be expected from elsewhere For he is the Prince of life and death the Alpha and Omega of all things He giveth and taketh away Victories Wars Famine and Pestilences also second partaking causes also free mediating con-causes and occasionall ones accompanying them over all which notwithstanding God is sits as chief as the totall immediate and independent cause Therefore the Firmament is a preacher of all these Works for neither doth God more erre in these free contingent things than in animall accustomed and necessary things if the Firmament was made by God the Mover and knower of all things to foreshew The Land of Libyssa shall over-cover the dead Carcase of Hannibal as Appian relates it to have been foretold by an Oracle of the evill spirit Hannibal hoped he saith that he should therefore die in Lybia or Africa who died in Bythinia near the River Libyssus For the Devil cannot foreknow the lots or events of future Wars which are in the hand of the God of Armies and as yet in the future will or judgement of man unless he shall first read them decyphered in a fore-telling Star Which Picture of the Stars while they no where finde mentioned but cannot deny but that the Devill declares things to come they have meditated of a privy shift and do say that the knowledges of future things are nearly related to Angels and so are co-natural to them but that they differ according to the Quires or Regions from whence they were expelled so that they which fell down from the highest Hierarchy of the Angels should have a much more clear understanding of future things which understanding because it was naturall God had not took away from an evill Spirit For neither is it more naturall to the Devil to have known the enlightnings concerning future things than to have known the natures and names of living Creatures not seen before like Adam But I conceive with Dionysius that the inferior Angels are enlightned by the superior but this light continually to beam forth from the wisdom of the Father and never to have been natural to Angels but to be a free and beatifical gift Next that every good gift doth descend from the Father of Lights that the gift of the Counsels of God and of his future works is not to be searched out by Creatures by their gifts of nature else the naturall knowledge of evill spirits should be almost infinite if it should include in it self the fortunes of mortall men to come distinguished in their second causes yea if an evill spirit otherwise had had this natural participation of divine counsel he had not been ignorant of future effects which he himself as the fire-brand of all evills was to raise up and suffer and so he could scarce have sinned Therefore it is more safe to believe contingent or accidentall things to be painted out by the Stars not indeed all but perhaps those of one age and likewise the Tragedy of every man to be deciphered in his own Star the Picture whereof ceaseth with the closure of his life They will say Hannibal took poyson Satan perswading him But this he did not certainly know as neither could he foretell it if man hath free will and therefore neither did he know that Hannibal would certainly obey his perswasions neither doth Hannibal die by the foolish perswasion of Satan which could not be knit to its causes depending on the divine will For neither doth he die by the poyson but first he is a run-away from many adverse battels But the Lord the onely God of Armies hath Victories in his own hand neither is the evill spirit chief in Battels Therefore to have foreknown the issue of Wars is the same as of free contingencies For truly Victory doth for the most part arise occasionally from a contingent thing not premeditated of therefore I conclude that the infernal enemy doth read the Pictures of the Stars whereby the Firmament is said to foretel the Handy works of the Lord. But thou wilt say whence do the Heavens make Predictions which no mortall men have known and the which to be known by the evill spirit is wickedness In the first place it should be sufficient that the fore-tellings of future things do chiefly declare the glory of God and the infiniteness of his wisdom and fore-knowledge to wit that it may not remain unsignified And then The Lord hath not done a word which he doth not signifie to his servants the Prophets Lastly if the number of mortall men be scarce the hundreth of Angels that are good Spirits it sufficeth that these at least do read the foretokens of future things and therefore do they praise the Lord anew Lucifer indeed hath waxed proud by the much knowledge of things both of those that do exist and of things afterwards to be and it was naturall to him the which he breaths in without grace But it doth not therefore follow that he hath known all mortall men to come and their fortunes vices defects sins grace and whatsoever things should be hereafter like to a second cause as neither the secret mysteries of God that are revealed in succession of dayes and added to a connexion of causes But whether Plagues do arise and rage or Tyrannies Wars destructions tumults or the beginnings of arch-Hereticks the Lord permitting them at leastwise those things shall be as well connexed to their own necessary and second causes although arbitrall and occasionall ones as otherwise Meteors are to theirs For neither is the office of foreshewing the Handy works of the Lord to be restrained to the changes of the Air alone but absolutely unto all the works of the Lords hands Because if the Stars can be preachers of the threatning effects of the wrath of God which without second causes should be committed to the smiting Angel why shall they not also in like manner shew the works of the Lord deputed or reckoned to second and free causes For truly what things soever God foreknoweth he can also if he will shew them by his Instruments but those proper Instruments of God are the Firmament and the Lights thereof as the Scripture witnesseth Yea truly I have been bold to attribute more Authority to the Heaven than what hath wont to be given unto it by the holy Scriptures To wit that the Stars are to us for foreshewing Signes Seasons or changes of the Air lastly for dayes and years wherefore the Text takes away all power of causes besides in the abovesaid revolutions of seasons dayes and years Neither do they act I say but by a motive and alterative Blas But the Stars are said to act by motion and light onely but motion in the Schooles is said to act onely by reason of the divers Aspects of Light for that the motion of the Heavens even the swiftest as well as those remote from us should produce as well heat as motion is a devise or fiction For truly the daily motion of the Heavens is almost
thirst after But now I being constrained by the Reasons and Letters of many moderate wise Men out of divers Kingdoms and States here and there who perswaded me that I was devoutly engaged by the pledge of Health to commit all the Writings of my deceased Father unto the Press and to annex thereunto when and after what manner he closed his Day Also in what State or Condition he left the aforesaid Writings And moreover to supply those things which were lacking for the vindicating the Life of Man-kind from many Errors Torments and Destruction It is That which hath extorted from me to leave all other things and thorowly to review the aforesaid Writings which being finished I gave up my self to hearken to their Calls I suspended my former purpose discoursing in plain and most simple Words the following Narrative in my Mother Tongue according to the tenour of the fore-going Dedication of my Father the which I also imitate by following him in the very same intent thereof The Death of my Father happened on the Thirtieth Day of the Tenth Month December of the Year one thousand six hundred forty four at the sixth hour in the Evening when as he had as yet a full use of Reason and had first required and obtained all his sacred Solemnities and Rights His Life it self was his Disease which remained with him seven Weeks beginning with him after this manner He at sometime returned home in hast on foot at Noon in a cold and stinking Mist which was a cause unto him that when he endeavoured to write a small Epistle of about fifteen lines or did indulge himself with too large a discourse his breathing so failed him that he was constrained to rise up and to draw his breath thorow the nearest Window whereby a Pleurisie was provoked in him at two several times from the which notwithstanding he restored himself perfectly whole yea the day before his Death he being raised upright as yet wrote to a certain Friend of his in Paris there being among other these following words Praise and Glory be to God for evermore who is pleased to call me out of the World and as I conjecture my Life will not last above four and twenty hours space For truly I do to day sustain the first assault of a Fever by reason of the weakness of Life and defect thereof whereby I must finish it The which accordingly followed after that he had bestowed a special Benediction or Blessing on me the which I esteem for a great Legacy I do not here more largely extend the property of his Disease by reason of the straitness of time seeing that I am besides to make mention of him in my Compendium from all things unto the one thing the which I endeavour God willing it to publish in a short time A few days preceding his Death he said unto me Take all my Writtings as well those crude and uncorrected as those that are thorowly expurged and joyn them together I now commit them to thy care accomplish and digest all things according to thy own judgement It hath so pleased the Lord Almighty who attempts all things powerfully and directs all things sweetly Therefore attentive Reader I intreat thee that thou do not at the first sight wrongfully judge me because I have taken care to have the more Crude Writings Printed as being mixed with the more Digested ones those not being Restored or Corrected Know thou that the desire of promoting this great and laborious Work hath been the cause thereof at length thou maiest experience that the desirous Reader was to be by all means satisfied no less in this than in the aforesaid Writings and then thou wilt judge that I have well and faithfully performed all things seeking nothing for my own gain the which shall more clearly appear by this my Preface I call God to witness that my Desire unto whom it is known doth extend unto the help of my Neighbour Wherefore read thou and read again this Writing and it shall not repent thee for ever for I tell thee in the height of truth that I have published these things from pity alone as taking good notice that men by reason of their own Imaginations are so little careful of or affected with the safety of an Eternal and Temporal Life Stop your antient in and out-steps enter ye into the Royal path Eternal dismiss ye those innumerable by-paths which I my self have with exceeding labour and difficulty thorowly beaten in seeking whereby I might come unto the knowledge of the Truth endeavourm in the mean time to find out the ordination of all created things and their harmony and that by all the more internal and external means which I was able to imagine I then bent all my Senses whereby I might make my self known unto Wise men so called hoping at length to find some Wise Man not learned according to the common manner in all places where I should passe thorow which I might call Nations of whatsoever profession or condition they were I spake to them according to their desire that I might joyn in friendship with them by discourse and according to my abilities I imparted unto them the whole cause by this and other means I touched at many clear fundamental Knowledges and Arts all which I heare advisedly pass by And when I understood all and every of them to be onely the esteemed workmanship of a great Man I discerned that by how much the more a thing was absurd vain and foolish or frivolous by so much the more it was exalted and respected or honoured the which servitude I perceiving became voluntarily averse thereto as being one who did prosecute plain simplicity I descending ascended unto essential and occult or hidden properties and for my aid the understanding of some Latine Books seemed to be desired to this end I read over diverse times the New Testament in the Latine Idiome and the Germane that by that means I might in a few days not onely understand the Latine stile but also that in the aforesaid Testament I might find the perfect and long wished for simple one onely and Eternal Truth and Life which the one thing to wit God doth onely and alone earnestly require and is averse to all duallity or plurality So also whatsoever God hath created he created all of it in that one and by that one thing otherwise he had not kept an order And by how much the more I knew this amiable free and one only thing in all things and did enjoy it I addressed my self to a quiet study I was outwardly cloathed with simple or homely raiment and for the more inward contracting of my mind as also for curing thereof I acted many things known to God alone as also for the preservation of my health and increasing of my strongth I lived soberly for many Years together I also abstained from fleshes like as also from Fishes Wine and Ale or Beer and that so far that I
say Plethora or the abounding of humours alone is called the shewer or betokener of bloud-letting which as it hurts for the future so hunger and the withdrawing of meat in the beginning of a sharp Disease do together with a destructive Disease easily empty out all abounding humours in the first dayes Neither that the vain device of revulsion and derivation hath greatly profited at sometimes by their own position I have demonstrated in the Treatise of Feavers But laxative Medicines since they do at leastwise wipe away very new bloud out of the Meseraiok or sucking veins and change it through the disposition of their poyson by divers waves corrupting it truly they have given hitherto none but a weak hope of healing by the event full of confusion sorrowes and uncertainty Therefore we are blinde unless with a stout heart we being at length moved with compassion do go to meet so great a slaughter of mortal men and the sighs of sick persons or phanes and of Widowes and of the dead For besides that the helps of the Schooles for the sick are so uncertain and of so little credit I intreat you let us mutually commiserate mans condition which hath committed his life and fortunes to an art filled with conjectures and uncertainty also that it hath admitted of all sorts of knaves and Harlots whereby it may without punishment exercise cruelty on our Kinsfolks When I exactly consider with my self the so great sluggishness and blindeness of Schooles and Ages I give praise to the thrice glorious God that he hath made manifest to the little ones in himself much truth which he hath hidden from Noble Persons and those in chief Seats and therefore I admiring the depth of the judgements of God do religiously adore him But Galen snatching the glory of his Predecessors into himself extended his own Art contained in a few Rules into huge Volumes It pleased him indeed that all Bodies should be framed of four Elements and from thence to snatch their wholethingliness or Essence and so that to the square of these elements he confirmed or framed four qualities and as many simple Complexions straight-way so many couples of Compound qualities and from thence also foure constitutive humours of us before dreamed of by others And then from their strife and discord joyned as well with a simple as with his own feigned humours he determined to derive almost all Diseases and the scopes or indications of healing even as health from their fit proportion also that every Disease is a meer disposition in quality wherefore that of contraries there are onely contrary Remedies With which necessity he being at length constrained distinguishing the vertues of simples word for word out of Diascorides and the Elementary Degrees he copied out their Seminal and specifical power neglecting on both sides because not knowing either By what facility of Art indeed he allured the chiefdom of healing to himself he obtained it and Posterity being allured with so great a compendium a drowsie sleep crept into the Schooles thorow the Doores of sloath for the awakening whereof I would God might take his honour and mortaâ—â— the experienced fruit which I wish by my labours Many I know well enough will prate grieving that themselves and their â—iresome readings will be diminished if I shall resign the sound truth of Medicinal Science unto the gift of the glorious God alone but shall have very little hope in the sharpness of wits But however they may gun man is a plained and naked Table and ought to get his Learning else-where and from one onely Master of whom it is said that the Scholar shall never excel that Master because there is onely one Father and one onely Master who dwelleth in the Heavens from whom is every good thing all light and clearness of understanding Truly we Christians do profess the Lord Jesus to be the onely wisdom oâ— the Father the beginning and the ending of all Essence Truth and Knowledge â— and so sâ—eing every good gift not onely of vertues but also of knowledges doth descend from the Father of Lights who could learn perfectly the skill of the Science of Medicine from the Schooles of the Heathens for the Lord not Schooles hath created a Physitian The Heathenish Schooles indeed may have an Historical knowledge the observer of things contingent or accidental of things regular and necessary which is a memâ—rative knowledge of the thing done they may also get Learning by demonstration which is the knowledge of applying things unto measure And lastly they may promise rational knowledge which is derived from either of these by the fitting of discourse and I wish they had soundly and sincerely performed what they might have done by those meanes They may I say historically have known the reflux or going back of the Starrs and Sea that the water bends to a levelled roundness and downward draw divers Sequels from thence and stablish them into maxims They have known I say the craft of composing and how to fit the necessity of Causes in some measure conjoyned by discourse But to understand and savour these things from the spring or first cause is granted to none without the special favour of Christ the Lord. Therefore the Science of healing is the last of all Sciences and chiefly hidden so that it is no wonder that its first beginnings are even at this day desired from types or figures The more diligent Heathens have as yet promised the World to continue by its own Law and things to have their Roots in the whole and in the particular kindes or Species whereby by its own proper force it was to be preserved for ever and so an independency or Deity to be in things Alas thereby from the true Phylosophy and truth of Medicine even as drunken men about wan Deities and blindnesses they have stumbled in the dark and therefore they have of necessity been ignorant of created things and the Seeds Roots and knowledge of these Therefore the knowledge of nature hath indeed been attempted by the Heathens through childish conjectures and very little ever obtained Therefore I have grieved with pity that hitherto the beginnings of natural things have not been fetched forth elsewhere the which as I have determined to discover by this my labour So I humbly intreat that God may grant that he hath not yielded me his Talent for a recompence of punishment although in this Work I could not do so much as I would For the whole faculty of natural Phylosophy is committed to man and therefore this ought to respect both his life immediately and all his defects Therefore all natural Phylosophy is limited for the use of life the finding out of causes the Disease and Remedies in which last point I finde that hitherto little pains hath been taken no hing known but much promised and very much neglected long expectations and every where errours For the knowledge of Diseases containeth the knowledge of the Causes the dependance
Agent the efficient or Archeus or chief Workman Therefore it is false that by how much the more a thing hath of the form by so much the more it hath of the act of the Entity or Beingness of vertue and operation Because the form is not gotten or possessed by parts or degrees neither therefore are Beings more or lesse capable to receive from the form yea although they were more capable to receive yet the activeness of the Agent is not of the form it self but of the Master-workman or Archeus of whom by and by Therefore the form cannot be divided For whatsoever Aristotle hath attributed to the form or to the last perfection in the Scene or Stage of things that properly directively and executively belongeth to that Agent or seminal chief Workman In the next place seeing that the efficient cause of Aristotle is external as he saith the Smith to be in his view of the Iron I easily knew that he hath set to sale his fictions for true foundations and all his speculation about artificial and external things of Nature to wander The whole efficient cause in Nature is after another manner it is inward and essential And although the Father generating be effective yet in order to causing or doing he is not but the cause efficient of the Seed wholly outward in respect to the Being which of the Seed is framed by generation For in the Seed which fulfills and contains the whole quiddity or thing liness of the immediate efficient that is not the Father himself but the Archeus or chief Workman For that the Father in respect of the thing generated hath the Reason of nought but an external cause and occasionally producing for by accident alone the effect of generation doth follow although the Agent applies himself to generation with his whole intent Therefore the constitutive constituter efficiently causing inwardly perfectively and by it self is the chief seminal Workman it self really distinct from the Father in Being and properties Even as in Vegetables Herbs indeed are the productresses of Seeds but they are but the occasional and remote causes of Herbs arising from that Seed and therefore although they are natural causes yet not sufficient and necessary ones for neither of every Seed will therefore rise up a Plant. Therefore the seminal Being is in the Seed the immediate efficient cause efficiently the internal as also essential of the Herbe proceeding from thence But the Plant that goeth before that Seed is the remote cause the natural occasion indeed of the Seed which by it self and immediately frameth the Plant and effects it with the assistance of that which stirs it up For otherwise if the Herbe causing should be the efficient of the Herbe produced the working or begetting cause could not be burnt up but the Plant produced should also perish Therefore the Seed is the efficient inward immediate cause of the herbe produced Wherefore after a diligent searching into all things I have not found any dependance of a natural body but onely on two causes on the matter and the efficient to wit inward ones whereto for the most part some outward exciter or stirrer up is joyned Because that these two are abundantly sufficient to themselves and to other things and do contain the whole composure order motion birth sealing notions or tokens of knowing properties and lastly whatsoever is required to the constituting and propagating or increasing of a thing For the seminal efficient cause containeth the Types or Patterns of things to be done by it self the figure motions houre respects inclinations fitnesses equalizings proportions alienation defect and whatsoever falls in under the succession of dayes as well in the business of generation as of government Lastly Since the efficient containeth all ends in it self as it were the instructions of things to be done by it self therefore the finall external cause of the Schooles which onely hath place in artificial things is altogether vain in Nature At leastwise it is not to be considered in a distinct thingliness from the efficient it self For that which in the minde of the Artificer is the Being of Reason can never obtain the weight of a cause real and natural Because in the efficient natural cause it s own knowledge of ends and dispositions is infused naturally by God Indeed all things in Nature do desire some generating juyce for their matter and lastly a seminal efficient disposing directing principle the inward one of generation For of these two and not more have all corporeal things need of But the three principles of bodies so greatly boasted of by Paracelsus although they should be found in all things that are to be framed yet it would not therefore follow that those have the force of principiating because those three seeing they are the fruits of Seeds they do partake as it were of a specifical diversity which they should necessarily be ignorant of if they should be true principles that is if they should be present before the framing of the particular kinde Nor also could one thing passe into another which notwithstanding is a thing natural or proper to the three first principles of Paracelsus Moreover since matter and also the efficient cause do suffice to every thing produced it followes that every natural definition is not to be fetched from the general kinde and difference things for the most part unknown to mortal men but from the conjoyning of both causes because both together do finish the whole effence of the thing And then it also followes that the thing it self produced or the effect is nothing but both causes joyned or knit together Which thing truly is to be understood of things without life to things having life life is otherwise to be added over and above or the Soul of the Liver For so a Horse is the Son of his four-footed parents created by virtue of the word into a living horse-like soul Sublunary things are commonly divided into Elements and things elementated but I divide them into Elements and seminal things produced These again into Vegetables Animals and Minerals So as every one of them may shut up a peculiar Monarchie secret from the other two Therefore Minerals and Vegetables if by any condition they may seem to live since they live onely by power and not by a living form in light enlivened they may also fitly be defined by their matter alone and internal efficient For every effect is produced either from the outward Agent and it is a thing brought forth by Art or from an outward awakener and nourisher which is the occasional and outward cause which notwithstanding hath an efficient and seminal causewithin and remains the efficient even until the last period or finishing of the thing brought forth yet the occasional cause is not the true but mediate Agent But the subject which the Schooles have called the Patient or sufferer I call the co-agent or co-worker But in respect of both limits or in the disposure of the
do see being witnessed in the holy Scriptures and bewrayed by those kinde of bruit Creatures which owes not its rise but to the Moon For therefore there was darkness that might be felt which should far exceed ours although thick because it was deprived of all help of the Moon Nor is it a wonder that darkness hath its degrees seeing the infernall pit hath its utter or uttermost darkness because an Hebraisme wants the superlative degree without the favour of the Moon For happily abstracted spirits have something which for seeing may answer to our eyes that it may not see wholly throughout the whole of what belongs to it self and some of these Spirits are Seers by night but others being mute or silent like to Bats may as it were wax dim or dark under the Sun or in the day time and therefore they do the more willingly appear to their own in the dark and mid night therefore I will subscribe a History of this I had in my time of being at the University a Chamber-fellow born of honest Citizens This man his eyes being shut did for the most part rise and wander in the night but he carried away the Key with him and returning opened the Lock that he had shut after him In the Evening therefore I arise and secretly hide the Key under the Bolster but he arising in his sleep takes the hidden Key as if he had seen it and goes his way I taking my Coat followes him But he climbed an antient Wall the bound of the Colledge beset with Mosse and Hay For there was an Arch whereby on the other side of the River the Wall did support the Wall of a Neighbouring Garden It was full Moon and a frosty night I was amazed at the sight and by reason of the cold returned But my Chamber-fellow by and by returning he so quickly or cleverly hid the Key in a hole of the Cloyster that any one seeing could scarce do that thing so undelayingly at noon day But in the morning he was unmindefull of all that he had done For those walkers their eyes being shut do see clearly under the thick darkness they climbe securely without giddiness of the head because they do enjoy a Moon light A small wound becomes oft-times hard to be cured because it is inflicted on a member by the Moon appearing or advancing Under the Equinoctial line all things do soon putrifie not indeed by reason of excess of heat which is now and then greater and more constant elsewhere for truly under the line it sometimes raineth for dayes together but surely by reason of the continual nearness of the Moon and the long and round figure of the Globe as I shall prove in its place If a dead man or a bruit Beast shall passe one night at least all the night under the Moon for there she smites the near places with a full beam on the morrow morning the dead Carkase flowes abroad or abounds with corruption By occasion whereof it is related among experiments that if any one the light of the Moon being collected into a Cone or Crest doth cast her beames through a Glasse upon Warts Apostemes that have a humour like hony small tumours called Nats and the like excrescences untill they shall feel the cold within they do easily vanish afterwards of their own accord Nor is it a wonder for such defects do heatken to the Moon increasing Hence also in her decrease they shall the more easily perish Indeed I know if the Moon shall shine upon a wound that its lips do straightway wax black and blew or envious and resist healing In the next place if a Frog be at the full of the Moon in a most sharp North winde of winter digged up washed clean and tied to a staffe in a field the morrow morning a certain white and transparent muscilage is found resembling Gum Dragon dissolved and the shape of a Frog For that is not the Workmanship of cold which by it self onely cooles and occasionally freezeth else the full of the Moon should not be required wherefore I impute it to be a passage into its first matter Moreover that first matter of a Frog doth very much prevail in the healing of a Cancer life and is called by Paracelsus under a riddle Gluten de aquatico or the glew of the watery thing or Creature Therefore the Sun doth call forth the flowing of seeds unto the bound of the last life But the Moon on the contrary drawes to the first matter of a thing For seeing the Moon doth draw waters and fat or nourishable things into the juyce Leffas therefore a profitable observation of planting and dunging is referred to the Moon Also that Plants do profit no lesse by night than by day the family of Mustromes and Pompions doth shew Neither is the gathering of Plants before Sun-rising superstitious not indeed because nature like unto Serpents or creeping things ceaseth from its works by night but because they being the more plentifully nourished by the night have obtained a full nourishment Therefore the Moon is chief over the night darkness rest death and the waters As all things do return to death rest and water And for that cause doth the Moon bring in a passage to transmutation Indeed she doth primarily behold and move or affect rather the seminall powers than the matter of the same yea truly because the light of the Moon drawes back seminall things especially to their first life or matter therefore some Adeptists do begin the labour of wisdom with the light of the Moon according to that saying Night unto night sheweth knowledge to those that seek it Therefore two great Lights are sufficient for all motions and progresses of seeds from the first into the last life and from this into that For because they do abundantly suffice to the fruitful use of nature hence they do enroule the other Stars among their Bands And therefore the Scripture hath made mention onely of the two greater Lights Thus far of Fire and Light I being now about to speak of the birth of Forms will rehearse that the Masse of seeds do receive into them a corporall Air the Vulcan which I name the Archeus or Master-Workman Some seeds of Woods or Kernels or Oil do contain him in them as Almonds Pine-kernels Pistack-nuts and the seeds of many Pot-herbs or they are mealy seeds as Acorns Chesnuts and Corny or grainy seeds or they do powre forth a milky fruitful muscilage or slimy juyce For the Archeus inhabits them being drowsie and sleeping in the curd of the seeds being content with his condition as long as he is negligent of propagation But when his seed is once committed to the Earth he cannot but drink in his liquor and become swollen and then contract a Scituation and presently snatch to him a Ferment putrified by continuance Which Odour and Savour although it be putrified by continuance yet in every seed it is specificall and therefore altereth by
or boyling to be concoction therefore they translated digestions to boyling and on both sides where they thought heat to be the natural total and one only cause of them For they saw that by seething and roasting very many things waxed tender and were altered Therefore a liberty being taken from artificial things they translated a Kitchin into the amazed transmutations of the bowels and meats not indeed by way of similitude but altogether properly and immediately and by thinking the matter passed over into a belief and then into a true opinion and all the offices and benefits of our nature they translated into heats and temperaments as it were into totall causes Especially indeed because they perceived the bellies of men and four-footed beasts to be actually hot even so that afterwards they laboured more for increasing of heat than for strengthening of digestion For neither have they diligently searched further into it although the event did for the most part deceive their hope Thinking it sufficient that heat might be found as well in boyling as in the natural digestion of the belly from which they slumbered as expecting abundant help to themselves In the mean time they were in doubt when they took notice that meats were not by seethings wholly transchanged into juice by a total metamorphizing For fleshes the vessel being shut they resolved into a consummated Bâ—oth a true portage being pressed out and melted but indeed they observed their errour because fleshy tough and hard remaining threds did abide and never melt by a true transmutation into juice yet through an aptnesse of belief and antiquity of errour they suffered their eyes to be vailed seeking privy shifts and biding places they presently thought themselves safe while that they had implored the divers degrees of heat if not also its particular kinds and general kinds as is a fiery elementary radical correspondent to the element of the stars c. yea and the moments of heats for a help of their excuses So that every degree should almost in every moment have its own constitutive temperature in digesting In which stupidity Paracelsus also involved himself who will have one only bread in so many particular kinds of living creatures to receive a specifical diversity of venal bloud and dungs by reason of the moment of degree alone in heat As if the Latitude of heat could frame a species or vary in the substance But while the Schools did presume to have taken away every knot in the Bulrush they afterwards fell into the spongy differences of digestive heat natural and likewise into that of besides and against nature And at length they ought now and then against their will to fly back unto the sacred Anchor of hidden secrets or properties in digestions So indeed that there should be some certain heat the Authour of digestion as well in diseases as in health Having forgotten in the mean time that as they had feigned one only kind of contraries and both to be said or declared after like manners that there should be one only and a uniform condition of both Wherefore they forgot to devise the like particular kindes and properties of colds to wit of what so it that natural digestive cold besides and against nature should be And likewise they ought to have taught some radical and primogeniall cold So that if radical heat doth answer in proportion to the Element of the Stars and doth differ in the whole general kind from any other luke-warmth also radicall cold ought to differ in as many numbers and faculties from any other cold unlesse through the great want of truth they forsake their own wisdom as barren So indeed although heat not natural should proceed into natural and this into it by an unheard of license of seeds yet they have banished native and feverish heat into distinct species yea also into generall kinds that they might save the effects attributed to digestive heat So that while they would believe that some Birds do digest those things which otherwise do defend them against the fury of the fire they have acknowledged some fire to be more powerfull than fire For a Dog doth digest swallowed bones which fire never dares to convert into Chyle Therefore The diversities of which effects have constrained the Schools to erect heat into the Latitude of a predicament opposite colds being in the mean time neglected When as in the mean time there is only a specifical diversity of heat which is not able to with-draw it from the number of other things For truly whatsoever is cast into the stomack digestion being at length finished is transchanged and far separated from boyling and other coctures after whatsoever degree prepared Because the one only ignorance of ferments hath caused digestions and the remedies of unconcoction to be unknown and a faulty argument to be promoted of not the cause as of the cause where it is not an idle brawling as it were about a name while fermentall effects are ascribed to heat Because the resolving of this question doth change the intentions of healing Therefore I willingly accustome my self to enquire into the proper causes to wit at the meditation whereof profit follows diseases tremble or the strength or faculties are made vigorous Therefore ferments are worthily wrath because they are against their will believed to war under a Relolleum or quality not having a seminal Being For it never belonged to heat to withdraw a thing into a formal transmutation Seeing heat by it self and primarily doth nothing but make hot but by accident it separates watery things from stiff or tough things Which univocal or single action of heat is no wise a digestion being wholly included in transchanging For although digestion doth happen in us heat accompanying it yet that is not heat although it be by accident connexed with heat For therefore in a Fish there is no actual heat neither therefore notwithstanding doth he digest more unprosperously than hot Animals Neither is he after the manner of men badly affected by things cast into him Therefore it is a frivolous thing to flee to potential heat for a fish For in sensible things known by sense the touching only is witnesse and judge but not to flee to dreams For if digestion be to be attributed to heat not actually hot but to a virtual power I now enjoy my wish For otherwise what is that I pray but ignorantly to brawl about heat as such And in the mean time to confesse that there is something besides a sensible heat which is the containing cause of digestion For what can more foolishly be spoken than that potential heat doth actually make hot and that digestion is made for this heatings sake Can a thing in power now act actually But at least in a Dog-like hunger there is a most swift digestion and implacable hunger Therefore a troublesome and offensive heat even then ought to be felt in us hot creatures if digestion be made in us by actual
to the vital scope For from hence there is no seldom offence of the stomach it having arisen from a degree of a forreign sharpness wherefore an Orexis or inordinate appetite to meat and such like perplexities or the stomach do offend in an adulterous tartness For from hence are prickings in the stomach difficult concoctions lastly very soure belchings and vomitings wherefore if a ferment should consist in soureness Vinegar Oyl of Vitriol and the like should ferment the lump of bread and should digest our meats by a perfect transmutation but they do neither of these Therefore the ferment is a free Secret and vital and therefore it every where co-fitteth to it self a retaining quality in its own Borders Because seeing ferments are of the rank of formal and seminal things therefore they have also severed themselves plainly from the society of material qualities But if they have associated unto them a corporeal ministring quality whereby they may the more easily disperse their own vital strength account that to be done for a help and so it cannot but contain a duality with the Ferment And therefore also that quality may offend as well in its excessive as in its diminished degree For in that thing I greatly differ from the Schooles Because first of all they teach that the Gaul is not a vital bowel 2. That it is not a noble member 3. That it is nothing but a very unprofitable superfluity it self and banished from the masse of venal bloud to wit least it should infect the venal bloud 4. That it is therefore a product besides the intention of nature 5. Being onely profitable for the expelling of Dung and Urine 6. And therefore that the little bag of the Gaul is not of the substance of a Bowel but a sack or sink of dregs and superfluities 7. That at length Sanguification or the making of bloud doth begin and is compleated in the Liver which things indeed seem to me dreams For first of all seeing Choler is not required to the constitution of venal bloud that bitter Gaul or Choler should not of necessity be procreated of all kinde of meats unless it be propagated by a proper Agent and in a particular Shop of its own for a profitable vital and necessary end For much lesse hath the Gaul seemed to me to be an excrement than the water of the Pericardium or Case of the heart It is a wonder at least why Fishes of water and Cattel of Grasse do nevertheless alwayes daily make so bitter a Liquor Truly that simple identity or sameliness of the Gaul through so many particular kindes seemed to me to prove some necessity in the Workmanship of life And so the Gaul not to have the necessity of an excrement produced by any nourishments whatsoever but rather the constitution of a necessary Bowel For I ceased to admire by considering how great Tragedies of rule the paunch which is nothing but a Sack and Skin might stir up and that it obtained the room of a principal bowel by considering I say how great a prerogative the membrane of the stomach might challenge to it self so that it hath snatched to it self the name and properties of the heart before the other bowels Whence surely I ceased to admire that the name of a bowel should be given to the little bag of the Gaul and to the Gaul it self especially because the wrathful power is believed by most to be bred in the same Surely I have found in the Family-administration of mans digestion Bodies and Ferments connexed of two bowels the Gaul and the Liver for Sanguification To wit the Gaul to precede in the work of Sanguification and for this cause to be nearer to the Stomach and Entrails than the Liver For the Gaul is nourished in the Bosom and lap of the Liver as it were in its Mothers Bosom for it is the Balsam of the Liver and Bloud For seeing Sanguification is not a transmutation which may be introduced by a momentary disposition and since the Liver is deprived of a remarkable hollowness whereby it may be able to contain within it the juyce that is to be made bloud for the leisure or terme of digestion That is the Liver in it self is a solid Body having few and slender veins and so the whole Cream being accompanied with so great a heap of Urine it ought to passe thorow the Liver with a swift passage but the crude Cream cannot by so swift a passage onely be straightway changed into venal blond Wherefore a perfect Sanguification could in no wise be made in the Liver Because the Liver was not a Kitchin but a family Governour by its own Sanguificative ferment whereby as it were by a Command it chiefly by successive dispositions executes the office enjoyned it from its creation Therefore the plurality of the Mesentery veins is the stomack of the Liver it self and the preparative Shop of the venal bloud And the perfection thereof the Liver doth breath into the venal bloud as yet naked after that it is laid up into the hollow vein Truly as Sanguification is a certain more exquisite digestion and a more manifest transmutation of a thing than is the melting of the meat into Chyle it could not fitly or profitably happen in any large vessel but in many the more straight ones which together may equalize some notable capacity whereby indeed that fermental Archeus may most strictly narrowly and neerly touch and comprehend them all and his Liver may communicate a ferment in changing and may inspire a vital faculty Forthe Spleen doth inspire its Ferment into the Stomack a large vessel for neither doth the Spleen touch the meats immediately So also doth the Liver inspire the act of Sanguification by the breathing or ferment of its own life into the veins subjected under it And even as the meat slides from the Mouth into the Stomack and there expecteth the end of digestion So from the Entrails the Cream is immediately snatched into the stomack of the Liver But seeing that Cream is much and for a great part of it excrementitious for as yet it containeth the Urine in it it ought first to be unloaded of its excrement that it may the more conveniently be made bloud Because that Cream is as yet wholly undistinct neither therefore doth it acknowledge an excrement what therefore shall the Liver act by a single action of Sanguification For shall the severing of the excrement the degeneration of the Cream and Sanguification of the Cream be made and finished by one and the same work Nay Surely the Cream had need of a Ferment its transchanger distinct from the Sanguificative ferment whereby indeed that part of it that is less fit is changed into a meer excrement for the action of Sanguification could not make an excrement of that which is not an excrement For both those do differ too much from each other For the action which prepares an excrement out of the greatest part of the
A Girle of three yeers old and noble takes a vomit to drive away an Ague of a boasting Italian Physitian being a few Grains of a certain Powder Also another Noble young Daughter not yet exceeding the second yeer of her age took the same Both of them indeed straightway after the taking of it vomited but both of them had their right eye wrung or wrested aside and their whole side as it were beset with the Palsie their arm indeed wholly but their leg not altogether so For the elder being wholly given to tattle yet her sorely annoyed but the younger slumber and vomiting now and then interrupting each other both of them dye I am called unto both and I attempted some things in vain Perhaps indeed because late and life failing But both their carkasses are opened And the same stinking Liquor detained in the stomack the Pylorus being exactly shut the cause of the murder comes to hand 3. A Hen when she would pick grain on the ground she retorted her neck to one side and in picking was rowled into a Circle on her left side and her legs fayling at the taking of every Barley Corn or Crum of bread she slid on her hinder part upon her tail And that had remained thus perhaps for eight dayes space before it might be declared to me I ran unto the unwonted Spectacle I unfeathered her most lean breast and a certain old woman opened her former or membâ—anous stomack with a Razor But I found that she had swallowed a small gobbet of rocky Chrystal but that woman sowed up her stomack again with a thred and afterwards she survived in perfect health 4. One of my house-hold servants forming some Vessels about Distillation with a most sharp fire of pit-Coals melted a Glasse by sporting the Fragments and Vessels themselves were dark and white from green Glasse and the sweepings of my distillations But the Fragments of his new Vessels being cast into a corner of the floor the Hens devoured them being deceived in the whiteness of glasse They were well in health but it happened that the fifteenth day after the two fatter were killed for the Table But that there were found in their first Stomack some of the aforesaid Fragments which were easily conjectured to have stuck in the same place many dayes But they were diminished so that when as glasse is not broken but Point-wise as well side-wayes as corner-wise Those Fragments were on every side obtuse or blunted But I have hence collected to my self things worthy of note 1. That the Pylorus being shut my Brother did alwayes vomit For truly also after death that stinking Liquor was found in his closed stomack which else had been in the Bowels without any notable dammage 2. That that shutting of the Pylorus was furious otherwise it had opened it self and had not so hurt 3. That the motions of the Pylorus are of another Re-publick than all others are For all contractures do cease with death those of the Pylorus not so 4. That in the vomitory medicine its poysonous faculty had stirred up the indignation and contracture of the Pylorus For he was not only contracted or drawn together but he drew forth or allured a bloody juice out of the veins of the stomack which was forth-with made black and stinking 5. That the same things happened in the two little Girls 6. That the indignation of the Pylorus doth also produce Palsies 7. But an Aeâ—uginous or cankery Liquor death 8. That in the Cock the only stubborn stoppage from the Even-tide caused his giddinesses 9. The Hen which had swallowed the Chrystal doth more strongly prove this besides which no other thing was found in her fore-stomack 10. That the detaining of Glasse in the stomack did remain with health because the Pylorus was not thereby stopped up 11. That glasse is of easier Digestion than rocky Chrystal 12. That an Aeruginous or black Liquor was made from the indignation and shutting of the Pylorus but not from the detaining of a Body or Glasse besides nature 13. That Glass was consumed by little and little in the stomack of the Hens CHAP. XXX A History of Tartar 1. That a Treatise of the four feigned humors is to be joyned in this place for the integrity of the work 2. After the rejecting of a quality being an elementary distemper we must then also treat of Tartar and the three first things or principles of the Chymists 3. The Birth and Life of Paracelsus 4. He first brought Tartar into a disease 5. Strife unhappily fell out between the Humorists and Paracelsus 6. They afterwards made use of Remedies borrowed from our fugitive servants 7. Humours were long ago silenced which I at length have demonstrated in a particular Book never to have been in nature 8. An Epitome or Summary of those things which Paracelsus hath here and there written concerning Tartar IT hath seemed to me a meet thing to premise natural things in order to the matter of Medicine because I am he who have alwayes thought the knowledge of the whole of nature to have no respect but unto the health or welfare of man Therefore have I treated of the Elements alone whereby I may drive away the fictions of the Schools touching the composition of four Elements in every single body which hitherto is reckoned to be mixt That I might shew I say that there are no mixtures nor strifes nor distempers or complexions of the same even as neither that the Catologue of diseases of the feigned temperatures of Elementary qualities can stand with truth That is that the Schools have not hitherto known the causes of diseases all which almost they have ascribed to those qualities Moreover now the same labour remains to me concerning the four feigned and false humours and the wandring corruptions of these it was to be written shewn that such humours were never in nature therefore also that they have alike perniciously erred hitherto as well in the Doctrine knowledge subscription of dâ—seasifying causes as consequently in wandring Remedies and the universal directions and applications of these And seeing that thing is already performed by me in a peculiar book printed in the yeer 1644. at Colonia by Jodoc Calchove directed for a fore-runner of this work and nigh the same yeer I set forth two other Books to wit concerning the disease of the Stone and the Plague-grave wherein I have shewnâ— that hitherto the causes of those diseases are unknown in the Schools Therefore it is enough here to have attested it Although those books are to be â—ansferred hither for the integrity or enâ—ireness of the work Therefore the causes and essences of diseases have even unto this day stood neglected by the Schools and they being neglected therefore the more weak have been destitute of right Remedies Now at length because Paracelsus hath lately dared to remove the general cause of almost all diseases into Tartar And although Paracelsus first hath rashly made that sufficient yet
ones contrary to the nature of relatives and contrary to their own Maxim That one contrary is said to be as many wayes as the other For the doctrine of contraries in Remedies standing health likewise ought to come forth of Medicine as a chick out of an egge Or seeing that contraries ought to reduce each other unto nothing health ought to proceed from a Disease even as otherwise weakness proceeds from a Disease For if a Remedy be contrary to a Disease verily the faculties of our life cannot be contrary to a Disease and by consequence a Disease shall not be able to hurt our faculties or the actions of these And the Schools have erred while they contend that in a Crisis or judicial Sign a Disease doth in its whole course sustain a single combat with our faculties But if a Disease be contrary to our faculties and to the Remedy it self at least wise they shall incongruously apply cold things in a Fever they being applied no lesse to the vital faculty than to the Disease Yea if from a contrariety of disposition a Disease be bred our action ought not wholly to depend on the Spirit making the assault but on the meer cause of the Disease and the which therefore seeing it should have the principle of its motion in it self it ought to operate as well in a dead carcass as in a living Body and the whole skirmish should be only between the dispositions of strange accidents suppressing each other Of which strife the life it self should be only a hateful spectator without discommodity to it self What other thing is this than to have feigned a sluggish and cold vital Philosophy and that the Physitians or Curers of Fevers are cold What if a Disease doth stand in a quality whose contrary warriour they will have to be known by sense and elementary why therefore are so uncertain weak and slow Remedies of Diseases devised Why are there so manifest and ready Tokens Remedies and Simples of manifest contrary qualities boasted of in the Schooles Therefore according to mee a disease is a substantial Being begotten by Archeal causes as well materially as efficiently But heat and cold and that sort of signed Concomitants I call fruits and symptoms far different from the produced Diseases For a Disease is oft-times furiously moved against us wherein many symptoms do interpose which Disease notwithstanding doth oftentimes cease without a product As is manifest in intermitting Fevers For neither doth a new Disease arise from thence But only nature intends to shake off a tedious guest under which endeavour fruits and symptoms are produced drowsinesses heats colds pains watchings disquietnesses vomits weaknesses c. Elsewhere also a Disease doth often convert the matter of its Inne To wit while the Archeus being stirred up by an occasional ferment doth bring forth a new product whether in the mean time the former Disease be shut up in the term of the product or not Neither doth a Disease also seldom occasionally produce a Monster unlike to it self While a Fever doth cause the Dropsie a Cataract Scirrhus c. because they are the products of Diseases by accident To wit whereof a new Idea from the Archeus is the Mother as shall appear beneath in its place But weaknesse is a universal Fruit of Diseases the Chamber-maid of these The which indeed is no other thing than a disposition following a diminution of the strength or faculties And it is either total by reason of the afflictings of a notable or noble part It happens also through an adherency of a diseasie occasion unto some solid part Whence the Archeus being at length the extinct a blasting of that part and presently after a death of the whole Body do also proceed Or weaknesse is particular by reason of a particular Blas affecting some member by its animosity or wrathfulnesse For so from the stomack is there a giddinesse of the Head Head-ach c. as from the Womb the parts do diversly and miserably languish by an Aspect Which things surely are the symptoms and fruits of the Archeus but not the Diseases thereof the which otherwise do naturally lay up their own efficients in themselves Even as elsewhere concerning the action of Government In the next place the product of a Disease differs from a symptom in this as this is a fruit it requires indeed a mitigation from the Archeus himself but not a curing as it is by it self Because it likewise vanisheth together with the Disease But I find no mention of the product of Diseases in the Schools but it is either confounded with a symptom or is attributed to a certain new distemperature and a new aflux of humours Others also are wont to dedicate Diseases to the parts containing the causes likewise to the parts contained but to banish symptoms into the spirit making the assault Being in the first place badly mindful that they attribute the heat and cold of the first qualities as Diseases to humours contained In the next place if a Disease be in the part containing and the cause in the thing contained If the spirit in-bred in us shall not move or stir up the cause and the disease whereby I pray you shall it be done what shall beget a disease by a cause if not the spirit For as wrath bashfulnesse and agony do heat by a Blas so fear grief and sorrow do cool without the aid of humours But Pepper and heating things do heat living creatures but not dead carcasses as neither do Cantharides Scar-wort or Smallage embladder these But Causticks do even wast a dead carcasse and that not through the effect of their own heat but only by virtue of a burning Salt which resolves the solid parts into a Salt without heat To wit even as Calx vive doth resolve Cheese into a muscilage Causticks therefore or searing Remedies do generate an Eschar in a live Body but not in a dead carcasse but they do resolve this by a simple resolution of their Salt But because in a live Body the Archeus is also inflamed within an Eschar is produced from both Agents To wit the Caustick and the Archeus Lastly the fire doth indifferently burn as well a living as a dead Body and more speedily the live Body it self Because the fire consumes from without by burning and the spirit it self through its inflaming becomes caustical or burning within Therefore from a fourfold handy-craft operation to wit of the Fire Pepper a Vesicatory and Caustick the remarkable things which follow do voluntarily issue 1. That the efficient heat of heating things is ours In Pepper therefore there is only an occasional exciting heat 2. That a Fever is not heat effentially but it hath things proper to it as well cold as heat from the property of an alterative Blas And that not efficiently but only occasionally incitingly and accidentally But the Archeus alone is the efficient of heat and cold For neither is a Feverish matter in a Body otherwise hot
as is the Falling-sicknesse the Gout Madnesse c. Truly in all these things there is a manifest Errour of the Schooles which teach That whole Nature is governed by a Ruler or a created Understanding not erring knowing all ends and for the sake of these acting after a most excellent manner For truly it is not to be doubted but that a Wound might be healed or closed without the Tumor Pain corrupt Pus and Inflammation of its Lips But that a Thorn may be drawn out of the Finger with greater brevity than that the Finger should therefore arise into a corrupt mattery Aposteme For the fat or grease of an Hare being annointed on it doth extract the Thorne in one Night Meanes are not wanting to the Archeus whereby he might perform that very thing safely and quickly even as he doth in some of his own accord but that our Archeus is subject to any kind of Passions as if he did conceive childish indignations from the least hurting of the Body No wonder therefore that the sublunary being of Nature by no means subjecting it self to Justice doth yeeld to or fall under its own inordinate Passions When as also the whole man whereof the intellectuall mind is President doth exceed the path of right Reason in many things At length that is remarkable that in the works of Art the efficient Cause is alwaies without and the Schools being deceived through the errour thereof have not known that in natural and substantial generations the Agent is internal For therefore they have banished the efficient Cause as external in the catalogue of natural Causes Yea it hath been unknown that both the Causes of natural things being connexed as I have demonstrated in its place doth not differ from its Effect but in the priority of flowing which thing hath deceived as many as have similitudinously contemplated of Nature by artificial things For neither have they been elsewhere more blinded than while they have introduced that incongruity of their own speculation into Diseases For they have not onely made artificial things like unto seminal speculatively but also in endeavouring to cure they have through a great confusion of falshoods bespattered the whole practice of healing with contrarieties For they have thought that to produce and to generate are altogether the same while in the mean time a generater bespeaks that he brings forth something from his own substance but he produceth who onely couples active things with passive although he contribute nothing of his own He maketh or doeth also who acteth any thing how he listeth Furthermore I also oft-times admire that while the Schools do constitute the benefit of healing in the removal of Causes after what sort they could place distemperatures within the rank of Diseases seeing the hot and most known of diseases doth both suddenly and of its own accord slide into cold and we are able presently to remove the intemperance of heat at pleasure without helping of the Fevers And then seeing they have never received the vital Cause which is the impulsive one in Diseases for the efficient Cause of Diseases they have determined of removing nothing but the occasional Cause For the Archeus although he be the true and immediate Cause as well according to the matter the which he brings vitiated and that out of his own bosome as also according to a seminal and efficient Idea yet the Archeus doth not shew the removal of himself But the Schools do act contrarily while they attempt their Cures by blood-letting purgatives and next by every means fortifying Life But upon what ground they do that they themselves shall see Moreover in Diseases Nature is standing sitting and laying Nature standing doth her self cure her own Diseases from a voluntary goodness as wholsome Fevers And likewise a Quartane which is cured by the proper guidance of Nature but not by the helps of the Schools And Nature standing can also presently walk the which belongs onely to Health But Nature sitting although she be able of her own accord to stand and at length to walk yet she is constrained to arise before she stands and therefore she ariseth with the more difficulty But if she attempt to arise by inordinate remedies she is prostrated from her seat and lays on the ground and being not a little shaken thereby is pained and sometimes dies of her fall Yea also while many that they may not be sick or ill at ease do make use of counsels or advices which do for the most part hasten old age and death and oft-times also deprive them of life But Nature laying along can never rise of her self as the Leprosie falling Evil Asthma Stone Dropsie c. Yea neither is it sufficient for her to arise for if the nerves or sinews are not confirmed they do easily relapse Furthermore Hippocrates will have a Physitian to be onely the Minister or Servant of Nature but Natures themselves to be their own onely Physitiannesses and that thing he thus commanded in his age When as otherwise a Physitian is the Patron and Master of Nature being prostrated which kinde of Physitian if the old man had not as yet acknowledged surely much less the succeeding heathenish Schools even unto this day Last of all dead carcasses are dissected which is done to excuse their excuses in sins for after a thousand years Anatomy the Moderns do scarce either the better know Diseases or the more successfully expel them They rejoyce indeed that they have found an imminent mark of any corruption in a part which covers their unfaithfull Aids or Succours with the Buckler of impossibility So indeed the world is deceived with a lofty brow For neither was that corruption there before the space of two days although the place might be pained long before So far is it from excusing the Physitian which is seasonably sent for that it rather lays open the fault of the same who to wit had seasonably or in due time dispersed the accused excrement For nothing of the parts containing is destroyed in live Bodies but it is first deprived of the commerce of Life And besides neither can it long be deprived of the Balsame of Life nor a mortisied part wait many houres in the lukewarmth of the Body which doth not likewise speedily putrifie stink and draw the whole Body into its own conspiracy Therefore from thence it is manifest that the corruption which is obvious in the Dissected dead Carcass was made but a few hours before and began but a few dayes before Death For corrupt mattery Imposthumes which are stirred up by malignant assemblies in the Lungs do indeed contain the Seeds of Diseases but the mortifying of Internal parts doth not many paces precede the day of Death One onely thing is at leastwise to be admired that the Schooles indeed have acknowledged a Spermatical or seedy nourishment whereby we are immediately nourished because it is that which they divide into four secondary humours yet that they have not
the Legs is recocted into good Blood about the Ancles without the Shop of Sanguification and dominion of the Liver That is that the once out-hunted and cocted Blood is by a forreign agent and unfit organ at length received into favour that it doth by an inspired motion retire into the mouths of the Veines and is received or associated as equally fit for vital Offices But whence do they spend so much labour in drying up of the Dropsical affect that they can scarce command a possible abstinence of one year from liquid things if the Dropsie be the vice of the one Digestion of the Liver Why do they referre it among Diseases offending onely in moisture the which was to be attributed unto a full half Digestion For I will first dispute about the Liver and under the same by-by-work I will discover the occasional cause of the Dropsie I saw a certain un-savory Simple nor by any meanes to be manifested administred by a Physitian in the Suspition of the Stone of the Kidneys which suspended the Urine for eights dayes and even unto death the which presently before death was loosed and then it throughly be-pissed the bed cloathes The Disease brought forth another thing like it For truly neither in the Urine-pipe or Bladder appeared any obstacle after dissection But he had his left Kidney triangular free or undamnified from all obstruction and Stone But the right Kidney was plainely monstruous and scarce of the bigness of a Filburd-nut Therefore he had pissed 76 years with his left Kidney not letted or stopped That the Liver therefore is guiltless in the Dropsie I will declare my experiences For because the precepts of the Schooles did the less satisfie me in the Dropsie therefore I was wont being as yet a young Man to hasten although not called unto the Dissections of Dropsical Bodies that I might search out the birth-places of the Dropsie For I thought with my self to what end hath there been Anatomie now for two thousand years if there be not at this day a more successful curing of the Dropsie than in times past For wherefore are we the Butchers of dead Carcases if we do not learn by the errors of the Antients If we do not amend fore-past things For we flee unto Anatomie with a prejudice and sweep the purses of Heires if we do not look into the causes of Death that we may learn the cures For truly dissection profits the Dead nothing Heires also do not expend their moneys that they may heal the dead by Anatomy and much less that they may wound the same least happily he should rise againe nor also that they may learn to cure others which are unwilling to be healed But only the dead Carcase is opened for the Physitian and that he may more perfectly learn the Heire paies the reward of his learning Thus Oxen yee that yoaked are The Plow not for your selves do beare But Physitians seeing they scarce any longer expect to learn they stand by stop their Noses and hope by the expences of the Heires for the most part to escape the mark of Death A Lawyer after divers Gripings or Wringings of his Bowels died of a Dropsie But in the Dissection we saw his Liver without blemish An English-man my Neighbour by eating his fill of roasted Porke sliding into a daylie Flux and presently after into a Dropsie he died and being dissected his Liver was seen to be unhurt Hitherto also doth the Tragedie of Count Stegrius tend In the Autumne of the year 1605. I returning out of England to Antwerp found some hundreds after a malignant and popular Fever to be dropsical I cured many and many under the unhappy experiments of others in the mean time Perished But that People have a perswasion in them that unless all the Water be drawn out of the dead Carcases the Dropsie will passe over into the next Heire And so they are Solicitous of Dissection And I certainly affirme that I found the Liver of none defiled A certain Citizen was long pained between his bastard Ribs neither breathed he without Pain at length the Conjectures of Physitians being tried he died of a Dropsie But his Liver was seen to be without hurt One pertayning to the Kings Treasurie of Brabant after a sudden pissing of Blood was long handled by Physitians in vain and thefore being sent by his Physitians unto the Fountains of the Spaw he returning began to shew a hardness in the left Side of his Abdomen under his Ribs and thereupon the Leg of that side was swollen But the chief Physitians and those of Lovain although they saw his Urine like unto that of healthy Persons and thereby did betoken his Liver to be guiltless yet they desisted not from the continual use of solutive opening and Urine-provoking things yea they gave him steel diversly masked against the obstructions of the Liver to drink And at length having a huge Abdomen he Perished with a Dropsie For neither was there place for excuse as to say they were called late who were present with him from the hour of his bloudie Pissing But his dead Carcase being dissected his Liver was found innocent But his left Kidney had swollen and that more than was meet with a clot of out-hunted Blood such as is in a boyled Gut A Major of Souldiers from a bloudie Flux which was at length appeased died of a Dropsie whose Liver notwithstanding was without blemish however the Schooles may grin A certain Merchant keeping his bed through a Colick of four months fell into a Dropsie but being dissected he had his Liver without fault A Woman of sixty years old hearing in the night Theeves at the windows and rising dashed her Belly beyond the Breast-bone against a corner of the Table But first it pained her and then her Menstru'es brake forth as she thought the which although it was little yet it desisted not but with the birth of a Dropsie it also expurged into the masse of a greater Tympanie But she being dissected Her Liver offered it self undefiled Another old Woman being vexed with a more cruel Husband after inordinate menstru'es Perished with a Dropsie and shewed an unblamed Liver A certain Hand-maid hanging some washed webs of Cloath to high for her Stature sliding into a flux of the Womb at length died of a Dropsie neither offered her Liver it self guiltie to the beholders A Cuaplaine of Bruxells of the age of 31 years complaines to me of the shortness of his Breath he shews his Legs to be puffed up and his Belly to be swollen And he saith that his Cod was swelled to the bigness of ones Head For I saw that he had a face bespotted with red pricks or spects as it were with the marks of stripes He as yet celebrated the Masse yet with difficulty presently after three dayes from thence he suddenly dieth but he being dissected his Belly was found to be without water But in his Breast much Blood had choaked him And
the tune of his own Beak and every one talketh of the Faires according as he hath profited in them From what hath been before mentioned in sundry places it now plainly appeareth 1. That the Sanation or sound Healing of a secondary Disease is vainly intended unless the primary Disease which nourished it be first brushed off and trodden under foot 2. That then the Healing of a secondary Disease is conversant onely in a removal of the Product 3. That Primary Diseases do continue even after the generation of a Secondary Disease if its Idea's do issue from the implanted Spirits 4. That Primary Diseases do also voluntarily cease whose Idea's have failed in their first on-sets 5. That the Causality Succession and Propagation of a Disease being hitherto unknown the Healing of the same hath remained unknown 6. That the Schooles have esteemed Secondary Diseases yea and the Products of Diseases to be the Causes of the same and therefore they have directed the whole endeavour of Healing unto later things or to the Effects 7. And that they had more rightly proceeded by taking away of the Product than by the contrarieties of Qualities and they had sought out due Remedies which their virtue remaining safe would have been able to pierce unto the places affected 8. That whatsoever hath happily succeeded under healing that is to be ascribed to conjecture and the goodnesse of Nature alone because they being seduced by false perswasions have wandered about Distemperatures Humours Catarrhes and Tartars by Solutives not drawing forth Electively but putrifying every thing furiously 9. That they have learned some Remedies from Old Women or Countrey-Folk which besides the Maxims of the Schooles might cure diseasie Idea's by a specifical gift 10. That they have accounted as many primary Diseases as did persist by their own Ferment to be uncurable and those that did not transplant their Vigors into their Products For primary Diseases do for the most part respect the transmittings of seminal causes in Idea's and disturb the action of Government From whence not only the framing of Diseases but also the Critical or judicial freeings of the same do issue of their own accord by unwonted expulsions wandring conspiracies labours anguishes and convulsive assaults especially if they subsist in the matter by a Seed and an efficient Ferment to wit by which signs they distinguish themselves from the family of Symptoms But I have confirmed the Doctrine of primary Diseases above by hereditary ones unequal strength the torture of the Night and silent Diseases the which indeed do not only presuppose the necessities of Idea's but moreover also primary Diseases Truly Nature hath no less variously sported in defects than in integrity but also by a Systeme of the Universe she being every-where conformable to her self hath seemed to walk up and down that also in things of a different kind she may every where represent her self in a proportionable agreement I have now done as much as I promised in the beginning of the work I have demonstrated the errors of the Schools in natural things so far as they concern the faculty of Healing and that they have been more ignorant of nothing than of Principles Means and Ends to wit the Essence and Causes manner of proceeding and making the means of Preparing and Remedies Of things retained which are assumed because they are by themselves known I have said something Now I must come unto the Products of Diseases which are inbred domestical and degenerated within our Cottages For indeed our Retents do offend in abounding quality intimateness of place or in their strangeness or long continuance of delay and because they have crept into anothers harvest through a vice of the distributive Faculty therefore I call all of them things transplanted or transmitted But other Retents I call transchanged ones for their distinction sake from things assumed Truly things retained whether they are transchanged or indeed transmitted yet they are alwayes made remarkable by an intrinsecal Idea I say by a diseasie Being from whence they have received an hostility of degeneration Wherefore the root also of a primary Disease doth for the most part adhere unto them and therefore they do imitate and represent the same as they are the Products of it But because all the particular Digestions do first of all contribute their own Citizens to wit the nourishable Liquors unto home-bred Retents which were prepared in their Kitchins and those otherwise ordained for the solid substance of our Body Therefore domestical things retained have degenerated from the scopes of Nature But I do as yet divide home-bred Retents that some may be the dungs of things assumed which I call Reliques or they are things which from a good Citizen have degenerated into a Traitour From whence indeed I have drawn things transchanged and transmitted for they are those which do descend from the vice of the Digestions and Ferments to wit from a universal offence of the inflowing Spirit or a particular errour of the implanted Spirit through a voluntary defilement of a wantonizing Idea produced by humane or Archeal Passions Also the Relique of things Assumed Inspired and Suscepted not unfrequently bringing aide hereunto Therefore Reliques next after things assumed do offer themselves unto the publick view or exercise of Products For although things taken into the Body and things there left are not the Products of primary Diseases yea do often produce primary Diseases yet I have accustomed my self to reckon them among secondary Diseases and Products But not that I am ignorant that they could have no relation unto a primary Disease as a Parent but I refer them among Products by reason of their strict affinity with those where we must again seriously admonish that it is an abuse to distinguish intimate Causes from Diseases For truly the thingliness of causality is obscured if it be never so little banished from the rank of Diseases For external Causes as long as they are external are only occasions by accident but after that they are admitted and transchanged by the force of Digestions although they may seem internal Causes yet they become not Diseases but occasions by themselves which disturb the Archeus stir up an Idea and defile the material part of the Archeus with an Ideal Seal For so things assumed do wander into Reliques or things left and do lay up their troublesome remembrance into the Archeus that he may presently tumult and stir up a Disease his off-spring for they are not Products although they dissemble the marks of Products but they leap froth abroad under the name of Reliques For if by a proper vice of malignity they shall violate the right of their Inn they are for the most part cast out crude half digested and badly seasoned by Vomit Stool Urine yea and now and then do by an Imposthume pass over into things transmitted From whence are Paines Gripings of the Bowels Un-concoctions Fluxes Lienteries Sranguries and Miseries of the Parts through which they
that which had been distilled into another Bottle because I saw that the distilled Liquor of the Urine had on every side touched the receiving Vessel otherwise easily capable of containing three Gallons it being over-covered with a duskish whitenesse I was grieved that a Glass so precious was stained about so sordid a matter And then I was the more angry when I saw that the blemish contracted was not to be taken away by any ashes For it repented me of my wastfull and so often repeated curiosity Therefore I powred that that was distilled out of doores But presently I had this prick of sloath and unwonted indignation suspected by me I admired within my self that man who before spared no paines and Costs should now be wroth at the destruction of one Vessel Therefore I well weighed with my self that receiving Vessel whether its blemish were of a forreign tincture or whether any thing had perished from its concavous superficies being corroded At length I certainly knew that out of the most clear watery distillation a true dusky Duelech was adjoyned to the Vessel But then I being full of admiration praised the Lord who had undertook the care of me for those things which I judged I had committed through my own carelesnesse I knew had come to pass by divine Goodnesse so disposing it For unto whom he will he converts all things into good Indeed I had already long since beheld in my urine a Coagulater of so great a moment to inhabite And now at length I had also learned that that most clear Liquor that was separated from the urine putrified in the Vat did containe a true Duelech which it had applyed to the receiving Vessel From whence first of all it became an undoubted truth unto me that there did in no wise concur a slimy matter unto the Composition of Duelech That Vessel therefore although pretious and now condemned for its blemish was dear unto me because it had paid a Reward of Teaching to its Master Therefore I again put it in the place of a Receiver as thinking that I should at sometime shave of that Duelech by Aqua Regis Therefore I proceeded in distilling the residue that had remained unto me after the fifteen dayes respite And behold I being astonished through a new favour of divine Bounty saw all the particular drops to dissolve the adhering duskish Duelech where they ran down and the Vessel presently restored to its former brightnesse Also that this second Liquor although it had the odour of the former yet being poured on Aqua vitae did not likewise coagulate this any longer And so I being led by a divine beck which others suppose to be an Event by Chance found part of that which with care or anguish I had long since sought with many charges Therefore I praised the Lord that he had given understanding to the little one and poor For if he had not commanded me to be called away from my work and if those Feasts had not detained me untill Duelech had grown together in the Receiver and unless the Vessel had been so clear and pretious And moreover if I had finished the operation with one thred Surely I had wrought and attempted all things in vain The Lord therefore had respect unto the necessities of mortals neither despised he the prayers of the dejected in spirit Wherefore he gave me knowledge of the divers parts of a healthy Urine that is my own One indeed was after some sort the lighter and more swift part having Duelech hidden under a clear distillatory Liquor without a dreg snivel and sediment But in a most clear distillation and cold of the encompassing Ayr. But the other part was alike admirable which in cold also again dissolved Duelech that took its rise in cold and supt it up into its self For I seriously admired so opposite faculties in one onely volatile salt of urine afterwards indeed I considered that whose urine had more of the former spirit he was subject to the stone and the other was free whose urine contained more of the other spirit and that first conception smiled on me but that discursive knowledge was vain and especially unprofitable for the managing of Affaires For truly the urine doth not undergoe in us those foregoing marks of putrefaction without which notwithstanding those Beings would sleep for ever And then neither was there a mean made manifest from that Speculation whereby more of that latter spirit should alwayes be made or by what method a composure of the former spirit might be restrained And much lesse after what manner Duelech being now composed there might be given a relief against him Notwithstanding least that Speculation should depart without fruit I considered whether that latter spirit the Urine being first evacuated might be granted to be cast into a stony Bladder by a Syringe Therefore the knowledge of mortals offers it self to me as barren which rejoycing in Speculation alone withdrawes their hand from the Art of the fire For urine being duly putrified yields spirit a Coagulater which coagulates Aqua vitae And likewise afterwards such a spirit which being wholly transparent and volatile containes a Duelech potential or in possibility because it brings him forth and at length such a spirit which presently sups up Duelech being once bred into it self Notwithstanding the Devil straightway disswading me I as doubtfull began to stagger and considered that those things were vain which being found by me I so greatly esteemed Especially seeing the urine putrifies not in us unto that limit or degree whereby it had afforded these spirits Therefore I detested my own Curiosities For although they after some sort suggested a Remedy yet they left the former ignorance behind them concerning the causes and manner of making Duelech Wherefore I began to neglect all things lately seen as if they had not been done and I left a sleepy drowsinesse to be stir'd up in me From whence I was confirmed the which I have explained in many particulars in my Preface that no labour is more tedious or wearisome and no kind of knowledge through the disswasion of the Devil more to be disregarded than that from whence mankind may at sometime receive fruit Therefore it becomes a Christian to be of a constant mind in a good work At length therefore my distillations being repeated and that with a more exact delay I by prayer attained the causes manner of making and dissolving of Duelech Good God I admire thy great Bounty which hath led the most unmeet of Physitians unto the disclosing of so great a thing which hath been neglected for so many Ages and by so many great Wits I therefore return thanks unto thy infinitely Glorious Name not because thou hast led me on unto these Secrets before others for can the Earth boast it self and say to the other small Vessels Vah or Fie as a note of disdaining because it is brought under the Potters-Wheel into a Vessel of a more
Tragedy of the world would again be hidden at leastwise I suppose that there will be other far more horrible Plagues than ever heretofore and against which all Antidotes will be vain For truly our Plague at this day doth not affect bruit beasts But in the last dreggishness 〈…〉 they shall destroy wild beasts also yea fishes and trees and there shall be Plagues but not an ordinary Plague otherwise this should be an uncertain sign of the future destruction For there shall be Plagues from the hand of God from the powring out of the Vials as the Revelation hath it But against those Plagues there is not to be a Buckler in Nature I promised therefore unto my self before I attempted to write these things that the Plague that was curable even unto that face of times and a true remedy thereof was to be fetched out of the Grave of Hippocrates or rather from above from the Father of Lights I will declare what I have learned for the profit of Posterity CHAP. III. The Heaven is free from as also innocent of our Contagion or Infection NOt the least comfort hath appeared unto the Soul that is earnestly desirous of knowledge or unto the miserable and forsaken sick from the writings of the Antients First of all it is of Faith that the Stars are for signs times or seasons daies and years nor that man can any way alienate the offices of the Stars or decline them unto other scopes That the Heavens are the works of the Lords hands that God created not Death and therefore that neither doth the Heaven contain Death a disease poyson discords corruptions or the effective cause of these For truly they are ordained not for the cause but for the signs of future things and only for the changing of seasons or Meteors and for the succession of daies and years The office therefore of the Heavens is not to generate evils to cause poysons to disperse or influx them to sow wars and to stir up deaths Because the heaven cannot exceed the bounds of its own appointment the heavens declare the glory of God for whose honour and the uses of ungrateful humanity it was created And therefore it rather contains in it life light joy peace and health with an orderly and continued motion no curse is read to have been communicated to the heaven after the transgression of Adam nor execration to be infused into it as neither a spot to have been sprinkled thereon The earth indeed brings forth thistles and thorns because under the Moon is the Copy-hold of the Devil and Death because of sinners the Empire of discords and interchanges The earth hath become a Step-mother unto us she is therefore the vale of miseries being great with-child of the corruption and fardle of sinners because it hath pleased God that there should be no other way unto rest but by tribulations yea it behoved Christ to suffer and so to enter into glory not indeed anothers but his own because he was willing to take on him the form of a servant I belive the Word of God but in no wise the vanities of the Sooth-sayers of Heaven and I judge that they who write that the Plague doth arise from the heaven do stumble as being hitherto deceived with the errours of the Gentiles The Heavens declare the glory of God and the Firmament sheweth the handy-works of the Lord The Heavens therefore shew a sweet or bitter thing to come but they do not cause that sweet or bitter yea neither is it lawful for us to call bitter things evils for God hath directed all things to a good end Therefore the heaven declares future things unto us but doth not cause them and the stars are only unto us for the signs of things to come and therefore there shall be signs in the Sun Moon and Stars The Stars also cause the successive alterations of seasons in the ayr waters and earth only by a native Blas From whence the changes and ripenesses as well in fruits as in the body of man especially in a sick one do consequently depend I understand also that the stars are in this respect for times or seasons unto us by their motive and alterative Blas For neither therefore are the Heavens Sorcerers or the Cocters of poysons the incensers of wars c. I knowingly consider them to be altogether as the alterers of successive interchanges in Elementary qualities as to the interchangeable courses of Stations Wherefore it happens that the sick aâ—e diversly altered in the promotion and maturity of seeds conceived in them because our vital faculties do stir up every their own Blas according to the rule or square of the most general motion of the stars not indeed as of violent leaders but of foregoing or accompanying ones For the Book of the Revelation doth not attribute even any the least punishing power unto the Heavens but the same to be distributed by God among the Angels and the which therefore are called smiting and ministring spirits performing the commands of the Judge Therefore I shall not easily believe that the Plague owes its original unto the importunate or unseasonable changes of times the which also Eudoxus according to Fernelius perceived And I cannot be induced by any reason to believe that the Heavens do give growth form figure virtues or any thing else which proceedeth from the Being of seeds For the Herb was potent in a flourishing seed even before the stars were born so that although there should be no stars yet every seed by the power of the Word is of it self naturally for producing of its own constituted body and against the will of the stars and stations of the year yea and of climates many seeds and forreign fruits are produced by Art Wherefore the Epidemicks of Hippocrates illustrated with the Commentary of Galen do also contain very many things unworthy the name of the Author not only because it attributes diseases to the stations or seasons of the year and not every one to their own seeds and divers infirmities to one root that is unto the first qualities of the ayr and so coupleth divers effects with unjust causes but because they contain very many absurdities of trifles For I am wont in this thing to compare Judiciary Astrologers unto Empericks who having gotten an oyntment powder or any other medicine extoll the same to be prevalent well nigh for all diseases and also for many other So many of those being not content with the shewing or betokening message of the Stars constrain them to be the workmen Deasters and absolute Patrons of all fortune and misfortune to be conscious or witness-bearers and the workers of life and death to come Lastly to be the Councellors and Judges of thoughts and questions asked If therefore they do not contain death wars poysons nor the Plague verily neither shall they be able to rain down such scourges upon us seeing they cannot give those things which they have not do not contain
memory and understanding For how readily doth the contagion of an Hypochondriacal excrement under the Midriff alienate the mind and seduce it with sorrow horrour fury madnesse feverish dotages and the differences of a Lethargye while as they estrange us according to the Image bred in their owne Feâ—ment For how terrible a poyson of terrour is at one onely moment imprinted by a stroak of Thunder on a Beast which it hath smitten so that with the eating of his flesh the Plague is swallowed Which thing at least is for a sign that a Thunderbolt is darted from a monstrous sign full of terrour to wit from whence the Archeus being extinguished in a moment in discovering the Image of his Terrour perisheth almost in a moment For sleep yea a deep drâ—wsie evil is oftentimes in a man where there is a great disturbance of the Pest in his Archeus Oft-times on the other hand the Archeus lives free and safe from perturbations when as the man is in a miâ—erable conflict with his owne disturbances In Wars and out of Wars there are now more cruel Plagues than in Ages past Because Wars are more cruel in dreadful fear and have more of great dread and lesse of angers when man being moved against man with the violence of Wrath studyed Revenge Neither is it a Wonder therefore that the drinking of ones own Urine should restrain the Plague before the accesse thereof not as an An tidote but because it contained a hope and perswasion before it was taken For I remember that in the Year 1635. while the French men besieged our Neighbour City Lovain a very great Plague â—rom thence soon after invaded the fearfull Bruxellians and the poor Women who were terrified with fear and the which being dispersed into all the Villages brought every where a great destruction For a co-participation of life in meats also causeth that they are soon made vital and they presently snatch hold of our Archeus being otherwise lyable to indignation fury and a manifold misery or dammage of Symptomes so in Magnum oportet a necessity and transplantation of much contagion is inclosed in us But if the properties of the middle life of things eaten ought after some sort to remain in the blood and for that cause also the fleshes of the Eaters do vary their savour according to the diversity of the meats it must needs be that we are affected by those things which leave their mark of resemblance in us Indeed savours the witnesses of properties have stricken a covenant as well with the external as internal fellowships of putrefactions which therefore are easily made the partakers of injuries in us For the middle life of mears remaineth in our fleshes hence it is that Fish-devouring Nations and Carthusians are not troubled with flyes of wormes For fleshes that are not well preserved from the co-resemblance of the middle life residing in us do easily stamp any putrefaction on us From whence also formal corruptions do arise in us from an unthought of Beginning And then fleshes and fishes although they are seasonably killed yet they conteined in them the purulent matters of diseases wherewith when we are â—ed especially if they have before contracted a burntish odour we readily yield unto the fellowships of their symbolizing mark and they presently stir up in us adustodours and mumial putrefactions by continuance in us For neither do Oxen or Sheep eat men nor contract our Plague into themselves but we â—at Oxen and draw a brutal Pest like as also our own Because the pestilences of many bruit Beasts do play their part in man alone Wherefore neither are meats noâ— being rightly concocted guiltlesse while they scorn at the Ferment of the stomach because they easily passe over into the forreign colonies and various corruptions of their own conâ—agion Truly this successive alteration of new calamities in the Plague shall at sometime be a future betokening cause of the last times At leastwise the Ferments of poyâ—ons and venomes have never been throughly weighed in the Schooles But the action of these hath therefore been supposed to be equivocal or of doubtful interpretation and prepared by an impression of the Heaven For alwayes when as they slide into Ignorance they implore the too far distant aid of the deaf Heavens and blame guiltlesse Saturn For they call that an equivocal action while the Agent doth not generate its like As happens in Celestial Impressions and Meteours But how improperly they have recourse unto the Heavens and their equivocal actions for poysons every one shall easily know who hath beheld poysons as Agents meerly natural and domestical they being not onely alterative after the manner of Meteours but transchanging and spermatical or seedy ones For what can be more like to a seminal generation than if the slender poyson of a Scorpion kills the whole man and propagates the property of its own seed into the whole body For neither do Ferments any where operate Equivocally or doubly but plainly Univocally or singly Because if the Pest should bud forth by an equivocal action verily it should not be contagious seeing it should not produce its like Therefore it is manifest that the diligent search of Ferments being neglected in the commerce whereof notwithstanding every transmutation of things to be generated is enrowled Poysons have been hitherto unknown as well in their making as in their Being and operation Especially because the property of a poyson is by the destruct on of the Archeus of man to imprint its own seminal Image in the room of the other Wherefore also the Organ of this poyson is the Ferment it self But uâ—derstand thou this thing concerning poysons which attempt a transmutation by way of a seminal Image but not of meer Corrosives because they are those which do not fermentally corrupt the Archeus or his Image but they stir up the same Archeus into fury who afterwards destroyes his own matter or Inne under the alteration or destruction whereof the Archeus himself also gives place together with the integrity and retainment of his Image For the greatnesse vehemency strength and swiftnesse oâ— poysons have deceived the Schools who the consideration of ferments being neglected have passed by the one only dispositive instrument of generations which goes before the introducement of a seminal Image For the Schools are wont to measure the works of nature according to the square of artificial things and so if at any time there â—ere any thing which would not seem to them to square with this measure they by a verbal excuse have had recourse unto the heavens and hidden causes that they might cover their sluggishnesse and ignorances with an impossibility of sifting it out CHAP. XIII The form and matter of the Pest. SInce a disease ought to perfect its own title and misfortune in us as it were in its own mansion and its own proper essential causes do remain in its product it must needs be as long as any thing wanders in
or confidence which is wholly vexed with confusion and a sorrowful troop of disturbances Therefore the womb is to be comforted with the oyl of Amber and with Amber dissolved in the best spirit of wine and with the suffumigation of the warts of the shanks of a horse being beaten to powder in a mortar CHAP. XVII Zenexton that is a preservative pomander against the Pest. VVHich confidence as it were the principal pledge of animosity and mean of preservation that the Schools might stir up the succours of idols purging sacrifices and exceeding mad Idolatries have been Antiently devised Things also were hung on the body and carried about from without which afterwards in every religion were accounted for holy things and the which were even falsly believed by an hidden because an unknown goodness to repel terrour and sorrow A Zenexton therefore seeing it hath for the most part been devised for prevention of the plague and doth also compleate a part of the cure therefore it deserves a singular consideration For Physitians have described diverse such preservatives according to the desire of every one that they might readily serve for a comfort to the sick while themselves were fugitive helpers They decree also that Amulets are to be hung on the body the which although for the most part they could have nothing of virtues at leastwise that they may from a ruinous foundation perswade others unto animosity to wit unto a be lief hope or some kind of confidence For the Pagans at first commanded the Images and Statues of their Deasters or starry Gods to be carried about the sick and then they came unto characters words seals or tokens and to the Talismanicks of Gamahâ—u Afterwards the first Monks of the Christians offered labels and things to be hung about the neck against the plague and from that foundation they perswaded the vulgar to believe that the Pest was a stroak immediately sent from God I meditate therefore that every natural work ought in nature to follow its own means as oft as all things requisite for operation are present Therefore I enquire in this place into the fixed firm roots into the necessary and ordinary causes for the obtayning of the effects correlative to such causes Others therefore interpreting the Plague to be a punishment have proposed unto people unutterable names writings signates guarded with meer vanities also polluted with unsignificant words in bearing them about whereunto perhaps they have joyned a verse of David of Salomon or of some Prophet But Paracelsus laughing at these vanities devised other greater ones especially those adorned with two characterisms yea and with lying seales and he again consents to those which elsewhere he derided with much Taunting But I have at sometime frequently noted a sometimes ready sliding into hypochondrial madnesse from these superstitions Besides these there are some who forsaking divine names do commend figures lines characters words the figures of numbers and according to the pleasure of Astronomers the feigned seals of the planets to wit the errours of the wandring stars under the name of Pythagoras of Salomon the Jew or some other they hitherto attributing more to the toyes of the heathen than to any sacred imprecations For if happily any one who had saluted him that had the Pestilence afar of and had remained free from contagion he now being the Authour of trifles had made it his priviledg of deceiving two thousand people afterwards by his toyes For truly I have taught there is no Astral thing that in the Pest as well in the manner of its making as of its curing For I alwayes reject unfaithful triflous means and especially those which are unlawful because none that leans upon a Staffe half broken is preserved from falling unlesse it be by chance For although the terrour of the man be put off by vain remedies which otherwise infants want yet they are not therefore deprived of the terrour of the Archeus Indeed they exclude onely the effect of faith privatively when very much and that onely for a little space and they oft-times forsake their own confiders for why since they are known to be of no power For Paracelsus always made an heightned imagination and strong confidence of great account the which when as he floating as loose and frivolous I found to be founded on the sand I could dot approve of and that follies do contain a succour of preserving from the plague Paracelsus scarce trusting in mental trifles converts himself unto a Zenexton which would undoubtedly preserve him that carried it about him from the Pest But since he describeth not that preservative Pomander for the City of Stertzing that had been bountiful unto him right would make us to conjecture whether as ungrateful he deceived that City or whether indeed he were ignorant of that Zenexton Surely a remedy is in no wise to be hidden from mortals in so great a destruction especially from whence he might hope to deserve honour to himself among those that are present and all posterity Men have been diversly mad about this thing for every one hath persâ—aded himself that he hath catched the boasted of Zenexton of Paracelsus by the ears and that thing hath so greatly pleased mortal men that thenceforth they have exchanged names the Amulet of the Greeks with the barbarous name of Zenexton for very many have carried Arsenick Orpiment Quick-silver yea and Mercury sublimate and such like poysons of the veins about their neck or the pulses of their veins no otherwise than as if the Plague and Lice were chased away by one and the same remedy But these kind of inventions being brought unto us out of Italy which is fruitful in presumption jugling deceits and subtilties we strangers do adore and follow For as pâ—sterity willingly boasteth that it hath drawn the first rudiments of discursive Sciences from the Greeks So also it hath hoped to learn the properties of poysons more readily from none for the varieties enlargements and maskings of death than from a Nation frequently imploring the help of poysons for it hath believed and falsly perswaded it self that to hand forth poysons and to cure the Pest had a neer affiniâ—y Therefore our Physitians returning from Padua with worship and reverence toward their Professors there some opinionating these men for their great learning have hung Quick-silver enclosed in the shell of a Filberd Nut about their neck and they supposed that they were safe whom when others saw to die they married the former Quick-silver unto Arsenick a Spider or Scorpion being added thereunto some whereof inscribed sacred words on Troâ—hies prepared thereof that if one should the less successfully profit the other at least might help But I have seen in the Camps of Ostend nigh the shoar many thousands of men with such a Zenexton the plague being removed yea and those who for every fifteen daies embladdered their ribs by Trochies of Arsenick enclosed in fine â—â—nnen bags and those are the medicinal Tragedies
Of the power of witches 779. 86 Of the nature and extent thereof 780 How a witch may be bound up in the heart of a horse 782 109 110 Witchcraft Simpathy and Magnetism do differ 759. 1 VVomen why monthly purged 405 24 VVomen are subject to double disieases 609 358. 17 VVomen consume not so much Blood as men 740 Yet they make more Ibid. VVhy they have so many conceits when with child 306 50 VVomb its overslowings cured by odorus ointments 114. 17 Remedy for a woman in travel 306. 46 VVomb a peculiar monarchy 575 A Twofold monarchy of a woman 609. 15 VVomb governs its self Ibid. 334. 43 VVomb brings forth an alterative Blas Ibid. Disseases of the womb differ from products 610. 19 The progresse of the wombs defects 612. 358 Its cure 612. 325 48 Sugar stirs up the sleeping fury of the womb 612 Wherein the fruitfulness of the womb consists 630 Where the womb of the urine beginneth 209 23 Womb warreth under its own banners 306. 52 Of the force of Imagination in women with Child 1117. 1118 The monarchy of the womb distingisheth a woman from a man 335. 48 In words herbs and stones there is great vertue 575 Silk-worms figure out a shadow of the Resurrection 684. 94 VVounds asswaged by odours c. 114 17 Hurt by the Moon-beams 141. 55 Z. ZEnexton against the plague 1144 Of the uselessness of some Zenextons 1145 Pretious stones not true Zenextons 1146 Amber a Zenexton and how so made Ibid. The qualities a Zenexton ought to have 1148 1149. Toad a Zenexton Ibid How the Toad is prepared for a Zenexton 1150 VVhy he is a true Zenexton 1152 A Poetical Soliloquie of the Translatour Harmonizing and Sympathizing with the Author's Genius WHen first my Friend did ask me to translate Van Helmonts Works wrapt up in hidden state Of Roman dialect that 't was a Book Of Med'cine and Phylosophy I took It in good part enough and did not doubt But to perform what I should set about By Gods asistance for I willing stood Much pains to take about a publick good I forth with entred on it and did see More than my friend thereof could tel to me For why since something was begot within My inward parts which loved truth but sin And selfish errour hated I began To feel and love the spirit of the man Whom I perceived like a gratious Son To build his knowledg on the Corner Stone And out of self to sink in humble wise As his Confession in me testifies The light of understanding was his guide From heath'nish Books and Authors he did slide And cast them of that so he might be free Singly to stand O Lord and wait on thee And in the pray'r of silence on thee call Because he knew thee to be All in All. And thou didst teach him that which will conduce To th' profit of his Neighbour be of use Both unto soul and body as inclin'd To read with lowly and impartial mind But as for lofty and and self-seeking ones Thou scatter wilt their wisdom wealth and bones Because thou art not honour'd in a lye Whether of Nature or Divinity But in the truth of knowledge of thy Life And of thy wondrous works which men of strife And alienated can no whit attain Till from the fall they do return again Helmont that thou returned'st I believe Thy testimony of it thou dost give When by the light thou saist entring thy dore Thou changed wast from what thou wert before And cause thou suffredst by a wicked sort For being good and once wast poyson'd for 't That 't was unjustly I am doubting past ' Cause th' Enemies conscience prickt him at the last And truely'n many places of thy Ream Words slow forth from thee like a silver stream And so that I at sundry times have found Sweet op'nings from the un'ty in the ground But did thy life in words alone consist Or art thou to be enrowl'd among the list Of Stoical Notionists which only spend Their time in contemplation and so end Their days or were good actions wrought by thee Which as the fruits discover do the tree Did shew that healing virtue forth did start From thy fire-furnace as love from thy hart If not how is it that thou dost us tel Thou ceased'st not Annually to heal Some Myriades or ten thousands yed Thy medicines were not diminished Or that thou wert so tender of the poor What if I say that bagd from door to door That thou retiredly didst live at home And cure them out of Charity not roâ—â— And gape for gain for visits as do most Physitians who unto rich houses post Floating about even as in a floud Of poysoned purged filths and venal blood And so the peoples wealth health life do soaâ— Through the sâ—ay viâ—ard of a Doctors cloak But Helmonts hand-pen asit plain appears Their false-paint coverings a funder tears In room whereof such Practicâ— Theory It doth insert that they as standers by Like Bibels Merchants will ven weâ—p and waâ—â— When they shall see their trade begin to fail And upright Artists held up by the â—an Of him who owns the good Samaritan Yet such School-Doctors shall not thus relent Whom Grace and goodnesse shall move to repent This is not utter'd out of spleen but pity Unto the sick in Country and in City No just cause given by these words to hate But to be owned by the Magistrate And I my self in former silly times Through School-tradition and Galenick lines Have wrong'd my body weaken'd my nature Clipping my vitals in their strength and Stature And though through Grace to soul and body to T' was turned to good yet that 's no thank to you Help Chymists help to pul their Babel down Builtby the pride of Academicks Gown Let Theophrastus Azoth Helmonts Lore Erect an Engine such as ne're before Hark Chymists hark attend Baptista's law He speaks to h's Sons as th' Lyon by the Paw And why as th' eye is opened to look May y' not discern Hercules by his foot Be it sufficient that he gives a tast Least pretious peat is he unto swine should east Be 't no dishonour to the Ghymick School That some mistakes thereof he doth controâ—â— Rather a praise unto the Masters eye Houshold disorders for to rectifie Strike Chymists strike strike fire out of your 〈◊〉 And force the fire unto the highest stint Of a Reverb'ratory such a heat As Galen back out of the field may beat And fetch th' Archeal Crasis Seminum To keep the field gainst a Rololleum Srrive not not by reason if you 'd win the day Pâ—ice your Athanar as he another way Aime not at lucre in what ye undertake Your motive love the spirit your guider make That day to day in you the Word may preach And night to night unto you knowledge teach That so Elias th' Artist if he come Ye as prepar'd may bid him welcome home And all well-wishers unto Science true Unto