contracted or diminished or from some stroke or wound fall or contusion be tumefied or inflamed the faculty of seeing is wonderfully offended Eyes that stick out or sink in are dark also eyes that stick out too far or sink in too deep do bring some inconvenience to our sight for prominent eyes are hurt by the external light so that in the clear Ayre and Sun shine they see not their objects well for the immoderate light hinders them but if the skye be dark and clowdy they see the better hence it is that they see perfectly what is near them but things afar off darkly and obscurely again such whose eyes lye hid and deep within and their balls stick lesse without their eye-lids are contrary to the former For these see things hard by not so distinctly but they see things afar off very well Hid eyes and such as stick forth are contrary to seeing wherefore when we would see things afar off we half shut our eyes and wink almost for so the spirits compacted and heaped together do send forth their rayes very far Hence we use to wink with one eye and put a vail before it which may darken the Ayre and hinder the light whereby we can more forcibly and fixedly look upon the object as men do that shoot in Guns and Crosse-bows for they shutting their left eye From Archers a reason for sight is taken the spirits run more plentifully to the right and make the sight stronger therefore Archers ayme thus and so come to hit the mark they shoot at To which we may apply that Ironical speech in Persius He can direct a verse as fine Sat. 1. As winking with one eye hee 'd draw a line But that some men see two things for one is caused by the distraction of their eyes into divers parts Why some men see double For when the rayes of the eyes do not direct themselves to the same point of the object but are carried divers waies and the spirit that uncertainly receives the species of things fluctuates with inordinate and wandring motion here and there we see two for one Why things seem divided But things seem divided cut in sunder full of chinks and holes when part of the pupil is blinded with some humour standing before it also thick fumes and vapours rising from the stomach to the brain do present various sights and images to our eyes so that sometimes all things seem to run round and turn here and there Some think they see straws fleas gnats flyes Beetles spiders Why we see such absurd things Hobgoblins witches fairies and drunkennesse and gluttony cause these effects as also a melancholique humour which cloud the brain with most grosse vapours But that the right eye is duller than the left every man may prove in himself The right eye duller than the est In our perfect age a grosse and thick spirit occasioneth this and because commonly by lying on our right side nocturnal vapours rise and flow thither but in old age the right eye grows drier and the heat of the Liver devours the humours that serve the sight but the left eye is moyster and in that the spirits are not so easily extenuated nor do the humours grow dry But the heart The heart lives first and dies last the fountain of life begins first to live and dieth last and being taken forth of some living creatures will pant a long time after yet the eyes which are thought to be perfected last first cease to move and shew signs of death The eyes dye first and they dye before the rest because the spirits being taken from them when death comes they must vanish or the spirits are drawn back from the eyes to the brain that is the beginning of motion and sight But as for the causes of divers colours that are seen in the eyes I shall speak something here to it They proceed from the humours that are round about Whence come diversity of colours in the eyes whose quality plenty want thinnesse thicknesse mixture make divers colours and species of the eyes as black blew gray Owl or Goats eyes red yellow tawny pale light-red clay-colour green dark-red fiery flaming bloud-red violet-colour saffron-colour golden-colour white as milk whitish But eyes that are all with black colour whose beauty if the eye-lids be of the same colour make a man seem comely proceed from this Whence come black eyes when the visible spirit is weak and the humour plentifull thick dark and shady so that one cannot see through it by reason of the abounding humour and the profundity of it for no light that comes from our eyes is carried into his eyes that stands over against us but the rayes flye back again and are as it were retorted upon us So in Fountains and cisterns Why the water shews black in wells and deep pits the water seems to be black and serves for a Looking glasse the sight of the eyes being beaten back by the thicknesse of the water and reflected upon it self for it forceth back our sight upon us What sight black eyes have But black eyes are of that nature and condition
parts of this member and order of the small bones wherewith the hands should be clinched or opened were hid and folded up within We call this Stompen Hence I pronounced that that errour and fault of nature proceeded from this that that force and faculty of nature which should be employed in forming the Child and strives to perfect a man in all his parts was hindred by some imped iment that it could not make the joynts compleat and frame them handsomely as a hand should bee for the Mother being subject to the hardnesse of the Spleen and female Children inclining to that side that is the left side from the affection of that part on which those parts leaned as against a hard Rock they became so ill shapen and deformed CHAP. VIII Whether Shirts Sheets Coverings Linnen ought to be changed when men lye sick of Feavors and whether it be sit presently to shave the Beard and cut the Hayre of such as are newly rocovered of diseases also in what diseases it is good to wash the feet IF at any time in contagious and pestilent diseases Carbuncles or Bubo's and other Eruptions or Pushes shew themselves in the outward parts of the body as they use to do somtimes eminent like Warts sometimes flat and plain as the humour is thick or thin sometimes lead colour'd wan black yellow green divers colours which are the worst sometimes red fresh white which are the best and safest â—ll which kinds differences we see in the Smal-Pox Measils in all thâ—se kinds of Blisters Whence Spots come to be of divers colour I advise men to shift their Sheers Blaâ—kets Pillows Coverlids Beds Shirts to lay on fresh to hang their foul chothes that are taken from their bodies in the Ayre to be ventilared whereby the contagion and ill vapours that the Coverings are tainted with from the body infected may be taken off For since many foul and pernicious vapours as smoke come out of such bodies which the clothes that the sick is covered withall draw to them it will be that the sick must needs suck in the Ayre round about them and be infected again every moment with a new contagion for he roles in his corruption as a Sow wallows in the mire In the increase of the disease nothing to be changed which I would have to be observed thus farr when the disease abates and begins to mend and the Concoction and Crisis be past that is when certain and undoubted signes of health shew themselves which signifie that the forces of the body are masters of the disease and that but a few reliques of the disease remain within for then Sheets or Shirts hung in the Sun or before a good fire should be laid under those that are upon recovery or else I bid one of the Servants whose body is well to weare them for two days on his back or else to lay them in his bed to keep them warm and they may not differ from the heat of a mans body least the change might bring some inconvenience to the sick or exasperate the disease in any part for by this reason or rather errour the party that was almost recovered may fall to a relaps Wherefore both to those and to others that are sick of lighter diseases I command severely that the disease may forthwith come to the height and the fit may be lessened at first that they be not unquiet tossing and tumbling nor any way expose themselves to the cold Ayre as there are some Tossing of the body ill for thâ— ficst who in doubtfull and dangerous diseases will lye with their Armes stretched forth and their legs displayed and tosse themselves up and down and so drive back sweat Pushes Impostmes Swellings and tumours and other collections in the body that would break forth For the cold Ayre coming to the body stops all their course drives them back and will not suffer them to ripen but hear and her fomentations Fire draws forth sweat and contagion open the Pores and passages and make way for the filthy vapours to come forth that they may be discussed wherefore I think they do well who first being infected and taken in a contagious Ayre set themselves close to a good fire that they may all run down with sweat yet not beyond their strength or that they should faint by it but that at the same time their body being purged downward and their belly cleansed they may take such things inwardly which shall expell and discusse the venome they have first drawn in before it get root and hath lay'd fast hold of the body and possess it selfe of the heart and principall parts for the mischiefe makes haste to do that A simile from a City besieged As they that lay siege to a City do first assault the Castles and Forts and Commander of the place for the rest will yeild presently and submit when therefore the body begins to be affected with a dangerous and dubious disease if the matter require the opening of a Vein or purging let that be done in time so that at first and before that the belly be purged then open a vein Let puâ—ging bâ— befâ—â—e blood letting then give cordialls to corroborate the Heart and the vitall parts as Theriack and Mithridate with Wine or syrup of Fumiterry Epithime Violets or some other liquor that the nature of the body requires or a skillfull Physitian shall think fit wherein it is fit he should be wonderfull clear-sighted that he misse not the mark But for a decoction the present remedies are Germander that smells like Garlick it grows plentifull in Zealand Marigolds that cause sweat Balm Figs red Onyons the root of Spondylion that is like to Angelica and Master wort in forces Amongst which the root of Zedoary is singular that is not rotten of no valew lost and without smell so it be swallowed with Raysins or Currance or some Liquorish and so chew'd and swallowed For thus they may preserve and defend themselves What things preserve from the Plague and cure it Such as must go to the diseased In a contagious disease sweat must be driven forth who are forced to go to those that are infected with a pestilent disease to comfort them and raise up their hopes for what is better and make them be of good confidence as Ministers of the Church Physitians Chyrurgions Midwives In case of such Eruptions of tumours which it is best to be sent forth be times I think it not fit at the beginning to strew the Chambers or floores with Vine leaves Sedge White-Thorn Roses Myrtils Willow Poplar green Grasse or to sprinkle Vinegar or Water in them unlesse they faint by too much sweating for such things will make the humours fall back and thicken the skin and passages of the body When the Chambers must be strewed with boughs which should rather be opened that the contagious vapours of the body may come out which is
understanding and reason and judgement and upon every small occasion she casts off the bridle of reason Why a woman grows angry suddenly and like a mad dogg forgetting all decency and her selfe without choice she sets uppon all be they known or unknown If any man desires a naturall reason for it I answer him thus that a womans flesh is loose soft and tender so that the choler being kindled presently spreads all the body over and causeth a sudden boyling of the blood about the heart A simile from things on fire A woman is soon hot soon cold For as fire soonest takes hold of light straw and makes a great flame but it is soon at an end and quiet so a woman is quickly angry and flaming hot and rageth strangely but this rage and crying out is soon abated and grows calm in a body that is not so strong and valiant Why a woman will cry when she is angry What men are more subject to weep and that is more moyst and all her heat and fury is quenched by her shedding of teares as if you should throw water upon fire to put it out Which we see also in some effeminate men whose magnanimity and fiercenesse ends almost as Childrens do in weeping when the adversary doth strongly oppose himselfe against them If any man would more neerely have the cause of this thing explain'd Whence do women become furious and desires a more exact reason I can find no neerer cause that can be imagined than the venim and collection of humours that she every month heaps together and purgeth forth by the course of the Moon For when she chanceth to be anry as she will presently be all that sink of humours being stirred fumeth and runs through the body so that the Heart and Brain are affected with the smoky vapours of it and the Spirits both vitall and animal that serve those parts are inflamed and thence it is that women stirred up especially the younger women for the elder that are past childing are more quiet and calme Old women lesse â—â—gry because their terms are ended will bark and brawle like mad doggs and clap their hands and behave themselves very unseemly in their actions and speeches and reason being but weak in them and their judgement feeble and their mind not well order'd they are sharply enraged and cannot rule their passions And the baser any woman is in that sex the more she scolds and rails and is unplacable in her anger hence the vulgar woman and Whores for Noble women and Gentle women will usually observe a decorum though oft times they will be silent and bend their brows and scarse vouchsafe to give their husbands an answer the Dutch call it Proncken because their Bodies are commonly polluted with faulty humours are full of impudence joyn'd with equall malice as if the Divell drove them and they cannot be perswaded by counsell reason shame flattery admonition that will ordinarily make wild beasts quiet and you cannot hold them from their cruelty or make them forbear their mad and lowd exclamations They see not right nor good nor just Terent. Heaut Scen. 1. Act. 4. What may help or hurt them their lust Doth govern all So forgetting themselves they despise their faith honour chastity fame honesty reputation and hazard all To which may be applyed that enquiry of Solomon concerning mans condition Eccles 7. I applyed my heart to know and to search and to seek out wisdome and the reason of things and to know the wickednesse of folly and of foolishnesse and madnesse and I find more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets and her hands as bands I have laboured to this hour to find a good and cordiall woman and could find none one man amongst a thousand have I found but a woman amongst all those have I not found A good woman is rare Pro. 36. And that enquiry in the Proverbs is not much different from this Who can find a vertuous or good woman as if he should say you shall not easily in any Country no not in the remotest parts of the earth or any corners of it find an honest and well manner'd woman and if by chance you should light upon her Solomons place explained she may be equal'd with the most precious Jewells and no Merchandise be they never so costly can be compared to her But because I have fall'n upon this argument and have begun to examine the condition of women I shall by the way clear the meaning of those words of Solomon the wisest Eccles 25. The iniquity of a man is better than a woman doing good I interpret that sentence thus That a man The wise Hebrew his sentence interpreted be he never so sluggish idle unskillfull and rude in merchandise will do his businesse better than a headlong and rash woman that undertakes any thing with a vain perswasion of wisdome and inconsiderate confidence and thereupon doth all things more uprightly than a woman doth For a man distrusting himselfe doth by leasure and circumspectly all his actions using other mens help that he calls to counsell with him so that the successe is more happy than when the same things are performed by an arrogant woman that is puffed up with a proud opinion of her own wisdome as they commonly are For such a womans endeavours commonly run to the worst and are unsuccessefull A Dutch Proverb against women why a woman is not so ingenious which the Dutch commonly signifie by this Proverb Het quaeste van Een man is better dan het beste van een vrouwe that is If any thing be done and brought to perfection by a woman it deserves lesse praise than what is but yet rude and imperfect begun by a man namely by reason of a woman's want of mind and counsell her dullnesse and blockishnesse for want of naturall heat and because their languishing mind is soked into great moysture so that the faculties of their souls come forth more slowly and are not so fit for action and to do noble things The Roman Law concerning women Wherefore the Romans who took great care to order and to confirm the Common-wealth would have women as Tully saith Pro Murena to be under Guardians by reason of the infirmity of their natures and to bear no civill office Also St. Paul who with indefatigable labour instructed mens minds in the sound faith St. Pauls precept concerning Women and diligently informs us what is godlinesse commands silence unto women in publick solemnities in the Congregation by reason of the impotency of their minds 1 Cor. 14. and want of moderation in their affections and will not suffer a woman to preach or to aske a question in publick meetings or to be present in voting or to give her opinion concerning it Since therefore so great is the frailty and weaknesse and imperfection of womens nature Platoes
in moving the mind and in raising or stilling the motions of Conscience So Marriners Souldiers Porters Carriers Hucksters Victuallers Hosts Bankers Usurers Bauds and many Factors and petty Merchants Brokers Shopkeepers and Tradesmen are not much moved with any motion of conscience that they have made it large enough and it is become like wide nets that let all things through straining at a Gnat as our Saviour Christ saith and swallowing down a Camell A simile from Nets Math. 23. Others that are addicted to a solitary and melancholique life are too much troubled about it and tremble for fear when there is no cause of fear So the force of Conscience drives superstitious people farther than they ought to go and they will not be quit of their vain perswasions So melancholique people are more anxious than other men but cholerique people by reason of the thinnesse of humours and heat make no regard of conscience and they either cast it off or extenuate it or strive to forget it Sanguine people are not much affected with any such motion in their souls nor do they ever think of their life past Job 15. To this belongs that of Job Thou writest bitter things against me and thou wilt consume me with the sins of my youth ' Jobes place is explained For those things that we did insolently in our youth and were not much perplexed with them the same will in times of diseases calamities danger or old age An clegant simile from such as are oppressed by usury come fresh to our memory like to accounts that are crossed and blotted out Like to those that have borrowed great sums of other mens moneys and have quite forgotten to pay are called upon for it and compelled by Law to make all good But Phlegmatique people are slow sluggish forgetfull carelesse nor do they ever think what conscience is nor doth their mind ever wax hot or can they be stirred up by any meanes to think of goodnesse as being drown'd in too much moysture Wicked men who are sunk into the deep and who are strangers from the word and knowledge of God depise laugh and jeare at all Psa 1. Some between both will palliat excuse deny or charge their faults upon others which thing David prays against and desires not to fall into that sinne Psa 140. Incline not my heart to malitious words that I should excuse my selfe in my sinns Wherefore many things hinder the light of conscience and overshadow it as youth drunkennesse gluttony intemperance love night delights pleasures all which cast off the bridle of conscience shame and modesty so Plautus writes Night Amor. L. 1. Eleg. 6. Woman Wine are most pernicious things For young men and that most destruction brings Ovid is of the same opinion Night Love and Wine all moderation fly Night knows no shame Wine and Love fear defie For these Counsellors are not safe and carry the mind the wrong way Youth neglects conscience and turn us from harkning to good counsell and advice and if Conscience sting wound any of thes and would draw any such people to what is good they contemne neglect deride it cavill and cast a Cloud upon all things they aggravate or extenuate and lay it upon their youthfull yeares that must be spent jovially and without melancholly and that all sad thoughts must be driven far from them and laid aside for old age to think on Thus rejecting the documents of reason and avoiding the instruction of conscience with mirth Eccle. 11. they frame all their thoughts rather by the rule of pleasure than the square of moderation Whence Solomon speaks to the purpose Youth void of counsell Youth is vain rash slippery inconstant mad thoughtlesse improvident inconsiderate and the pleasures that use to accompany it are transitory and soon gon sometimes they are damnable and have a lamentable and miserable event But because commonly the companions of this age are ignorance want of experience want of counsell inconsideration therefore it lesse apprehends what is good for it and may make it prosperous Also some there are that are at their full age who have the government of the Commonwealth and are to take care for the Church and Religion whose consciences are blinded with errour and darknesse so that oft times they do not measure all things out exactly and by rule or call reason into Counsell Men are not led by conscience but by their passions with Judgment and election of things or performe what they do by the right rule of Gods Word and Spirit but oft times either humane passions drive them or else the favour and gratifying of Princes prevails with them which we read that Paul did or else some errour of setling some inveterate superstition or an old vitious custome that is crept in not by the consent and authority of good men but by the misunderstanding of the ignorant common people Old errours are hardly left yet as if it were a rule for men to walk by no man will suffer to be taken away or abolished whence it comes to passe that in the choice of things in the difference of good and bad in setting up and restoring and propagating true Religion and the worship of God they are blind and deceived and wander from the truth John 16. to the great detriment of conscience So the Jews were perswaded that they did God good service when they raged against those that had given up their names unto Christ Paul was stirred up with the same violence and desire to punish the Christians and he persecuted them fiercely Acts. 9. with a zeal of godlinesse but which was wrapt up in errour and as he saith being an Apostle was not according to knowledge Rom. 10. that is it was not done with judgment or reason and with a right unstanding of the cause as Gamaliel did Acts 5. not first knowing and observing what the will of God is not by the instigation and inspiration of the the spirit of God which he will have to be tried and examined by the expresse word of God 1 Joh. 4. whether it proceed from thence Wherefore there is errour committed in the choice of religion not by an affection and propension to godlinesse because they wanted the Spirit of God who puts into mens minds things that are certain and out of all doubt So the wise man saith There is a way seems good unto a man but the last end thereof Prov. 24. tends unto death Paul shews us an example of it who of a persecutour was made a Preacher and a defender and maintainer of the Gospell of Christ who professeth that he obtained mercy 1 Tim. 1. because he did it ignorantly through unbeleife and that thereby in him Christ Jesus had shew'd all clemency to be an example to those that should believe in him unto eternall life Some perchance may say that I have used too many
14th year of their age or somewhat later shew some signes of maturity their courses then running so that they are fit to conceive which force continues with them till 44 yeares of their age and some that are lusty and lively will be fruitfull till 55 as I have observed amongst our Country women When a womans courses stop I know that the flowing of the terms is extended farther in some women of good tempers but that is rare nor doth allwaies that excrementitious humour flow from a naturall cause Wherefore their opinion must be examined who say that as there is no certain time of womens termes to end so neither of their conception nor cannot any set bounds be prefixed for these things For though some have their courses at 60 yeares old yet that proceeds not from a naturall cause but from some affect that is contrary to Nature which also hinders all conception For anger indignation wrath and sudden fear may cause the vessels and passages to open and cleave asunder so by a violent concourse of humours such a thing may run out many by falls and accidents having the fibres of the veins pulled asunder But since women for the most part about the yeare 45 or at the most 50 have their termes stopt and no hopes are to be had of Children by lying with them Old wives should not marry young men they do contrary to the law of Nature that marry young men or men that for greedinesse of mony woe and marry such old women For the labour is lost on both sides just as if a man should cast good seed into dry hungry lean ground It is more tolerable for a full bodied lively old man that he should marry a very young Mayd in her green and tender years For from that society they may hope for some benefit for posterity because a man is never thought to be so old and barren and exhausted but that he may get a Child But what is the Nature of man and how long the force lasts in him to get Children must be shewed by the way For since young men as Hippocrates saith are full of imbred heat about the age of 16. or somewhat more they have much vitall strength and their secrets begin to be hairy How long a man is fruitful and their chins begin to shoot forth with fine decent down which force and heat of procreating Children increaseth daily more and more untill 45 yeares or till 50 and ends at 65. For then for the most part the manhood begins to flag and the seed becomes unfruitfull the naturall spirits being extinguished and the humours drying up out of which by the benefit of heat the seed is wont to be made There are indeed some strong lusty old men who have spent their younger dayes continently and moderately who are fruitfull untill 70 yeares and subsist very manly in performing nuptiall duties examples whereof there are sufficient in Brabant and amongst the Goths and Sweeds A History done so I heard a trusty Pilate relate that when he traficked at Stockholme when Gustavus the Father of the most invincible Ericus who now reigns ruled the Land he was called by the King to be at the marriage of a man that was a hundred years old who married a Bride of 30 years old and he professed sincerely that the old man had many Children by her For he was a man as there are many in that Country who was very green and fresh in his old age that one would hardly think him to be 50 yeares old The Brabanders live very â—old Also amongst the Tungri and Campania in Brabant where the Ayre is wonderfull calme and the Nation is very temperate and frugall it is no new thing but allmost common that men of 80 yeares marry young Mayds and have Children by them wherefore Age doth nothing hinder a man forgetting of Children unlesse he be wholy exhausted by incontinence in his youngest dayes and his genitall parts be withered and barren wherefore the Dutch have a scoffing Proverb against such that are worn out A Proverb against such as are spent A simile from horses exhausted and quite broken by venery Vroech hengst Vroech ghuyle the comparison being taken from horses who if they back Mares often or too soon they will quickly grow old and will never be fit for any warlick service But what difference there is between men and women or what cause or reason there is in it that a woman is sooner barren than a man and ceaseth to eject her seed if any perhaps should require to know I say it is the natural hear wherein a man excells For since a woman is more moyst than a man A man is hotter than a woman as her courses declare and the softnesse of her body a man doth exceed her in native heat Now heat is the chief thing that concocts the humours and changes them into the substance of seed A man is longer fruitfull than a Woman which aliment the woman wanting she grows fat indeed with age but she grows barren sooner than a man doth whose fat melts by his heat and his humours are dissolved but by the benefit thereof they are elaborated into seed Also I ascribe it to this that a woman is not so strong as a man nor so wise and prudent nor hath so much reason nor is so ingenious in contriving her affairs as a man is CHAP. XXV Who chiefly take diseases from others And how it comes about that children grow well when Physick is given to the Nurse SInce contagious diseases infect all that come in the way of them yet they infect no men sooner than such whose Natures are of much affinity one with another as are Parents and Children Sisters Brothers Cousins who are in danger almost on all hand and the disease spreads amongst them And the nearer any man is of bloud and kindred the sooner he catcheth this mischief from others by reason of Sympathy that is consanguinity and agreement in humours and spirits Kindred soonest infected Wherefore when the Plague is hot and contagious diseases rage I use to speak to people of one blood to stay one from another and live something farther from them least the pestilent Ayre should infect them that will sooner lay hold of acquaintance and kindred than strangers and such as are not allyed Nurses infect children though none be free from danger The same reason serves for Nurses and children sucking at their brests for when the Nurse is sick all the force of the disease comes to the child and the Nurse is helped by it and escapes the danger For the force of the disease being diffused through the veins that are the receptacles of bloud and milk useth to be made exactly from bloud the child draws forth the worst and impure aliment whence it falls out that the whole force of the disease rests upon the child because the bloud which is the substance
whereby even in the Low-Countries some Witches and cunning Women do mischief to their neighbours heards and flocks of Cattel Witchcraft is hurtfull and rob them of their milk and butter by the help of the Divel spoyling their Corn and Wine and destroying them Also they take strength from men and as if they were gelded they make them weak and feeble for the Marriage bed of which some strong brawny men have complained to me and that they were become Eunuchs and unable to their great disgrace and losse to their Wives to whom I strove to afford help and to give them amulers applying to them such hearbs that in such cases are present remedies by the gift of God Now for a man to toil his wits in such enchantments is not onely unnecessary and idle but also dangerous and destructive For by laws of God and man they are to be punished with death and tied to a post Deuter. 28. they are to be burnt who exercise any wicked Arts by the help of the wicked spirits But how inchantments may be driven away and repelled I shall shew at the end of the Book where I shall speak of the Majesty of the name Jesus lest we should here interrupt the order and series of this treaty CHAP. XXI We must not lesse take care for our Minds than for our bodies We must adorn both minds and bodies BUt since man is made of Soul and body we must with all providence take care for the safety of them both The Soul is the principal part in man and the body is the house of the Soul We use most the command of the Soul A simile from domestick affairs and the service of the body therefore we must not be slothfull in the consideration of them both For if we be so carefull that our houses stand not in boggy and marish lands that there be no rifts nor open places for the rain and winds to come in and that our cloathes be not mouldy and for want of ayring come not to be eaten by flyes and mothes how much more need have we to look to our bodies the vices whereof will affect the Soul also by consent and law of company and they converse together in all things For Horace Our bodies Faults do fasten on our mind The Soul divine is thus made earthy kind To which agrees that of the Wise man The corruptible body presseth down the Soul and the mind that meditates on many things Wherefore we must take some care of our body upon whose props as Pliny faith the Soul stands Saint Paul observed that who forbad Timothy to use water any longer and prescribed unto him the use of Wine 3 Tim. 5. to comfort his stomach and to make him more cheerful in the propagation of the Gospel For the body being in a sound condition can better serve the Soul and hinders not nor burdens the mind when it is employed in the contemplation of high things But in the first place we ought to take care for out mind and to adorn that which is no way better performed than by a firm and stable confidence in God which raiseth a man into a most certain hope of immortality and takes out of our minds all dread and fear of death And as meat is nutriment for the body The Souls food so is Gods word the food and nourishment of our Souls whereby alone we conceive peace and tranquillity in our minds than which there is nothing more to be desired and sought for in this life But even the external habit of the body shews what disquietnesse and anguish of heart there is and what tortures wicked men endure in their minds The wicked are unquiet For wickednesse is such a revenger of it self that what mind it hath once fastned on it will never suffer it to be at quiet but continually holds it upon the rack with perturbations which Esaias expressed by an elegant similitude taken from the waves of the Sea Esay 57. The heart of the wicked is as the troubled Sea whose waters cast up mire and dirt That is the minds of those men who are stain'd and polluted with sins and wickednesse are tumultuous troublesome Naughty affections hurt the mind and unquiet For what man can take pleasure in his life or enjoy a quiet mind who carrieth a body about with him that is soiled with most foul faults and a Soul polluted with obscene vices wherefore since great part of misery comes from the vicious affects of the mind we must by all means abstain from them that the body may receive no hurt thereby With the like care and industry must the body be freed from diseases least any blemish or contagion might be conveied from the body to the Soul For being that ill and vitious humours communicate ill fumes to the brain Ill humours cloud the mind they drive and provoke the mind to many mischiefs CHAP. XXII How we must help the body that it may subsist in perfect health Frugality is profitable FRugality and temperance in diet defends health and drives off diseases using moderation in those things that are necessary to confirm health and to cause strength Galen calls these conserving causes because they are fit to conserve the habit of the body Art Med. 83. so we use them well and opportunely Things that bring strength The modern Physitians call them things not-natural not that they are besides nature but because being set without the body and are not within us as the humours by use and effect they affect nature and the faculties thereof with some inconvenience if they be employed amisse and not duely as they ought to be Of this kind is the Ayre that is about us meats and drinks sleeping and waking repletion and inanition affections and motions of the mind all of which mans body requires for the preservation and defence thereof But because the principal part of health consists in a sound diet we must diligently observe in that what is good or hurtfull to the body And since gluttony is no lesse loathsome than it is pernicious and hurtfull to the body we must take in so much meat and drink as will serve natures necessity and that the forces of the body may be fed and not oppressed Moderate diet is profitable for students Moderate diet is profitable and necessary in all occupations of study and managing of great affairs to endure watchings in labour and in performing publick duties For it is this that keeps health perfect it makes the spirits both animal and vitall that are ascribed to the brain and heart to be cheerfull and ready so that what a man conceives in his mind he can readily effect and bring to passe without any trouble But daily examples prove that by luxury and intemperance of life diseases are brought on our studies are hindred all honest cogitations fail we cannot proceed in our lucubrations the
the urine vex a man if dimnesse and blear-ey'dnesse hurt the eyes if the hands or feet be held with the Gowt Horace in Art If Scabs or swelling tumours do offend The mind of man cannot so readily perform it's office or functions Wherefore I suppose they do well who take care of their health and keep the body and all its parts free from excrements For so the mind is fit for great matters and more ready for any noble employments The greatest part of men neglecting all ornament and taking no care of their health hunt onely after wealth and is busied in getting of gain Health is better than wealth though health be better than Gold and there is nothing more to be desired than tranquillity of mind Horace confirms it by Verses L. 1. Epist 12. If thou be sound of body feet and hands 'T is better than to have rich Craesus lands For 't is not wealth nor baggs of Gold be sure Can cares of mind or body sicknesse cure And that he might recal men to a frugal and moderate use of things he adds L. 2. Epist 2. He that enjoyes his wealth Must alwaies live in health The wise Hebrew accords with the words of Horace exactly It is better to be poor and well Ecclus 30. than to be rich and sick Health and a sound body is better than any Gold or the greatest riches There is no wealth better than a sound body and no joy greater than the joy of the heart Wisd 4. therefore felicity is not to be measured by wealth or prosperous successe but by the soundnesse of the body and of the mind For he onely lives and is well that perfectly enjoyes the commodity of both these CHAP. XXIX Wholesome precepts are no lesse proper for the mind than they are for the body THere are three things reported to be most wholesome which are fit for every man to observe To feed not to full Not to fly from labour To preserve natural seed To these I oppose as many things most unwholesome which besides diseases bring on old age apace and cause men to die young To eat too much To be idle To use too much venery We must use moderation in natural things For since frugality when we banish gluttony keeps the body sound and exercise when we drive away idlenesse and sluggishnesse makes the same nimble and ready we may take examples from horses for the other Virg. l. 3. Georg. Our minds are strengthened by no industry As by declining love and venery Old age is not proper for venery For intemperate and lustfull youth makes the body feeble in old age Wherefore since we are to use moderation in our desires in our youth we are to do it much more in our age and to stop up all wayes of luxury for as it is naught in youth as Cicero saith so it is most unseemly and foul in old age For as we need strength in war and agility and force to endure labours so in love we need strength to wage war in Venus camps in the night which will consume the tediousnesse of matrimony and make us able to sustain the conditions of a froward Wife Wherefore not War nor love are fit for old men because both these carry with them many troubles and hindrances which old age is not fit nor able to undergo L. 1. Amor. Eleg. 9. Ovid hath expressed this in very elegant Verses Cupid hath Tents and every lover war Believe me Attic every lover war What times are fit for war with love agree Old souldiers are naught so old venery Love is a kind of warfar cowards then For to maintain these Ensigns are no men The Winter nights hard labour and long wayes And every pain is found in Venus frays Who sees not how uncomely it is for an old man that is full of wrinkles and worn out to fall to kissing and embracing like to young people for old folks are unable to perform those duties So Sophocles when he was old being asked by one whether he would use venerious actions answered well that the Gods had order'd it better and that he would with a good will fly from that as he would from a rude and cruel Master CHAP. XXX We must take care of our credit and reputation USe all the means you can that your acquaintance may have an excellent opinion of you We must have care of our credit and may give a laudable testimony and commendation of your worth and may think and speak of you worthily Nor be ashamed to observe what opinion the common people have of you and how they stand affected towards you For to neglect what any man thinks or speaks of a man ◠1. offic is the part saith Cicero not onely of an arrogant man but also of a dissolute man Math. 16. So we read that Christ asked his Apostles what the multitude said of him and what rumours they scattered abroad concerning him lastly what they thought of the Messias not that he sought for glory and was ambitious but that he might make trial whether after they had heard so many saving Sermons and seen so many Miracles from him they thought any better and more honourably of him than the common people did Chaist did not seek for honour amongst men Wherefore he enquired so much of them that he might draw from them a solid profession of their faith and that he might try how much they had profited in the heavenly doctrine that hath no fraud or vanity in it no deceit or impostures as the Pharises did caluminate it but is all saving and sincere delivered unto us by the truth it self and the Son of God who is the Saviour that was expected Whom when Saint Peter by the inspiration of God had openly professed in the name of them all Profession of faith and had undoubtedly proclaimed Jesus to be the Saviour of the World and that by belief in him all mankind obtains redemption Christ praised the profession of Saint Peter that he had by inspiration from above and saith that being it stood on so firm a foundation it should never be conquered or fail We must take care for decency In every action and in every word and deed be mindfull of decency and what is most comely for the reason of honesty requires that Whence it is a handsome saying that it is the chiefest Art to know what is decent that is what is fit for nature and convenient to our wit and manners Dat ù wel voeght ende betaemt How we must affect glory It is a compendious and ready way to solid glory if you shew your selves to be such a one as you would be thought to be which Horace gives us notice of 'T is good to be what men do say thou art L. 1. Epist 27. That is what thou art said to be and which the people testify of thee For if they say thou
their sharp taste they are very good for a nauseating and qualmish Palate David speaks of this plant who in many places brings very apt similitudes to perswade in the point of Religion fetched handsomely from natures works Before saith he Psal 57. your Thorns be grown and become hard as white Thorn the Lord shall break you and take you away and shall make you melt as a Snail A place of David explained and an abortive child Whereby he describes the factions and deeds of wicked men shewing that their Tyranny threats power endeavours and undertakings shall all come to nothing and shall never do the hurt they intended taking a comparison from the Buckthorn that when it is grown up is full of hurtful prickles but in the spring it is tender soft tractable and not so hurtfull Now there are in these Sea-coasts many shrubby plants whereof some growing far from the shore yet receive the Sea Ayre though they be never wet with Sea-water others are moistned by the Sea coming in when the Ocean over-flows as it useth to do in winter at the full or new of the Moon hence it is that all Sea plants are of a wan colour Sea hearbs are ill colour'd and hoary and not so beautifull as Garden plants are nor so gracefull to sight yet some of them transplanted and made tame by cultivation become more beautifull and grow and flourish more delightfully We see the like in Coblers Bakers that stand by the Oven A simile from sordid Artificers Colliars Black-Smiths Gold-Smiths that are gilders which is performed by Quicksilver and in those that forge Pewter Brasse Copper Lead all these are discovered by their Countenance Some works change a mans colour and have not their natural colour but that which is accidental by reason of the vapours and fumes that fly about them so that some of them are Box-colour'd Weesil-colour'd wan like half burnt Brick brown smoky but should these men use some other trade and forsaking their vulgar calling should live as gentlemen they would soon look of another hue far more comely and beautifully and their whole body as well as their faces would be more gracefull to look upon though some of them would allwaies carry some marks of their old vocations that they were before used to and this we observe in Country-maids and men that chance to rise to great fortunes that they commonly will discover something of their former rural and servile life Laevinus Lemnius a Physitian of Zirizee CONCERNING Natures Dignity and Excellence The Fourth Book CHAP. I. Of the force and effect of the Moon by whose motion the Sea is driven and what useth to happen to men that are dying or desperately sick when they are in their agony and are beginning to dye by the flowing and ebbing of the Sea and motion of the Moon whose forces such as live near the Sea perceive more effectually than other men I Shewed before what power this Planet had Gen. 1. which was ordaind to give light by night and is nearer to us and more familiar than the other stars whose force works upon the bodies of Animals and stirs the humours But since it is wonderfull effectual not onely in raising The force of the Moon what diseases it sharpneth and moving of Tempests and inundations of the Sea but in causing and sharpning diseases namely the Apoplex Lethargy Astonishment Epilepsie Palsey Dropsy Catarhs and flegmatique distillations I shall speak a little more accurately concerning the nature of it and the rather because the Inhabitants of the Low-Countries do more strongly feel the force of it by living so near to the Sea than others do that live farther from it for these being so near and when the Moon sets in the West are so nearly shined upon by her and no woods or Mountains keep her from them do manifestly perceive the power of the Moon and are more abundantly moistned by the moist beams of it For as Pliny saith The Moon is a feminine soft and nocturnal light that moves humours L. 2. c. 100. but it draws none as the Sun doth but fills all things with a moist vapour and makes them swell whence it is that such as dwell in moist and cold countries are full of Flegme and excrements and are subject to coughs hoarsnesse Poses and to many other defluxions and Catarhs especially such as are idle Idle persons subject to catarhs Idlâ— people subject to the Moons effects and sit much and seldome labour or exercise upon whom by reason of abundance of humours the Moon doth more forcibly shew her strength So that these above other men are exposed to her motions and effects For Porters Seamen Carriers Husbandmen and many more that labour much and who by native heat augmented and rowsed do consume superfluities if there be any are lesse subject to the inconveniencies of this Star and do not greatly feel the force of it Yet that I may discover what I have proved and observed by long experience I will shew what force the God of nature who makes all things for our use hath given to the Moon besides that clear light she borrows from the Sun to give light to mortals in the night time Moreover I will shew by the way what increase she gives to Shel-fish Oysters Cockles Plants L. 1. Hist c. 98. Corn-Trees Pliny from Aristotle maintains that in the French Seas no living creature dieth but when the Tide goes forth which opinion as I dare not contentiously contradict or disallow yet I do testify to all men that all things do not exactly answer that opinion since I have seen some by the motion and aspect of the Moon when the Sea was coming in to dye but most men when the Sea goes out For in the low Countries those that live by the Sea as I have proved it use to dye after a diverse manner according as the humours abound in them Fat people are in danger when the Sea flows For some by the course of the Moon by whose motion the Sea is driven when the waters flow others when they ebb either recover or dye the humours and Spirits being either tossed or quieted by the motion and aspect of this Starr So in denouncing the Crisis that is in giving judgment of life and death upon all those that I observed to be troubled with diseases from fullnesse of humours or with inflammation of the Lungs Pleuresie Quinseys Apoplexies Lethargies and Flegmatick diseases and Dropsies whose bodies do swell and the moysture chokes them I pronounce that when the Moon is at the full and when the tide comes in those persons will dye or else the most of them according to the condition and nature of the disease will suffer some manifest alteration by sudden breaking forth of sweat or blood or evacuation and flux of humours that abound in some part Dry bodies dye when the Sea goes out then I give my judgment