his custom in the corner of a Floor presently lay down as being afflicted with a bloudy and cruel strangury but any Remedies of Physitians were in vain except that as oft as he drank of the aforesaid Ale he perceived a notable ease but as oft as he arising out of the Bed-cloathes walked up and down and pissed in his wonted place he presently suffered Relapses At length there was seen a pin made of old and black Oaken wood fastened or thrust into the place whereat his accustomed urine issued out That pin therefore being pulled out and burnt by the drinking of that Ale he remained altogether free from that bloudy strangury And then I remember that Karichterus writeth that he had loosed the like sort of Enchantments onely by pissing through Birchâ—â—â—â—oomes CHAP. IX Sensation or feeling unsensiblenesse pain lack of pain motion and unmooveablenesse through diseases of their own rank the Leprosie Falling-evil Apoplexy Palsey Convulsion Coma or Sleeping-evil c. 1. Grating or fretting only is reputed the cause of the pain of him that hath the Stone in the Reines 2. The opposite is prooved 3. For so the Urine-pipes should want a feeling 4. The definition of pain according to the Schooles 5. The opinion of the Antients and Moderns concerning the first or cheif organ of the senses 6. But it teacheth nothing besides vain words 7. The implicite Blasphemies of the Schooles 8. That the braine is not the immediate organ of sense and motion 9. What hath deceived the Schooles about these things 10. A better attention or heed of some 11. From whence they have so perswaded themselves 12. The Authours meditation about sense and motion 13. A speculation about the solution in a wound of that which held together 14. A solide part doth not feel of it self 15. Three organs subordinate to motion 16. The Schooles go back from their former supposition 17. That the sinew is not the proper instrument of all sense 18. A consideration of tho Leprousie â—9 All sinewes dedicated to motion are also sensible 20. The errours of the Schooles about the Leprousie 21. The errour of Paracelsus 22. The unconstancy of Paracelsus 23. The unsensiblenesse of the Leprosie from whence it is 24. Manginesse and the Pox or fowle disease how they differ from the Leprosie 25. Scabbednesse requires not internal remedies 26. The Reader is admonished 27. Wherein the difficulty of curing the Leprousie is seated 28. Hipocrates had not as yet known the immediate subject of sence 29. Life what it is 30. A nearer Doctrine concerning sense 31. The immediate subject of sense 32. A deaf or dull definition concerning the Sensitive soul 33. How Sensation or the act of feeling happens 34. Why for sensation there is no need of recourse unto the Braine 35. The seate of the Mind 36. What pain is 37. In what sense paine may be action and passion 38. Paine and a disease by what Beginning they may be made 39. Of what sort anger and fury are in this place 40. Pain what sort of passion it is 41. Concerning the Apoplexy 42. The manner delivered of making the Apoplexy is ridiculous 43. Paracelsus about this place is a like frivolous and unconstant to himself 44. The meditation of the Authour 45. Some absurdities accompanying the Schooles 46. A new distinction of causes 47. A stopping up of the arteries in the throate what it may argue 48. That a positive Apoplexy is hitherto unknown by the Schooles and practitioners 49. That the Apoplexy and Palsie are not made from the afflux or flowing of phlegm into the bosome of the Braine 50. Galen is ridiculous in the neâ—like contexture of the brain 51. An examination of some remedies 52. That an Apoplexy is not the primary affect of the braine 53. That there is a tasting in the midriffs 54. A secondary passion is prooved to be from below 55. The properties of the head how far they may ascend in themselves 56. A true Apoplexy is positive not privitive and that the Schooles are ignorant of 57. The astonishment or unsensiblenesse of the Schooles is noted by the astonishment of the fingers 58. The manifold impossibility of the Schooles which followes upon a privative Apoplexy 59. The Schooles are astonished in the astonishment of the touching 60. A history of the astonishment of the hands from a Quartane Ague 61. The rise or original of a positive Apoplexy 62. The Palsie is a contracture or convulsion of the sinewy marrow 63. The Palsie is oftentimes without the Apoplexy 64. The shortnesse of the neck what it may argue 65. From whence frictions or rubbings in an Apoplexy were instituted 66. Why they are ridiculous 67. The anguishes of the Schooles 68. The rubbing of the skinne contradicts the phlegme of the Cerebellum or little brain of the hinder part of the head 69. The generation of the stupefactive or sleepifying matter of an Apoplexy 70. Why the Apoplexy is called by the Germans a stroak 71. The place of an Apoplexy is proved to be in the Duumvirate 72. The stumbling of the Schooles about the examination of the property of simples 73. Against the position of the Schooles concerning the phlegme of the fourth bosome of the braine 74. The perplexities of the Schooles concerning the hurting of the sense motion remayning safe and on the other hand 75. It is explained by some positions why sense may be hurt motion remayning safe 76. The Apoplexy after the manner of hereditary diseases lurks in the formative faculty of the seed 77 Against the cause of the Schooles for an Apoplexy 78. Against the cause of the Schooles for a Palsey 79. The causes of the Apoplexy 80. That the Apoplexy doth not consist of a privative cause 81. The definition of an Apoplexy 82. What a true Palsie is 83. Diverse stupefactive remedies 84. That sleepifying medicines as such do not cure madnesses 85. What hath deceived the Schooles herein 86. A sweet Anodine orpain-ceasing medicine is harmlesse 87. Why Anodines as such do not presuppose cold 88. What a sleepifying medicine is 89. An Anodine pertaining to the Falling-sicknesse differs from that of the Apoplexy 90. A returne unto paine 91. There is a forreigne consent for paine 92. From whence paines are con-centrall with the stars 93. Whether the venal blood be informed by the soul 94. Sense and pain wherein the may subsist 95. What may cause paine and after what sort 96. Whether sense or seeling be made passively 97. The primary cause of paine and sense 98. The Schooles stay behind 99. The consideration of life hath regard hitherto 100. A vainprivy shift of the Schooles 101. A demonstration of the fire that pain and sensation may from thence cleerly appear 102. That these things have layen hid to the Schooles 103. What is to be considered for searching into the proper agent of paine 104. The rules of the Schooles concerning the activity of simples is reproved by the way 105. From whence the Schooles have been deluded
106. A paradox is prooved against the Schooles 107. Sensible agents act on the sense only occasionally whether they are medicines or not fire excepted 108. An application of virtues by what meanes it may be made 109. Sensation consists in the vitall judgment and so also in that of the Soul 110. Some consequences for the demonstrations of things before passed 111. From whence the faculties of medicines have been estranged in the Schooles 112. How differently the fire can act 113. The unconsiderate rashnesse of the Schooles 114. Some sequels drawn from the foregoing particulars 115. The differences of paines 116. A convulsion is the companion of paine 117. The paine of the disease of the stone 118. The blockish opinion of the Schooles concerning the convulsion or Cramp 119. It s falshood is manifested 120. Errours meeting us 121. Some negligencies of Galen 122. Galen looseth the name of a Physitian from the censure of his own mouth 123. Galen hath taught only childish devises 124. Arguments on the contrary 125. The errour of the Schooles concerning the Convulsion is concluded 126. Ridiculous similitudes made use of by the Schooles 127. Some remarkable things 128. After what manner the Convulsion is made 129. A twofold motion of the muscles is proved 130. The Convulsion is not properly an affect of the head 131. Example of parts convulsed 132. A sight of a colicall contraction in a child 133. An Artery from whence it waxeth hard 134. Divers contractures 135. That the causes of the Cramp have layen hid 136. The neglects of the Schooles 137. The degrees of paines THe pain of the Stone in the kidneys being one of the chief and most troublesome of paines is very great and cruel For the Schooles are at rest in accusing the cause of so great a pain to be a fretting or grating made by the Sand or Stone But I have perswaded my self that there was nothing at all of satisfaction from that answer And therefore I have made a further search Because some one very small Stone sliding out of the kidney doth at the first turnes cause more cruel pain than any the more big one afterwards the which notwithstanding is undoubtedly more than by its freting to wrest or wring to excoriate or pluck of the skin of and extend the urine-pipe For truly in persons grown to ripe years the spermatick parts of the first constitution do no longer dayly grow and so neither is their Ureter enlarged afterwards by the descending of the stones In the next place the slender sand hath been oftentimes very troublesome through its paine and hath cast down the howling man on his bed before it proceeded out of the kidney and the which therefore was never as yet injurious by its rubbing on it or grating of it neither also is it sufficient to have spoken of fretting or grating for the proper and total cause of so bitter a paine For the Ureter throughout its whole passage hath not the commerce of a sinew implanted in it the which therefore ought even to want sense or feeling and by consequence also pain For truly the Schooles define pain to be a sorrowfull sensation made by a hurtfull thing rushing on the part If therefore the slender and un-savoury sand be voide of all tartnesse and fretting or grating or the smal clot is not guiltlesse because neither without pain certainly to have toucht upon the causes and race of sense and pain together wit hs it circumstances shall not be disagreeable to the treatise of the disease of the Stone First therefore and in the entrance of sense the Touching of pain comes to be considered For therefore the Schooles teach that the Braine is the first and principal organ of all the senses and of all motions and by consequence also of pain and unsensibility To wit the which should discerne the objects of the senses by the animal spirits being on every side dismissed from it self into all the propagations or Sprouts of the sinewes and therefore as into the patrons of all sensations so also as into the interposing messengers and discerners thereof They presume to themselves that they have spoken some great matter in this thing I will speak more distinctly And moreover I shall say nothing or at least wise I will declare a matter which is of no worth For indeed the Schooles confesse that the Braine doth in it self feel nothing or scarce any thing and that therein it is like the first universal Mover which the moderns alio Catholiques do with Aristotle command that he ought to be unmoveable if he ought to move all other things as if the unutterable first mover cannot move himself or that he ought to be unmoved and wholly unmoveable yea that he acts and perfecteth by his own touch of local motion all things in a moment who in very deed moveth not any thing but by an absolute and most abstracted beck of Omnipotency and let this be an absurdity of the Schooles by good men accounted for blasphemy by a Parenthesis here noted by the way Notwithstanding the Brain is not the primary or adequate Organ of sense and motion seeing that in it self it is unmoved and deprived of sense For the Schooles beholding that a turning joynt of the back being displaced for that very cause whatsoever was subjected to the Nerves and Sinewes beneath that turning joynt was also without sense and motion therefore they straightway determined the Brain it self and the marrow of the Thorne of the Back the Vicaresse hereof to be the adequate or fuitable Organ or Instrument of sense and motion But other Writers being willing to give a nearer attention since they acknowledged and confessed the substance of the Brain to be deprived of touching nor to be voluntarily moved but that the twofold membrane or filme endowed with the name of Menynx was of a most acute touching although unmoved They decreed that every sinew how slender soever was over-covered with such a double membrane and did borrow it from both the Menynx's of the Brain that this very membrane of the sinewes was to wit consequently formed under the one onely endeavour of Formation and labour of the seed of Fabrication Even so that also these would have it That every Nerve should draw its own feeling from the little filme that covered it which did not any way answer from its substance unto the marrowie substance of the Brain Perhaps they took notice that in the stomach and womb so great and so excellent vertue were inmates in the naked membranes thereof and therefore that neither was it a wonder that something very like unto those had happened unto the filmes of the Brain from a prerogative of the same Right I have altogether proceeded something otherwise for the searching out of sense and pain and the Organ objects and causes of motion and feeling I considered first that while a wound is as yet fresh it scarce paineth but anon while the lips of the Wound do
necessaries of its own Constitution from excrements Yea it should rather follow that seeing the Leprosie is such an abundant productress of salt in the excrements the venal Bloud also shall not want its own salt Even as while there flowes a continual Sunovie or gleary water and that plainly a salt one out of ulcers the remaining bloud doth not therefore want its salt or sense is not diminished in the flesh but rather encreaseth the pain and sharpness So also in the Dropsie a salt water doth sometimes forthwith extend the Abdomen or neather Belly yet do not dropsical persons want the sence of Touching For Paracelsus elsewhere defineth the venal Bloud to be the meer Mercury of man from which those excrements are sequestred in the shew of a putrified sulphur and likewise of a Whey-ie unprofitable and superfluous salt Elsewhere again as being unmindfull of himself he defines the Bloud to be the salt of the Rubie As though salt were the Tincture of the Rubie or that the Tincture of the Bloud were from a salt For he makes his three first things mutable at pleasure no otherwise than as the Humourists do accuse their Humours and Heats at pleasure and which more is do say that the same are the causes of Diseases and Death and also the Authors of sensation and motion Fye must we thus sport at pleasure with Nature Diseases the Bloud and Death of our Neighbour For Medicine is plainly a serious thing and man shall at sometime render skin for skin For salt doth not appear in the Bloud flesh solid parts c. except in the last and Artificial separation of those Beginnings after Death and that indeed by the fire To wit after that the sense of Touching hath been a good while extinct Those Dreams of the principles do not serve for the Speculation of motion and sense A mark imprinted by the Devil on Witches is wont to bewray these because the place of the Brand is voyd of feeling for their whole life and that mark being once impressed hath its own natural Causes of unsensiblenesse after the manner of the Leprosie yet enrouled in a certain and slender Center For the Witch her eyes being covered if a Pin be in that place of the Brand thrust in even to the head that prick is made without feeling At leastwise that place should by a wonderful priviledge be preserved all her life time without salt and putrefaction seeing that otherwise the life according to Paracelsus is a Mummy with a comixture of the Liquor of Salts Far more sound therefore is the doctrine of Hippocrates which decreeth the Spirit or aiery and animal flatus or blast to be the immediate instrument of Sense Pain Motion Pleasures Agreement Co-resemblance Attraction Repulsing Convulsions or Contractures Releasement also of any successive alterations whatsoever so that it appropriates to self sensible Objects and from thence frameth unto it self Sensations themselves For it happens that if by chance that Spirit be busied by reason of profound speculations or madness that the body doth not perceive Pains Hunger Cold Thirst c. For I remember that a Robber deluded the torture of torment by a draught of Aqua vitae and a piece of Garlick the which he at length wanting confessed his crimes But the astonishment and unsensibleness of the Leprosie is in the habit of the flesh and sinewes subjectively or as in their Subject but not in the compass of imagination but effectively and occasionally in a certain poyson But that bloody Anodynous or stupefactive ice and well nigh mortifying poyson is communicable and effluxive through a horrid and stinking Contagion whence the holy Scriptures command the Leprousie to be severed from the company of men But this icie poyson begins from without and therefore they feel inward pains and likewise external cold and heat yet not wounds or a stroak The Mange and Scab is manifold and the Pox or soul Disease infamous through a defiling poyson But they differ in kind as well through the nature of the poyson as the diversity of Subjects For indeed the Scab infects only the skin so as that the skin cannot turn the nourishment designed for it self into a proper nourishment but it translates the most part thereof into a salt and contagious liquor to wit the which is of the property of an itchive and nettlie or hot stinging salt c. Therefore scabbedness doth not require internal remedies but only local ones which are for killing of that itchive salt But the Pox doth chiefly affect the venal blood with a biting mattery and putrifying poyson But the Leprosie doth chiefly infect the inflowing spirit with an Anodinous icie poyson Indulge me Reader that through the scanty furniture of words I am constrained to use an illusion unto names Because as the essences of things are unknown to us from a former cause and therefore proper names do fail those essences we are constrained to boâ—â—ow and describe the conditions of poysons in diseases from the similitude of their properties that if not by reason whereof it is yet at least because it is the definition may proceed from Cousin-Germane Adjuncts or Properties So I say that the Poyson of the Falling Evil is a be-drunkenning sleepifying and also a swooning one together with an astringency neither therefore is it contagious because intrinsecal and not fermental so the Leprosie hath an anodynous or stupefactive Poyson not indeed a sleepifying one but an icie or freezing poyson well nigh mortifying together with an infection of the sensitive spirit and therefore mightily contagious especially in a hot and sudoriferous or sweaty Region For even as cold takes away the sense of touching by congealing and driving the faculties inward so also the Leprosie hath chosen to it self and prepared an anodynous or benumming poyson not a coolifying and sleepifying but by another title a Freezing one no otherwise than as Kibes or Chilblanes are bored with Ulcers as if they were scorched with fire the which notwithstanding do oftentimes happen unto those before or after winter who all the winter in the Chimneys felt no cold The poyson of the Leprosie therefore doth in this respect co-agree with cold effectually although not in the first Elementary quality thereof neither therefore doth it also totally mortifie after the manner of a Gangreen but only the part which it sealeth with the Ulcer Yea neither also doth it straightway extend it self far from thence because it is from a conâ—stringent icie poyson the Author of unsensibleness But it is of a difficult curing by reason of its freezing and almost mortifying Contagion and that an oppressive one of the sensitive spirit because as it is intimately co-fermented with the sensitive spirit while it hath issued forth unto the utmost parts therefore it is difficultly taken away unless by remedies which have access unto the first closets or privy Chambers of us to wit that so they may confirm the spirit of life whereby it may overcome
oft-times also to destroy them Therefore in the termes proposed concerning the disease of the stone the womb of Duelech moves at first great paines only by a convulsion of it self the which at length become more mild unto those that are accustomed thereunto to wit by reason of a less indignation of the soul For from hence children make water afar of but old folkes nigh Because the bladder of children being impatient of the pain conceived from the retained urine naturally contracts and presseth it self together But the bladder of old men being now the lesse sorely smitten with the accustomed chance suffers the urine of its own free accord to slide forth otherwise the muscle of the bladder being loosed there is no reason why children do pisse far of and old folks nigh unless the already said childish contracture of the bladder and painfull and voluntary pressing together thereof behind were as yet unaccustomed Through occasion of pain the Cramp or convulsion is not to be neglected First of all I will not repeate what I have taught concerning gripings or wâ—ingings of the bowells in the treatise concerning windes the part that is contracted doth not grieve by reason of the contracture as is manifest concerning the cod it being contracted without pain but by reason of an offence brought on the spirit and life For the contracture is an effect of sensaâ—ion or pain although it happens that the pain is also increased by the comming of the contracture My age because it is fruitfull in perverse wits will laugh at this paradox with many others The which notwithstanding following posterity will willingly embrace The Schooles indeed have thought that a convulsion is made by the execuâ—ive instruments of voluntary motion in that respect because they say that there are the healthy and diseasie functions of the same faculty although they are stirred up from diverse occasional causes A Muscle therefore seeing it is the only executive member of voluntary motion and a sinew the derivative organ of the command of the will it followes as they teach that a Muscle although it be acted in the Cramp against our will yet that it is never drawn together unless by the very same voluntary motive faculty it self which moveth that muscle while it is in health wherein the Schools do erroneoosly contradict themselves while as they define a Convulsion to be indeed the symptome of a voluntary motion yet to arise from a fulness or emptiness as it were its immediate and containing causes Yet it is sufficiently known that fulness and emptiness are natural causes but not arbitral or voluntary ones which natural causes if they shorten or contract a sinew as they manifestly teach at leastwise the attraction of the sinews shall not be made by an arbitrary motion I admire also the hitherto famous stupidities of the Schools in this respect For first of all a sinew differs from a Muscle no otherwise than as a vein doth This indeeed carries blood unto the Muscle and that motion And then besides the two causes of a Convulsion perhaps invented by Hyppocrates Galen hath moreover added a third which is admitted in the Schools to wit a poysonous quality For Galen had seen the Convulsion to follow from the stroak of Serpents neither yet could he as yet believe although the strucken member was swollen that fulness caused the Convulsion He being defectuous first of all because he was ignorant whether a nerve ought to be smitten that it may be pull'd together or indeed a Muscle Then because mortal Convulsions are made in gripings or wringings of the bowels and Hellebour being taken without any hurting emptying fulness of the sinews or a colical poyson Thirdly He is also defective because that seeing in a Convulsion there is made a drawing back of the member and a shortning of the Muscle he hath not discerned as it otherwise beseemed the Prince of Medicine to do why a poyson doth contract or shorten the Muscle thus leaving the former obscurity For truly Galen saith That the name of a Physitian is the finder out of the occasion which name he hath not lost in this place Again In the fourth place if a Convulsion happens from an empried and filled nerve that is from a proper Passion of the nerve Ought therefore a poysonous qualiry to be imprinted on a sinew or on a Muscle that a Convulsion may from thence happen Fifthly Galen hath remained defective and together with him the Schools his followers why the stroak of a Serpent the poysonous quality of a Medicine c. are made the proper Passion of a voluntary motion and of its own Organs For if the poyson ought to be imprinted on the Muscle therefore the sinew shall cease to be the proper subject of the Cramp and by consequence the emptiness or fulness thereof is vainly supposed and required But if the poyson dasheth against the nerve it self after what manner shall Hellebour wandring through the bowels primarily affect the sinew After what manner shall a Medicine being as yet detained in the stomack cause a Convulsion and give a freedom therefrom by the vomiting thereof At leastwise it is ridiculous that the successive alteration of the affected Muscles shall effect the shew of the Malady if the essence of the malady dependeth on the affected sinews And it is a foolish thing That an Emprostotonos or a Convulsive Extension of the neck forwards a Tetanos or straight Extension and an Opistotonos or an Extension thereof backwards should differ specifically by reason of a changing of the Muscle For a Muscle draws its tail always after the same manner to wit towards the head Truly such childishnesses do of necessity proceed from the ignorance of a Disease and the rashness of a childish judgement wherefore nature hath distinguished of the Specie's of Diseases according to the Specie's of occasional causes but not by reason of the difference of scituations And so seeing emptiness and fulness are terms plainly opposite they could not produce one only kind of Convulsion And it is a hard matter to believe that the emptiness of a sinew being wholly privative is as equally occasional to the Cramp as a fulness of the same sinew Even as it is alike blockish that a nerve is filled for so long a time until it shortens that nerve and that from a small nerve being extended in its breath by repletion or filling the Muscle is shortened As if all the sinews could be suddenly emptied and likewise filled and extended unto a hugeness in every fit of the Falling sickness to wit by feigned humours as if the Convulsion were only a shortning of the Muscle following upon the abbreviating of a dried or moistened sinew and indeed as if in regard that the unaccustomed repletion of a sinew did shorten that sinew even as the other which by its drying of the sinews did diminish the sinews no less in their length than in their breadth the nerves did suffer an unexcusable Palsey
length shall that actuall equall and connexed heat under the Sea Rivers pooles Meadows and under the Quellem be For truly it behoveth heat and dryth to be actuall and strong which may there be sufficient for so notable an effect but not potentiall naked remote possible or dreamed qualities What is that heat from what and whence is it rowsed in the more deeper cold what is that heat so short so strong and so interrupted which after a few rigours or extremities of tremblings ceaseth nor which doth shake the Earth a new by trembling For if the cause of so great motion be in heat there shall not at leastwise after the motion be in heat the cause of so sudden rest Lastly what is the dryness connexed to the fire which may forthwith kindle under the Earth and Waters the Waters being all alike dryed up throughout all the Low-Countries a fire the Patron of so great exhalations But go to let us feign by sporting and grant a heat to be actually under the Earth and Water which is made by kindling likewise that great and stubborn heat and its unwonted action which may raise up the exhalations before the dryness of the thing It is verily an irregular effect not as yet hitherto seen among the Artists of the fire Again let us feigne also other absurdities that actuall fire violent in the Water or under watery Bodies may there be bred without fewel and be sustained proceed and long persist without fodder but at leastwise that fire shall not be able to raise up vapours and much lesse inclosed exhalations and to detain them in a narrow place which may not choak that fire out of hand and make the sufficiency forces and successive generation of those exhalations void For truly in the Burrowes of Mineralls if the lights are not forth with from above refreshed with a new blast of Air they are presently extinguished and the diggers also are deprived of breath and life But if that the fire and that the exhalation do subsist untill a sufficient breathing be given Now for that very cause the motive exhalation its off-spring shall first expire from thence or if there be not room for a sufficient breathing the fire verily shall of necessity be stified nor shall there be place for so great a successive exhalation or for the repeated onset of an Earth-quake Let us feign again not indeed that actuall fire or heat is entertained under the Waters in the aforesaid Soils of the Earth but that all the Low-Countries have had something in all places like to Gun-powder which at length by its own ripeness or a hidden conspiracy of the Stats is enflamed at once and every where and for that cause doth afford a sudden exhalation in every place equall But neither truly under so many trifles should all the Low-Countries then jogge any more than once and it had gaped in the more slender and lesse deep and weigh y places and some pieces thereof had leaped forth on high and a Chimny of that exhaling flame would there follow But the Low-Countries and part of Germany had not therefore trembled For once and at once the Earth had some where rose up on the top where it had gaped but it had not often trembled as it were with an aguish rigour For truly the supposed action of inflaming should be made onely that the piercing of Bodies might be hindered Therefore as to the third point To wit that also a sufficient exhalation being granted to be under the Earth nevertheless an Earth-quake is impossible I have begun indeed already to prove by some granted fictions Otherwise after what manner soever an exhalation may be taken and wheresoever that of the Pavements may be supposed the Earth should not thereby tremble but where the least resistances should be it should rise up into a heap or bunch untill it had gaped and the exhalation had made a passage for it self by expiring thorow a huge Gulf. Which things seeing they are not found to have happened the tradition of the Schooles doth in this respect also go to ruine For first of all that it may more clearly appear that the action and manner of the action is divers when as for fear of a piercing of Bodies a thing leaps forth and that nature doth operate after another manner by reason of the supposed lightness of exhalations striving to break forth observe a Handicraft-operation Let there be a Glasse-bottle spatious thick and strong infuse in it four ounces of Aqua fortis being prepared of Salt-peter Alume and Vitriol being dryed apart But cast into that water one ounce of the Powder of Sal Armoniac and straightway let the neck of the Glasse be shut by melting it which is called Hermes Seal As soon as the voluntary action shall begin and the Vessel is filled with a plentifull exhalation yet an invisible one and however it may be feigned to be stronger than Iron yet it straightway dangerously leapeth asunder into broken pieces for fear of piercing but not by reason of the lightness of many exhalations For truly although it bursteth by reason of the multitude and the pressing together of most light and invisible exhalations yet the lightness of the same in this things hath nothing of moment Because if any of these things should happen for lightness sake the Glasse Vessel it self before its bursting would be lifted up into the Air and fly upwards Because it is a thing of lesse labour to lift up a weight of three or four pounds than to break asunder a most strong Vessel Therefore the exhalations which do break the Glasse should much more powerfully lift up the Glasse if the Schooles did not beg the vain help of lightness from exhalations for an Earth-quake If therefore exhalations are not able by their lightness to lift up the Vessel wherein they are shut much lesse so great a quantity of Earth and vast an heap Lastly seeing that every exhalation is of some body and every body if it be to be seperated is divided into Salt Sulphur and Mercury and the Mercuriall part be the watery part of the body therefore it must needes be that every exhalation is of a Salt and Oylie matter And that that is first to be raised up before the watery part Which thing hath not as yet so happened in our Glasses by the an equall action of heat If therefore an exhalation be Salt it is easily soaked or imbibed into the Earth which may be seen wholly in all waters and exhalations of what Salts soever which in acting upon the Earth are coagulated in it and loose all activity Therefore if they should be stirred up in the earth they had failed before they were or in the making had ceased to be But if the exhalation be oily surely that being laid deposited or laid up into the Earth it retakes the former shape of Oyl and so growes together Which thing seeing it easily comes to passe it cannot be thought
that of the stomack of a living Creature Certainly thou shalt draw out nothing but an un-savoury and no glewy water and much less a salt sharp and tart Rheume 16. That although snivel do slide into the jawes and doth diversly and oft-times badly affect these according to the divers indispositions of the snivel notwithstanding neither that filth nor the dropping down thereof can bear the reason of a Rheume no more than the urine sliding out of the kidney into the bladder is to be called a Rheume Wherefore if there be an un-savoury salt sharp or soure fluide or gross snivel sliding down into the parts whereby it is deputed naturally to be purged as it were through an emunctory it is not to be called a Catarrhe however badly also it may affect the parts even as also the urine if it shall afflict the bladder 17. By how much less ought the Flux of any feigned humour or dreamed excrement bred and derived after a manner through means places and journeys naturally impossible to be reckoned a Catarrhe 18. If the brain in living Creatures be not actually cold the reason of condensing of a vapour ceaseth but if it be less hot than the other parts doth therefore a vapour seek the more cold part by sense or feeling and choice because it desires rather to be coagulated than to remain as it is 19. Or are vapours driven by all the more hot parts on every side unto the brain as the more cold part But thus there should be altogether a continued unexcusable tempest in healthy folk But yet all these things being disregarded the which notwithstanding cannot have themselves naturally by way of necessity Rheumes should nevertheless flow down But not in the first place toward the outward parts between the scull and the skin For truly the Schools themselves do teach that vapours or the foregoing matter of a Rheume doth climb from the stomack unto the bottom of the brain and there doth find a certain plain an imaginary one nor as yet found by Anatomy in the hollow whereof it doth presently grow together and presently after that concretion it fall's down by drops Far be it surely from thence that an enemy which is a stranger a meer excrement a forreigner to the brain and the cause of so great infirmities passing into water in the lowermost plainness of the brain should from thence pierce thorow the very body of the brain or that in the form of water or at length again in shew of a vapour it shall sport in the aforesaid plain For not in the likeness of a vapour as though a vapour reacheth from the stomack unto the bottom of the brain and doth grow together in the place of cold as they say surely by the same opportunity of cold it shall remain water neither shall it be again made a vapour If therefore that vapour be now there made water by reason of the cold of the place it is not to be believed that this hostile water is drawn inwards and much less to have become so subtile that against the will of the receivers it should pounce the brain coats of the brain seames scull and the Periostion or skin covering the bones that it may be stayed and run down under the skin For besides unavoidable and very many absurdities that water shall be as it were rain water and unfit for slimy Catarrhs waxing very hard with muckiness Yea the Rheumes which are hence to arise should at the first sense of heat sooner vanish away by every sweat unless the Galenists do teach that the water which is made of the vapour of a luke-warm stomack is afterwards fixed Also that it hath become salt and sharp only by the touching of the plain which thing the knife hath not yet observed And then the skin of the scull being far more pory than the scull should sooner root out that water by transpiration or sweat than the evils from thence believed can be made Moreover the skin which is stretched over the scull is more toughly adhering hereto neither doth the steepness only of the place suffice for the flowing down of a Catarrhe and for the renting of the skin from the bone Yea and more is this water bred from the vapour of the stomack should of necessity have a driver within which should drive it thorow the brain coats bone and Periostion But that should not be any heat for then it should cease to be water and should again be made a vapour which is feigned to be condensed into water by the coldness of the brain In the next place Rheumes are said to be more accustomed to old folks weak people and to the colder stations therefore that driver or forcer shall be cold which after another manner is wont to bind the parts together and shall now the order of things being overturned drive the water thorow the brain and that indeed in the form of water And that driving or pulse in the water sprung from the meer vapours of the stomack shall be even in the brain which should open it self together with the coats and scull unto the water coming to it Again seeing all such water co-thickned by a vapour is said to be hanging on the bottom of the brain neither that it can there be detained beyond the bigness of a drop but that it of necessity will presently and droppingly fall head-long down or the brain being forgetful of its duty shall set up this excrementitious water by drops And then besides a driver the water should have need of a leader which should stretch out the skin and pluck it from the ribs that it may provide a place to wit in the Pleurisie for it self hastening downwards And as well the leader as the driver in the water should be more powerful than our Blas Lastly the mask of credulity being at once discovered at whatsoever price I shall prostitute the dreams of the Schools concerning Catarrhs none shall buy their false wares Neither could I hitherto sufficiently admire that the world hath been circumvented by Catarrhs that mortals have placed so great credulity by reason of one only fault to wit ignorance in a thing I say so blockish foolish and wholly impossible Because the Schools not finding a cause whereto they might ascribe the Catalogue of Diseases have commanded these dreams of Catarrhs to be believed But at least wise the sweat is salt wherefore the humour latex should rather afford the matter of a Rheume than that feigned vapour to be led through so many windings and scarce possibly consisting through a thousand absurdities Then also the accustomed saltness of the latex hath more immediate causes of pains than an unsavory water derived upwards in feigned vapours In the next place if water doth pass thorow the brain coats thereof scull and about the bony membrane shall it now therefore being wearied not be able to pierce even the skin also or shall it forget the wayes why shall the sudoriferous
that labour with the astonished Disease Convulsion and Palsie and Leprous Persons to be Cured Fie fie Miracles are manifested by an Unimitable finger Besides it behooveth rightly to distinguish effects by Accident from those which are due unto their Causes by themselves As if a Virgin through the failing of her Menstrues doth labour with a strangling Epilepsie or affect of the Palsie but her Courses bewraying themselves upon the drinking of the Water of the Spaw she be freed from the annexed disposition there is not cause that therefore we should commend the true Apoplexie Asthma falling Evil or Palsie to have been Cured by the Fountains of the Spaw For Diseases which proceed from the Womb are Uniuersally the Client of another Monarchy and do consist of another Root than those which break forth from the Condition of the Microcosme as well in the one as in the other Sex The which indeed if any one shall not distinguish of he procures loud laughter to himself from the more discreet Person But besides it hath already been spoken how much a hungry Salt may profit in Fountains but hereafter we must shew what the Coâ—roded and dissolved Mine of Iron may act That therefore first of all doth manifestly binde and therefore it strengthens the Stomach and any of its neighbouring parts In loose therefore and dissolute Diseases the Waters of the Spaw do agree or are serviceable to wit in those of the Lientery Flux Caeliacke Passion and Dysentery or bloody Flux c. Whereunto I exspect that it will be objected that whatsoever Irony matter is offered it provokes the mouth Issues and alwayes the breaches or enfeeblements of the Liver and Slpeen and so that from hence it is agreeable to truth that the Waters of the Spaw are rather opening than Astringent By reason of which difficulties some perhaps doubting do rather flie for refuge unto the unlike parts in Mars I answer from the Adeptists That there doth oft-times wander up and down in us a certain resolved Salt and Mineral one plainly Excrementitious a resolved Tartar I say existing either in the first or in the last matter whereof whether the Womb Liver Slpeen Kidney the Mesentery or Stomach be the Mine we now reckon it all one So that it be manifest that it brings forth remarkable troubles unto that labour with it Stomoma therefore that is Steel or Iron Administred in Powder being drunk down assoon as may be that hurtful Salt which hearkens not to the commands of purging things runs headlong unto the Iron and adheres unto it that it may dissolve that and display its own Faculty and so is Coagulated nigh that and together with the Iron goes forth But if the Iron or Steel be drunk being dissolved in a sharp Liquour yet not hostile unto us to wit the Spaw waters Nature the same liquours being wasted and more inwardly admitted within presently separates the Iron because it is unapt for nourishment from that which was co-mixed with it and sends it forth thorow the Bowels As may be seen in the blackness of the dungs of the Fountains of the Spaw In which Sequestration of the Iron there is straightway made a Con-flux of Mineral Salts no otherwise than as Silver dissolved in Chrysulca or Aqua Fortis doth flie unto applyed Brasse and dissolved Brasse unto Iron The received Iron therefore freeth from obstruction and openeth by accident to wit the vanquished obstructing matter being taken away with it yet not that it therefore ceaseth by it self to be constrictive It opens I say by a specifical and appropriated power but it constrains or binds by a second quality Now moreover seeing the drinking of the water hath increased a courage and hope in the miserable sick especially in those that have the Stone I will declare my judgement It is certain that the Waters of the Spaw do wash or rince the region of the Urine both because they do easily pass thorow and also because they being many and abundantly drunk and Mineral their hungry Salt hinders whereby the Spirit of the Urin the onely Architect of Stones in us may by a property inbred in it the less Stonifie any thing Because another more potent Salt doth now derive the same Spirit being as it were bound into its own Jurisdiction But because that is onely a Cloakative or dissembled Cure although the made Stones and Sands are expelled as it were by the cleansing of the sliding water yea as long as the waters shall be drunk they hinder new Collections of the Stone Yet because they do soon after grow again we judge them to be unfaithful or untrusty Remedies for those that have the Stone For by so much the more readily indeed the Stone hastens to grow by how much that womb the other parent of the Stone shall be the cleaner For shall not the Urine more easily glew a Stone unto a clean Urinal or Chamber-pot than unto one that is besmeared with Oyl For from hence perhaps the Kidneys of Bruit Beasts do abound with very much grease We therefore know a perfect Cure of the Stone and the desired rest to be a far different thing wherein the lesser Stones being sweetly expelled which is the least thing the greater indeed may return into their former Juice by a Retrograde resolving of their Concretion or Composure But neither shall that be sufficient unless the Stonifying inclination be taken away by restorers to wit by the Collected harvest of a few remedies nor is any one able to hope for an entire and wished for health from the Stone no less than from a Fever concerning which we have written in other places and afforded Remedies For the Virtue of healing stands right under every weight that is all Diseases are with it of one value or esteem and it can be diminished by no Disease The more noble powers of remedies onely are desired which cry unto Heaven to the Creator that they have come as it were in vain neither that there is any one almost who can loosen their bands We must timely abstain from complaints in an Ulcerous or corrupt age Therefore as to what belongs unto the first qualities of the Fountains of the Spaw although we are very little careful of those because they are Momentary and those which have not a Vital Anatomy as often as they are not infamous in a very incensed degree yet we Decree that their hungry Salt is in the first Degree of heat and dryth but that the dissolved Vein of Iron hath reached to the second Degree of Cold and Dryth But it hath been shewn with an indulgence of Aristotle and by the above-said Inferences that the water it self is moist in the highest degree but remisly Cold. But because those qualities as well of the water as of the Minerals are Relosteous ones or those which have not a Seminal Being in them they have not any thing of a Cure in them but they Preposterously or over-thwartly happen unto constituted things like
narrowness For the Schools if they speak seriously in these things they befool or deride the sick and do wantonize by applauding of themselves I pray you if they suppose these things to be true why do they forbid Diureticks if they are of validity for driving forth of the stone and by adminstring moisteners do enlarge the narrow passages Why do they not couple moisteners with provokers of urine that they may satisfie both betokenings at once For I have already taught before that if death shall come upon the Patient from the stone sticking in the passage that doth not happen from the guilt of Diuretick Medicines as neither because the urine vessel unless perhaps it shall be a monstrous one is in some other place straighter than it self in its beginning and therefore that the stone once departing out of the kidney if it be stayed in the sliding down by reason of the strickness of the passages that happens from the cruelty of pain which hath convulsively contracted the urine-pipe And therefore that comes not to pass through the offence of the Diureticks but of the Physitian who hath never scarce heard of this Convulsion in the Schools and therefore neither hath he sought into a remedy for it Where surely the incongruity and faulty arguing of the Schools from not the cause as for the cause comes to be taken notice of Because the aforesaid moysteners the Marsh-mallow mallow and oyle of Almonds c. Do profit not as they do enlarge the urine-pipes which is in it self ridiculous but forasmuch as they aswage the convulsion of frizling even as some external somentations do And likewise the juice of Citron doth not helpe by the abstersive and incisive or cutting force of its sharpnesse for otherwise vinegar and other sharp things should perform the same because the juice of Citron layes aside its tartnesse in the first digestion of heat and therefore neither is it admixed with victualls now waxing hot but there remaines in it a residing faculty convenient for asswaging of the Cramp or convulsion To wit while it being converted into urine doth as yet retaine a certaine kind of marke of its former middle life What if the Schooles do fear the use of Diureticks least happily many stones in descending should light at once within the Ureter and that he which as being the more grosse one was the hindermost should as it were a wedge stop up the passage But neither so indeed is there a casual vice to be ascribed to the Diuretik medicine Because besides a fiction is also set to sale for a truth For whatsoever doth at the beginning happen to fall into the urine-pipe unlesse it shall be a certaine hook that doth thus procede and is carried downwards For smal stones do not play and wantonize in so famous a passage not one stone or many at once that are bigger than the passage do passe out of the kidney as neither do they once fall down from thence which sustain the weight of urine behind them That thing indeed were to be suspected if the Ureter were not a soft and loose membrane but a dry and unflexible reed For that a moist membrane for fear of a Vacuum or emptinesse doth of necessity alwayes fall down on the sides unlesse it be enlarged from behind by the urine falling But the urine provoking medicine is not yet therefore hurtfull For the falling of many and badly formed little stones by chance into the Ureter hath not drawn its faults from the diuretick remedy but from the fatal urine rushing on it which without that Diuretick had equally fallen wherefore a Diuretical remedy is neither to be feared or turned away from for fear of an irregular and monstrous chance to wit that that wich is ordinary by it self profitable should be forbidden from the fear of an unwonted and most seldome accident But if they say that many smal stones being glewed together with a slimy matter do fall out First of all that destroies the material cause of Duelech which is diligently taught by the Schooles For truly that phlegmy glew ought already to have been stonified but those stones neither found nor took to them that glew in the urine-pipe wherefore if one only stone or many co-glewed ones do slide out of the kidney it is all one because in their sliding forth they were not bigger than the passage of the kidney Therefore if urine-provokers do not dissolve that glew nor disjoyne those little stones it shall atleast be very profitable so much as may be to have driven forth that offensive fardle of the stone a more plentifull and provoked urine laying on it by the urine it s own weight For the urine-pipe is not naturally moist with any muscilage within The which the urines of healthy persons doe testifie Therefore if any muscilage of medicines should come down thither that could not but be unto the Ureter besides nature and its usual wont What if the urine pipe being beset with a stone cast into it be said to beget a muscilage First of all the urines of those that have the stone in the reines do contradict that chance And then also the Schooles shall be heedlesse which derive phlegme or the material cause of the stone from above yea out of the stomach for stones because it is that which should be found at hand and in the sick urter And foolish muscilages of forreign simples are given to drink if a muscilage should be the native cause of the malady And then the Schooles speak as if Diureticks did drive foreward the stone yea and also the urine as with a hammer or as if they did thrust them forward behind their back as by a staffe for so by artificial things after the manner of the vulgar they plunge themselves into a labarinth for a spectacle Not considering that in urine-provoking remedies there is a specifical property left from the middle life of the simple or got in the transchanging of digestion from which property Diureticks do emunge or wipe out the urine But no Diureticks do by themselves respect the progeny of the stone As neither doth an honest or true Physitian give heed to effects that rush on the sick acidentally by accident that therefore he should neglect effects perse or by themselves the which notwithstanding is otherwise done by forbidding of a urine-provoking medicine Because that a sanative indication or healing betokening commands a most ready removal of that which is hurtfull and the rather of that which doth afterwards wax more great by delay Therefore I prayse Diuretical remedies in the stone of the kidneys so that they do also aswage and lull asleep the convulsion A certain Countesse and likewise another Nun closed their day with huge pain For both of them shewed as it were a hook wlth one sharp top of its Triangle ending in the kidney but with its other into the Vreter and both of them dyed with a cruel Convulsion They dye not indeed by
sometimes made in these so ready and stubborn a perseverance of affection that it presents a Spectacle of Admiration to the Beholder especially if any one doth examine the attributes of the Life and spiritual Seed For how most suddenly are Children Women and improvident people angry do weep and laugh For the sensitive Souls of those do freshly as it were immediately even adhere unto sensible things It is therefore a natural thing that the sensitive Spirit is voluntarily and easily carried into these kinds of overflowings because that Soul being easily received by its own sensual judgement slides into the voluntary passions of material Spirits and as even from a Child these same exorbitances have encreased so afterwards that Soul growes to ripeness as wrothful furious and wholly symptomatical the which otherwise would far more safely perform all things under meeknesse or mildnesse than as by reason of furies to aspire into Diseases and now and then unto its own death which is frequent and most manifest in Exorbitances of the Womb and in the Symptomes of some Wounds and of other Diseases Anger therefore and Fury in this place are not of the man but of that Sensitive Soul brought into the Life which begetteth the animosities of a natural Sensation and the which therefore doth oftentimes ascend unto a great height that it burns to an Eschar and blasts the part with a Sphacelus or mortifying Inflammation like fire Pain therefore is an undoubted Passion of the Sense of Touching wherein the sensitive Soul expresseth a displeasure with the Object according to the differences of the conceived Injury brought on the parts Furthermore Whether that Passion be the Office or Performance of a judicial power from whence the Soul is by a proper Etymology named Sensitive no otherwise than as the motive faculty moveth only by the beck of the Soul without an external or forreign Exciter Or indeed whether pain be a Passion immediately produced from a sensible paining cause the Schools might have sifted out if as great a care of diligent searching into the truth as of receiving a Salary from the sick had ever touched them But with me that thing hath long since wanted a doubt For truly Seeing the Sense of Pain is the Judgement of the Soul expressed by the act of feeling in the Sensible Faculty whereby the Soul bewails it self of the sensible hurtful and paining Object Therefore both of them being connexed together do almost every way concur and both also stand related after each its own manner unto pain For indeed the cause being a sensible injury is the motive of pain But the sensitive Soul it self gives judgement of the painful Object with a certain wrothfulnesse and impatiencie of Passion The which indeed in a wound Contusion or Bruise Extension or Straining Burning and Cold as being external Causes is altogether easie to be seen But while the motive Causes of Pain are neither applied from the aforesaid impression of external Objects or from a proper Exorbitancy within and the Sensitive Spirit is from thence made wholly sharp gnawing biting degenerate and forms the blood like it self Then indeed the Sensitive Soul in paining doth not only give a simple judgement concerning Pain But moreover she in her self being wholly disturbed brings forth from her self a newly painful product no otherwise than if that Product proceeded from an external occasional Cause And although both these do in a greater Passion and more grievous Sensation for the most part concur yet in speaking properly Pain doth more intimately respect the Censure brought from the Sensitive Soul the Patient Or Pain doth more nearly reflect it self on the property of the Soul than on the paining cause Because many are grievously wounded without manifest pain even as also a furious man shewes that he scarce feeleth Paines from hurtfull Causes Some things also do oftentimes delude the paines of Torture and Unctions do also deceive paines although the parts are beaten with injury Wherefore Sense doth more intimately and properly respect the Censure of the power of the sensitive Soul than the injury of the painfull Cause But truly I am diverted elsewhere as for the cause of the aforesaid unpainfulnesse in the Leprosie and unmoveablenesse in the Apoplexy c. The Schooles indeed contending for the Brain as the chief Organ of Sensation and pain do therefore take notice that the Brain being by its own property of passion immediately and as it were by one stroak touched doth lose even both sense and motion at once yea that it doth contract either of the sides But the manner of making they thus expresse The fourth bosom of the Brain it being a very small little bosom beginning from the Cerebellum the beginning of the Thorny marrow is stopped up by phlegme from whence ariseth an Apoplexy in an instant For Nature being unwilling or not able to draw back or reduce that phlegme once slidden down thither being diligent is at leastwise busie in laying aside that phlegme into either side of that pipe from whence consequently a Palsie of that side begins These things indeed we read concerning the Apoplexyand Palsie yet nothing of the contracture arising through the stroak of the Head Paracelsus also not being content with this drowsie Doctrine of three Diseases is also tumbled in unconstancy For sometimes he saith That the Apoplexy and Palsie following thereupon is bred for that the sensitive Spirit in the Nerves or Sinews hath from the Law of the Microcosme after the manner of sulphurous Mines contracted like Aqua vitae a flame from the fire of Aetna Through which inflammation the Sinewes and Tendons being afterwards at it were adust burnt and as it were half dead are dryed up together with the muscles and therefore they do thenceforth remain deprived of sense and motion To wit he Constitutes these two Diseases considering nothing the while of the Contracture or Convulsion from the stroak not indeed in the Case of the Brain but in the utmost Branches of the Nerves as though they were affects hastening from without to within But in another place he judgeth not a certain sulphurous or inflamed matter to be the cause of the Apoplexy but he accuseth Mercury onely to wit one of the three things which he calls His own Beginnings of Nature as being too exactly Circulated and affirmes that through its abounding subtility or finenesse it is the conteining Cause of every sudden Death Elsewhere he recals the Apoplexy unto the Stars of Heaven And in another place again being unconstant he teacheth That every Apoplexy is made of gross vapors stopping up the Arteries and restlesse beating Pipes of the Throat and that there is also an Eclipse of the Lunaries or Moon-lights of the Brain in us from a Microcosmicall necessity Therefore hath he in like manner whirl'd about the causes of the Vertigo or giddinesse of the Head unto uncertainties To wit himself being wholly Vertiginous But I have otherwise proceeded Whatsoever doth primarily feel
suspended motion not in one side only even as in the Palsie For from thence I confirmed my self that the influences and communion of the inferiour Bowels were taken away from the Brain by the interception of a Bond or Obstacle From whence also I consequently supposed that the first Conceptions were formed elsewhere than in the Head according to that saying of Truth Out of the heart proceed adulteries murders c. I found moreover that the Apoplexy astonishment or unsensiblenesse Palsie giddinesse of the Head Falling-Evil Convulsion c. were passions arising from a positive occasional Cause and much differing from privative ones the Constrictives or fast binders together of the sinews passages and Spirits which Causes have been hitherto neglected by the Schooles by subscribing in the aforesaid Diseases to wit unto Heathenish Doatages stablishing phlegme in the fourth little bosome of the Brain When as in the mean time the like and positive faculties do every where occur in Opiates and likewise in sleepy and Epileptical Diseases I remember also that I at sometime in my young Beginnings distilled some poysonous things the which if at any time the junctures of the Vessels being not well stopped there expired an odour from them or that afterwards in separating the vessels from each other they struck me at unawares I was at one onely instant ready for a fall together with a giddinesse of the Head and a benummednesse of my right side So that if the Odour had once onely again smitten me without doubt I had fallen as being Apoplectical Indeed an ardent desire of knowledge in times past constrained me into so great rashnesse that a thousand times I have not spared my own life Therefore in the tearms proposed truly that Odour did not stir up phlegme threatning to slide down and a new and fresh blast of ayr again removed it not out of the bosome of the Brain Therefore if some Simples do bring a drowsie Evil giddinesse of the Head a cessation of Motion and an obscuring of Sense it is not unlikely that the like things to these do also suddenly spring up within Neither is it seemly alwayes to dedicate all these effects to the depriving stoppage of one phlegme For I remember that a person being smitten with an Apoplexy dyed in two hours and seeing there was a suspition of poyson offered him a Dissection was appointed His Scull therefore being taken away thirteen studious men pleasantly took away the Menynx's or Coates of the Brain and then the Cerebellum or little Brain being modestly opened not any thing of phlegme was found in the fourth Bosome as neither was there any thing found to have fallen downwards into the Thorny Marrow by those diligently narrow Enquirers Therefore I shall never be induced to believe with the Schooles that the Apoplexy is a phlegmy stoppage of the fourth bosome of the Brain as neither can I believe the Palsie to be an obstruction of either side of the Thorny marrow First of all the unprosperous healing of these Diseases do bewray the sluggish Enquiries into Causes And then the Apoplexy hath so negligently and ignorantly been handled hitherto that it is as yet in the Schooles destitute of a proper word For truly it hath retained its Name from a folding or small Net of Arteries dreamed by Galen or being delivered to him being credulous from some other which small Net Anatoâ—y hath not as yet hitherto seen But Galen his feigned fine Net hath forsaken him as a rash Asserter of Trifles and a ridiculous Dissecter So that it is now clearly manifested by Andrew Vesalius being the Author That Galen never saw a humane dead Carcase dissected and that he described his Doctrine of Anatomy word for word out of some other no otherwise than as he did his Herbarisme out of Diascorides Therefore I have easily learned that of necessity not onely the place and manner of making but also that the whole Tragedy and due Remedies of an Apoplexy are wholly unknown in the Galenical Schooles For the method of curing it hath confirmed that thing unto me For I have often seen in a new Apoplexy by Vomitive Medicines but otherwise comforting ones being afterwards added the Speech Sense and Motion to be restored But all either side of whom had failed I have seen cured by the Mercurius Diaphoreticus of Paracelsus elsewhere by me described For that Sudoriferous Mercury as it cures without any Evacuation so also it hath brought desired help without the Revulsion of phlegme out of the fourth bosome of the Brain For I having followed the Doctrine of the Holy Scriptures by their fruits ye shall know them Have learned To wit from the latter and from the effect That the original of the Apoplexy is positive but not privative or by a stopping up of the bosome of the Cerebellum lum made by phlegme suddenly falling down thither Especially because that from affects of the Womb Apoplexies and Palsies do oftentimes arise They ceasing Remedies being administred to the Womb and those being neglected they are either choaked as being truly Apoplectical or do also languish with a Palsie for their life-time Finally I have known that the entry of an Apoplexy is in the Midriffs but in the Brain not but by a secondary passion whereby the Brain doth successively hearken unto the Government of inferiour parts For neither do vomitive Medicines as neither also the aforesaid sudoriferous one withdraw any thing from the hinder little Bosome and much lesse from the hollownesse of the Thorny marrow And that thing they have known as many as have ever been present at the Dissection of those parts And likewise Odoriferous and succouring Essences being drunk should never be derived unto the Head if it were stopped or beset yet they do presently sensibly help Because there is in the Midriffs their own tasts and their own proper smelling And moreover their own touching also is from hence communicated to the body by meanes of the sensitive soul being every where present Which thing although I have elsewhere sufficiently proved concerning long Life yet it shall here be profitable to have confirmed it at least by one Example Therefore if any one shall drink a Scammoneated poyson masked with sugar and spice the Tongue and Pallat do indeed commend it for the first turn but at a repeated one the horrour of the Midriff and aversnesse of drinking will discover the errour of the masked tast And that which otherwise is sweet to the Tongue is made horrid to the Midriffs It s no wonder therefore that there is a singular Tast and Touching in the same place and that it is from thence diffused into the members and that those Senses of the Midriffs are presently refreshed by the Essences of the Odour but slowly and never if they are applyed unto the Nostrils Pallat and seames of the Scull For I have taken notice of some things which cause not onely the drowsie Evil or Catalepsie but also foolish madnesse and
to be from the errour of a convulsive Retraction and not rather from that of both the supposed causes To wit as well through a stoppage of the netve from Phlegm filling it as they say as by a pressing together of the dryed sinew and as if so great a sudden drying up thereof were credible or possible to be in a live body Yea after what manner doth a nerve being now once withered suppose thou by too much insolency as they say of laxative Hellebour presently again admit of a restauration of its own radical moisture being dryed up Why hath it been necessary to feign and admit of a filling or emptying of a sinew if a poysonous quality can afford the Convulsion without either of them The received opinion therefore of the Schooles concerning the causes of the Convulsion or Cramp registred to be from the emptinesse and fulnesse of the sinewes is ridiculous For although they with Galen acknowledge also a third Cause which is that of a malignant quality Neverthelesse they stick as convicted in the two former Causes For they err in the Matter Object Efficient and manner of making That is in the whole As if a small Nerve being extended unto a Muscle which oft-times scarce equalizeth the grossenesse of a threefold thred being moistened more than is meet and dryeâ— than is fit to be should be made by so much shorter than it self by how much a muscle drawes the members together perhaps to to the length of a span Yea as though as well the be dashing of an hostile Humour as the emptying of a Nerve should cause the paines of a Convulsion They bring hither the ridiculous Example of dryed Clay when as in live Bodies drynesses are impossible and they also afford impossible Restaurations While as notwithstanding those Cramps do oft-times cease of their own accord The Schooles have thought that those feigned Moistnesses and Drynesses of a little sinew which could scarce effect the latitude of a straw do contract the Muscle even into the Convulsion of a foot-length Neither likewise is that Example of value That the string of a Lute being wet with the Rain of Heaven leaps assunder as broken in regard that it is cut short by the imbibed Liquor For first of all it might have been extended longer by twofold than the feigned extension thereof in its breadth had shortened the same The Schooles do not take notice that a moist membrane is brickle as also a dry one and therefore also that Lute-strings are kept fat in oyl lest they should become wet or wax dry Away with their examples which have no place in a live body For in a living body the sinews cannot be so dryed that their witheredness can cause any abbreviation 2. They being once dryed can never afterwards receive a moistening any more than drie old age it self 3. They deny a Convulsion arisen from a laxatâ—ve medicine to be made by a poyson For if they should acknowledge a poyson to be in a solutive medicine they should cut off their own purse A Convulsion therefore arising from a solutive Medicine as from only an emptying but not from a poysonous Medicine should be indeed from an emptiness or dryness of the sinews But a Convulsion or Cramp arisen from a loosening Medicine is oft-times restored Therefore it is not bred from a dryness of the sinews 4. Every lean old person should be drawn back by a perpetual and universal Convulsion 5. Seeing a sinew is not the executive member of motion therefore the shortening of at sinew proves not a Convulsion of the joynts as though an arm or leg ought to follow upon the cutting short of a sinew 6. Seeing that a nerve being moistened so that it were made by so much the shorter by how much through a forreign humour being imbibed it should be extended on its breadth such a humour should be plainly contrary to nature it should effect a Palsey rather then a Convulsion But a Palsey is Diametrically opposite to a Convulsion it self as well in Sense as in Motion 7. How could a stroak of the Scull presently at one moment dry up the sinews of one side but by moistening the other sinews opposite unto them forthwith enlarge them on their breadth that they may cause the Convulsion and Palsey at once And seeing as well Emptying as Filling are feigned for the cause of the Convulsion the stroak of the Scul ought to produce the Cramp on both sides 8. It is no wonder therefore that so unsuccesful remedies have been applied to the Convulsion if the Universities are hitherto ignorant of all the Requisites of Diseases For they ought to have known that every Convulsion is a vital Blas of the Muscles stirred up from the in bred Archeus The occasion whereof is a certain Malignant matter rushing on the Archeus as laying in wait for the life of the Muscles What if Hippocrates hath referred the cause of a Convulsion unto emptiness and fulness he hath had respect unto the occasions of the foregoing life To wit that there was a frequent Convulsion to riotous persons and likewise through much emptying of the Veins And Galen not apprehending the mind of the old man hath waxed lean at the humoural filling and emptying of the sinews by a succeeding and that his own device Such old wives fictions therefore which have been perswaded by the Schools unto credulous youth being despised I say that there is in the Muscles a twofold motion to wit one as it is the Organ of a voluntary motion and another as being proper to it self whereby although it draw back it self towards its head yet it nothing hinders but that the spirit implanted in those motive parts doth retract or draw back and move those parts even as was already said before concerning the â—od For neither is it repugnant to nature for the parts to leap a little by a local motion of their own the soul being absent to wit for the parts which are moveable by another Commander to be furiously contracted through a sorrowful sensation seeing that another conspicuous motion is singularly wanting to the Muscles whereby it may denote the hurt brought on them besides that whereby it executes the voluntary motion of the Soul And moreover it is altogether natural to all the members and proper to the common endeavour of the parts for those to be drawn together by reason of the sorrowfull sense of an injury brought on them which place the Schooles have left untouched Wherefore I have accounted it an erroneous thing to believe with the Schooles That the Convulsion is an affection of the Head For now they depart herein from their own Positions whereby they suppose the Cramp to be from filling or emptying or from a poysonous quality of the Nerves unlesse they had rather the Case being now altered that the Convulsion should arise from the filling or emptying of the Head But the Cramp is an accident of the sensitive Spirit Which thing first
the scope of pain Because they are onely abstracted Names and for the most part not in the least point conteining the cause thereof even as I have demonstrated in the Treatise concerning Diseasifying Causes as it were in the combating place of exercise For in the Urine-pipes for an Example in the tearms of the Disease of the Stone there is no necessity dependency of Dominion Clients-ship Usurpation Possession Custome and no community of the Pipes and Excrements with the bowels or stomach For if when the left side of the Throat is in pain not so much as the right side thereof in such an angiport or narrow passage be now and then afflicted why shall we not deservedly suspect the nearness and dependency of parts which are unlike and differing in the Ordination of their Offices and Scituation It is therefore sufficient hitherto that all pain the author of a Convulsion or Contracture presupposeth a hatefull Guest For there are also unpainfull Contractures as before concerning the Cod and the which draw their original not so much from pain as from meer trouble But painfull Convulsions are made from Hostile Causes For so Those things cause paine which smite the Spirit called for the Soul Sensitive with sharpness brackishness or degrees of heat or cold But the most intense pain is from fire and then from Alcalies and corroding things because they are the nearest to fire after that from austere or harsh brackish and four things because they are the nearest to Contracture Presently after from salt things then next from sharp things and lastly from some bitter things But from poysons as such cruel pain ariseth the which in the Plague is ordinary and because so great pain oft-times ariseth without sharpness a Truth is denoted To wit That pain issues from the judgement of the Sensitive Soul For Corrosives since they gnaw the sensitive Soul it self they wast the parts themselves like fire But Alume Vitriol Aqua Fortes's next the juyce of unâ—ipe Grapes and also any sharp things as they do by themselves crisp and pull together the Fibers of the Organs therefore such Excrements are Convulsory and painfull There are also Alcalies which sleepifie paines To wit in Cases where they break the greatest sharpnesses of Putrefactions For under the Dog-star while as Fleshes threaten corruption at hand the Broaths of fleshes are made sharp with an ungratefull savour whence in the Gout Colick and gnawing and putrifying Ulcers I conceived paines to proceed at first from a sharpness Likewise the sensitive Soul at first feeles pain the which being at length accustomed waxeth the less wroth even so as an accustomed Horse refuseth Sâ—urs For Nature in her self is wholly furious and Sumptomatical and being by degrees accustomed to paines waxeth mild Wherefore Self-love and Revenge are before or more antient than sense or feeling because they are intimately in Seeds in the bosome of Nature before Sense For the Characters or Images of anger agony fear revenge and sorrow do bring forth Convulsions like to those their own Idea's For from the knowledge whereby a Mouse abhors a Cat not before seen the Spirit being provoked is stirred up into anger fear c. The which by its own Idea uttereth its fury on the members as it were by a Brand. 1. The hand waxeth cold because the heat there cherished by the Life is extinguished by cold but not that the vital Spirit retires inward as having left the arterial bloud whch it had married and much less that heat as a naked quality passeth departeth and returneth inward as it were in a Comedy 2. The heat being now diminished cold also persisting the cold waxeth strong and then Sense in the hand is stupified For the sensitive abstracted Spirits are pressed together To wit those which are in the sinewes but not those which are in the Arteries because the Spirit hath the more firmly married the arterial Bloud and it is the property of the Veines even after death to preserve the Bloud from Con-cretion or Coagulation For the vital Spirit is sustained from behind by the fewel or cherishing warmth of the heart as much as may be and therefore in that stupefaction Life is as yet deteined 3. Motion languisheth in the Hand because the Spirits being grown together in the flesh seeing they are not sufficiently nourished from behind by the heart they by degrees perish and by degrees are altered 4. And then together with the perishing of Motion Sense also is extinguished To wit while the Bloud being chased out of the Veines threatens a clotting Life as yet remaining 5. And so at length the joynts are by cold totally deprived of Life To wit when as the venal bloud hath now departed into Clots and dyed Therefore in the third and fourth degree aforesaid pain springs up in the Hand being heated For as the Heart inspires a new sensitive Spirit from behind the which while it takes notice of death to be readily at hand it being as it were enraged in the same place presently frames the Idea of its own indignation and so puts off its native sweetness or Complacency Even as in the Treatise concerning diseasie Idea's in the work concerning the Rise or Original of Medicine I will more clearly demonstrate So the sensitive Spirit which was not trampled on by cold but repulsed by pressing together in its return stirs up another Idea of its own indignation and another pain as it were like that of the pricking of a pin Let the Reader in the mean time pardon me in that I ought to borrow the Name of an Icy or freezing Poyson without the necessity of fore-going Cold For I call not that an Icy poyson as if it were made cold as I have already spoken concerning the stupefying astonishment of the Hands but I call it a cooling and also a stupefying poyson and that which takes away sense and motion Therefore the similitude of the Name draws its Original not from the Root but from the Effect And last of all in this By-work for a Conclusion of this Work and Sensation Let us meditate at least of the Remedies of Physitians in the Apoplexy in astonishment or beâ—ummedness giddiness of the Head in the Catalepsie Catochus Coma Convulsions plucking of the Eyelids Eyes Tongue and Lips For thou shalt find that presently cutting of a vein and a Clyster are prescribed They doubting in the mean time Whether the dung of the Fundament may pluck the Tongue and Lips in the mouth may likewise stamp drowsinesses and astonishment in the sick As it hath brought forth blockishnesses and neglect in the Physitian Or indeed whether these arise from the venal bloud therefore they are presently intent upon both at once And then on the day following they administer purging things And thirdly as being full of uncertainty after Rubbings they provoke Sweats For their Succours are universal because others are wanting and they are ignorant of such And therefore their total usual Medicines are general
vital abortive young For neither do I speak these things as if I fled unto the devise of the Microcosme of Paracelsus although I give notice that the nature of the Universe doth observe a single manner in every thing For truly nature is on both sides co-agreeable and like to her self which the sense of feverish persons complaineth of in Fevers happenning unto them in winter as in summer For he who in wrestling being short winded hath failed is for some time at quiet and recovers his breathing and by leisure repaires his strength whereby he can shake off the Conqueror laying on him so by a natural single Conduct the Archeus in Fevers commands rests to himself by intervals and afterwards his strength and successive labours being re-assumed endeavours to shake off the Fever his enemy Wherein surely the part wherein the feverish matter sits or sticks fast doth first contract it self into wrinckles which is easily perceived in the Midriffs But the whole veinie generation by a certain consent co-labours with the besieged part and the oblique Fibers being drawn together it strictly straightens it self For from thence a seldome hard and lessened pulse is the betokener and work-man of cold For every one that hath a Fever if he mark it in himself shall easily discern this co-wrinckled straitness of the veins and that it is altogether natural even unto him that is in good health For although the Cod may hang down as loose yet presently assoon as the drossie dung of man slides down to the muscle of the straight gut the Cod is co-wrinkled of its own accord It is therefore a natural thing to the veins and parts that are chiefly affected to have contracted themselves into wrinckles since therefore that the arteries are for the most part everywhere adjoyned with the veins it must needs be that these together with the veins are contracted by an oblique or crooked Convulsion which thing surely feverish persons shall easily perceive if they being mindful of these things do give serious heed unto those things which they feel This therefore is the cause of cold in Fevers But that trembling seeing it is in the Muscles themselves it is to be noted that the Muscles have two motions One indeed as they are the Clients of the Will that they may utter a voluntary motion But another inasmuch as they are carried with a motion of their own against the consent of the Will And this again is two fold to wit the former which is contracted by one only violent drawing even as in the Convulsion Cramp c. But the other which suffers intervals such as is an aguish or feverish trembling the tossing and trembling of some one member to wit of the head or hands c. being familiar unto old age and Drinkers Truly Galen passeth it not by without observation but he is received with laughter For he teacheth That such a trembling of old age is made from the striving of weight with the voluntary motive faculty And that this faculty indeed endeavours to lift up the member but by reason of weakness that it stops the motion begun being hindered by reason of the weight of the member As if indeed the voluntary motive faculty should endeavour against the consent of the will to lift up a laying and quiet member that it might continually leap a little I return unto the terms concerning Fevers Since therefore not only the skin as in the Cod but also all the particular membranes are by a motion proper and natural unto themselves crisped wrinkled and contracted it is no absurdity to give also unto a Muscle it s own motion For so also after death in a Tetanus or straight extension of the neck the Muscles on both sides are extended a good while after the death of all will For so the poysonous quality of purging things doth oft-times pull the Musclely parts together and in Fevers that are mortal there are unvoluntary Convulsions with an interposing slackness Of which motions seeing I have largely treated in the Treatise concerning the Convulsion It shall be sufficient to have admonished in this place that those two motive faculties do naturally belong to a Muscle One whereof is idle and at rest as long as the Muscles are in a good state but it is moved as it were an auxilliary or assisting one in the encountring of things troublesome unto them At length therefore when the Archeus hath observed that he profited nothing by an oblique convulsion of the veins and arteries and by the trembling of the Muscles as Wroth he frequently moves any thing that he may shake off from himself the forreign enemy Wherefore I repeat that which I have divers times spoken to wit that all motion as well in healthy as in sick persons doth immediately proceed constitutively and efficiently from the Archeus which maketh the assault but occasionally from occasional causes The which I at first mechanically discerned by some remedies of Fevers Because if they are given to drink on the very day of the fit and at a seasonable hour they do oft-times take away many Fevers at one only turn For that opportunity is in a small hours space before the fit to wit as much as the actuating of the Medicine doth require and with an empty stomack For if it be given in the dayes of rest of intermitting Fevers or a good while from the beginning of the fit while the Medicine fore-feels not nature to be an assistant unto her as well to actuate or quicken as to expell the occasional matter of the Fever it is handed forth in vain Yea then the Medicine vexeth rather than helpeth as it spurs up nature unto a banishment while she had rather be at rest But in the Plague Malignant and other continual Fevers if it be reached forth to a fasting stomack nor the action thereof be disturbed between while by drink it for the most part supplies the whole office of curing at one only turn else surely while the veins are strained and grieved or otherwise nature is called away from her work begun or is made to awake in the middle of her rest the indignations of the Archeus are the more provoked Neither hath it been sufficient here nakedly to have said That the Archeus in Fevers first stirs up a Blas of cold and afterwards of heat as seeds do imitate and bear in themselves a figure of the world For truly nothing is naturally moved by it self except the Archeus who is the first mover of the living Creature For I know that a vigour is granted unto every seed that this vigour being once stirred up it is afterwards fit for moving of it self by its own vertue and all other things thence-forth besides it self which are contained under the sphear of its own activity Therefore troublesome and confused urines are voided forth sharp and undigested vapours and also bruitish ones are stirred up which go into improper places increasing the cause of the cold But