Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	disease_n	part_n	symptom_n	1,651	5	11.2411	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

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

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

Gasi then it commonly kills before any greatly manifest symptoms of the outward parts break forth till after an expiring of the vital spirit the virulent Ferment goes on to over-spread the vegetative life in the last digestion which it doth after death and so I say the last digestion viz. of the solid parts becomes also infected and breaks forth even after death into spots pustul's and swellings for in these malignant Diseases where the venome first seizeth upon the vital parts or center and so spreads to the outward parts or circumference the vegetative or growing life or property which lodgeth in the ultimat digestion viz. of the solid parts is the last that 's wrought upon and slain whose badges do betray the Serpent that lurkt in the blood The intolerable pains that happen in these outward swellings come from the anxiety of the vital and animal spirits I mean the Archeus for those divisions of spirits are but different vibrations of one and the same Archeus which is sadly opprest with the close dogging of this virulent Ferment that has got footing in the Cottage of life The Virulency in respect of its great corrupting property has an acute acidity annexed thereto which pricking the nervous and membranous parts of the body especially of the part where the Contagion works to a head in the swelled place somewhat like to the pricking pains of the Pleurisie though more eminent in degree which proceeds from a punging acidity in the blood whereby it becomes Nature abhorring its hostile enemy therefore where it hath strength thrusts it forth hostile to the Archeus and is therefore extravasated out of the azugal Vein into the Plura and there by reason of its acidity which yet has not arriv'd to any virulency which is hostile to the Veins and Membranous parts lacerates and as it were by pricking tears the Membrain of the Plura which is a most sensible part thence comes those smart pains and stitches frequent in that kind of Feaver But in the Plague the corrupting acidity differs from others in that it has a contagious Ferment adjoyning to it and what the acidity causing pains and boylings in the blood and what the virulency causing a gangrenating property through the whole this Disease becomes determin'd into the most deadly enemy to the mortal life And from the boyling of this venomous leaven in the blood proceeds those direful symptoms which accompany this Disease as an inquenchable thirst which would drink all before it because of the fermental fire that centers in the bosom of the blood which boyls up continually in an anxious dark fire-source darkens the vital beams which should be irradiated through the whole and makes the lamp of life burn dimly For this outward temporary life of ours which at the best since the fall is caduce is truly and really a vital lamp or a luminous ens of a middle nature between the immortal Soul and the Elemental Body and is as the acute Helmont well calls it pedissequa or receptaculum animae immortalis not only the Hand-maid but Cottage of the immortal Soul or if I might call it the lowest Sphere to which the Soul is banish'd since it fell from the upper Sphere of Paradise where now its conversant amongst those Spinae tribuli those Briers and Thorns of Morbid Entities or Diseases and passions which disturb the otherwise pure and serene oeconomy of the generous Soul as it is born in the divine light The lives of all Creatures as Helmont saith are entia luminosa Dei dona Beeings of light and gifts of God implanted in every Creature for the governing the structure of the body with both the signatures of the life and inward spirit and also the stage wherein the Magia thereof produceth its wonders this spark of fire or light which quickens every body gives life motion sense capability of accepting or eschewing what is either of a like nature or what is of a different from its self and gives all the concomitant products of life is yet but a little in bulk and yet puts an activity into great bodies which otherwise would fall of their own weight ruit ipsa mole This is that Plastick principle that shapes every thing in the Embrio puts on the watery Element for an outward garment and appears in most delicate forms sporting it self according to the appointment of God in Nature in great variety to the wonderment of the great Spectator Man who if he be born with eyes cannot but admire the wisdom of the great Creator who has plac'd a vegetative spark in every Plant Praesentemque refert quaelibet herba Deum If these lights are darkened the Creature falls into disorder deficiencies and weaknesses if it be extinct the body falls like a cadaverous bulk That which I would aim at herein is That seeing the outward fragil life of man consists in a spark of light which is a warming nourishing and inlightning lamp to the body is therefore exposed to all those many dangers which may hazard not only the dim dull and obscure burning ef the lamp of life but also the extinction of the same amongst those many puffs and blasts that hazard the extinguishing this vital flame that malignant blast of the Pest as also of other contagious fermental Diseases doth the soonest stifle the same and that because such infective odors are very active and nimble and therefore insinuate with their venom the more intimately reaching to the very root of life These pestilential Odors or Hogoo's surprize the vital flame of insected persons not much unlike the malignant Mineral Arsenical sulphur which is found in Mines that first darkens a Candle and at length blows it out which also they in effect do the same to the workers in the Mine by sometimes stifling their vital flame by the poysonful Arsenical vapor that comes out from the Caverns of the earth where there is as well unwholsom nay poysonous breaths as well as healthful Thus you see I have as succinctly as I could run through the description of the cause essence manner and symptoms of this devouring Disease the Plague together with some transient hints of other malignant Diseases so that Ex ungue leonem from one you may learn to measure another and them all in their own proportions and dimentions you may espy i● you observe a secret concatenation or cementing together of the notions laid down in order to the through discovery of this Monster though I confess much shorter then I might have done if I had time The nature of a Zenexton HAving thus determin'd the essence of this Disease it 's now time to discover if we can what may possibly concur to the assistance against it as also what may conduce probably to its Cure For the way to seek a right Remedy is first to be throughly satisfied of the Nature Cause and Essence of the Disease which may make way for a due application of Antidotes and