also that That Oyls and Emplasters are the true food of wounds so that a wound is truly nourished by them and that the corrupt matter is the excrement of that nourishment Therefore the sour salt of the Cream seeing it is destitute of an object and the which seeing it wandreth through the action of a dissolver into a fixed salt as I have taught before concerning volatile spirits it is suitably exchanged into the volatile salt of Urine And that not by the action or re-action of sournesse on a certain object but by a true fermental transforming for the Spirit of life it self is of the nature of a volatile salt and of that which is salt And so even from hence alone the vital action of the Gaul is proved For Sea salt being oft eaten doth remain almost whole in the excrements Which thing the Boylers of Salt-peter do experience against their wills For they are constrained to seperate salt out of the dung of Jakeses being sometimes eaten up by the Salt-peter through a repeated boyling and coagulation of cooling For the Sea salt being coagulated doth stick fast to the spondils or chinks of the vessels being nothing changed from it self long ago eaten And that before the Salt-peter hath obtained a sufficient drying up of its own coagulation And therefore from hence it is known that Sea-salt is more readily coagulated than Salt-peter Therefore humane excrements are lesse fit for Salt-peter than otherwise those of Goats Sheep and Herds Yet as much of that Sea-salt as is subdued by the ferment of the stomack so much also is sour and volatile Consequently also although any one do use no salt his Urine should not therefore want salt because it is that which is a new creature and a new product out of the sour of the Cream The Salt of the Urine therefore hath not its like in the whole Systeme of nature For not that of the Sea Fountain Rock Gemme not Nitre not that of Salt-peter Alume or Borace Lastly not of any of natural things as neither the Salt of the Urine of flocks or herd with which although it may agree in the manner of making yet the salt of mans Urine disagreeth from them throughout the general and particular kinds no lesse than dungs do vary throughout the species of Bruits although bruits are fed with common fodder to wit by reason of the diversities of an Archeus and Ferment Therefore of meats and drinks not sour or salt is made a salt sour and at length a salt Salt and it is easier for a thing of a sour salt to be made Salt than of not Salt to be made sour salt I remember that I have seen a Chymist who every yeer did fill a Hogs-head of Vinegar to two third parts with water of the River Rhoan he exposed it to the heats of the Sun and so he transchanged the water in it self without savour into true Vinegar a ferment being conceived out of the Hogs-head This I say he was thus wont to do by reason of the singular property of that Vinegar For truly out of the Vinegar of Wine the weaker part doth alwayes drop or still first but the more pure part a little before the end riseth up with the dregs but this Vinegar made of meer water as it wants dregs so it alwayes doth minister an equall distillation from the Beginning even to the end Wherefore as the ferment of a vessel doth by its odour alone change Water into Vinegar So indeed by the fermental odour of the Spleen breathed into the stomack meats are made a sour Cream which afterwards is turned into a urinous salt yea and into a vital one Because the Schools never dreamed of these things neither had their followers read them in the labours or night watches of their Predecessors therefore they have been ignorant of the use of parts and ferments and the celebrations or solemnities of transmutations but they have introduced both the Cholers into the masse of the bloud Lastly They have not known the Contents and be-tokenings of the Urine Therefore the third Digestion is made by the President-ferment of the Liver which is by the blind odour of a Gas doth begin Sanguification in its own stomack of the Mesentery and at length perfecteth it in the hollow Vein Furthermore The fourth Digestion is compleated in the Heart and Artery thereof in which elaboration the red and more gross blood of the the hollow Vein is elaborated made yellower and plainly volatile For the heart is said to be eared on both sides and hath at its left bosom one onely beating Artery inserted in a great Trunk fit for it that by a double rowing it may the more strongly draw the fenced venal bloud which is between both bosoms in the middle of the heart Refer thou hither what I have above noted concerning the porosity of the hedge or partition which distinguisheth the bosoms of the heart and why the Arterial bloud doth not return from the left bosome into the right but only the spirit of life as it were through a thin sive Therefore the venal bloud of the Liver differs from the arterial bloud by the fourth digestion manifested by the colour and consistence of the matter digested But the fifth Digestion doth transchange the Arterial blood into the vital spirit of an Archeus of which I have discoursed under the Blas of man as also under The Spirit of Life I could not satisfie my self that in the venal bloud of the Liver there was any spirit although it hath gotten a degree of its perfection after that it hath overcome or exceeded the Mesentery But that venal blood alwayes seemed to me as it were a certain Masse of Mummie and the matter Ex qua or whereof But not as yet to be accounted for perfect vital blood For if the blood of the hollow vein had begged a spirit from the Liver the right ear of the heart had been in vain which works uncessantly for no other end than that some spirit may be drawn from the left bosom thorow the fence of the heart that the blood in the hollow vein nigh the heart may begin to be quickned by the participation of that spirit But seeing from the left sides there is an ear and especially the notable Trunk of an Artery hence also the â—â—cking is stronger from the left bosom And from hence by consequence also little of the vital Spirit is communicated to the venal blood For truly the blood of the Liver is alwayes throughout its whole moist with too much liquor whereof it ought to be deprived before that it be made a fruitful and worthy support of spirit neither finally hath the Liver had a fit hollowness in it self for the framing of spirit Wherefore as I have intellectually seen throughout the whole Scene of Generation one onely Framer and Ruler of the spirits of life in the seed So also I admit of one onely spirit of the vital family-government For the venal
the dayes of Galen wherein surely I am amazed at the great sluggishness of wits as to a diligent search they assenting unto false principles lest the right of disputing against denyers should be forestalled from them I will therefore no longer speak to Galen but unto the Schooles I wish therefore that they may explain to me by what Conducter manner and passage a putrified humour may at every fit come from the shops of the humours unto the utmost parts of the veines which are terminated into the habit of the Body or into the flesh and skin For if it were putrified before it came unto the slender and utmost extremities of the veines why is one alone to wit Choler or Phlegm separated from its three fellowes that as a banished humour it may putrifie far from its own Cottages Or who is that silly Separater which plucks the harmless humour from its own composed body for so absurd ends Why therefore the same Separater remaining for Life doth not the same Fever continue for Life What School-master admonisheth this Separater of his Errour that he may seasonably repent At leastwise if the utmost parts of the veines do not corrupt that putrified humour the veines themselves shall be more putrified and so they shall labour with an unexcusable Gangreen But if the Cause which calleth the guiltless humour unto it self subsisteth in the very extremities of the veines that it may putrifie the same in its own possession Yet by a greater breviary it should execute that in the Bloud nigh to it self over which it hath a stronger Right and from whence it hath as well a liberty to separate Choler or phlegm as the same thing is otherwise proper unto a solutive Medicine Again If it listeth it to have prepared a putrified humour out of the nigh bloud it shall in vain expect an agreeable quantity of Choler for full two dayes space But if that humour shall putrifie before it could reach to the utmost parts of the veines then the Schooles contradict themselves and the seat of intermitting Fevers shall not be in the habit of the Body but in the first shops of the Humours In the next place If at one onely turn of a fit the whole putrified humour be dispersed out of the veines into the habit of the Body even for the consumption of it self why at least shall that Separater or Driver seeing nothing is moved by it self which is not vital be less generous in the Bowels than he that is placed in the utmost parts of the veins At length for what end of Doatage shall there be this passage of the putrified Humour from the Mesentery through the Liver and Heart even unto the extremities of the veines It is a matter full of danger and it is to be feared but that by its frequent passage it may soon defile the whole blood with its corruptions and deadly gore For let it either be a great lye of Galen or humane nature voluntarily meditates of its own ruine And by this meanes the necessity of Revulsion boasted of by cutting of a veine falls to the ground For truly the putrified humour is by the voluntary force of intermitting Fevers at set hours Revulsed or pulled back from the Nest of its Generation Yea it issues of its own accord unto the utmost parts of the veines unless perhaps that Revulsion be accounted dangerous which wholly ought to be made by the Heart through the hollow vein as well in intermitting Fevers as by the cutting of a vein And then either the feverish matter is at every fit wholly drawn out of the Nest of its nativity or not wholly if totally there shall be no cause of return if not totally it is exhausted Why shall a new humour which putrifies at every future fit no more move an Aguish fit by its putrefaction than by its expulsion For truly there is greater labour and pain while corrupt pus is in making that when the pus is made Why in that case shall not the seat of Fevers be rather in the place of putrefaction than in places through which it passeth while it is expelled Why I say the appetite returning Thirst and Watchings being absent To wit in the resting dayes of intermitting Fevers shall Choler or phlegm putrifie in the Bowels And why doth not the putrefaction thereof disturb the Family administration of the shops of the Humours Why shall black Choler which should be made on the second day of the week putrifie in two dayes space into a ripe putrifaction and that which should be made on the followng day putrifie as much in one onely day as the former putrified in two dayes If that which was joyned of them both causeth the fit of a Quartane on the fourth day of the week Why doth not that which is made on the second day stir up its own fit on the fourth day and that which is made on the third day not likewise stir up its own Tumult on the fifth day And consequently if any be made on the fourth day of the week why doth it not frame a fit on the sixth day The shoulders of Physitians are lifted up their Browes are bent and hidden properties are accused while as they are constrained to answer unto things known by Sense by believed and supposed madnesses Why at length in the rigours or shaking fits of a Tertian will they have that which is vomited up about their Beginnings to be Gaul and say that Nature bends that same way if on the contrary the guidance of Nature doth in the same interval of time proceed from the Center unto the utmost parts of the Veines because Nature doth not at one onely instant stir up two opposite motions within and without especially from the cause of one Excrement which is accounted the Gawl Why doth not that vomiting take away as much from the sharpness of the fit as there is a plentifull expulsion of that excrement which they suppose to be the very matter of a Tertian But if in a Tertian a residing Choler remaineth in its own shops after the fit why doth it rather putrifie new Choler than the humours radically annexed to it self After what manner do bitter Vomiting Thirst and so great Tokens of hurts molest the stomach while as most of the Balast of the malady shall passe over unto the extream parts of the veines that it may provoke Rigours But those who carry the marks of a Cautery do see that two dayes after Fevers a spare quantity of or no excrements are wiped off the which surely should be many if so many feverish filths should at every fit slide unto the utmost parts of the veines and habit of the Body The Schooles triumph in the Causes of Rigour they being as prettily feigned as blockishly believed But why doth Galen give more heed unto the quantity of an humour than to the ready obedience of the same Should not Choler although lesse in quantity by reason of its heat and
oft-times seem presently to be eased and also to be cured yet cutting of a vein cannot but be disallowed seeing that Feverish persons are more successfully cured without the same For however at the first or repeated cuttings of a vein the cruelty of Fevers shall oft-times slacken Surely that doth no otherwise happen than because the Archeus much abhorreth a sudden emptying of the strength and an undue cooling and so neglects to expell the Feverish matter and to perform his office But they who seem to be cured by blood-letting surely they suffer a relapse at least they obtain a more lingering and less firm health which Assertion the Turks do prove and a great part of the world who with me are ignotant of the opening of a vein because it is that which God is no where read to have instituted or approved of yea not so much as to have made mention thereof But as to what belongs unto the first scope of a co-betokeming sign which is called Cooling Truly the letting out of the blood cooleth by no other title than as it filcheth from the vital heat But not that it obtains a coolifying and positive power In which respect at least such a cooling ought to be hurtful Why I pray in a Hectick Fever do they not open a vein Doth not that Fever want cooling or doth it cease to be a Fever But blood is wanting in Hecttick Fevers wherefore through defect of blood and strength there is an easie Judgement of hurt brought by Phlebotomy which otherwise the more strong faculties do cover In the year 1641. Novemb. 8. the body of Prince Ferdinand brother to the King of Spain and Cardinal of â—oledo was dissected who being molested with a Tertian ague for 89 dayes dyed at 32. years of age For his heart liver and lungs being lifted up and so the veins and arteries being dissected scarce a spoonful of blood flowed into the hollow of his breast Indeed he shewed a liver plainly bloodless but a heart flaggy like a purse For but two dayes before his death he had eaten more if it had been granted unto him He was indeed by the cuttings of a vein purges and leeches so exhausted as I have said yet the Tertian ceased not to observe the order of its intention and remission What therefore hath so great an evacuation of blood profited or what hath that cooling plainly done unless that those evacuaters were vain which could not take away so much as a point of the Fevers Is that the method of healing which makes a Physitian whom the Almighty hath created and commanded to be honoured by reason of the necessity of him If that method knows not how to cure a Tertian ague in a young man to what end shall it conduce Is that the art whereof the infirm and unhealthy person stands in need I wish and wish again that that good Prince had not made use of it who when the returning from Cortracum was saluted by the Senate of Bruxells recovering from the agony of death by reason of the diminishments of his blood and strength then walked in good health about his Chamber Physitians therefore abhor to expose their feverish persons to the encountring of cold things to wit whereby they might presently and abundantly experience the vertue of cooling things by a manifest token because they put not much trust in their own rules of Heats and Coolers For since it is already manifest that the whole heat in a Fever is that of the very vital spirit it self it follows also that the cooling which is made by cutting of a vein is meerly that of the vital spirit and together also an exhausting of the blood and an impoverishment thereof For if a Fever be to be cured as a distemper by cutting of a vein as a cooling remedy Alas the contrary is manifest by the exhausting of all the blood out of the Prince the Infanto of Spain In whom as yet but the day before his death the Tertian Ague kept its fits â—o great cooling not hindering it and if others intens a curing even in a Quotidian only by cold which they writ to be kindled of putrified Phlegm at leastwise that cooling should be far more easily obtained by exposing the sick half naked unto the blowing of the North or West wind or by hanging him up in water or a deep well until he should testifie that he were sufficiently cooled For so they should prefently and abundantly perfect a cure if their conscious ignorance did not within condemn their own feverish essence of heat Therefore a Fever is not a naked Tempest of heat but an occasional vitiated matter is present for the expelling whereof the Archeus being as it were wroth doth by accident inflame himself The which as long as it shall be neglected in the Schools the curings of Fevers will be rash destructive and conjâ—ctural therefore none shall owe any thing worthy of giving thanks unto Physitians seeing they are cured by the voluntary goodness of nature and I wish they were not put back by Physitians But unto the argument of curing by sudden cold the Schools will answer that there is a perilous departure from one extream unto another By which excuse of their ignorance they stop the mouth of the people as if they spake something worthy of credit not taking notice that they therein contradict themselves while as they praise and prefer the cutting of a vein before laxative medicines chiefly for that end because it presently and abundantly succours by cooling and therefore they have given it the surname of a speedy and universal succour For they constrain their own impotency founded in ignorance unto the will of a Maxim badly understood and worse applied For truly it is not be doubted but that it is lawful presently to cut the halter of him that is hanged that he who was deprived of air may enjoy it as soon as may be Likewise that it is lawful presently to place him that is drowned in a steep scituation that he may cast back the water out of his lungs That it is lawful I say to draw any one presently to the bank and that it is lawful presently to free a wound from its indisposition and to close it with a scar For so very many wounds are closed in one only day because a solution of that which held together wants nothing besides a re-uniting of it self That it is lawful presently to repose a broken or diplaced bone Likewise that it is lawful in the Falling Sickness Swooning Fainting Cramp to recall the weak as soon as one can presently to loosen the detainments of excrements and presently to stop the excessive flux of womens issues For neither must we think that nature rejoyceth in her own destruction and that from an healthy state she indeed le ts in sudden death but refuseth a remedy which may suddenly repell a disease otherwise she should not do that which in things possible is most exceeding
Mathematical if six do notably hurt three cannot but hurt although not so sensibly But it is not permitted him to hurt nature who ought to heal and restore the same if nature her self ought to be the Physitianesse to her self and by so much the more prosperous by how much the more strong For it is sufficient for a Physitian that the sick doth otherwise decay through the disease with hungers lack of appetites disquietnesses pains anguishes watchings sweats and with an unexcusable weakness Neither therefore ought a faithful helper to add weakness unto weakness It is a deceitful succour which the cutting of a vein brings and the remedy thereof is so uncertain that no Physitian hath hitherto dared to promise a future cure from thence Every Artificer doth what he promiseth For a Statuary undoubtedly prepares an Image and a Shoomaker shooes But the Physitian alone dares to promise nothing from his Art because he is supported with uncertain foundations being only by accident now and then and painfully profitable Because however thou shalt interpret the matter that is full of ignorance which would cure by procured weakness For by a sudden emptying out of the blood made by heaps nature for the most part neglects the expulsion of her enemy which expulsion notwithstanding I have demonstrated to contain the whole Tragedy of Fevers and Nature Besides it is confessed That the matter of a Fever doth not consist in a vein above the heart and by consequence that neither doth the cutting of a vein any way exhaust the occasional matter or effectively cure by a direct intention of healing Again If blood be to be let forth for a more easie transpiration of the Arteries That al leastwise shall be in vain in the beginnings and increases of Fevers whenas the heat is not yet vigorous And seeing that blood is not to be let out in the state as neither in the declining thereof Therefore never But that not in their state or height it is proved because a Crisis or judicial sign is hindered seeing Nature as they write being very greatly letted or cumbred strives with the disease and being for the most part the Conqueresse doth then least of all endure the loss of strength and a calling away from the Duel But if nature be conquered in the state of the Fever what other thing shall the cutting of a vein then be besides meer Murder If therefore it is not convenient to open a vein in the height of Fevers while as there is the greatest heat perplexity and a most especial breathing of the arteries is required Surely much less shall it be convenient in their beginnings and increases especially because presently after the first days the fear of a Plethora or too much fulness departs and so there is a sufficiently easie Transpiration of the Arteries But that diseases in their declining do neither require nor endure the cutting of a vein it is so cleer and testified by the voice of all That none ever attemps the cutting of a vein at the declining of a Disease Let us consider further That in Fevers the blood in the veins is either good or evil or neutral If it be good it shall be good to have the good detained because it addeth to the strength For as I have shewn elsewhere the fear of a Plethora if there were any hath ceased even presently after the beginning But for that they will have good blood to be let out for cooling and discussing of putrefaction Truly both of them hath already been sufficiently taken away and the imaginary good which they suppose brings a real and necessary loss of the strength or faculties But moreover the Schools teach That the cutting of a vein is not commanded in a Fever by reason of the goodness of the blood the which indeed they suppose to be evil and putrefaction But I have sufficiently taught That corrupted blood is not afforded in the veins as long as we live and by consequence that this scope of the Schools in cutting of a vein falls to the ground It behooves thererefore that they demonstrate unto me a naughtiness of the blood which may be without the corruption of the same And then that that blood is detained in a vein from the heart unto the hand if they will have the cutting of a vein to be confirmed in as much as it is such or as to revulsion Let them teach I say That bad blood is not in the first shops and that blood being drawn out through the vein of the elbow worse blood is not drawn to the heart where the vena cava or hollow vein makes the right bosome of the heart Let them likewise instruct me that the upper veines being emptyed there is not a greater liberty and impunity whereby the hurtfull and feverish matter may reach unto the heart than before So that instead of a discussing of the putrefaction which in the truth of the matter I have proved to be none a free passage of putrified ayr unto the heart is not rather occasioned whither indeed the vacuity of the emptied veines attracteth the bloud from beneath Let them shew I say by what reason an afflux of bloud and diminishment of the strength through the Elbow may hinder putrefaction or may import a Correction and renewing of that which is putrified Let them also explain themselves what they will have meant that cutting of a vein should be made whereby the Arteries may the more freely breath since putrefaction if there were any possible to be in the veines doth not affect the arterial bloud the Buttery of whole Nature And moreover Let them prove that the good bloud being diminished and the strength proportionally that there is a greater power in the impure bloud that is left and which is defiled by corruption as they suppose of preserving it self from putrefaction hanging over its head Let them likewise teach contrary to the sacred Text That the Life and Soul are rather and more willingly in the remaining defiled bloud than in the more pure bloud which was taken away by the cutting of a vein Otherwise regularly the drawing out of good bloud includes an increased proportion and unbridled liberty of the bad bloud remaining What if at length in a Fever and in the veines there be bad bloud and they say it is good as a sign or effect which in the letting out of bloud flowes forth as evil and they think that so much bad bloud at least is taken away First let them prove the bloud which they account hurtfull to be truly hurtfull even as I have already before proved it to be harmlesse And then let them teach that by such an hasty and full emission of bad bloud nothing that is of prejudice is taken from the strength and that the remaining bloud being defiled and the Faculties being now diminished the emptying out of bloud that is made shall be for a cause why a putrifying of the remaining bloud is the less
At length the one onely Fountain and Spring of waters which thou hadst placed in the heart and top of the Earth is afterwards spread abroad into a thousand veins which did almost every where pierce thorow the Globe of the earth to far better uses And moreover thou hast also dashed the Sea almost into every Creek of the earth that there might be the greater fellowship of Mortalls thereby Therefore if thy punishment be blessed and happy what shall the free gifts of thy blessings be Oh Lord keep us for the exceeding greatness of thy goodness within that number who shall praise thy great and mighty deeds for ever in the sanctifying of thy name But although that one onely Fountain now ceased neither Lands being now rent asunder one alone was not enough yet perhaps the same entrance of waters remained Because in the sweet Sea between Roest and Loefelt according to the Table of Gothland a Gulf of waters is described by Olaus whereinto Ships Marriners being not aware and their endeavours being in vain are supt up For indeed it is the mouth into which the waters of that Ocean do fall and by one onely passage were before the Floud carried thence unto the aforesaid Fountain But afterwards that passage like the hollow vein was diversly distributed and hedged in by a Rock by some thousands of veins ending upon the face of the Quellem from which afterwards the waters being drunk up do hasten from far unto their appointed offices Moreover that Whirle-poole or Gulf if it ought to be any where and Olaus be a true Writer or if not at leastwise it is fitly in the Sea as well for the sweetness of the Sea as for the long and round figure of the World by me straightway to be proved In the next place if one onely Fountain were for the moystening of the Earth the aforesaid Whirle-poole shall be sufficient especially because the bottom of the Sea hath the Sand Quellem longly and largely laying open which would be sufficient for the drinking up the water And the rather because the Sea doth sometimes wash upon and rince the earth on every side and thorow many middle spaces Therefore the Sea being supt up in the said Whirle-poole it is by little and little brought thorow stony Channels and hence by lesser pipes thorow a great part of the earth Notwithstanding they are scarce over whelmed beneath the Soil Keyberch but as often as the veins of the Whirle-poole do cut or touch at the Quellem rising up thorow middle places and rushing forth into a Fountain indeed the sweet veins do perish and veins of Sea-Salt are produced Otherwise the briny Liquor if there be also any in the Gothick Sea doth through the lively Archeus of the Earth lose by degrees the nature of Salts or if the Ferments of Salts in places do any where exist those very waters do put on the seeds as well of divers Salts as of Stones and Mettalls and are changed into the same fruits For so neat gemme nitre aluminous vitriolated Sea Salts do grow of the water they as it were promising the first birth of the water to themselves And then from hence they do decline or decay into Bur or the first off-spring of Mineralls and degenerate by the guidance of the seeds So some fruits of the water do stop up the passages of their own Fountain and by their last ripeness do attain the perfection of that Minerall whose appointments the seeds did bear before them which were entertained in the Ferments of places Moreover as that Northern Whirlepoole or Gulf doth also sup up Fishes within it so it sups up the same exceeding small ones the greater being detained within the Channels Where oft-times they are either made Rockie or wax filthy through putrifying or also are seasoned with the Balsam of the soils as also that Fishes are oft-times found digged up which the Husband-man and others being amazed at do think they were born in undue places and without a seed Furthermore whether the Conduits have received the water or at length have drunk up that Quellem the waters are at least there endowed with a lively and seminall property For no otherwise than as a vein even in a dead Carease preserveth the bloud contained in it from coagulating or curdling which is a corruption of the first degree truly by a stronger Reason that right agrees to the veins of the earth which is not yet dead Therefore the water is supt and drawn within the lively soil of the Earth whence it having gotten a common life Come let us worship the King by whom all things live it knoweth not the Scituations of places it easily ascendeth unto the tops of Mountains without trouble together with the Quellem that it may from thence send forth fountains without ceasing VVhich things surely being unknown to the Schooles they have left that place of the wise man Coheleth or the Preacher scanty or barren where he saith all Rivers hasten towards the Sea the which notwithstanding doth not therefore re-gorgethem again For truly Rivers do return to the place from whence they came forth that they may flowagain Which words have been corrupted heretofore with divers modellings or qualifications Because springs in the tops of Mountains were not seen to proceed from the Sea whither they at length do rush Therefore Springs have been hitherto falsely judged by the Schooles to take their Beginnings and Causes from Air condensed or co-thickned by the force of cold between the hollow places of Mountains ready to fall upon each other The which I in a little Book concerning the Fountains of the Spaw printed in the year 1624 at Leidon have shewne that they have themselves after the manner now delivered in this place Therefore the true originall of true Springs being manifested it hitherto remains unknown to the Schooles The Scripture-Text entire and cleared But seeing the same Law course and re-course of waters from the Quellem into Fountains and at length from Fountains into the Sea was kept no lesse in dayes wherein it hath not rained for three years and more than when the whole year doth almost wax barren with a continual showre we must know that it is sumcient for the Earth that it doth not send forth such bountiful Springs through its Water-pipes and steep-running Brooks as by the common besprinkling of Dew and Rain Moreover before I shall come to the unchangeable substance of the water wherein the Schooles do promise that Air is easily changed into water and this likewise into it I will first clear up another Paradox To wit that the Globe being composed of Earth and Water is indeed round from the East thorow the West into the East yet not from the North into the South but long and round or of the figure of an Egge Which thing in the first place hath much deceived Saylors Because the Waters do slide with a more swift course from North to South than otherwise
by devouring and consuming of the radical moisture whence it would follow That the heart is the Torch of a consuming fire But notwithstanding seeing the substance of the Heart and Pericardium or case of the Heart and also of the Bloud is not fit for fire They have been forced to confesse that fire not to be fire and that heat not to be fiery yet devouring but they have said It is sufficient for them to have described the Fewelor Torch or Beginning of heat Metaphorically As if nature should admit of Metaphors For first of all I remember that some swooning Virgins were beref't of Pulse and breathing so far as was conjectured by humane judgement and so for some hours were bewayled among the dead yet that they revived and being married afterwards to have lived without sicknesse and to have brought forth five or six times For they were cold as Ice assoon as their Pulse had failed from whence I began to be doubtful whether the Pulse were not made rather for the effecting of Heats sake than through the occasion of fetching in cold whence I began to account the final causes of Pulses to be frivolous and so also I suspected the presaging part of healing to be weakened And that I thus prove For there is Hedge or Partition between both bosomes of the Heart in it self as long as life remains So Porie That by the attraction of the ears of the Heart for on both sides it is reckoned to be eared by way of proportionable Resemblance because it hath as it were Bellows the Veinie Bloud doth passe from the hollow Vein forming the right bosom of the Heart by its passage and wanders into the left bosom not likewise from hence to the right bosome Because the pores in the hedge or partition it self are triangular whose Cone or sharp point ending in the left bosom is the more easily encompassed or pressed together but the Base of that Triangle in the right bosom never but by death But the bloud of the left bosom is now arteriall and is the bloud of a true name being diverse from the bloud it self as being yet in the hollow vein in colour and subtility or fineness Wherefore I must needs not without cause have found out a new or fourth digestion in the left stomach of the heart For no otherwise than as the bloud of the veins differs from the cream and chyle so also doth the bloud of the Arteries differ from the thick bloud of the veins although by a neerer kinne and cloathing of the Heavens they have after a sort returned into one Family Yet in that is the specificall difference of both that the arterial bloud is informed by the immortall Soul in the left bosom but the venall bloud not and that it is illustrated onely by the light of the sensitive form participatively but not informatively For the other digestions do require rest But the fourth is perfected by an uncessant continuation of motion Not indeed that the very motion of the heart is the formall transchangeative cause but onely that it concurs dispositively Indeed in the left bosom of the heart as it were in a stomach doth a singular most vitall and lightsom Ferment dwell which is a sufficient cause of the venall bloud its being transchanged into arterial bloud even as it is chief in the transmutation of arteriall bloud into vitall Spirit Because all venal bloud doth naturally tend into its own end which is nourishment yet at last it is dispersed and vanisheth away into a vapour or into a Gas unless it be stayed by the Coagulum or co-thickning of growth But the arterial bloud hath for its aim not indeed that it may incline into a smoakiness or excrement For if that thing come to passe it happeneth to it from a Disease and by accident After another manner the proper object of the arterial bloud is to be brought over into vitall Spirit which if afterwards it doth also vanish let this be unto it besides its intent Seeing that every Being doth naturally desire to remain For the vitall Spirit is a light originally dwelling in the Ferment of the left bosom which enlightneth new Spirits bred by the arterial bloud to wit for which continuation of light the Arterie is lifted up For thus the Spirits are made the partakers of life and the executers thereof even as also the Vulcans of continued heat Therefore the life of man is a formall light and almost also the lightsom or clear sensitive Soul it self and so death doth forthwith follow the blowing out of this Because the immortall minde is involved in the sensitive Soul which after death slies away this other perishing But far be it that that vitall light be called fiery burning and destroying the radicall moysture and that by the continuall plenty of the smoakie vapours hereof it should defile the heart and Arteries But it is a formall light even as I have said before concerning Forms for neither shall he ever otherwise describe the in-most essence of life who had seen the formall lives of things even in an Extasie Because words are wanting and names whereby these may be shewen or called as it were by an Etymologie from a former cause And although God had shewen to any one the essence of life in a composed Body yet he will never give his own honour of teaching it unto any Creature Seeing life in the abstract is the incomprehensible God himself For so by little and little the meat and drink ascends into the Chyle or juyce of the stomach into the juyce of the mesentery or Crow into venal bloud and at length by arteriall bloud unto a most thin Skie or Air the vitall Spirit and the prop of the Soul which exchanging doth presuppose a motion of the heart For neither is it sufficient that the Ferment be effective efficiently that the arterial bloud be quickened and turned into Spirit and it to dwell in the left bosom of the heart unless a pulsative motion doth concur which is likened to the motion whereby sowrish milk or cream by a true transmutation is changed into Butter For by the motion is made an extenuating not indeed of the soure but of the salt arterial bloud neither therefore is it turned into a fat or butter but into vitall Spirit of the nature of a Salt and so of a Balsam For so the arteriall bloud is by motion heat and the Ferment changed into an Aiery or Skyie off-spring the immediate Inne of a vitall light Wherefore the Bloud VVater and Spirit are one and the same For if that light be in the Spirit but this be carried thorow the Arteries into the whole Body also that light ought to be on every side continuall to it self seeing it is the property of light else to be extinguished Therefore the Arteries ought to remain open so indeed that they do never remain long pressed together wherefore it was also meet that the pulse should dilate the same nor
Neither is it a wonder because we therefore drink more liberally in Summer but we are more speedily nourished with drink than with meats Therefore the use of the Pulses are 1. That the venal bloud may through the Partition be transported into the least bosom 2. That therein and in its dependent Arteries the spirit of life may be made of the Arterial bloud 3. That of venal blood may be made a yellow arterial blood 4. That it may be informed by the mind of man Indeed the Arteries are the stomack of the heart as the sucking veins are the Kitchin of the Liver 5. That there may be a continuation of the vital Light throughout the whole body 6. The Blas of the Pulses is for the framing of heat but not of cold 7. That the venal bloud being dispersed into the habit of the body for nourishment may be made wholly capable to be breathed thorow the pores without a Post-hume or Future remembrance of a dreg 8. But breathing hath for its aim only this last use of the Pulse At length I also adde this That there is not an Animal spirit in nature Because the change which the vital spirit receives in the Brain is not unto a formal transmutation but is a perfective degree to the appointment of it self Indeed the in-bred spirit doth intend of a vital influx to generate its own like to it self and that in all the particular shops of the senses and giveth to it the seal of its own instrument For so the Optick or Seeing spirit doth not taste yet they do not therefore both differ in the particular kind although in their own offices For in the vitality or liveliness of the heart it is at once quickned by the mind and is made the universal instrument of that life CHAP. XXV Endemicks or things proper to the People of the Countrey where they live 1. The Schools have stated whence it was to be begun 2. That the encompassing air is not breathed into the Arteries 3. It implyeth that the air doth inspire at every turn and that smoakie vapours are expelled 4. The mutual unsufferableness is demonstrated 5. It would thence follow that the artery is not lifted up but that it may fall down 6. The end manner and possibility of air attracted by the pulses should cease 7. That Endemical things are drawn by breathing 8. That vapours are not drawn inward by Ointments 9. It s own generative vertue is wanting to the vital spirit 10. The humane Load-stone of Paracelsus is a fiction 11. That no smoakiness is to be granted in the heart and Arteries 12. That the whole knowledge of the Schools by signs or tokens is polluted 13. The progress of Endemical things IT is not sufficient to say That the Mines of Veins do belch forth the wild Gas of a hurtful Arsenick and a metallick malignity Fens a stinking vapour breachy Rivers and Shores a diseasie mist and a contagion of the soil putrifying by continuance But by coming nearer the suitings of causes do every where give understanding to those that search diligently but neglect to the ignorant or unskilful For without doubt man was to dwell in the air to be thorowly washed round about with the air yea and to be fed and to be subjected to the violent tyranny of its impressions and to the interchangeable courses of its successive changes whereby the air is the continual seperater of the waters Therefore the air is promiscuously drawn thorow the mouth and nostrils into the Lungs in its chiefest part But whether the air and by consequence also an Endemical Being be drawn inward by the encompassing aire through the Arteries the Schools affirm it But I as the first being supported with the much authority of reasons and the great authority of truth have doubted of it By consequence also That Oyntments applyed to the places of Pulses that they may be drawn inward are made vold First of all These Propositions do resist themselves The aire is drawn through the skin into the Arteries And the depression of the Pulses is to drive away smoaky vapours successively raised up by the heart Because if continual smoakinesses are stirred up by continual heat and the heart doth uncessantly labour with the Arteries for the expelling of those Surely there shall be no room nor space of motion for the attraction of the air from without to within For if there be a successive continual and uncessant expulsion of the Pulses from the center of the heart by the Arteries of necessity also the whole Channel of the Arteries shall by a continual thred from the heart even unto the skin be filled with a smoaky vapour of the expulsing of which smoakiness seeing there should be a greater necessity than of attracting air for fire is most speedily extinguished by smoaks but doth not so soon consume the whole through extream want of cooling or refreshment there is no leisure for the attraction of the air And moreover the Pulse being stirred the attracted air and that in the least space of delay should be besmeared being involved in smoakiness so also the aire in the smallest branches of the Arteries that it should rather increase the use of expulsion than satisfie the cooling refreshment of the heart Therefore the supposition of smoaky vapours standing the air is in no wise drawn by the Arteries from without to within and so the Schools do unadvisedly dictate their own and yet do subscribe to each other And moreover it follows from the same supposition that the Artery is not lifted up by it self and primarily but that it is only principally elevated that it may fall down next that by that endeavour it may shake of the fardle and drive away the fear of choaking seeing that should be the chief end of the Pulses but the other which is that of cooling refreshment is in respect of the former a secondary end Again If the Arteries should suck the air inwards to what end I pray should that be done seeing the sucking of the more crude endemical air should rather hurt than profit For not for the cooling refreshment of the heart seeing all the Pulses should scarce allure the smallest thing from the air by the least and utmost mouths of the Arteries which being the more swift in drawing should not straightway afterwards be expulsed by the depression of the Artery yea it should so most speedily in that very moment be co-united with the smoaky vapour and made hot by the Arterial bloud that the heart should not feel in it self any cooling or refreshment thereby Especially seeing the air should not by one only attraction proceed that way from the skin to the heart but by a manifold depression of the Artery coming between it should wax so hot in the way that it should deceive all hope of cooling refreshment Wherefore if the Arteries should allure the air from without the elevation of the Artery should of necessity alwayes far exceed its depression
and double Fevers Neither doth it also forbid a primary Disease to be con-folded with its own or with a secundary one bred from else where In such a manner as is a primary Fever which brings forth a Product from whence there is a resolving of the Blood into the putrifying Disease of a malignant Flux matched with a feverish Ferment At length neither is there a necessary passage of the three first Digestions unto the sixth by the fourth and fifth Because the greatest part of the venal Blood never comes unto the Heart and much less is it snatched into its left Bosom Because all particular parts are nourished no less with Venal than Arterial Blood From hence indeed it happens that the Vices of the three first Digestions do oftentimes immediately pass over into the sixth And therefore the transchanged Retents of the three first Digestions if they shall reach unto the sixth they offend not by transmission of a proper name but only by transmutation because a transmission from the third into the sixth Digestion is regular lawful and ordinary I will add concerning the Spleen If from the first Digestion a sharpness of the Chyle be immediately brought unto the Spleen A Quartane Ague is soon present to wit from a curdled Retent being there a stranger But if the sixth Digestion in the Spleen be troubled seeing it is the Couch of the first Conceptions The Excrements or things transchanged which are made of its proper nourishment are for the most part endowed with an imaginative Power such as occurs in many Simples and which is most plainly to be seen in the Spittle of a mad Dog and the which therefore I call inebriating or be-drunkening dreamifying or befooling Simples For therefore of one Wine there is a many-form condition of drunken Men That is one only Wine doth stir up diverse Madnesses For a mad Poyson halts with the similitude of Wine For a mad Poyson by reason of its excelling Power doth not follow the conditions of the Man but the very Conditions of the Man are constrained to obey the Poyson As is clearly seen in the Poyson of him that is bitten by a Mid-dog Poysons therefore which of a degenerate nourishment are bred in the sixth Digestion do follow their own Nature For by how much the nearer they shall be unto assimilating by so much the more powerfully do they infatuate For by how much the nearer the Ferment of the Bowel and an in-beaming of the implanted Spirit shall be present with it by so much also the nearer it calls unto it the Idea of a certain imaginative Power which at length it transplanteth into a venemous Poyson not indeed so destructive unto the Life as unto the Power of that Bowel But from what hath been before declared any one shall be hereafter able to erect unto himself the Stages of Diseases But it hath been sufficient for me to have shewn that every primary Disease doth objectively and subjectively fall into the Archeus and so into the Life it self whereof to wit it is immediately formed But that a secondary Disease fals objectively indeed into the Archeus but subjectively into a Matter either the solid one of the part containing or the fluide one of that contained And thus indeed to have shewn Diseases to be distributed in Nature by their Causes Roots and Essence according to their Inns I repose my Pen. Barrenness also seeing it is among Defects beside Nature hath hither extended its Treatise Wherefore Coldness Heat or moistness is not in either of the Sexes the cause of Barrenness however lowdly others may sound out this thing For truly first of all there is no dryness possible in living Creatures or the vitious moisture of the Womb is not of the complexion but a meer superfluity of Digestion or Transmission So in the next place Heat and Cold are signs of Defects in Nature but not Causes Because these Qualities do want a Seed vital Properties and potestative Conditions Therefore indeed Barrenness and Fruitfulness is in every Climate of the World Yet an Aethiopian Woman is far hotter than the most hot Woman of Muscovia But the excrementitious and superfluous Moistness of the Womb is an Effect of Diseases Yea if it shall be a companion of Barrenness yet not the containing Cause thereof For an internal Cause differs not from the Being it self So neither is the Defect of the Menstrues the cause of Barrenness if that Defect contains a denial or proceeds as an Effect of a nearer Indisposition Women of unripe Age have oft-times conceived even also before their Menstrues and those of more ripe years their Menstrues being silent Also oft-times Women affected in their Womb being trampled on by many Perplexities do succesfully conceive and accordingly bring forth In the mean time some Barren Women are in good health Also many conceive while their Menstrues is urgently present As also the Menstrues being afterwards silent hath deceived many of Conception Some Women do take notice of their Menstrues all the time of their bearing but many for some months only For indeed although Barrenness may after some sort bespeak a privative respect yet it is meerly a positive and diseasie Being for it ariseth from singular positive Defects Because by it self and in self it is a Malady of Nature Even as fruitfulness bespeaks an entire Cause For in a Man which is not Gelded not an Eunuch not hindred or disturbed not mischieved Barrenness hath scarce place For from hence an Old-man doth as yet generate Whence it follows that there is not so much perfection to be attributed as neither to be required in the Male as in the Mother But I call those hindered Males who do labour with a Gonorrhea or who have from thence retained a Vice And likewise who do labour with the notable Vice of some Bowel In a Woman the Menstrues abounding being Deficient Irregular Watery Yellow looking Blackish Slimy Stinking a Pain in her Loyns Belly Hips and movings of the Womb upwards downwards to the Sides are indeed Witnesses and Signs of the Sicknesses or Feeblenesses of the Womb and therefore also they fore-slow overflow Conception move Abortions and gushings forth of the Courses yet they do not altogether take away the hope of Conception nor are they the Disease which is called Barrenness For indeed old Women are Barren without all those For I find the one only suitable and co-equal Cause in Time and Age to be described in the holy Scriptures for a positive Being which is called Barrenness in these Words God opened the Womb of Sarah For it is the Gift of God derived into Nature whereby the Parchment or Membrane of the Womb being most exactly shut in its Foldings is opened and enlarged at the co-agreeing moment of Conjunction There is I say an attractive drawing Blas whereby for fear of a Vacuum or Emptiness an attraction of the Seeds and a suitable filling up of the opened Wrinckles follows that opening To wit the
the scope of pain Because they are onely abstracted Names and for the most part not in the least point conteining the cause thereof even as I have demonstrated in the Treatise concerning Diseasifying Causes as it were in the combating place of exercise For in the Urine-pipes for an Example in the tearms of the Disease of the Stone there is no necessity dependency of Dominion Clients-ship Usurpation Possession Custome and no community of the Pipes and Excrements with the bowels or stomach For if when the left side of the Throat is in pain not so much as the right side thereof in such an angiport or narrow passage be now and then afflicted why shall we not deservedly suspect the nearness and dependency of parts which are unlike and differing in the Ordination of their Offices and Scituation It is therefore sufficient hitherto that all pain the author of a Convulsion or Contracture presupposeth a hatefull Guest For there are also unpainfull Contractures as before concerning the Cod and the which draw their original not so much from pain as from meer trouble But painfull Convulsions are made from Hostile Causes For so Those things cause paine which smite the Spirit called for the Soul Sensitive with sharpness brackishness or degrees of heat or cold But the most intense pain is from fire and then from Alcalies and corroding things because they are the nearest to fire after that from austere or harsh brackish and four things because they are the nearest to Contracture Presently after from salt things then next from sharp things and lastly from some bitter things But from poysons as such cruel pain ariseth the which in the Plague is ordinary and because so great pain oft-times ariseth without sharpness a Truth is denoted To wit That pain issues from the judgement of the Sensitive Soul For Corrosives since they gnaw the sensitive Soul it self they wast the parts themselves like fire But Alume Vitriol Aqua Fortes's next the juyce of unâ—ipe Grapes and also any sharp things as they do by themselves crisp and pull together the Fibers of the Organs therefore such Excrements are Convulsory and painfull There are also Alcalies which sleepifie paines To wit in Cases where they break the greatest sharpnesses of Putrefactions For under the Dog-star while as Fleshes threaten corruption at hand the Broaths of fleshes are made sharp with an ungratefull savour whence in the Gout Colick and gnawing and putrifying Ulcers I conceived paines to proceed at first from a sharpness Likewise the sensitive Soul at first feeles pain the which being at length accustomed waxeth the less wroth even so as an accustomed Horse refuseth Sâ—urs For Nature in her self is wholly furious and Sumptomatical and being by degrees accustomed to paines waxeth mild Wherefore Self-love and Revenge are before or more antient than sense or feeling because they are intimately in Seeds in the bosome of Nature before Sense For the Characters or Images of anger agony fear revenge and sorrow do bring forth Convulsions like to those their own Idea's For from the knowledge whereby a Mouse abhors a Cat not before seen the Spirit being provoked is stirred up into anger fear c. The which by its own Idea uttereth its fury on the members as it were by a Brand. 1. The hand waxeth cold because the heat there cherished by the Life is extinguished by cold but not that the vital Spirit retires inward as having left the arterial bloud whch it had married and much less that heat as a naked quality passeth departeth and returneth inward as it were in a Comedy 2. The heat being now diminished cold also persisting the cold waxeth strong and then Sense in the hand is stupified For the sensitive abstracted Spirits are pressed together To wit those which are in the sinewes but not those which are in the Arteries because the Spirit hath the more firmly married the arterial Bloud and it is the property of the Veines even after death to preserve the Bloud from Con-cretion or Coagulation For the vital Spirit is sustained from behind by the fewel or cherishing warmth of the heart as much as may be and therefore in that stupefaction Life is as yet deteined 3. Motion languisheth in the Hand because the Spirits being grown together in the flesh seeing they are not sufficiently nourished from behind by the heart they by degrees perish and by degrees are altered 4. And then together with the perishing of Motion Sense also is extinguished To wit while the Bloud being chased out of the Veines threatens a clotting Life as yet remaining 5. And so at length the joynts are by cold totally deprived of Life To wit when as the venal bloud hath now departed into Clots and dyed Therefore in the third and fourth degree aforesaid pain springs up in the Hand being heated For as the Heart inspires a new sensitive Spirit from behind the which while it takes notice of death to be readily at hand it being as it were enraged in the same place presently frames the Idea of its own indignation and so puts off its native sweetness or Complacency Even as in the Treatise concerning diseasie Idea's in the work concerning the Rise or Original of Medicine I will more clearly demonstrate So the sensitive Spirit which was not trampled on by cold but repulsed by pressing together in its return stirs up another Idea of its own indignation and another pain as it were like that of the pricking of a pin Let the Reader in the mean time pardon me in that I ought to borrow the Name of an Icy or freezing Poyson without the necessity of fore-going Cold For I call not that an Icy poyson as if it were made cold as I have already spoken concerning the stupefying astonishment of the Hands but I call it a cooling and also a stupefying poyson and that which takes away sense and motion Therefore the similitude of the Name draws its Original not from the Root but from the Effect And last of all in this By-work for a Conclusion of this Work and Sensation Let us meditate at least of the Remedies of Physitians in the Apoplexy in astonishment or beâ—ummedness giddiness of the Head in the Catalepsie Catochus Coma Convulsions plucking of the Eyelids Eyes Tongue and Lips For thou shalt find that presently cutting of a vein and a Clyster are prescribed They doubting in the mean time Whether the dung of the Fundament may pluck the Tongue and Lips in the mouth may likewise stamp drowsinesses and astonishment in the sick As it hath brought forth blockishnesses and neglect in the Physitian Or indeed whether these arise from the venal bloud therefore they are presently intent upon both at once And then on the day following they administer purging things And thirdly as being full of uncertainty after Rubbings they provoke Sweats For their Succours are universal because others are wanting and they are ignorant of such And therefore their total usual Medicines are general
good to be done as neither should every thing desire to be and be preserved In Science Mathematical indeed it is determined as impossible to proceed from extream to extream without a mean and that Medium wholly denyes all interruption the which if we shall grant in natural things with a certain latitude we shall as yet be accounted to have done it out of hand and that in the best manner And so that neither is it lawful to wrest that of Science Máthematical unto curings I confess indeed that it is not lawful to draw out a dropfie abundantly by an incision of the Navil at one only turn as neither to allure forth all the corrupt pus out of a great Aposteme nor to bring one that is frozen by reason of cold immediately to the Chimney nor abundantly to nourish him that is almost dead with hunger Yet surely a slow and necessary progress of Mediocrity as such or a proceeding from one extream unto another doth not conclude that thing as if nature were averse unto a speedy help Since this betokening is natural nearly allyed pithy and intimately proper unto her self But those things are forbidden because a faintness of the strength depending thereupon would not bear those speedy motions The Schools therefore by a faulty argument of the cause as not of the cause drive the sick from a sudden aid which they have not that they may vail their ignorance among the vulgar with a certain Maxim being badly directed For as often as a Cure can be had without the loss of strength for the faculties do always obtain a chiefdome in indications by how much the more speedily that is done it is also snatched with the greater Jubily or joy of nature Even as also in Fevers I have with a profitable admiration observed it to be done with much delight Therefore in the terms proposed if a Fever be a meer heat besides nature and all curing ought to be perfected by contrary subduers Therefore it requires a cooling besides nature to wit that contraries may stand under the same general kind That is every Fever should of necessity be cured by much cold of the encompassing air especially because the cold of the encompassing air collects the faculties but doth not disperse them But the consequence is false Therefore also the Antecedent Therefore the Schools do not intend by cutting of a vein the cooling or heat but chiefly a taking away of the blood it self and a mitigation of accidents which follows the weakened powers or they primarily intend a diminishment of the strength and blood It being that which with a large false paint they call a more free breathing of the Arteries But I do alwayes greatly esteem of an indication which concerns a preserving of the strength and which is opposite unto any emptying of the veins whatsoever because the strength or powers being diminished and prostrated the Disease cannot neither be put to flight neither doth any thing remain to be done by the Physitian Therefore Hippocrates decreeth That Natures themselves are the Physitianesses of Diseases because the indication or betokening sign which is drawn from a preserving of the faculties governs the whole scope of curing As therefore Reason perswades that the strength is to be preserved so also the blood because this containeth that Hippocrates indeed in a Plethora of great Wrestlers or Champions hath commanded blood to be presently and heapingly let out and that saying the Schools do every were thunder out in the behalf of the cutting of a vein But that is ridiculously alledged for the curing of Diseases and Fevers For he bad not that thing to be done for fear of a Plethora however their veins may sufficiently abound with blood but only lest the vessels being filled they should burst and cleave asunder in the exercises of strength otherwise what interposeth as common between healthy Champions and the curing of Fevers For there is no fear of a Plethora in him that hath a Fever neither that a vein should be broken through exercises and moreover we must note that the emptyings of the blood are on this wise That the exhausting of the strength or faculties which is made by carnal lust is unrepairable because it takes away from the in-bred spirit of the heart But the exhausting which is made by the cuttings of a vein is nigh to this because it readily filcheth away the inflowing Archeus and that abundantly But a Disease although it also directly oppose the strength yet because it doth not effect that thing abundantly but by degrees therefore it rather shakes and wears out the strength than that it truly exhausteth it Therefore the restoring of the faculties which are worn or battered by a Disease is more easie than that of those which are exhausted by cutting of a vein For they who in Diseases are weakened by the cutting of a vein are for the most part destitute of a Crisis and if they do revive from the disease they recover by little and little and being subject to be sick with many anguishes in a long course of dayes and not without the fear of Relapses But they who lay by it with a Disease without cutting of a vein are easily restored and recovering they soon attain unto their former state But if they being destitute of remedies shall also sometimes come unto an extremity yet Nature attempts a Crisis and refresheth them because their strength although it was sore shaken by the Disease yet it perished not as not being abundantly exhausted by the lettings out of blood Wherefore a Physitian is out of conscience and in charity bound to heal not by a sudden lavishment of the faculties as neither by dangers following from thence nor also by a necessary abbreviation of life according to the Psalm My spirit shall be lessened therefore my days shall be shortened And seeing that according to the Holy Scriptures the life glistens in the blood however plentifully thou shalt dismiss this thou shalt not let it forth but with the prejudice of life For the perpetual intent of nature in curing of Fevers is by sweats And therefore the fits are for the most part ended by sweats But the cutting of a vein is Diametrically opposed unto this intention For truly this pulls the blood inwards for to replenish the vessels that were emptied of blood hut the motion of nature that is requisite for the curing of Fevers proceeds from the Center to without from the noble parts and bowels unto the skin But that the cutting of a vein doth of necessity weaken although the more strong and plethorick persons may seem to experience and witness that thing to be otherwise If the sacred Text which admonisheth us That the life inhabiteth in the blood hath not sufficient weight in it at leastwise that shall be made manifest if thou shalt offend in a more liberal emission of blood For the strength and sick person do presently faint ot go to ruine Therefore in Science
be drawn from a more ignoble part unto a more noble one For the more crude and dreggish bloud is in the Meseraick veins but the more refined bloud is that which hath the more nearly approached unto the Court of the Heart For otherwise Nature as undiscreet had placed the chief Weapons of Parricide nigh the Fountain of Life Seeing therefore the matter of a Fever floats not in the veins nor sits nigh the Heart Fat be it to believe that that is fetch'd out or moved from its place by the cuttings of a vein however divers coloured blood be sometimes wiped out by the repeated emissions of bloud It is therefore a cruel Remedy if unto the place of the bloud let forth other bloud shall come from remote parts For so the contagion of one place should be dispersed into the whole body and unto the more noble parts and otherwise there is an easie co-defilement in things or parts that have a co-resemblance Lastly if the Errours of the Heathens being once renounced Modern Physitians would have respect unto the Life of their Neighbour verily they should know that the devices of Revulsion are vain that it is a pernicious wasting of the Treasure of bloud and strength that no hurt doth insult from the bloud within the veins but onely from hostile and forreign excrements that God also hath made sufficient Emunctories or avoyding places of any filths whatsoever neither that there is need of a renting of the veins for a victory over Fevers CHAP. V. Purging is Examined 1. The first confession of the Schooles concerning their purging Medicines 2. The deceits of Corrections 3. Another confession 4. A third 5. Shamefull excuses 6. A fourth confession 7. A frequent History 8. Deceit in the name 9. It is explained what it is for a laxative medicine to be given while the humours do swell or are disturbed and how full of deceit it is 10. A History of the repentance of the Author 11. A conclusion drawn from thence 12. Nine remarkable things for the destruction of the Schools 13. A History of a certain chief man 14. A fifth confession 15. An examination of the aforesaid particulars 16. A sixth confession 17. Vain and foul privy shifts 18. Weapons retorted from a seventh confession 19. An argument of poyson from stink 20. A mechanical proof 21. The same out of Galen 22. A proof from the effect 23. The Schooles oppose their own Theoremes 24. The suppositions of the Schooles being granted none could dye of a Fever and it should be false that purging things are not to be given in the beginning of Fevers 25. That this Aphorisme includes a deceit and an unadvisednesse of Hippocrates 26. Coction in Diseases is the abuse of a Name THE Schooles acknowledge that their Purgers even unto Agarick have need of Correction because they enforce Nature And I wish those Corrections were not sluggish nor blockish and that they did rather serve for obtaining the innocency of a Medicine than for a gelding thereof For truly a gelding of the Faculties in a Medicine includes a deceit To wit least the sick should understand that a poyson subsisteth therein For the Tamed Remedies of the shops are like an Houshold Wolf who when an occasion is given him while he is trusted in returns unto the wonted cruelty of his own Nature For from hence neither dare they to call their corrected purging Medicines by their proper Etymologie To wit They vail Scammony with the name of Diagridium as also they mask Coloquintida with the name of Alhandal In the next place Laxative Compounds in Dispensatories war under the dissembled Title of a Captain or Leader In the mean time They cannot deny but that in every solutive Scammony and Coloquintida are the two pillars whereby the whole Edifice of Purging is supported and the which being dashed in pieces all of whatsoever was superstructed thereon falls to the ground Next The more mild Solutives as Manna Cassia Senna Rhubarb c. have given up their names unto those two Standard-defending Leaders The Schooles confess I say That a laxative Medicine being administred it is no longer in the power of the Physitian and so they hereby defame their Laxatives and therefore put them behind Phlebotomy For if a laxative Medicine shall commit any the more cruel thing They accuse either the Dose or the Correction or the fluid nature of the sick or the Apothecary or his Wife least otherwise the name should perish from a Solutive Medicine Yet in the mean time will they nill they they confess that all Solutives do enclose in them a consuming poyson and they in the Proverb call Aloes alone harmlesse But the others are to be administred with an additament Correction and Circumspection as neither rashly nor force-timely For of late a judicious man of the privy Councel of Brabant that he might preserve his health had taken a usual Pill of washed Aloes To wit gelded or Corrected wherof while he found not the effect he declares it to a Physitian passing by who blames the sluggishnesse of the Aloes and so turns picron or bitter into pigrum or slow I will prescribe saith he corrected pils of greater vertue The which being taken he miserably perished because it was in vain endeavoured by him for a whole week that he might restrain the unbridled effect of the Laxative Remedy For he that he might free himself from a future Disease perished by the deceit of the Physitian and left eleven Children From whence it is first manifest That it is as well free for a loosening Medicine to Tyrannize on him that is in good health as otherwise on a sick person To wit it is lawfull under the name of a Physitian and deceit of a purging Medicine to prey even upon the life of Princes without punishment Because the earth covers the cruel ignorance of Physitians A Purgation or purifying is indeed a Specious Title but full of deceit And I wish that the purgatory of the Physitian were able to expiace Diseases I wish in as much as this is not done that the sick would not expect a purgatory Medicine from the Hand of Physitians Surely it is a thing most worthy of lamentation what they say That a Laxative Medicine being administred before the Coction of a Disease the same humours indeed are drawn forth for they will have loosening things to draw out one humour and not another by Selection or Choyce which otherwise after the aforesaid Concoction of the Disease is notwithstanding unprofitable yea and hurtfull Neither yet do they from thence hitherto learn That the humours brought forth by Laxative things are not Humours nor offensive ones for otherwise at both stations of the Disease and from the things supposed by one onely Laxative they ought of necessity equally to profit if they detract from the same offensive matter but a meer putrefaction and a meer Liquor corruptively dissolved through the poyson of the Laxatives And by so much the more
in separating And so seeing both Cholers accuse of a necessary access in a just temperament as they call it these could never be made fit for nourishment Since moreover we are daily nourished by the same things whereof we consist to wit of a temperate and lively seed refusing both Cholers And there shall be the like reason for both Cholers which there is of Phlegm That if this be perfected into the blood within the veins Choler shall no less be made blood in the Arteries For if Phlegm be changed into blood out of a natural proper and requisite shop much more shall yellow Choller be fit that in the heart it may degenerate into the more yellow blood of the Artery and into the spirit of life and the heart shall be the restorative shop of a gawly excrement But alas how miserable an Argument is it while as the blood let out of the veins disposeth it self to corruption sometimes two three or more liquors are seen therefore there are as many constitutive Humours of us For blood is wholly changed into milk and then after its corruption it hath only three subordinate parts to wit Whey Cheese and Butter nor ever more For sometimes it is totally coagulated in the Dug into a hard swelling in the form of Cheese now and then it wholly passeth over into a white yellow somewhat green c. corrupt Pus Sometimes into a pricking gnawing watery liquor as in the Disease called Choler Ulcers c. Elsewhere also it totally departs into a salt Wheyish liquor as in the Dropsie and many Hydragogal or water-extracting Medicines Oft-times also it waxeth wholly black like pitch as in blood that is chased out of the veins in a Gangreen c. but frequently into an ashie and stinking clay of slime as in Fluxes At another time also it wholly passing over into a yellow poyson shews or spreads forth the Jaundise in which manner also it boasts it self in those that are bitten with a Serpent Elsewhere also the blood is without the separation of an Heterogeneal matter wholly changed into sores issuing forth matter like honey called Melicerides into swellings of the Neck or Arm-holes conteining a matter in them like Pulse c. And in the Pâ—ssing-Evil the blood is totally changed into a milky liquor Even as under a Tabes or Consumption of the Lungs it wholly passeth into a yellowish spittle Are therefore perhaps as many Humours to be constituted in the blood as there are beheld degenerations thereof And shall there be as many Liquors in Rain-water as there are things growing out of the Earth For the blood is in us like unto water neither had it need of divers seeds in the Liver that it may be one only equally nourishable Humour But in the last Kitchins it attaineth its own requisite diversities whereby it performeth the office of nourishing And so it should in its beginning in vain exceed in divers seeds and diversities of kind the which at length ought totally to be Homogeneally reduced into one only glewie white and transparent nourishable Sperm or Seed for the support of the similar parts or to remain red for the flesh of the Muscles and substance of the bowels Wherefore I stedfastly deny That the blood as long as it liveth or is detained in the veins although after the death of a man is coagulated and by consequence that it bath integral unlike parts with any Heterogeniety of it self But that all diversity in the blood is made only by the death or destruction of the same Therefore the diversity of Humours is the daughter only of death but not of life Neither is that of concernment that Excrements do now and then occur in the body which dissemble the countenance of blood To wit from whence they are made by degeneration For Urine is no longer wine even as neither are corrupt Pus or Snivel or spittles as yet parts of the blood Because Excrements are no longer that which they were before their corruption Because every thing assumes its Essence and name from the bound of transmutation For what doth it prove if blood by Phlebotomy separates water or other soils in time of its corruption if the same water be thereupon neither Gaul nor Choler nor bitter and wants the properties of Gaul Or what a rash belief is that Water swims on dead blood Therefore it it is gauly Choler which under a false taste dissembles the bitterness of Choler For that Water swimming on the blood is not an entire part thereof nor of its Essence or Contents or more near akin to the Blood than a Chariot in respect of a man sitting therein It is therefore to be grieved at that for so many ages none hath ever tasted down that water but that they all have engraven their names on the trifles of their Ancestors that I say under a shew of healing the Schools have delivered the destructions of the sick under false Principles For truly Humours are destructive Ignorances sluggishnesses and shamefulnesses introduced by the Father of lies and celebrated by the loose credulity of his followers For although the bottom of the blood doth sometimes look the less red it shall not therefore be black Choler Even as neither is the sediment of the Urine Phlegm But while the life of the blood departed it s no wonder if all particular things which were kept in the unity of life do re-take the material conditions whereto they are obliged For the variety of soils in liquid bodies depends on a preheminency of weights Because they have a latitude in weight which after death become Heterogeneal or of a different hind and by degrees do hasten into a disorder of confusion For will a man that is of a sound judgement believe that Wine Ale and the juyces of herbs do lay aside their own black Choler at the bottom together with their sediment For what hath black Choler common with the heterogeneal substance of a sediment But as to the Colour every Aethiopian hath his Blood almost black but for the most part without whey yet none of them is Melancholy but all wrathful For the blood which by the encompassing air is presently cooled in the Basin waxeth more red than that which being sunk unto the bottom hath the longer continued lukewarm For this also is ordinary that any blood being chased out of the veins presently waxeth black in the body For whatsoever things do readily putrifie do easily admit of the companions of putrefaction and that part of blood doth sooner putrifie which hath the longer continued warm after its death Therefore neither is it a wonder that the part of the lower ground thereof becomes more intensly black But that black blood is not a separation of weight in the Blood and much less black Choler I have separated nine ounces of fresh Blood and that as yet liquide into Porâ—ingers One whereof I exposed to swim in cold water but the other part being equal to the former
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
to be a Bird a thousand dispositions do succeed each other in the way and all of them to be external and accidentary to the Seed neither that in the mean time it ceaseth to hasten to the aims of its appointment For the figure of the yolk of the Egge together with accidentary dispositions succeeding each other do passe over it indeed yet there is not a new generation of the form of that puttified Egge present at every disposure of the putrifaction Indeed one onely vitall form of the Chick being excepted there comes to it no other which by degrees is stirred up by foregoing dispositions and at length the ripeness of dispositions being attained floweth into it For neither when the Bird dyeth is there a certain essential form and generation of the dead Carcase Because all generation in nature is enclosed in an essential form which a dead Carcase wanteth even as also a seed and an Archeus the Governour as shall be shewed in its place Even as the essence begins him with the Vulcan of the Seed and the same essence continues with the product or thing generated so the same product failing the same essence perisheth But the essence perishing the form the Governour or President thereof also goes to ruine For the Vulcan or Master-Workman forsaking the body the flesh heart veins c. do begin to putrifie for that they are now deprived of the vital Balsam their leader For under life the flesh and the bone c. were distinguished In its particular kinde and proper form the flesh was flesh and was formally severed from the bone in which form in the dead Carcase they do forthwith appear And so through death no form or essential thingliness comes upon the dead Carcase in the whole or in any particular parts Onely that which was vitall is seperated Therefore let it be an erroneous thing That the corruption of one thing is the generation of another Because the corruption of life happens onely through the quenching of the vitall Balsam or form therefore without a new generation of a Creature Therefore no privation happens in things that have life and so neither can privation there have the force of a Principle Seeing that from the seed even unto the vitall being there is but one progress promotion and ripeness about the end whereof the form is given Therefore also generation doth reciprocally or cursarily happen without any corruption as often as the matter being now brought to the ripeness of its appointment by the seminal Vulcan hath obtained a form coming to it from elsewhere Yea that Vulcan through the departure of life departs flies away and vanisheth without any corrupting of it self no otherwise than as light perisheth without the corrupting of it self Indeed life vanisheth after the manner of light perishing And the Vulcan seeing it is a certain vitall Air fleeth away Both of them without the corruption of themselves and the body which is deprived of life properly for that very cause is not corrupted although through the failing of the vitall Balsam corruption doth soon succeed Which thing sufficiently appeareth in Mummies and also in Vegetables which being dry and deprived of life are kept for uses yea they do very often drive away all corruption So far of is it that their life perishing for that very cause they should be corrupted Therefore death in things that have life is not the corruption of their own life as neither of that which lives but the extinguishing of life And although in some things the corruption of the body may follow truly that is to life and the body by accident which thing is manifest For truly dead Carcases are preserved from corruption by art Therefore now Aristotle confounds privation with corruption and doth not distinguish his own Principle non ens or a non-being from the Being corruption Lastly the forms of things are not subject to corruption and therefore neither are they corrupted but annihilated or brought to nothing Wherefore neither can the withdrawing or the extinguishing of the form include any corruption on behalf of the form Furthermore I have hated Metaphors or figurative Translations of words from their proper signification to another in the History of nature and Family of essential things because they are those things which have introduced the errours of the Schooles brawls of disputing and religious Worship given to Aristotle But besides if Aristotle be unskilful in nature and ignorant of all natural Philosphy truly Galen hath hitherto every where manifested a greater ignorance For first of all I will make it manifest that there is not a quaternary or a fourfold kinde of Elements nor a congress or conjunction of these for bodies which are believed to be mixt much less a strife or fighting of qualities or Complexions or for the Causes of Diseases And so that neither doth the Treatise of the Elements properly belong to Medicine Truly I finde Galen diligent in opinions and a boasting Writer without judgement or discretion For neither hath he better perceived of Nature Diseases Causes and defects than of the decrees of Hipocrates and Plato For I profess I have twice read over those Volumes of Galen with attention but I have found the poverty and undistinct ignorance of Galen to fight with his rashness For truly those Books do touch at nothing lesse than the Doctrine of Hipocrates or Plato Neither also hath Hipocrates any thing common with Plato And so that I have not found any one who hath judged them worthy of a Commentary as neither to have been written concerning the preserving of health This one thing is alway to be found in Galen that the names of Authours being suppressed he hath willingly snatched the Inventions of others to himself a man wholly scanty or very poor in judgement as oft as he hath expressed the conceptions of his own judgement I ought to declare these things concerning the two Standard-Defenders of natural Philosophy that the Schooles may abstain from worshipping these Masters CHAP. VIII The Elements 1. The Doctrine of the Elements in healing is wholly impertinent and so that in Galen such a heap of those Books is ridiculous 2. The vain opinions of the Schooles concerning the Elements 3. The true beginnings of naturall Science are delivered 4. Six conclusions out of the holy Scriptures 5. That there are onely three Elements 6. The Content of the Heavens 7. That there are two first-born Elements 8. That Fire is not an Element 9. The Errour of Paracelsus touching the matter of the Heaven 10. A Quaternary of Elements for the mixtures of Bodies and for Diseases falls to the ground 11. A Proposition that all things which are believed to be mixt are materially of water onely with a mechanicall or handicraft demonstration 12. What the Elementall and Virgin Earth is 13. From whence the two Elements may be called the first-born 14. An objection from artificial things 15. The force of the artificial fire of Hell 16. Another
there is not a certain product like unto love wherewith a man being stricken or anointed may by so much profit by how much he is deadlily smitten by another product Whence it is manifest that that poyson however it be produced by anger and be mortall unto a man yet that doth not happen through any contrariety seeing that a direct contrary is wanting unto it which doth equivalently or equally help and promote the life even as this poyson hurts it And so if these kindes of poysons do act by reason of contrariety now the Maxim is false That so many wayes one contrary is said to be by how many wany wayes another is so said Therefore it hath now beensufficiently shewen that poysons indeed are made from the anger of Beasts but it doth not therefore follow that the poysonof a Plant if it act as was shewen above by reason of its own naturall endowment implantedin it by God and not by reason of any contrariety that the poyson of bruit Beasts is more capable of contrariety than that of other Simples Otherwise the same thing is wholly to be judged concerning the poysons of those that have the art of poysoning Sorceresses c. For although they are compounded and given to the drinker to hurt the minde yet those do operate either naturally and so without an intention of contrariety or fight or they operate by the power of the Devil which is either solitary or singly alone and so is truly a hostile effect because from the evill Spirit an enemy or naturall And then not by the force of contrariety or fight but onely by the unfolding of its naturall endowment The which I have already shewen above to be void of contentious contrariety Furthermore through occasion of these things the efficacy of poyson prepared by animosity is to be explained it is known to the common people That the bloud of a Bull doth strangle him that drinks it but not the bloud of an Oxe or Cow And that thing I have elsewhere referred to the fury of the Bull with the desire of a dying revenge after the manner of Serpents But a Hog although he perish with anger perhaps therefore God forbad the bloud of living Creatures under pain of indignation yet that is done with a fear of death But the Bull is struck with so great a fury that he suffers no apprehension of death And so although his bloud be poysonsom yet not his flesh Because his fury approaching nigh unto death hath not space enough to defile his flesh But a mad Dog because he was a good while mad before death doth also infect his flesh Therefore fearfull Animalls as the Mouse Toad c. do centrally besprinkle their fleshes and bones with a certain fear Even as I have demonstrated elsewhere in the Plague-grave But hitherto hath that Maxim regard Morta la bestia morto il veleno The Beast being dead his poyson is kill'd which surely hath place in a poysonsom living Creature because between while he burns with a fury of revenge In brief if the vertues and endowments of Simples be adverse to us that proceedeth from Divine Ordination but net from the Idea or Image of revenge or hostile contrariety For these do far differ from each other to be contrary to any thing and to have hurtfull endowments in nature For truly this proves Gods order and variety of powers appointed in nature But that declareth Hostility an enemy to God and nature therefore they differ in their end That is in the institution and direction of God in nature which is in the order intention ordination and so in the whole scope of the minde of God according to which I consider contrarieties in Bruits and in Man and not in other Simples and least of all in the Elements And therefore to conclude the question is not here about a name if I shall overthrow the contrarieties of Elements and their fights and successive courses of Complexions in things falsly believed to be mixt even as also whatsoever hath from these Suppositions been hitherto pratled in the behalf of life a Disease Death and Remedies CHAP. XXIV The Blas of Man 1. The errour of the Schooles about the first Moover 2. Aristotle contradicteth himself 3. Blasphemy in a Christian 4. An errour hath slown from Science Mathematicall badly appropriated 5. The Blas of man doth imitate the flowing of the Stars 6. When our Blas doth go before and when it followes the Blas of the Stars 7. Why the Blas of Bruits goes before that of the Stars 8. A voluntary Blas is not annexed to the Stars 9. A twofold Blas in us 10. Whence unsensitive things are moved 11. Galen resisteth Aristotle in the Pulses 12. He sought into the measurings of pulses but not into the efficient cause 13. The use of the pulses with Galen 14. A third use unknown to Galen 15. The consideration of the Authour 16. That a cooling refreshment is not the end of pulses 17. Some suppositions 18. None hath treated concerning life 19. Contradictories concerning the fire of the heart 20. Whether a pulse be for the procuring of Colds sake 21. Why the pores in the inclosure of the heart are triangular 22. Wherein the venall bloud and the arteriall bloud do differ 23. The sensitive soul is the framer of pulses 24. To what end the motion of the heart is 25. The absurdities of the Schooles concerning radicall heat 26. The motion of the heart cannot be judged to be for cooling refreshment sake 27. Why a Feverish pulse is swiftly moved 28. A Thorn in the finger teacheth that from the swiftness of the pulse heat is increased but not cold 29. Five chief ends of the pulses 30. How the kindling and enlightning property of fieryness do differ 31. That the Spirit of the bloud is not from the Liver 32. It is a rotten Doctrine which confoundeth the ends of pulses with breathing 33. The necessities of pulses have been hitherto unknown 34. The use of the pulses hath respect unto the digestive Ferment 35. The sluggishness of the Schooles about these things 36. Why healthy Sailers are more hungry than themselves not sailing 37. The Air cannot nourish the spirit of life 38. An Alcali is formed by burning up 39. The wonderfull Coal of Honey and divers speculations of Chymistry are cleared up 40. The Common-wealth of Alcalies 41. The fabrick of the Balsam Samech of Paracelsus 42. An Alcali is made volatile and so interchangeably under the same formall property of a composed Body 43. Of the labour of wisdom 44. An Handicraft Operation of distilled Vinegar 45. Some Handricraft Operations of Chymistry are re-taken for the finishing of the venall bloud without a dreg 46. A new and unheard of use of the pulses 47. There is an unwonted pulse from the part grieving through a Thorn 48. Pus or corrupt matter being made why Sumptomes wax milde 49. Whence the hardness of an Artery may straightway be made 50. What a hard
so to be pressed together that the whole Arterie should wholly rush or fall down on it self perhaps therefore it is not unjustly cloathed with a double and harder coat For the discontinuance of that light is the cause that in one moment every chief faculty of the Brain in those that are hanged doth perish But not that the Spirit had so quickly vanished from the Brain Again if a pulsative motion should not be made a deadly cold would straightway arise and we should be more cold than a Frog So that although many things do live in the Winter time without breathing under the Clay yet not without a pulse Also the Ferment of the left bosome doth transchange its own arterial bloud not without a slow delay and would send it thorow the Body every way too slowly and therefore it should not satisfie the importunate necessities of the Spirits For let us feign a Bottle seasoned with an Odour but to be filled with Liquor up to its half For that Liquor shall scarce snatch the Odour of the Bottle but if it be shaken together that Odour also doth presently insinuate it self through the least parts of the Liquor So indeed is the vitall Ferment of the left bosom presently given to the Arterial bloud by the motion of the heart and doth compel it also to a hasty obedience of its own Impression For light is easily kindled by light and therefore also the Arteriall bloud being now quickned it easily snatcheth to it the light of that Sunny Lamp and is brought into a Skyie or Aiery off-spring Therefore the Blas of the heart is the Fewel of the vitall Spirit and consequently of its heat but the Spirit being thus enlivened is the mover of the heart almost neglected in the Schooles Also by consequence that motion is made for a necessary heat in Sunny constituted Animals and for the framing of Spirit in them Therefore I may not believe that the Pulse is appointed for a requisite cooling refreshment of the heart For truly things that have life do not war under the deadly Ensigns of cold neither do they intend or hearken to cold but onely do meditate on vitall things Indeed cold in us is a token because a Companion of death And therefore whatsoever it should attempt in the Fountain of life it should intend a taking away of life as also it should be destructive to our Monarchy so far is it that cold should be for necessity and co-temperaments sake For without a Pulse heat is not over-much kindled but straightway also life remaining heat dies For the Schooles being deceived do thus judge they thinking Elementary fire to be for the composition of Bodies and that fire in its heightned degree without which its fire ceaseth to be fire doth consist in the heart and that indeed Kitchin fire seeing else a ridiculous fire is to be far fetched from the concave of the Moon otherwise it should not by a loosed Bridle slide downwards safe at the pleasure of inferiour Bodies and contrary to its own disposition thorow so many colds of the Air unto the ordinary constitution of Simples And so if the Schooles had instead of radicall heat understood a fire feigned to be under the circle of the Moon they should improperly say that the same doth onely subsist in us as it were the Torch of radicall moysture Seeing else they dream that the fiery Element which they rashly feign doth alike unwisely live without a necessity and consuming of nourishment Therefore the Schooles do understand that there is in the heart a kindled Kitchinary and smoakie fire and that it is hot in a great degree and so that unless it be tempered by a continuall blast of new Air and all the smoakiness raised up by this fire be fanned out there is danger of choaking burning up and enflaming For so false authorities do bring forth false positions and through the ignorance of causes the speculations of healing have perished Truly in my judgement the Schooles ought at least to have remembred that the very blowing of the Bellowes doth not refresh or cool the fire but rather enflame it Neither do I see by what reason the motion of living Creatures may be the cause of their cooling refreshment In the next place I know that fire is in no wise to be joyned to the other Elements being divided by their least parts but that in an instant it is exstinguished I know also that its impossible that fire should be able to exist which is not truly fire and hot in the highest degree And so that if nature should attempt refreshment or cooling by a Pulse its endeavour should be foolish vain and impossible Whence a horrible thing followes that God in the ends proposed to himself hath actually erred Therefore let the Schooles repent But besides there ought to be a speedy transmutation of venall bloud into arteriall bloud and of this into vitall Spirit least that after faintings and tremblings of the heart under which are made most speedy divisions and scatterings of those Spirits so that the little pits of the small Pox or measills before not to be beheld do straightway appear as it were a necessitated death do invade Therefore aid was not to be fetched from far and to be deferred which his speedily required Indeed this is the reason why in a Fever the Pulse is swifter but not an expelling of smoakiness nor a greediness of cooling refreshment For truly let a Thorn be put in the loose or fleshy top of the finger there is presently a hard strong and more swift pulse but afterwards for the increase of the Pulse there is every where presently an increase of heat but not of cold and indeed as well before as without the births of smoakie vapours And then at the beginnings of intermitting Fevers after some houres and as long as the cold is delayed the Pulse is little slow deep or depressed yet putrefaction is kindled if the Schooles have spoken truth and therefore also the present smoakie vapour in the Schooles is the cause of the fit and they do thirst greatly in their cold and vomit up yellow choler Therefore also there ought to be a most frequent pressing together of the Pulse and the whole Pulse to be most exceeding swift Especially because many dying in those Fevers do perish in the cold a little before the Feverish fit through a great want of the Spirits and being as it were choaked But in troublesome heats also in an Erisipelas the burning Coal or Fever the Persick fire c. the vitall Spirit being incensed and as it were provoked to anger by the diseasifying cause waxeth exceeding hot as appeareth in the aforesaid locall also burning Inflammations whereas otherwise a temperate lightsome kindling doth on every side shine forth under a vitall Harmony yea that a little before death or sounding the horny membrane of the Eye is seen to be deprived of light the fire being not before in a burning
rage Furthermore the transmutation of the Arterial bloud into Spirit which is begun in the heart is ripened in the current of the Arteries or stomach of the heart Neither therefore is it a wonder that in the Spleen abounding with so many Arteries a Ferment and the first motions of the heart are established instead of a stomach the mentall and sensitive Souls being indeed Saturns Kingdoms For the digestion of the heart is with a full transmutation of the arteriall Bloud into Spirit without a dreg and smoakiness Because it is that which neither containeth filths nor admits of diversities of kinde neither doth the Spirit the Son of heat degenerate by reason of heat Indeed it is the immediate operation of the sensitive Soul alwayes univocall or single like to it self and to life for the life that is uttered by vitall motions Therefore the chief aims of the Pulses are 1. A bringing of the venall bloud from the bosom of the hollow vein unto the left womb of the heart 2. An increase of heat 3. A framing of arterial bloud 4. And again a producing of vitall Spirit 5. And then there hath been another ultimate aim of Pulses to wit that the original life residing in the implanted Spirit of the heart may be participated of Therefore I will repeat what I have said elsewhere To wit that some Forms do glister as in Stones and Mineralls but some moreover do shine by an increased light as in Plants but others are also lightsome or full of light as in things soulified And so a vitall lightsomness is granted to the vitall Spirit by a kindling not indeed of fieriness but of enlightning and specificall or differing by its particular kindes So indeed Fishes do not live more unhappily are more straightly and lively and longer moved than hot bruit Beasts The Schooles in the room of those things which I have already demonstrated do suppose the bloud in the Liver to receive the nature of a Spirit which perhaps they therefore call naturall To wit such an Air as is wholly in all juyces of Herbs and from hence at length they will have the vitall Spirit to be immediately bred and made But I do from elsewhere derive the Spirit and from a far more noble race But whether the Schooles or I do more rightly phylosophize let the Reader judge who now drinks down both Doctrines together he being at least mindefull of that which I am straightway to say to wit that sometimes the whole arterial bloud and the nourishable Liquor created from thence or the nearest nourishment of the solid parts are at length dispersed by the transpirative evaporation of the Body without any dregs or remainder of a dead head And therefore that the Reader may from thence think that the arterial bloud is of it self inclined that it may sometimes be made Spirit which is not equally presumed of the vapour of the venall bloud For therefore they have been ignorant that the whole bloud of the Arteries is often turned into a spiritual vapour or vitall Spirit But the venall bloud if it be changed in our Glasses by a gentle luke-warmth into a vapour it leaves a thick substance and at length a Coal in the bottom Therefore the Doctrine of the Schooles is far remote from the knowledge of the Spirits who think the vitall Spirits to be framed of a vapour or watery exhalation for they have neglected in this vapour of the venal bloud how of bread and water and venal bloud prepared thence not indeed a watery exhalation as they think but a Salt and enlightned Spirit is stirred up and its heat not onely made hot but also making hot For no Authour hath hitherto diligently searched into that vitall light whereby the Spirit is enlightned and is after a sort made hot So that the Life Light Form and sensitive Soul are as it were made one thing Again the rotten Doctrine of the Schooles confoundeth the ends of Pulses and breathing To wit that Breathing is made for the nourishment of the vital spirit the life of the fire which they will have to be nourished with aire the cooling refreshment of the heart and expelling of smoaky vapours For they intend or incline to nourish the vitall heat and coolingly to refresh or to diminish it which things how they can agree together let others shew I am willingly ignorant thereof at least in the greatest want of vital spirit and while the increase thereof is chiefly desired then indeed there is the least and slowest elevation of the Arterie And on the other hand while the Spirit aboundeth there is the greatest elevation of the Artery I confesse indeed that breathing is drawn by the bridles of the Will or by the instruments of voluntary motion but the Pulse not so But seeing that a sound breast may satisfie by its breathings the ends of the Pulses the Pulse should not therefore be necessary as long as any one is cold and his breathing doth sufficiently inspire But seeing notwithstanding in the mean time the Pulse doth not therefore pause surely there must needs be one cause or necessity of the Pulses and another cause or necessity of breathing For we percieve the necessities of breathing we also do measure our breathing at our pleasure and some can wholly press it together or suppress it in themselves But why do we not feel the more vitall and no less urgent necessities of the Pulses Chiefly seeing it is the life that is the Original of sensibility which alone indeed doth feel all its own necessity and doth alone exclude us from every act of feeling Wherefore hence I conjecture that there are other necessities unknown to the antients I know indeed that from the Arterial bloud and from the vital spirit there are no dregs filths or superfluities expelled as I shall shew in its place but that smoaky vapours are wanting where there is no adultion but that the venal bloud in the wasting of it self by the voluntary guidance of heat doth produce a Gas as water doth a vapour or exhalation And that that Gas which the Schools do signifie to be the spirit of the Liver or natural spirit of the venal bloud is subsequently of necessity expelled it remains without controversie For otherwise a man being almost killed with cold should the sooner wax hot again if he should for some hours hold his breath understand it if the breath should be drawn for cooling refreshment notwithstanding neither indeed in that state doth he notably stop his breath upon pain of death Also a fish wants Lungs and breathing for the bubbles which do sometimes belch forth are blasts of ventosities of digestion but not breathings But Frogs and Sea-monsters that utter a voice have little Bellows which perform the office of Lungs yet Fishes are not colder than Frogs yea Frogs and Horse-leeches are preserved under the mud all the Winter from corruption and do live without breaching yet not without a Pulse Therefore there is one
in swiftness greatness which is abusive As also that the air should keep the quality of a cooling refreshment undefiled being introduced by little and little through so many windings of the Arteries In the next place neither should the Artery draw the air that the vital spirit may take increase thereby Because with the consent of the Schools the vital spirit is not made of air but of the vapour of the venal bloud elaborated in the heart to the utmost and ennobled with a vital faculty And it is a dull affirmation which supposeth the vital spirit to be nourished by a simple Element Seeing we are nourished by the same things whereof we are generated Wherefore seeing the in-drawn aire is an elementary body it hath not the nature of a sanguine spirit as neither seeing the air can ever be made individual by a humane determination it shall not be able to nourish a composed body as I have taught in its place Moreover It alwayes keeps the properties of a universal Element but doth not attain the condition of an Archeus For the aire is neither akin to us nor is it capable of a vital light And therefore the Artery shall abhor a Forreigner neither doth it admit the air into its family before it be elaborated in due shops neither doth nature attempt any thing in vain as neither to prepare the aire that it may be made that toward which it plainly hath not a possible inclination otherwise the vital spirit should be made in vain through so many preparations of digestions long-windings and shops of the Bowels if by so light a breviary and without usury it may be ripened from without For this hath deceived the Schools that it hath hitherto been believed that fire is necessarily nourished by air Therefore also that vital spirit as the Authour of all our heat doth want for its food the Element of air But I have already cleered it up above that the fire is neither a substance nor that it is nourished by air Yea neither by a combustible matter unlesse that in hastening to the ends of its appointments it doth require an inflamable matter for its object but not for its nourishment Also for want of an object it perisheth in an instant when it hath attained the end of its appointments Because seeing it is neither a substance nor an accident it also perisheth for want of an object for that its own object is also its subject And so also that is a thing most singular to it and hitherto unknown Therefore the supposition of smoakie vapours standing the end ceaseth for which the outward Air should be drawn through the Skin into the Arteries the manner ceaseth and the possibility ceaseth Again if the Arterie sucks the Air by the Pulse it should indifferently suck and such an attraction should be promiscuously endemicall and so hurtfull which I have observed to be false by often experience Especially because that as oft as a forreign or strange Plague is contracted from without by the breathing the suiting or setling thereof is not made but nigh the stomach which thing is made manifest by the sense of the place anguishes vomiting sighs head-aches and doatages And so that part in us which feeleth and formeth the first motions of apprehensions doth also feel the first onsets of the Plague I grant indeed that the Plague is contracted by the contraction of a defiled matter and that forthwith the pain as it were of a pricking needle is felt But this doth not prove that therefore the sucking of the Air is made by the Arteries when as the poyson it self is apt to infect the skin and forthwith to burn it into an Eschar Surely it is a far different thing for the Pest to be drawn inwards by the Arteries or to be allured by sucking and another thing by force of its own contagion to creep inwards by touching as it were by the stroak of a Serpent for emplaisters Baths and Oils do alter the skin and consequently they do either proceed to alter or do draw from the Center to the skin but not because vapours fetched from thence are drawn materially inward Then at length the Pulse is not after the manner of breathing which by one sigh doth blow out whatsoever is of Air in the Breast but the motion of the Pulses is interrupted by an opposite and therefore the expiring motion is most frequent no lesse than the inspiring and those successive motions do so much hasten that if they had attracted any Air that should enter for a frustrate end seeing it would be knocked out in an instant For truly that which is nearer to the mouthes that should also first be blown out And so the Air should not have hope ever to be more thorowly admitted or that it should satisfie the cooling refreshment of the heart Lastly a generative faculty is wanting to the vital Spirit whereby it should bring the Air into Spirit by a formall transmutation Seeing that power belongs to the Ferment and Shops without which venal bloud is not made For neither can venal bloud generate venal bloud and the chyle of the stomach being granted to be in a Vein or Arterie venal bloud should not therefore ever be made thereby or arterial bloud Therefore the Air although it should be a fit Body yet it could not be made the nourishment of the vital Spirit unless it had first been elabourated in the heart being quickned and enlightned therein individually according to a humane Species all whereof do resist an Element Therefore the frivolous device is made void and the cooling refreshment of the heart by the attraction of Air inwards by the Arteries is feigned And the Load-stone of Man celebrated by Paracelsus is feigned Seeing the Arteries do not suck inwards and the Air so introduced should be for a greater load to the Arteries than the feigned smoakie vapour of the Schooles If therefore the Arteries do not draw Air certainly much lesse should flesh do that being an enemy wanting the hollowness of the Air For indeed that the Air is drawn from without unto the heart by the Arteries as well for its cooling refreshment as its nourishment and increase of the Spirit of the Archeus is nothing but a meer device So is the invention of the Schooles alike frivolous that the necessity alone of expulsing the smoakie vapour bred in the heart should depress the Arteries For truly in the foregoing Chapter I have already shewen at large that there are other aims of the Pulses For whatsoever is made in the heart is either a pure Being and a meer refined thing and vital For there is no adustion corrupt matter dryth nor efficient cause of smoakinesses For it is an unsavoury or foolish thing thus to have compared the Fabrick or frame of life to destroying fire that it must be feigned the arterial bloud there to be burnt to and to send forth smoakie Fumes For if any forreign vapours do sometimes besides
of all things as well in generation as in the transmutations of meats throughout the course of life which office doth properly respect the inbred or implanted spirit But now how and whence the spirit floating in the Arteries may be constituted by occasion of the Blas of man already described consequently I have undertaken to explain in this path their Office and Properties The Schools teach That nourishments are first changed into Chyle and then into digested juice and venal bloud and so that a certain naturall spirit is made in the Liver which afterward by a repeated digestion of the heart is changed into vital and at length is in the Brain made animal or sensitive so as that the natural spirit is ordained for nourishing of the parts but the vital for the preserving of the same and the animal for the functions of sense motion and the soul But I think it hath been far otherwise Phylosophized and farther proceeded For they had known out of Hippocrates That a certain spirit is that thing which causeth violence or maketh the assaults But it was not sufficient to know that there is a certain Spirit to have told by what instruments it should be made or what it might act unlesse they should explain also the disposition substance and properties of the same together with the manner of its making I have elsewhere delivered That of any plant and fruit a ferment being applyed Aqua vitae or a water of life may be made which thing seeing it is commonly known while out of Grains Hydromel or Water and Honey and juices it frameth a water of life The Proposition needs no demonstration But Aqua vitae is a volatile Liquor Oylie as it is wholly enflamed and wholly Salt as being sharp biting as being detained the longer in the mouth it burns the upper skin of the gums and lips and is one and the same simple thing and so it containeth two only and not the three Chymical Beginnings So indeed That according to the will of the Artificer the whole Aqua vitae may be made Salt or Oyl that is That those Beginnings are not Beginnings not constant things but changeable at the will of man But the Wine as to its Winie part contains a spirit answering to Aqua vitae For this is searched through the Arteries of the stomack unto the head without the maturities of other shops So that if more wine be in the stomack than is meet drunkennesse follows as the spirit of the wine doth flow more largely into the head than that by a fit space or interval it can be changed by an individuating humane limitation For from hence the changing and likewise the operation of the ferment is manifest Notwithstanding in Wine that spirit is milder than Aqua vitae which is drawn forth by distillation which thing appears from the like in Oyl of Olives For the Oyl which they call Oyl of Tiles or Bricks or Olem Phylosophorum being distilled doth far differ from the Oylinesse which is drawn out of simple Oyl by digestion only with the circulated Salt of Paracelsus for that circulated Salt is seperated the same in vertue and weight after it hath divided the oyl of Olives into its diversities of parts For a sweet and twofold Oyl is seperated out of oyl of Olives even as a most sweet spirit out of wine being far severed from the tartnesse of Aqua vitae Whence I have learned by consequence That whatsoever is distilled only by fire doth far recede from the vertues of the composed body But in us although meat doth putrifie after its own manner to wit if that putrefaction be a mean of transchanging a thing into a thing yet in our digestions by that putrefaction I speak of the action of the ferment of the stomack Aqua vitae is not extracted out of Potherbs Graines Apples or Pulses For truly the intention of nature is not then to procreate an Aqua vitae and there is one ferment in us whereby things are resolved into Chyle and another whereby things do send forth an Aqua vitae or a water of Life out of themselves For while herbs do putrifie in water through a ferment the stalk stumps or stocks and leaves do remain whole in their antient figure and hardness for the extraction of Aqua vitae which being eaten by us are turned into Chyle and loose their first face Wherefore I have comprehended as many varieties of putrefactions and as many dungs of one bread different in the particular kind as there are particular kinds of living creatures nourished by bread Yea further far more ferments of bread because bread doth putrifie as yet by more means as well of its own accord as from an appointment But what is spoken of bread as much is said of other meats The Schools indeed knew That nothing doth profit us which should not contain a Beginning or Essay of life in its root and so therefore they do admit of the air for the increase of spirit being deceiued by the Lessons of Poets who call them Vitall airs to wit they would have in the venal bloud a spirit of the Liver naturally actually to be and to glister like air For they thought it to be a vapour being ignorant that a vapour is never made an uncoagulable Gas an air sky or wild exhalation but that it alwayes remains water Therefore they thought a vapour exhaling from the venal bloud hunted outwards even as out of a certain luke-warm Liquor should be that spirit of the venal bloud whence vital spirit should be materially framed But surely the venal bloud as long as it flowes in the vessels of the Mesenterie and Port vein is void of spirit Wherefore it being also called out by laaxtive Medicines it is voided forth stinking without any notable token of weaknesse which comes not so to passe if it hath once well touched at the hollow vein Because then the venal bloud is Homogeneally or after one and the same kind sealed in its entrance that it may be made the bloud of the Artery and spirit and therefore it is in the Holy Scriptures indifferently with the Arterial blood called a Red spirit in which the Soul inhabits Although that be properly understood of the Arterial bloud Because the Scripture is there speaking of men stabbed or slain whose venal bloud is poured out together with their arterial bloud I shall at sometime teach concerning digestions that whatsoever is made or composed in the stomack that doth wax soure there by a ferment also Sugar it self not indeed with a sournesse or sharpness of Vinegar Oyl of unripe Olives Citron or Vitriol but by its own like ferment and with a specifical sowrenesse although it symbolizeth or coagreeth with other sowre things in that which is sowre Yet the sharpnesse is diverse from them all by an internall power And that sowreness of meats is perfectly volatile Neither doth that hinder that the Chyle in Youths doth assume the
fixednesse of a bone as also in the fractures of bones For the Chyle of the stomack is the same after growth as it was in a Youth But all that is at length discussed without any remainder of it self it again retakes the nature of a bone in a callous concretion in the solidness of fractures And therefore for that very cause all Chyle is volatile and thus far it sometimes doth assume the disposition of spirit in the venal bloud Not indeed because there is a natural spirit in it and diverse from the venal bloud but rather because the whole venal bloud hath obtained a spiritual Character in the promise John 5. The water the bloud and the spirit are one But I will teach concerning digestions after what sort that sowreness in the Chyle may be transchanged into a volatile Salt whose excrementitious part is banished with Urine and Sweats But the very Masse of venal bloud through the fermental virtue of the heart and assistance of the Pulses doth passe over into Arterial bloud of yellow looking reddish whence it is made vital spirit And so is not the air or vapour of the venal bloud but the venal bloud it self is brought into arterial bloud and from thence at length into vital spirit For the Office of the Liver is univocal and is called Sanguification but not the creation of spirit which do differ far from each other For neither do so many and so diverse Offices belong to one bowel especially because the rude heap of venal bloud is not yet a fit seminary for the spirits For it is sufficient for the Liver being enriched with so few Arteries and a communion of life that it performeth a true transmutation of the Chyle into venal bloud and a true generation of a new Being But in the heart as it were the fountain of life it is first of all meditated concerning vital Beginnings For the Venal bloud is there extenuated into Arterial bloud and vital air which two are wholly perfected by one only action according to the more ready and slow obedience of the venal bloud For the venal bloud is made with the in-thickning of the Chyle or Cream therefore by the separation of the liquid excrement or urine But the spirit is made with the attenuating or making thin of that which is in-thickned Both which actions so opposite do not therefore agree with one Liver But if the Schools will have a natural spirit to have fore-existed in meats but to have received a perfection in the Liver But yet it easily expires in things boyled cocted and roasted And if any doth by chance remain that spirit is not the hepatical or Liverie one of our Family Goverment I confesse indeed that the Spirit of wine is the spirit of Vegetables and is easily snatched into the Arteries as it were a simple Resembler previously disposed that it may easily passe over into vital spirit But from thence the Schools do frame nothing for their spirit of the Liver For the Spirit of wine is immediately snatched into the Arteries out of the stomack without digestion Neither is it taken as a vital companion by the degree of venal bloud it is also easily from thence gathered that the vital spirit doth not presuppose a natural one And what I have said is manifest For truly they which suffer fainting or trembling of the heart do presently and immediately feel the spirit of wine to be admitted into the fellowship of life for neither then also are they made drunk by much wine abundantly drunken Otherwise Wine being as yet corporally existing within the stomack drunkenness doth not from elsewhere proceed than because the winie spirit is abundantly snatched into the heart and head and there breeds a confusion of the fore-existing spirits it self being a stranger not yet polished in the shop of the heart Therefore the venal blood it selfe let it be the spirit of the Liver corporal coagulated into a matter and subjected to a vital Goverment with me it may be so so that we understand it Rhetorically to wit the venal bloud it self to be an object capable and a matter that it may thereby be made Spirit And in speaking Phylosophically or properly there is no spirit in the venal bloud made for it self by the Liver because the labour of Sanguification seperation of the Liquor Latex Urine and Sweat doth employ the Liver to wit while those do most swiftly pass thorow the slender Flood-gates of small veins For the venal bloud although it received an entrance of it self in the Meseraick veins yet the true generation of the same is made also the endowments of small threds and coagulation under the most swift passage together with its Whey through the small Trunks of a hairy slendernesse But if also the generation of spirit doth moreover employ the Liver Truly besides the vain generation of the same the Liver is to prostrate it self like an Asse with too much fardle and plurality of offices And it is sufficient for the venal bloud that being made a Citizen of the veins it doth partake of life and be illustrated with a vital light Therefore even as by the ferment and labour of the heart the venal bloud is made arterial bloud and volatile spirit So a ferment the Vicar of the heart being drawn from the arteries they are also made so volatile that after their consumings they leave no remaining lees that do go forth with a totall transpiration of themselves Therefore the heart doth frame out of the venal bloud arterial bloud which it fitteth and extenuateth by the same endeavour and makes so much vital Spirit in the arterial bloud as the groseness of the venal bloud and the resisting substance of the same doth permit in so little a space wherein it is agitated and shaken together within the bosoms of the heart yea indeed neither is it enough to have known the venal bloud to be Spirit also to be brought over into arterial bloud and to grant a vital Spirit by whose favour it may be informed by the minde and be made animate and from hence at length to be translated into the bosoms or stomachs of the Brain there to receive the various limitation of Characters So that it is made motive in the thorny marrow or Spina Medullae as we have seen in the Shops optical or of the sight which if they are through some errour brought to the tongue they are plainly unprofitable for tasting Wherefore it comes to passe that oft-times the fingers are benummed some moveable part looseth its sense being left either feeling or motion for that the parts are bedewed with a strange and wandring Spirit For the Authours of touchings are unfit for motion and those of this likewise for them But moreover it behoveth to have known the disposition of the vital Spirit For truly it will sometime sufficiently appear that of soure Chyle partly venal bloud and partly salt Urine and the excrements are made But that that excrementitious
saltness is a volatile and salt Spirit which being co-fermented with Earth doth at length in part assume the nature of Salt-peter The venal bloud also doth by distillation afford this salt spirit plainly volatile and not any thing distinguishable from the spirit of Urine Yet I have considered that they both do differ in this essential property that the spirit of the Salt of venal bloud doth cure the falling-evill even of those of ripe age the spirit of the salt of Urine not so Therefore it is manifest that in the Venal blood a salt and volatile spirit is contained But after what manner all the venal bloud may be transchanged by the ferment of the heart into spirit without a diversity of kind as much as may be said I have explained in the Treatise of Long Life Because otherwise Natures are not to be demonstrated from a former Cause as neither the operations of Ferments because they are essentiall causes for the transmutations of things Therefore the vital spirit is saltish and therefore Balsamical and a preserver from corruption and that not so much by reason of the salt as in respect of a light conceived in its own Salt And so neither can air be made the addition or nourishment thereof For although the Aqua vitae be easily assumed into vital spirit yet this is not oylie and combustible but the spirit of wine onely by the touching of a ferment doth easily ascend wholly into a saltish volatile nature forthwith assoon as it looseth its oylie or enflamable property Even as I have taught by Handicraft operation in the Treatise of Duelech To wit after what manner at one onely instant Aqua vitae may be truly changed into a yellow gobbet or lump not inflamable which thing doth more evidently happen to Aqua vitae by a saltish vital Ferment Therefore the Spirit of Wine is straightway snatched into the heart without delay or by a further digestion through the Arteries of the stomach and restoreth the strength because it is by small labour perfected in the heart yet we must not think that the vital Spirit is soure because the Spirit of Salt-peter is pleasingly sharp and is made at length of the Spirit of Urine Because the Spirit from whence Salt-peter is coagulated in the Earth was not soure or sharp while it was the Spirit of Urine Therefore the vitall Spirit is Salt not soure for that which is sharp out of the stomach is an enemy to the whole Body being nearer to the Spirit of Urine than to Salt-peter and it is as yet much more divers from the Spirit of Salt-peter by the adustion and co-mingling of the adjunct with the thing extracted But they do easily perceive the saltness of the vital Spirit who have had some stupid member which by degrees receiving touching doth suffer pricking and stingings which are the true tokens of saltness Indeed the saltness of the Spirit may be known but the light of the same proceeding immediately and fountainously from the Father of Lights doth drive away all further search of mortall men Furthermore that the whole venal bloud is a meer Salt it desires not more strongly to be proved than because the whole venal bloud is in Ulcers the dropsie Ascites c. homogeneally made a Liquor by an immediate degeneration For the venal bloud is intensly red but it growes yellow while it is made arterial bloud because redness waxeth yellow when it is as it were dissolved by a volatile Salt It is as yet a dead thing whatsoever I have spoken of hitherto The vital Spirit performs the offices of life But the famous top of life is not proper to a Liquor or exhalation as they are Salt things And that the life of things may live it ought of necessity to have a Light from the Father of Lights Therefore it behoveth that the Spirit or vital Skie or Air be enlightned with a Light simply vital not indeed universal but specifical and individuating Nor also with a fiery burning enfiaming light and conspicuous by concentred beames But it is a formal light of the condition of a sensitive Soul In which word the descriptions and further diligent searches of mortal men are stayed to which end imagine thou that Glow-worms have a light in their belly a little before night as also bubbles of the Sea have a night brightness and very many things which through purrifying do proceed into the last matter of Salts yet vital and that which is extinguished together with their life Suppose thou a certain a like light to be in the spirit of life which as long as it liveth shineth and when it forsaketh the eyes of one dying they appear horny and made clean And that light is now and then extinguished the material vital Spirit being as yet safe in the Plague poyson sounding c. yet thou mayst not think that the like essence of light is in us and Glow-worms that indeed lights do differ onely in the tone or tenor of degrees But in very deed there are as many particular kindes of vital lights as there are of Creatures that have life And that is an abundant token of divine bounty that there are as many particular kindes of Lights which are comprehended in us under one onely notion and word and that there are as many vital differences as there are Species of vital things because that those lights are the very lives Souls and Forms of vital things themselves yet I except the immortal minde while I treat of frail lights although it self also be a certain incomprehensible light and so by the same Lights themselves is the alone and every distinction of particular kindes Therefore the Father of Lights delighteth in the unutterable abundance of generall kindes of Lights with a far greater bounty than in fashioning almost infinite varieties in one onely humane countenance For there is with himself a certain Common-wealth of Lights and a Legion of unmemorable Citizens a certain likeness whereof he expresseth by the Forms of vital things in the sublunary World Therefore the vitall Spirit is arterial bloud resolved by the Ferment of the heart into a salt Air and enlightned by life which light is in us hot of the nature of the Sun and is cold in a Fish neither doth it ever aspire unto any power of heat wherefore our heat is not a consumer of the Original moisture even as concerning long life seeing fishes have not hitherto escaped death Neither could the first men who before the floud saw a thousand Solar years have had more radical moisture by ten fold than us unless they had had all things ten fold more extended which is an impertinent thing For truly it is probable that Adam being formed by the hand of God obtained the most exceeding perfect Stature of the Lord Jesus Christ neither to have exceeded the same Lastly Fishes should naturally be immortall under the frozen Sea seeing their radical moisture should not there evaporate by heat
importunity of a morsel or pertinacy of a draught seeing it can scarce endure that any thing should hang above over it in the throat Although in sick folks and those that have suffered hunger or want its opening doth happen with pain and great anguish because in the same persons that closure of the Orifice doth depend on an inordinacy Therefore the closure of the Pylorus is more obstinate and exact than that of the Orifice Again it is not to be doubted that the motive faculty of either part doth not obey the will and so that it is naturall or diseasie The Pylorus is said in the Schools to be subject to the retentive faculty But certainly it sheweth an absolute power when as the expulsive faculty being against it the digestive failing the attractive loathing and so others being trodden underfoot the Pylorus is oft-times stubborn as well in its closure as I have said above to happen in Fevers as in its opening as in Caeliack passions For vomiting is made while the Pylorus being shut it doth contract it self upwards not indeed by the co-wrinckling of the stomach but by a totall motion of the stomach upwards to the throat and so the Pylorus doth command vomiting and hearkeneth not unto the retentive faculty Seeing therefore the power of the Pylorus is not the Chamber-maid of other faculties nor subjected to fibers but Monarchal and so that the fibers ought to yield obedience to its very pleasure It must needs be that this power is absolutely vital and that it hath a proper motive Blas like the womb independent on the will of man And that so much the more potent a one by how much the Duumvirate of the stomach shall now come to light And although the Pylorus be wearied oft-times by external and occasional causes to wit from Medicines Poysons or Dregs yet its Blas is free unto its self which is implanted in its part or Archeus Wherein notwithstanding I admire a certain power from above like unto the influences of the Stars For the Blas of the Pylorus doth as near as may be express the Blas of a free will for truly an external inciter rushing on it it can nevertheless at pleasure oppose as to shutting or opening that as long as the Pylorus is well in health or able it may be moved for lawful ends or at leastwise those that appear so to it for the straightning or loosening of the passage Yet when a man being inordinate doth transgress against those ends the Pylorus as the Governour or orderer of digestion doth oftentimes constrain the man to expiate his ofence by punishing him But seeing there may be defects in that Blas in some sort as it were an arbitrall one not onely from occasional causes but also in its own motive mad principle so that through fury it doth preposterously open or shut it self freely like the womb Surely it is a wonder that these things with the other beginnings of healing have stood neglected by the Schools Every power and especially the motive doth easily wander abroad being stirred up as well by contingent causes as by a proper beck of madness seeing they are free and as it were independent in the errour of which motive power the Pylorus doth for the most part and easily stumble Even as the womb not being shaken from elsewhere doth rush it self headlong ascend or being furious doth writhe it self on the sides doth alienate straighten enlarge contract the throat weasand yea and the sinews readily serving the will against their office and doth now and then exhibite cruel motions scarce unlike to magical ones as the motive Blas is excentrical in stirring up divers Tragedies of Tempests And these things are diligently to be attended by Physitians that as oft as through occasion of the provoking cause the Pylorus doth wander from its aims he may straightway study a removing of the cause But if the Pylorus be exorbitant through the errour as it were the fury of its own proper Blas let him think that he must fight with excentrical powers and not with matter and least of all that evacuations must be trusted to For we may think that in a temperate state a man having eaten moderately his Pylorus is suitably shut least any thing do drop down out of his chinks and that at length digestion being finished the Pylorus doth open it self Surely neither doth this come to passe from a forreign pricking quality of the Chyle but because the Pylorus is expert of things to be done in the stomach and therefore is to be reckoned the moderator of digestion by whom indeed are the bounds of Government and the Keyes are kept For otherwise if the Pylorus be shut longer than is meer seeing that which was sufficiently digested doth not therefore cease to undergoe a further force of the digestive ferment therefore also it is cocted more than is meet Not indeed that the Chyle is therefore more excellently cocted like Glasse in the Furnace by how much the longer but through too much delay it is alienated and corrupted which afterwards must needs bring forth very many difficulties as well in the stomach as in its own neighbouring parts Notwithstanding if the Pylorus be lesse exactly shut surely the new drink cannot but be together with its former crudities carried into the Bowels about which surely since the digestion of the stomach is not employed a ferment of the Gaul being received it is changed into a strange substance and at length doth procreate divers Infirmities in the veins because the first digestion being omitted it is come to the second For so inspired tremblings and shakings of the hands beatings of the heart faintings sharp Fevers Tumors and joynt-sicknesses do break out So the tartness of Wine being not yet corrected by the first maturity of digestion being a stranger to the veins with the Aqua vitae inbred in it doth cause the proper nourishment of the veins to degenerate with it self and an unnamed and unknown guest doth bring forth unwonted and unknown infirmities Even as for the most part if the Chyle being well ripened doth slide down into the Duodenum and at the same instant new food be injected from above be sure that the Pylorus being well appointed is presently shut the former baggage being not yet plainly dismissed Therefore the detained part of the Chyle is corrupted doth wax sour more than is meet and defileth the new food with a fore-ripe ferment And the whole Chyle is made a forreigner unless that before an exact coction it be banished by the Pylorus which is by exciting divers appetites wringings and Fluxes Therefore the errour of Pylorus whether it be proper or stirred up from inordinacy doth cause many difficulties But that new food sliding in the Pylorus is presently closed it is manifest for else the new and raw food should slide forth together with the Chyle which should appear in the excrement as if it were bred from the affect of the passion
they nill they they have made all that common to the Stomach So as Cardiogmus or the griping biting of the heart Cardialgia or the pain of the heart have been withdrawn from the Stomach by a transchangeative and borrowed name and likewise swoonings faintings and epileptical insults or fits of the Falling sickness and those things which do seem to carry the Rains of life do take their original from the mouth of the Stomach For in bloud-letting that is daily seen wherein very often presently after a Vein is opened giddinesses of the Head and likewise dulnesses and obscurings of the sight are manifestly felt to spring from the Stomach and to cease again as oft as the finger is laid upon the opened Vein and it being removed from thence the same Sumptoms are again felt to arise from the Stomach and to be stirred up from thence Again the Authority of the Word confirmeth my Paradox in the entrance while it asketh What Cogitations have ascended unto your heart It doth not say they descend unto your heart As neither what Cogitations are bred or do arise from your heart For therefore also many times the Stomach is called by the name of the heart when as Adulteries and sins are reckoned to arise from the heart For every Cogitation in its first Original ought to spring from elsewhere than in the heart For the Pulse and vehement and uncessant motion of the heart would have forbid that thing Because that Cogitation or thinking ought to be made in rest or quiet As oft therefore as Cogitation is attributed to the heart that manner of speaking is according to the acceptation of the vulgar by taking the heart for the Seat of the Soul And although the necessity of Seeds in Plants do tend further unto a multiplicity of Functions and consequently also doth proceed into the diversities of kindes of parts yet the vegetative power doth not therefore depart out of its antient and vegetal Bride-bed wherein it hath once fixt its Seat neither doth it wander or divide it self by reason of the dispersing of the Kitchins That thing happens after a more formal and manifest manner after that the disposition of the Seed hath adorned a Beast-like figure and hath ordained a variety of members For then the sensitive and motive Soul is given and it is not stablished in any other place than in the Root wherein it afterwards prepareth all Fewel or nourishment for it self Indeed in speaking properly and understanding distinctly there is not a certain vegetative Soul in Plants or bruit Beasts but there is a certain vital power and as it were a fore-runner of the Soul But the sensitive Soul takes into it self the Rains of that Archeal power and that vital fore-running dispositive power doth melt in the Archeus and afterwards submits it self unto the sensitive Soul For the Head being as yet occupied with an animal Discourse or the heart stirred with continual Pulses and working uncessantly in the framing of vital Spirits and in transplanting of venal bloud into Arterial bloud are not fit Instruments for the Soul of a Beast But when as this findeth an Inn prepared for it in the Root it there resideth remaineth nor doth wander from thence to another place For in very deed the heart is a servant to the stomach while it all its life long onely employeth it self in framing of the vital Spirits For the entrance of the life of a very tender young begins from sucking and sleep and for some time so continues Both which things do happen in the stomach where indeed the vital Spirits are established and preserved by the soul in the Root in which the same soul doth for the future hope especially to be nourished cherished fewelled and increase For it was never the study or office of the soul to wander or passe from place to place that it may chuse out a Bride-bed for it self because that which is directed by an understanding in-erring is stablished in its own and certain seat from the beginning of life And there is that Center designed from the beginning of Creation for the original of seeds with a command and tye that the soul doth not change its seat or enquire after strange places as it were more commodious for it self For he who rules all things strongly and disposeth of them sweetly hath known the bounds or ends of every appointment There is indeed in the brain of a living Creature a motive virtue and sensitive shop But not that therefore the soul being shaken from its original and primary seat shall wander from its radical Inn designed unto it by the Creator unto the Head For the faculties and functions of the sensitive soul are indeed distributed into a plurality of parts In the mean time the soul it self remains unshaken from its antient place where it was first bound and tied For neither is it divided by reason of the diversities of offices because it perfects all things by the ministring Organ of an Archeus and it being as it were every where present is an assistant to that vital beam First of all it is easily perceived that all the force of the first conceptions and every entring and primitive stirring of disturbances doth happen about the mouth of the stomach For if a Gun send forth a noyse unexspectedly a shaking about the mouth of the stomach is perceived by the same stroak so if a sorrowful Message be brought on a sudden a sudden and speedied alteration is no where felt but in that Central Inn of the soul So that persons against their will and at unawares have before me there placed the desirable Inn of the soul which Inn because it is first in duration discourse motion and the act of feeling of the external senses so it denotes yea convinceth that the original Inn of the soul is in the same place And that thing hath seemed to me most exceeding necessary to be known for the curing of Diseases as I shall demonstrate in its place concerning Diseases For very many have remained without hope of recovery because Remedies have been applied to a member appointed for functions but not to the Root from whence the errour sprang For the Habitation and Court where the edicts are formed being unknown Medicines have been rashly administred unto the places of executions For the place of the sensitive soul being unknown it hath been unknown hitherto that that soul doth there receive the primitive blemish disturbance and contagion of most Diseases And in the same place Medicines ought to be appropriated if from the Root a Medicine for Diseases is to be appointed wherein surely they have most grievously erred hitherto At least the first motions or assaults which are not in our power are long since admitted to happen about the Orifice of the stomach and to climbe upwards to the Head But it is a certain thing that every first motion doth begin from the Center and so that the Center of the soul is
it is in the Center and very middle of the Body For I have demonstrated elsewhere that the Spleen doth inspire a digestive Ferment into the stomach that is to say that the Spleen is the beginning of vegetation or growth But that the vegetative power belongs to the sensitive soul that is unto the Duumvirate For truly there is not a vegetative soul singly by it self but it is a vital power imitating the soul But the Young is grown before quickning onely by the influx of participation from its mother so long as it is at it were an entire part of her but presently after quickning it lives by a Kitchin of its own And therefore there is onely a sensitive soul in bruits the which because it is also in a man and the minde is fast tied unto it therefore the conceits of the soul are first in the seat of the soul which although perhaps they may be refined in the head yet they do not deny their fountain yea although they should be a new stamped in the brain yet they have not need of a succession of motions from the soul into the head as it were a Pilgrimage for this purpose For the commands of the will are far more grosse than those of the conceptions yet the command of motion being scarce conceived in Fidlers their finger doth most swiftly execute that command Therefore the actions of government do beam forth on their objects with an un-interrupted light And therefore the discourse being suited unto its own shops doth receive Lawes on both sides and likewise appointeth others otherwise the apparitions of the brain are loose and consused if a hurt of the Spleen doth interpose which is manifest in hanging in a feverish doatage in those that are diseased about the short Ribs in outragious or mad Apoplectical epileptical c. persons From 〈◊〉 it sufficiently manifesteth that the brain doth obey the doating Duumvirate For it is most agreeable to truth 〈…〉 the wisdom of flesh and bloud which is the sensitive soul hath its scituation in the most sanguine or bloudy bowel of all Therefore it is read in the holy Scriptures that the soul and the life are in the bloud For if thou dost mark the bowel of the Spleen and its substance thou shalt perceive its substance to be bloud newly made clotty covered with a skin and to be enriched with so manifold a co-weaving of veins Arteries that there is not another bowel in the whole Body which by about a tenfold quantity is so rich in so many Arteries But the Brain hath scarce a vein or bloud or but sparingly in its whole lump The Coats indeed or covers of the Brain have their own small veins And although there be in the bosom of the Brain an Arterial Vessel fit for the transpiring or breathing thorow of Spirits labourated in the heart yet the lump of the Brain is almost wholly void of bloud It is no wonder therefore that the Spleen doth form strange Idea's and strange conceits under a forreign guest The expulsion of which guest while the spleen doth meditate of it stirs up a strong pulse even as a Thron driven into the finger doth shew a present and hateful guest For I have observed seriously the eyes and countenance of one distempered about his short Ribs to be writhed presently as oft as he would relate to me his foolish and first conceits whom while from the beginning of the doatage I would interrupt presently also at that very moment his eyes and countenance did return into their former health I did wonder in a fellow-feeling that so swift an innovation of the whole countenance so often a repeated one and so great a one should be propagated by the action of a lower government into the tower of the brain Furthermore for neither are rude and uncomposed conceptions onely from the spleen but likewise also the understanding of the brain being laid asleep under Dreams we must not despise the light of gifts it reacheth to the minde Act. Ap. chap. 2. v. 17. And it shall be in the last dayes that I will poure out of my Spirit upon all flâ—â—â— and your Sons and your Daughters shall prophesie And your young men shall see Visions and your old men shall dream Dreams To wit significative ones Nighr unto night sheweth knowledge if the Watchmen do fore-learn to withdraw his thoughts from things or affaires place and motion I have also not undeservedly affirmed that the first conceipts of disturbances are felt in the Midriffs Seeing that if a sorrowful message be brought unto a hungry man his appetite presently perisheth therefore the Message and Appetite do light into one and the same Inn. I have also taught elsewhere that the stomach of the Liver is not some notable hollowness spreading within its own bowel but that the Mesentery veins themselves are the sheath of sanguification or bloud-making into which the Liver doth beam forth the first breathing-holes of sanguification But that the stomach of the spleen is the stomach it self which it therefore nourisheth by embracing that it may inspire into it the Vulcan of digestion yet there is another and proper stomach of the spleen admirable for the manifold winding of Arteries wherein the Milt doth cook for it self alone Under which digestion if the least errour rusheth on it the spleen ceaseth in digesting and denies the ferments due to the external stomach which thing is evident in a Fever while as instead of a sour digestion burntish or stinking belchings do come for witnesses which are emulous of a certain putrefaction The Brain also through its own unsensibleness hath relation to the Milt as also the Coats of the brain unto the stomach it self in this respect For the action of the stomach is powerful and hath in it the Vicarship of the heart and doth execute the offices thereof against the will of the Schools For neither doth the spleen by an unbroken vital and wealthy number of Arteries flourish in vain in its own conceptions but as oft as it makes its conceipts drowsie through the delights of another nourishment it grants a truce from its work that is sleep which if they shall be lesse perfect or troubled by the too much care or anguish of the stomach it also produceth confuâ—ed Dreams No Physitian hath hitherto doubted but that the Ephialtes or Mare is stirred up from the Midriffs for it comes for the most part through the taking of a larger supper of the more hard meat or the stomach otherwise labouring and therefore that happens not indeed to one laying on his right side but onely sleeping on his back with his face upward or at least on his left side Indeed when he hath almost slept enough For they feel or perceive obscurely they discourse they think they do touch with their hands and see with their eyes yet they are not able to move themselves For oppressions are perceived to be heard and felt otherwise in sleeping
that it is written that Abraham carried the Messiah in his Loyns That is unaptly withdrawn from the spleen unto the Reins from a bowel I say chiefly vital unto an excrementous shop and sieve I have noted also very many who from a Quartane Ague had retained their spleen ill affected to have been very much curtail'd in the provocation to leachery I have also observed Women in a difficult labour for some dayes an adventurous or experienced draught being offered them to have brought forth at furthest within the space of half an hour And that thing hath been proved 200 times and more For surely the Medicine being as yet in the stomach the mouth of the share is opened and the folding-doores of the Ossacrum are opened in the loins and the Young is presently expelled Indeed I have noted the Stomach to keep the Keyes of the Womb And this medicine I have divulged willingly for the good of my Neighbour that she who is in labour may not hence-forward undergo the danger of her life But it is the Liver together with the Gaul of an Eele being dried and powdered and drunk in Wine to the quantity of a Filburd-Nut The gift of God is in this Simple That seeing the Woman ought to bring forth in pain by reason of the envy of the Serpent God whose Spirit was carried upon the waters hath filled them with his blessing He would have the Eele or water-Serpent by his bowels of a sanguifying power to appease the rigour of that curse The Liver of Serpents would effect the same and perhaps better but in the experiment of the Eele the event hath never deceived From this time likewise the Judiciary divination by the Stars Hermes his scale and whatsoever is supported by the point of Nativity falls to the ground But upon occasion hereof I shall a little digress in what part the Young is knit to the womb by the Navil-strings and without the coat of the Secundines or the swadling-band of the Young it hath a substance in form of a Spleen as Vesalius witnesseth And so it hath as it were an external spleen to wit wherein as it were the venal bloud of the Kitchin and the Arterial bloud of the Mother is re-cocted the Spleen in this respect stirs up in me a suspition of a more exact sanguification than that of the Liver to wit as the venal bloud being there re-cocted by so manifold a winding of Arteries doth go back as it were from the stomach to the heart Even so as Birds and Beasts that chew the Cud do rejoyce in a double stomach At least it is manifest that that external milt doth command the conceits of her that is with child For the mothers themselves do wonder that they are then affected with such unaccustomed conceits longings furious frights and storms of troubles But it is no wonder to me seeing nothing is milty or like to the milt if it do not swell with the properties of the milt But that is a wonder that this flesh of the milt is not informed by the soul of the Mother or Young but that it enjoyes a life of its own being communicared on both sides For it hath not a sensitive Soul seeing that it is also long before quickning but it possesseth it self in manner of a Zoophyte or a Plant alive such as are Sponges and also the thicker muscilages swimming in our Sea which do enlarge embrace strain suck and shew forth rare testimonies of life being present with them Moreover if the poyson of a mad Dog or a Tarantula do make a madness limited and that like unto it self it is now wonder also that this milty lump is enlightned participatively doth live balsamically and move the minde of the woman with childe with a diverse passion As well because it performs the office of a Kitchin as because there are in the things themselves their own vain visions or apparitions as is manifest in a mad Dog But besides the minde of man being the near Image of the most high wholly immortal doateth indeed with the sensitive soul but is not capable of suffering by a little Liquor Because the passions of the sensitive soul do affect the minde which they cover within themselves do roul up and co-knit in a bond The minde indeed properly is not sick although it hearken to the frailty of the sensitive soul whence it is made manifest that the sensitive thoughts or cogitations are from flesh and bloud according to that saying For flesh and bloud have not revealed these things unto thee Therefore discourse and conceit is from the milt or spleen as being a bowel most sanguine of all and rich in very many Arteries But I have proved elsewhere that the conceit of a woman although it be formed in the spleen yet that it is brought down for the most part with a straight line unto the womb whether there be a Young within it or not and therefore the principality of the womb doth war under banners of its own neither therefore is it evidently seen in its own rest but onely while according to a wicked pleasure and fury it strains wrings blunts choaks resolves and looseneth its Clients poureth forth bloud c. But the Duumvirate doth on every side keep a due proportion of life and that with so sweet a pleasant tuning or musical measure of the life that therefore it hath hitherto been passed by by the Schools But as soon as it withdrawes its government the strengths of the parts how chief soever they are are eclipsed For so there are faintings Apoplexies Epilepsies heart-beatings or tremblings giddinesses of the the Head and madnesses And so indeed that as the occasional root of which defects is voluntarily consumed and the circuits and durations of the same do vanish away even as in the milder Fevers So also they may be voluntarily silent that they may forget to return however the boastings of Physitians do differ in this thing For those whose Roots do the more stubbornly cleave unto them they are the more fully con-tempered therefore after another manner they altogether resist a voluntary resolving and therefore they wax old together with it together with the nourishments of the stomach and do expect their own relapsing fruits unto the end of life And therefore an Epitaph of uncurableness of these defects not voluntarily ceasing is now every where read to be subscribed because they have hitherto wanted a meet Secret whereby they may be rooted out But the Roots of these Diseases as long as they do affect onely the inflowing Spirit they produce off-springs proper to their own seed and Inn For so the falling-sickness because it besiegeth both Spirits it dashneth together as well the faculties of the body as of the sensitive Soul And so that hath distinguished a great Apoplexie from a little one that the lesse hath besieged the inflowing Spirit but the greater the implanted Spirit Likewise there are in Simples those faculties which make drunk
Meats Neither is the membrans of the Stomack so passable that it doth admit of another utterance or passage besides the Throat and the Pylorus for Belching and breaking Wind the which notwithstanding are far more thin than vapours Why therefore the Legs being moved by ascending should so many Smoakinesses be made which do reach the Heart Do require a difficulty of Breathing And the which else by a more swift steep motion do not arise For if they by chance are formed in the veins and arteries or without the same yet it do not as yet from thence appear why a slower ascent and motion may bring forth more Smoaks in the vessels than a swift motion of the same Muscles in descending But if the aforesaid Smoaks be bred without the Vessels now besides the absurdity before rehearsed likewise by what way shall Smoakinesses so suddenly proceed from thence unto the Heart and Lungs Seeing otherwise if one that is not Asthmatical swiftly running should have any Smoaks they should together with the sweat sooner exhale out thorow the skin than they should desire the inward parts by a retrograde motion Wherefore there is another cause for the sake whereof the Breast is strained the heart beateth the jaws wax dry although the Mouth being shut they do breath with difficulty only through the Nostrils but the Tongue is froathy about the Teeth and the Cheek do fall indeed by the same cause all that are in good health in their Lungs are distinguished and are free from every Cough and Asthma one whereof nevertheless is preferred before the other in a wise and longer running without difficulty of breathing Therefore our man of sixty years old doth more difficulty climbe Hâ—lly places and after meat most difficulty and as oft â—he pants for breath his knees wax feeble Shall therefore meat and Drink make Smoaks whereby the strength of the Knees doth decay If this be true But then that shall happen also to those that are not Asthmatical who notwithstanding having taken no Meat are the stronger But they will say the Stomack being filled a vacuum or emptiness is diminished in the Breast Rightly spoken But this is to have gone back from a Smoak and to have fled unto the anguishs of place Why therefore likwise do not all breath with difficulty after Meat in a modeeate a scending if the region of the breast be equally diminished in all after meat is taken Is perhaps the region of the Breast extended by descending or walking in a plain A reason indeed is given of a less breathing after Meat than before but it squares not to the question to wit why in climbing with a mean Pace any one doth pant for Breath who by any the more fwift motion through a plain way is not short-winded But inasmuch as that doth more vex one after Meat it is rightly argued from an unequal straightness of place but the Lungs are not pressed together by a Stomack moderately filled that they may thereby become difficult in breathing For else why after making water and going to stool also after breaking Winds is this man of sixty years old equally panting for breath and short-winded in a climbing motion Indeed being fasting and more strongly after feeding he feels in moving upwards as it were a girdle in his Ribs a beating pulse and interruptingly happening on him But nevertheless he breaths in a long breath at pleasure without hinderance that is he hath his Lungs open and free although breathing with difficulty and his spittings are freequent and froathy but throughout all a cold season much Spitting with expulsion by reaching most like unto Gumme Dragon dissolued but besides he Coughs very Seldome Truly as I have not had any thing as to cleernesses for the knowledge of diseases from predecessours I at first considered that all Asthmatical persons do undergo some vice of the Lungs an external obtructer being there grown together or an internal one to wit which is co-thickned in the outward Mouths of the rough artery whereby they breath into the breast But forthwith neither of them pleased me because the Asthma doth suddenly invade some persons and forsakes theâ— without any notable Spitting Also the aforesaid man of sixty years old doth swiftly and freely draw a long Breath without hinderance Yea he sitting and that in the Smoak doth no less freely Breath than indeed any healthy Person I considered therefore whether perhaps the Muscles of the Legs being the more deeply contracted and elevated by ascending and the which otherwise walking in a plain or steep ground do as it were hang down the belly of the Muscle being in the mean time Globy in ascending and pressing its artery together might contain a nearer cause of difficult breathing Do therefore in this motion the Muscles hinder the Arteries and also the Pulse of the same by successive turns that hence the ascending may be with a more difficult Breathing Next I considered whether in ascending the breath be a little longer retained than otherwise in a plain or steep Motion Indeed every one doth more press his breath together while he intends to moove any thing the more strongly Thirdly I considered that in ascending the breath is interrupted almost at every pace no otherwise than at if any one should at every pace say Ha Ha whereas otherwise in a steep or plain motion there is one only and continual Ha not interrupted by rest I doubted also whether the Lungs do labour with a passion of its own and the Bowel be in a climbing motion intent not to expel smoakinesses how great a conceived errour soever it may overcome I also beheld or considered that any one doth more easily walk seven hours space than stand five Because in standing the Muscle of both Knee-pans is continually bent on both sides which in going rejoyceth in a coursary rest But he that goeth doth more difficultly breath than he that standeth because many Muscles do successively labour in going but in standing although they are bent yet they are not moved Whence I learned that a cheerful motion of many Muscles doth make one to breath the more difficultly Lastly although every one of these considerations should have some weight in them yet all being connexed in one they could not yet satisfie the question proposed To wit why a slower ascending motion doth cause difficulty of breathing but not a swifter descending one Wherefore I have added to these things that in a moving upwards how slow soever the straight Muscles of the neather belly do stretch themselves that they suffrnot the belly to be sufficiently lifted up Truly the Breast and Ribs are indeed in difficult Breathing more largly stretched out but as I have taught concerning Catarrhs the motion of the Ribs is not primary and principal for Breathing but only an asistant while the principal one is not sufficient Therefore the Belly not being sufficiently extended a difficulty of Breathing is presently hastened to wit it being willing to
my foundation to wit that there is no dismissing or voluntary defluxion of a rheum which negative subsisting vain becomes the foundation of Cauteries For the Schools teach that by issues evil yea destructive humors are allured forth which else should either be sent to some other place or of their own accord flow down A fine thing surely that nature doth with a loose bridle expect the Will of the Physitian and opening of the skin that it should there throw off its fardle which else it would divert on a more noble member As if sending nature should threaten unless ye shall maintain a fleshy membrane open to me by a wound where ye shall see meet that by revulsion or drawing back ye shall appease me from fury and do divert me from the conceipt of dismissing Wo unto you for that which else I would purge forth under the Skin I will draw back unto a noble member in revenge But I pray in what center or in what spring-head is that evil humor prepared Is it in the Liver the shop of the four humors as they will have it But surely there is a difficult long and rough way as that evil humor is derived from the liver thorow the hollow vein and so thorow the heart unto the outmost skin of the arm thigh or neck without defiling the venal blood but the evil humor it self to be sincere Surely that is a cruel emunctory which brings an evil humor thorow the fountain of life And so the Physitian is cruel and the Schools more cruel which command a hurtful humor to be brought thorow the heart But if further that evil humor unknown to this day hath the brain for its fountain where I pray you on in what sink of the head is that evil humor bred Is it in its bosomes Or in its basin not indeed in the first place in the vessels of the brain shall there be made a daily collection and nest of that malignant humor without a present or sudden fear of death But if in the basin that be made evil which before was good now it shall of its own wonted accord flow down thorow the nostrils and palate neither shall it want a Cautery Or what is that corrupter which in some part of the head may vitiate by his endeavour a humor that was before good that it may be brought down malignant from thence unto some part between the skin which the Physitian hath commanded to be stricken For how obedient is that which being an evil humor indeed now a dead excrement shall suffer is self to be wrested back and sent to another place which otherwise being no more solicitous of the family-government of life doth obey the law of scituation by its weight only But that the evil humor to be wiped away by a Cautery is a vapour translated and collected from the stomack into the head thorow the brain coats and scull and from thence dismissed between the outward Muscles and skin that was before peremptorily hissed out concerning Catarrhs In the next place those things being granted it should want the essence and Etymologie of a humor by consequence also of an evil humour to wit of Phlegm one of the four For whatsoever had once been lifted up in manner of a vapour and had grown together into drops is neither thick nor tough nor any more of one of the four humors made in the Liver but it should be a Post-hume distillatory liquor Wherefore if any evil humour the finall cause of a cautery be not bred in the Liver Brain or Stomack which at length shall be the shop of evil humors for Catarrhs Or which is the sending and lofty part from whence they may be the more steeply brought unto a Cautery For in so great a strait of trifles the Schools are constrained to confesse that not any evil humor is dismissed unto the hole of a Cautery but that the venal Bloud degenerates in the wound it self and in its Lips being evilly disposed For this also is proper to all wounds which want Balsame Truly if the Schools do examine that Aphorisme while corrupt Pus or snotty matter is making the pain labour and Fever is greater then when it is made they would certainly know that corrupt pus is materially produced out of the Blood by the labour of the faculties and consequently that in an issue corrupt Pus is wished for for the same ends The which standing the position falls to the ground which supposeth that evil humors are derived by Cauteries 2. That the bringing forth of corrupt Pus in a wound is not from the Center of the Body 3. That it is not the excrement of Rheum flowing down 4. That Cauteries do not purge bad humours which do prepare good venal Blood into an excrement with the labour of the digestive faculty 5. That Cauteries do not any thing conduce to the preventing of a malignant humor which is locally made in the Lips of the wound it self 6. That corrupt pus and Sanies cannot go back-wards from the hole of an Ulcer and slide into a noble part and much lesse the good Blood from whence the corrupt Pus is made 7. If the venal Blood be an evil humor before it come down to the issue then nature ordaineth some bad humor from the masse of the Blood for the wounded part only that it may nourish it or this is ordinary within all particular parts now then nature wholly laboureth with the vice of folly 8. That it is a foolish thing that to have made much thick corrupt matter is for the Cautery to have well purged Seeing that corrupt Pus sheweth the corrupting of good Blood And so while a man is not in good health the issue instead of snotty matter weepes forth liquor 9. If therefore a Cautery should make for the evacuation of ill humours a man should needs be better in health while liquor flows than while snotty matter is made Which in the position is false From hence therefore it is rightly inferred that no select ill humor or pernicious excrement which otherwise should fall down elsewhere is evacuated by an issue but that that whole matter whether it be corrupt pus or a thin poyson is nothing else but meer Blood designed for the nourishing of the Cauterized part and there corrupted by the vice of the part and so that the corruption of it self doth measure the goodness and malignity of digestion in the place of the issue And therefore while the whole Archeus doth in any sort labour there is also a greater weakness of digestion in the issue and the Pus is the nearer to putrefaction and in this regard the issue by reason of a more powerfull hurting of digestion than was wont to be weepeth liquor Therefore it is the wish of the Schools that of harmless bloud there may very much and white Snotty matter be made And that they call a good purging if very much Blood be corrupted in the last
into the breast thorow the Lungs and so also that this is quiet Which thing is alike manifestly obvious by the expectoratings of the Pleurisie Because those spittles which were first hunted out and putrified in the ribs and hollow of the breast are cast away by cough It behoveth therefore the membrane of the Lungs to be very wide which may suffice for the sending thorow of venal blood and corrupt snotty matter These things the Schools see know confess and write yet they deny that the breath is blown away out of the Lungs into the breast but that the Lungs themselves are of necessity stirred like a pair of bellows They grant indeed that the Lungs have pores through which the venal blood and corrupt snotty matter are in a Pleurisie supt up yet they will not have the Air to be transmitted through the same pores into the breast but they alike stifly command the Lungs themselves to be driven like a pair of bellows Neither is it a wonder Because they meditate that they are nothing but dead carcasses as well made as to be made in whom the pores of that membrane are shut by death For the same thing also happens to the optick Nerves the thorny marrow the partition of the heart and little mouths of the veins at the bowels The lungs of bruit beasts swims upon the waters wherein they are boyled whole but being cut in pieces it settles or sinks because the rough Artery is filled with Air. Whither it is added by way of impertinency if the boyling water hath not access while it seeths how shall a Cattarhe obtain passage thither The same thing by mechanical operation H. Blow thy breath out of thy breast as much as thou canst measure the circumference of thy ribs with a thread then again breath in the Air as much as thou canst and again measure thou shalt find by a square that more Air was attracted than to the bigness of the Lungs of a man By how much more because a great part of the breath doth deceive this measure To wit as much as the Midriffe shall bend the stomack downwards I. Therefore make tryal again Draw to thee thy breath as much as thou canst and breath it into a bladder and thou shalt find the same thing as before and the inspired Air to exceed the greatness of the whole Lungs K. In the mean time remember that after every exspiring or breathing out the pipes of the rough Artery have as yet remained open with their rings and to be as yet filled with Air as before There is no doubt but that the breast and belly doth swell up with in-breathed Air but if therefore the Lungs may be extended the which in no wise they are yet at least wise there should not be room for placing the in-breathed Air by almost the tenth-fold so much as the breast is extended Therefore the motion of the breast doth not prove a necessary motion of the Lungs L. But if the Lungs should fill up the whole hollow of the breast which it manifestly doth not it were consonant to reason that the elevating of the ribs might extend the Lungs but seeing Air doth not sustain an enlarging and pressing together as is wont to be said therefore the elevating of the ribs should not draw an equal or suitable quantity of Air. Yea seeing that attraction should as yet be violent to wit for fear of a vacuum which is adverse to a natural and vital motion it also follows that the motion of the ribs was not appointed to extend the Lungs And seeing the Lungs hath not any principle of its own motion in it self nor else where unless from the motion of the ribs according to the Schools It follows also that the Lungs are moved by no mover but that they are plainly alwayes at rest M. For what is a greater folly than to confess that all the small branches of the rough Artery are opened by a co-weaving of gristle-rings and yet to teach that all the same little branches new Air being moreover attracted are alwayes enlarged divided and pressed together N. At length the Schools teach that the Diaphragma or Midriffe is sufficient for our ordinary use of breathing yet they substitute or appoint the muscles between the ribs in the office thereof Then besides there is a frequent belching out of the stomack which doth express the odours drawn into the Lungs Therefore the Lungs and the Midriffe are members capable of breathing them thorow Surely it is to be bewailed that such pains hath been taken in the Schools about such hurtful negligences and childish mockeries For truly if in laying with thy face upward thou shalt place one hand upon the bottom of thy belly but the other upon thy ribs but shalt draw a moderate or unconstrained breath thou shalt then easily feel that the muscles of the bottom of thy belly only have operated O. To wit thy belly being lifted up that thy Diaphragma was drawn downward and consequently that so much of the hollow of the bottom of thy belly was enlarged as the plain which is loose in it self or the Diameter of thy Midriffe is less in the Semicircle of it self being drawn downward and by so much the more ample by how much also the loosness of the plain of thy Diaphragma is easie to be drawn Yea if thou shalt compass thy ribs with a strait girdle and shalt draw thy aforesaid breath thou shalt feel thy belly to be lifted up and pressed down thy ribs being wholly unmoved And by consequence that the Lungs although it were otherwise moveable which it is not yet that it can thus rest for a whole day P. But in a sigh gaping sneesing and strong breathing with difficulty but not before the muscles between the ribs are felt also to perform the office of a Vicarship and help For the Semicircles of a rib are hanging down on the forepart all which the muscles between the ribs do every one draw upwards unto them Q. For this cause also they are made bigger by lifting up as they are then made rounder and so do enlarge the hollowness of the breast R. For so those that breath forth only with a straight neck do bring their shoulder-blades and shoulders for a help of the blast do press both their hands on their seats to elevate their shoulders that the hollow of their breast may be increased and their Midriffe hang over downward with the bigger bunch The Wife of a Senatour in bringing forth off-spring or travelling with a Child for she brought forth with her buttocks foreward break and tear her Pleura between the seventh and eighth rib without feeling for the greater pain obscureth the less an Aposteme c. Presently after the time of her delivery she felt that as oft as she pressed her breath together in singing or giving suck if she had stript her breast a great flatulent tumour presently bloomed up which would give place unto a finger pressing
have ascended into a poysonsomnesse by addittaments But these seeing they are not admitted within the root of the Mercury do operate onely without about the Sulphur and are there variously disposed according to the manner of the receiver At length I perceived That there was a sixfold difference of Digestions in us and that the three former of them were busied about the disposing of the matter appointed for to nourish the which although they do truly transmute yet they are sent before rather for a preparatory disposing than for a vital espousing thereof For truly in the Fourth Digestion a vital power is communicated to the venal blood and so the Controversie is decided whether the arterial blood be quickned For the venal blood is not truly enlivened until it be made arterial blood The which is drawn through the partition of the Heart into the Arterie Aorta for no other end but that in that Buttery it may be endowed with Life and informed with a mind But we are nourished by both bloods even as we have our original of the seed of a twofold Sex For perhaps the Mysterie of the Lyturgie is hence known why a little Water is mixed with much Wine That the Water may pass into venal blood and the Wine into arterial blood I perceived therefore That the Fifth Digestion was plainly occupied about the participative communion of Life But Lastly That the sixth did operate by a dispositive quality but did rejoyce in an assimilating ferment and that inducing humanity Therefore external aides are stirred up and do operate by another quality than internal ones Fat or gross persons are taken with Paines or Crampes or Convulsions of the Tendons the which notwithstanding the grease of man being outwardly over-smeared doth alay For the Sixth Digestion is wholly assimilative therefore it indeavours to change the grease brought on it into its own vital aire But the internal grease of fat things being now subdued by an assimilating ferment is kept without action But the Sixth Digestion enters into the middle Life of the external anointed grease the which our Archeus doth therefore appropriate to himself which Life and its properties are hidden in the last Life of the internal grease Moreover I perceived after what manner a Cantharides doth embladder in living People but not in a dead carcase as neither doth it raise up a burnt Escharre in the dead carcase although it dissolves the dead carcase no otherwise than as Calx vive poudered doth resolve Cheese For the Cantharides as long as it remains dry doth not act but is moistened by an unsensible eflux of our dew then first it begins to itch whence the Archeus under the Epidermis or outward skin is furiously inflamed not much otherwise than as under an Erisipelas the burning Coal or burning Fever and so the Cantharides begins in the Epidermis and an Escharotick in the skin the same which a Gangreen doth at length finish in the habit of the Body For Causticks do at first crisp the skin the which afterwards they resolve into a muscilage after they have fully moistened For then they do not onely sharpen our heat but also they assume the strength of a proper corroding Then I say they do not onely make an Escharrhe which ariseth from an inflaming of the Archeus but do melt the whole Lastly I perceived also that Amulets or preservative Pomanders things bound about the Head and hung about the Body do act by the virtue of influence and that directive without the evaporation of those things which indeed do reside in the more fixed Bodies Although there are other things hung on the Body which are by little and little diminished of their Virtues because they dismiss a Vapour out of them But things tied to the Head or Body are Bony Horney Animals and Plants but others are Mettallick Stony Salts Transparent things or Thick or Dark things But Mettals are seldome Amulets unless they are as yet opened or exalted by an external adjunct Because they have a dividable Sulphur in them But in Stones there is great virtue but of Stones some are transparent Looking-glasses but some are thick or dark ones As Corral Coraline the Turcois the Jasper But in clear Stones the Evestrum or Ghost of Life being well or ill affected doth reverberate To wit the life rejoyceth to be reflexed in a clear glass whereby it is then made like to the Understanding which in its own light is altered after the manner of a Chamelion at the assimilation of Objects Neither also have I in vain perceived Gemms to be as it were thick Glasses well polished Because the native and natural Endowment that is in them from the nature of the Glasse doth more powerfully reflect the vital beam communicated unto it For something is continually and necessarily discussed or blown out of us which is not yet plainly destitute of the participation of Life That very thing doth keep the activity of its own sphear about us the which while it findeth in the polished Glass it easily reflecteth on the whole Body from whence it issued for thereby sympathetical Remedies or Things were first made known But afterwards when it was known that things tied about the Body were applied in operating by virtue of a Glasse there were thereupon boughtie or convex concavous c. figures of Looking-glasses presently bethought of whereunto Gentilisme joyned Hieroglyphicks that by a figure they might denote the sign of a hidden virtue Superstition in posterity thereby encreased who anointed Gamahen Talismanicks and devilish Scurrilities of that sort Thinking that Figures had not indeed the virtues of a Sign but of a Cause But transparent Glasses do receive an Evestral or Ghostlike faculty the which although they do not reflect as otherwise dark ones do yet they approach nearer unto the nature of life or the shining glasse Finally I perceived that the diversity of Effects the end and appropriation of Medidines did not proceed from the fourfold fiction of Complexions but from the very powers of Simples themselves whose Election dose and preparation have therefore stood neglected because they have not been hitherto searched into in their root and manner After the perceivances of all these things at length another Spirit took from me the bottle which the other had given me And with great grief I then perceived all the necessities of Death in me unfit to be declared Whereby I presently returned unto my self neither could I receive comfort but when I truly knew that all things were acted onely by a Dream and because that if I ought to rehearse the virtues of things I could not better performe it than if I had as it were felt all those things within This one thing at least I did moreover remember that Chymical things did rather act by the force of Art than by the native power of Nature because their beginnings were brought forth and changed by the Fire To wit Chymistry separates fixed things from things not fixed
so a small vein being burst had caused a difficult breathing and did also dissemble a Dropsie But when as the rupture of the vein being more rent had poured forth its Blood it choaked the man A certain Dropsical Man and but one onely being seen by me shewed a black and stinking Bubble in the hollow of his Liver Barth-Cabrollius an Anatomist of Mount-Pellier Saith that he cured very many Dropsical Persons by Incision made in the very Navill it self standing out and that in both sexes But surely if the errour had been in the Liver it could not have issued forth with the water through the Navil or that the Liver being mortally defiled should admit of a restoring Which thing the Schooles will not admit of Wherefore I remember that I have restored above two thousand Dropsical Persons also whose Urine did now wax-blackish with Bloodinesse and who had scarce made a spoon-ful of water in one night whose Liver if it had had but even a mean and not a mortal fault I consess I had not Cured them I have seen also that they whose Liver hath been notably wounded have escaped who although they thenceforth fore-perceived the Storms of the Aire yet not the Dropsie I have seen moreover those whose last day a slow Fever had closed in whose Liver small Stones had grown yet they had not shewn a Dropsie It is a familiar thing for the Liver of Oxen to abound with small Stones although they are continually fed with grasse Whence at leastwise I have learned that Grass-roots do never remove the obstructions of the Liver The Schooles will say to these things the Dropsie indeed is not made from a visible corrupting or obstruction of the Liver as neither from the Salt of the feigned Jamenous-alume as otherwise hath seemed to Paracelsus but from a meer cold and moist Distemperature thereof for so a large Flux of Blood because it brings the aforesaid distemperature it causeth the Dropsie But this is wholly prattle old Wives Fables and vain sounds For first of all I have sufficiently demonstrated the nullities of mixtures and temperatures not any more to be repeated 2. I have seen many all the venal Blood of whom a Consumption had exhausted so as that scarce two ounces had remained when their Heart Lungs and Liver were plucked out but their Liver was of a yellowish Colour because it was without Blood yet there was no cold and moist distemper in these Livers as neither a Dropsie the Supposed son of its feigned Mother 3. If much Flux of Blood should generate cold and moist distemperatures surely the Schooles do not affirm that thing to be done but by the reason of a withdrawing of the vital Spirit which alone is the cause of our heat But the defect whereof seeing it includes a privation it cannot induce a positive Being such as a cold and moist distemperature and Dropsie should be 4. And likewise seeing they will have contraries to be contained under the same general kinde our vital heat which they will have to answer to the Element of the Stars cannot have an Elementary cold contrary unto it 5. A notable Flux of Blood doth of necessity cause cold And therefore if a cold distemperature arisen from a Flux of Blood should be of necessity the mother of the Dropsie at every notable flux of blood the Dropsie should of necessity be present But the consequent is false Therefore also the Antecedent 6. And moreover seeing cold from a flux of blood becomes universal there is no reason why the Abdomen should be rather loaden with water than the Breast whither to wit the Aire being continually breathed in doth increase the cold 7. If the Dropsie be the son of that distemperature in the Liver Whence therefore is there an uncessant thirst 8. If the Expulsion of water into the Abdomen be an action of a distempered Liver Why doth not the Liver use the same its own expulsive action while the Veines do swell with Urine they being intercepted by a destructive Stone 9. Likewise the Blood of Dropsical Persons even as also the Urine should be exceeding watery if the Dropsie should be from a cold distemperature of the Liver But the Urine should not be so reddish and Bloody 10. In the next place between a Dropsie and cold distemperature arisen from a flux of blood a positive cause being a third from a cold should of necessity interpose Which the Schooles do hitherto name because of a non-being there is no search made 11. Neither also do such distemperatures produce thirst together with a Salt Water in the Abdomen seeing they do not thirst who do plentifully detain a salt Urine throughout all their veins in the Stone which stops up the Reines on both sides 12. If the Dropsie be from a cold distemper Then a Dropsie should never be expected after a Fever or wringing of the Bowels if there be not a branded confusion of causes And in vain do they flee unto a cold distemperature for a Dropsie the which should equally proceed even from opposite causes 13. Every old and decrepite Person should now nourish the necessity of a Dropsie 14. A cold distemper seeing in its root it is like to Death extinguishment old Age and privation every Dropsie should contain a necessary despaire of health even as such a distemperature denies a restauration 15. If the Liver be the Liver and not the Lungs by reason of its Elementary co-tempering as the Schooles say and so from one only Seed all the Elements do proceed and wander hither and thither confused that they may be the constitutives of appointed Organs therefore the Liver receding from its natural temperature shall cease to be the Liver and shall be the Kidney Lungs or Milt 16. At leastwise a Member struck with a Palsey should not be wasted but should be after some sort swollen with a Dropsie 17. At length if the Venal Blood be resolved into four or again into three Humours from whence it is either naturally composed or they are in it being applyed unto or co-mixed in the subject of the Blood The Blood shall never be able to be changed into a Dropsical water Seeing this is not any Humour of the constitutives of the Blood Yet I have seen a country-man out of whom all the water was taken by a Borer in twelve hours space for he being become my Opposite Scoffed at me But the morrow morning being swollen with the former Lumpe of his Belly he died For the Dropsie increased not by degrees even as it had increased from its beginning but it presently hastened and proceeded unto an extream extension For I observed that his Flesh and Blood being melted into Water had made their retreat to the neather part of his Belly For in that one only day he had descended into extream Leannesse Therefore his Flesh and Blood shall now wander into an Hydropical or fifth Humour through the cold distemperature of his Liver I could perhaps pardon
especially of carminating things which doe not respect the outward bought of the Intestine And vainly do they feign that Winds are dispersed by extenuation or rarefying For to what purpose do they hope to have Winds extenuated in a matter more subtil than Wind or what shall it profit for to render the Wind more subtile than it self if it then requires a larger room and doth encrease the troubles of its extension For it is a home-bred foolish Remedy drawn from Fables Cabrollius an Anatomist of Mount-pellier tells That he cured a man of Eighty Years old who by the perswasion of Rondoletius ate nothing but salt things and least he should be overwhelmed with thirst he mixed pickels or sauces made of Vinegar and Sugar with his meats He also fomented him twice every day with a Lixivium wherein Salt Alume and Sulphur had boyled And thereupon used Cows-dung for a Cataplasm and at length he escaped and survived being a Hundred Years old For those things are not administred in vain which do consume the occasional Cause Neither therefore doth Paracelsus vainly commend dungs seeing they are the salts of putrified meats unto whom it is granted to resolve the occasional matter of a Dropsie Surely there is on both sides a wonderful action of the Archeus as well where he deteins the keys as where he unlocks the Closets and expels his Enemy But Paracelsus approves of his Praecipiolum or Mercury drawn dead out of its Mine before other Remedies But other Simples according to the degree of assinity wherein they reach unto this metallick Mercury It is a Phrase of his own liberty I reverence and admire the endowments of Simples as they arose from God but not as they are consanguineal or akin to mineral Mercury I confesse in the mean time that that Mercury hath alwayes served or answered my desires Indeed the attainment thereof is difficult but the dose of two grains is sufficient being three or four times administred But Mercurius Diaphoreticus being once obtained it is sufficient for many thousands of sick folks as well for himself being a Physitian as for his successors Finally I have seen a bastard Dropsie whereof none hath made mention that I know of before my self For I have frequently seen that from an inordinate growth of the Liver the extension of the Belly did counterfeit a Dropsical Disease Yea also in those who have died of a Tabes or Consumption of the Lungs and in those who have been exceeding sean I have seen their Liver to have increased beyond measure although wholly without Blood That Mercury therefore slayes the increasing or growing faculty even as Quicksilver being cast into a tree bored even into its pith or heart with an Auger doth kill the same Therefore it belongs to the property of Mercury to extinguish the growing faculty of the Liver But that that thing may succeed according to thy desire the Mercury ought to die without any association of external Salts or fellowship of forreign Spirits yet thus it ought to die that a vital Being may remain in the Chariot which may be able in the middle life of the Mercury to carry it unto its appointed places I am thankful in the behalf of him whom the Fire hath taught me to understand Hither do I referre the Remedy of Stibium solulutive For truly those Remedies do resolve consume and brush off every occasional Cause elsewhere lurking and detained That indeed is the cure of Arcanums which is attained by a removal of the occasional Cause and any one of those secrets doth suffice the which do resolve cleanse forth and disperse without distinction whatsoever I except the Stone is besides Nature concluded in the Body For truly although of any kind of Diseases there are two pillars whereby the disease edifice is supported to wit the occasional matter and the matter with the Archeal efficient yet either of the two pillars being with-drawn the whole building goes to ruine which was superstructed upon them Therefore the secrets of Paracelsus do take away every Disease by consequence as they mow down the occasional Cause And then there is another more hidden way of another secret to wit whereby peace rest and comfort is brought into the Archeus to wit lest he being wroth do bring forth a Disease and rather that he may abolish it being bred Yea also that he himself may meditate of putting the occasional Cause to flight For so as a Thorne being thrust into the Flesh is drawn out by the fat of an Hare a common and milde Remedy Otherwise the Archeus is presently as it were angry with the entring Thorne doth make a tumult the place swels and a various exorbitancy of Symptoms is awakened that indeed corrupt Pus being at length made and the place putrified he may exclude the Thorne the which if they had gone more mildly to work had issued or rushed out even as it happens under the perswasion of the Hares grease In like maner I say there is an Arcanum or secret in nature which cures almost every Disease as it takes away the indignation confusions of the Archeus and commands this Archeus to be peaceable Of which Arcanum I first will endeavour to open the way Therefore in the Dropsie the Archeus of the Reins looseth the passages and riseth up against the occasional Cause that is to be put to flight no otherwise than as by a stubborn fury he seeks his own distruction and so a Maxime of Hippocrates shall be verified That Natures themselves are the Physitiannesses of Diseases but the Physitian onely their Minister Therefore from the Premises I conclude that there would be as yet a far more peaceable and desirable cure from a sedative or appeasing Secret than by the Secrets of Paracelsus For they make more for the preservation of long life of which in a peculiar Book CHAP. LXIV A Childish Vindication of the Humorists 1. The End of the Race proposed or published 2. It hath happened to the Author even as he had judged 3. The Clamours of those who are beaten 4. The more secret Arcanums are not to be openly revealed 5. The Author Answers unto Letters written unto him 6. Ten Reproaches I Had now set forth some small Works which have been hitherto unheard of to wit concerning a different kind of sharpish Fountains and especially of those of the Spaw and of the Original of Fountaines Concerning Fevers concerning the Disease of the Stone concerning the miserable state of the deceived Humourists and of the Plague That mortals might return the race of all natural Philosophy and might thereby safely learn the rise manner mean and progress of healing First of all the Book of Feavers reprehendeth the ignorant Schooles of Medicine about the knowledge of an infirmity so common whereby they might repent and excuse the publishing of this Volumn But concerning the Stone a Monster accidentally bred in us and touching the Plague as it were an irregular by-work of the mind that
Life and Soul of soulâ—fied Creatures For in that those Words did differ to say Let it be made and to make For in the sixth or last day Adam was formed But on the seventh day God rested At length he afterwards translated Adam from the Earth into Paradise and deliberated to make Woman of the Rib of the Man but not of his Reins Thigh or Belly Therefore on the eighth day that it might be the Beginning of a new week for a new and super-natural Generation of an off-spring to come Wherefore it may be collected that Woman being wholly an Out-law ascended into a new heap of Choiceness as being a Vessel of Choiceness or Election But we may after some sort conjecture of the quality of humane generation in Eve a Virgin before the Fall by the most glorious Incarnation of our Lord For indeed the Father unto whom every name of Paternity is singularly and solely due and whom his Son as a Father doth alwayes adore hath indeed alwayes generated his Son from Eternity who yet is not read to be the Father of his Incarnation The which thing I even reverence for a vast mystery and the rather after that I understood the insinite goodness of the same as well from the first virginal conception of Creation as in the restoration by the regeneration of Man Indeed the Father Almighty would that the glorious incarnation of Christ should be conceived of the Person of the holy Spirit the which it self to wit therefore was not generated but proceeded from eternity from the Father and the Son For the Spirit of God had caused a humane conception of off-springs in the Arterial Blood of the Heart of the Virgin Eve it being the Image of the Divinity with all its free Gifts without the pleasure of the Flesh But the Mind being thus in the garment of Arterial Blood conceived in the Womb of the Virgin in a humane Shape had took an increase and full maturity from thence For he who the Womb being shut and the Gates being closed came into the World and unto his own also out of the Case of the Heart wherein he was conceived was by a foregoing consent brought unto the Womb of the Virgin and kept even unto the maturity of his Body For he piercing all Members was brought into the Womb For therefore our Lord's Incarnation happened altogether besides the order of Nature now accustomed For 1. The Incarnation of the Lord happened not first in the Womb but in the very Sheath of the Heart of the Virgin 2. Of the most pure and most lively Blood of the Heart but not of the Seed of the Virgin For truly the God-bearing Virgin in that singular respect was not only cleansed from Original Sin but was conceived altogether free from Sins to wit that she might be so much the more void of all Seed than a Child that is newly born For Seed is composed of a mixture of Venal and Arterial Blood or from a co-mixture of Bloods which mixture was no manner of way not so much as materially in the conception of the Son of God who was conceived not of Bloods nor of the Will of the Flesh or of Man but of God alone and born of a Virgin 3. He had not a Man to his Father nor a masculine Matter from whence he should be made which thing surely confirms that a feminine Matter was the more excellent governess or deputy and alone fore-elected from the Beginning 4. He fore-elected the most chast and unspotted Virginity of a Mother which he formed with a divine Hand 5. He was materially conceived onely and of most pure Arterial Blood To wit whereinto the seal of the holy Spirit inspired an humane Mind and a most pure Image of it self made or framed by his Father God 6. That conception was brought from the Heart into the Womb of the Virgin with a piercing of Dimensions 7. Lastly He exspected an increase and just maturity of Nativity as it were in the celebration of a Sabbath Furthermore that the knowledge of Good and Evil signifies nothing but the Concupiscence of the Flesh the Apostle doth manifestly testifie calling it the Law and Desire of Sin From whence to wit the first Bruital and Original Sin the fewel of the other Sins hath immediately issued and is hereafter to endure for a continued Seed of Mortals In the 8th to the Romans God sending his Son into the likeness of the Flesh of Sin hath also concerning Sin condemned Sin in the Flesh that the Righteousness of the Law might be fulfilled in us Original I say because it is the Beginning of the original of a humane Generation whereby all contagion of Impurity is derived on Posterity and Death became natural unto Man even as unto Beasts So that although the eating of the Apple did contain a note of distrust and ingratitude and the which also is a Companion unto every Sin Yet therefore even every Sin afterwards ought with the same Punishment of necessity also to descend unto Posterity unless the unwonted transgression of a loving Admonition should not so much consist in the disobedience of eating or abstaining as in the horrid Distrust of doubting and confidence of Faith given unto the Devil And so that the generation of the Flesh of Sin which is an effect of the Concupiscence of the Flesh hath of necessity defluxed into Death even unto all Posterity For it pleased the Lord of things to insert in the Apple an incentive of the Concupiscence of the Flesh to wit from which he was able safely to abstain by not eating the Apple therefore diswaded from For otherwise he had never at any moment been tempted by the Flesh or his genital Members the which I will hereafter shew to be therefore called the North in the holy Scriptures Therefore the Apple being eaten Man presently from a natural property of the Apple conceived the lust of being luxurious and from thence was made an Animal Seed which hastening into the previous or foregoing Dispositions of a sensitive Soul and undergoing the Law of other Causes reflexed it self into the vital Spirit of Adam which therefore like an ignis fatuus or foolish fire presently receiving an Archeus or ruling Spirit and animal Air I say a houshold Thief it conceived a Power of propagating an Animal and mortal Seed ending into Life At the arrival whereof at length the immortal Mind putting off the Rains of the Life and government of the Body substituted the sensitive Soul as its Chamber-maid From hence therefore we are conceived born and do die after the manner of Beasts For the day before the immortal Mind acted all in all and was the very immortal Life it self in the whole Body because it was solely and wholly immortal in the whole Body But that very so great Beauty of Nature was presently vitiated in our first Parent after that he was cloathed with the similitude of a bruital generation For then the immortal Mind being moved
Woman doth seminally conceive by Man besides the first intent of Creation Wherefore if Man were created that at least-wise from a foreknowledge of the consequence he might supply the Place of the Evil Spirits in Heaven he ought either to be created in a great Number at once from the Beginning or Successively If therefore They which are to be saved cannot be born by the will of Man of Flesh or of Blood and there was one only Man created therefore all Posterity ought by a successive Continuation to be born in Paradise of Women alone to wit the Birth-place of the Woman and of necessity to be Conceived from God and to be Born of a Woman a Virgin unto whom he afterwards Gave Power to be called the Sons of God and to be made with an exclusion of the Will of Blood Flesh and Man which Chastity alwayes pleased God doth please him at this Day and will please him alwayes And whatsoever hath thus once pleased the fountain of Chastity can never again displease him And so that Onely those that are of a clean Heart shall see God and shall be called his Sons wherefore the Prophet singeth Create in me a clean Heart Oh God! such as Adam had before the Fall And renew a right Spirit of the chaste and antient Innocency by the regeneration of the Spirit and Water in my Bowels Because my Bowels being now impure have contracted a Spirit of Concupiscence of the Flesh of Sin For indeed Man as long as he was Immortal and Pure Saw thy Face oh Lord and thou talkedst with him which Face afterwards Man shall not see and live But after that Man defiled his Bowels through Concupiscence thou casteth him from thy Face out of Paradise I pray thee therefore that thou cast me not from thy Face and that thou take not thy holy Spirit of Chastity from me Restore unto me the Gladness of the Regeneration of thy Salvation and with thy principal Spirit the Comforter do thou confirm me against the inbred Impurity of the Flesh For truly I shall teach the Unrighteous thy wayes of thy Regeneration the which among the hidden things of thy Wisdom thou hast manifested unto me and the Wicked shall be converted unto thee At leastwise free me from Bloods from the Concupiscence of the Sexes Thou who art the God of Chastity the God of Salvation as of new Regeneration and my Tongue shall exalt thy Righteousness and thy just Judgment whereby thou hast condemned Man who was born of Bloods and by the will of Man in the Concupiscente and of the Flesh of Sin as he hath made himself uncapable of thine Inheritance For loe in Iniquities aforesaid I was conceived and in Sins hath my Mother conceived me although under a lawful Marriage Bed Therefore I confess that besides the primitive scope of the Creator an Adamical Generation hath arisen into natural Death and is devolved into original Sin The Woman therefore as she hath conceived after a bruital manner she also began to bring forth in Pain The Male also in the Law was only circumcised as for a mystery of the deflowring of Eve Yet both Sexes ought to expiate the Offence committed in their privy Parts to wit whereby they had offended which thing although it be chastly insinuated in the Text Yet that was covered before Israel who were otherwise most ready for all Perfidiousness to wit that Godmight not seem a contemner of Matrimony instituted after the Fall The Woman therefore was not circumcised and yet she was saved but not the Pain of Child-birth or the Obedience of her Husband had expiated Original Sin in her For both a single young Virgin dying was saved as also a barren Wife Therefore from hence is manifested the mystery to wit that Eve so much as she could resisted the Insolencies of Adam and was by force deflowred in Paradise So that also our first Parents were Murderers of all their Posterity through Concupiscenc So also the eldest Son was a Brother-Killer For the fore-skin being taken away did of necessity cause a Brawniness of the Nut of the Yard whereby indeed he might be made a Partaker of the less Pleasure Concupiscence and Tickling whosoever should desire to be ascribed or registred among the Catalogue of the beloved People of God The Rabbins also confess That Circumcision was instituted by reason of unclean Virtues walking in a circuit The which I interpret that the diabolical and primitive Enticements of Concupiscence unto Mortality were not hid to the Hebrews and that at leastwise in an obscure sense the Sin arisen from thence was insinuated Also illegitimate Persons were in times past driven from the Temple and Heaven and those who should be born of an adulterous Conception because they did wholly shew forth an Adamical Generation but those who were born of a lawfull 〈…〉 Bed were as yet Impure until that the fore-skin being taken away they might seem to renounce the Concupiscence of the Flesh And in this respect they represented in a shadow also those that were to be renewed from far by the Spirit of God and the laver of Regeneration Moreover the very Word of Truth doth profesly confirm the Position 1 John 3. Except any one be born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God B. Except any one be born again of Water and of the Spirit he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God C. That which is born of the Flesh is Flesh and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit D. The Spirit breatheth where it listeth Thou hearest the Voice thereof but knowest not from whence it may come or whither it may go E. So is every Man who is born of the Spirit F. If I shall speak unto you of Earthly Things and ye believe not how shall ye believe if I tell you of Heavenly things G. None hath ascended into Heaven but he who descended from Heaven H. And as Moyses exalted the Serpent in the Wilderness So it behoves the Son of Man to be exaltâ—d Christ Jesus descending from Heaven took not on him the Flesh of Sin by Adamical Generation or by the will of Man but he receiving the form of a Servant was made into the Likeness of the Sons of Adam being found in Habit as a Man Yet being Adamical was a true Man such as Adam was being newly created But he being made into the similitude of an Adamical Man emptied or humbled himself taking on him the form of a Servant But he was not made a Servant or Impure But in this glad tydings he denieth the Vision of God or the sight of the Kingdom of God and in b. an entrance into the Kingdom of God For not that the Glory which makes blessed may be seen without entring into Heaven or the same thing is twice spoken in vain or that a. doth require another new birth than b. but a. contains a denyal of participating of the Heavens for the Souls of the Dead before the Resurrection
idly to be denyed that Iron or the Fragments of Iron are in the Fountains of the Spaw but the Vein of Iron to be in them For truly there doth more Virtue occur in the Vein than in the Iron to wit of those subtile Parts which the Furnace filched away in time of Fusion Wherefore the Juice Spirit or hungry Salt call it as thou listest doth not grow within the Vein of the Iron so that there may be a like co-melting of both in the Waters far be it The Salt hath obtained other Wombs in the Earth from whence the Water sliding by melts that Salt and snatcheth it away with it self as it were a Cousin-germane being once the Son of another Water But if therefore it be the longer detained in a notable hollowness about the Vein it suppeth up more of the Vein into it self as doth Pouhontius and this the Fountain Geronster doth as yet more amply do But Tonneletius being richer than the two foregoing Fountains in a hungry Salt yet is poorer than the same in the Vein For from hence it is Cold and more troublesome to the Stomack Therefore which-soever Fountain doth more provoke Stoole is the more fertile in the Vein Neither indeed was that thing unknown to the Antients who used the Scale of Iron for the loosing of the Belly Virgins also taking Stomoma or the Powder of Steel are wont also to vomit on the first dayes Geronster therefore hath received more of the Vein than Tonneletius but as much of Salt but mitigated by reason of the Activity of the Vein received into it and therefore that Salt hath become more gross and corpulent But Savenirius is far more washy in Waters having the least of the Vein and hungry Salt and therefore it sooner finisheth the Action of the hungry Salt and Vein and the Medicinal water sooner dyeth And for the same Cause it most easily passeth thorow the Stomack is sooner concocted and doth penetrate The presence therefore of the Spirit acting into the Vein enlargeth the Pores in the Water and works up the Water of the Fountain unto a lighter weight It is further to be noted that even as in Wines and unripe Oyl of Olives there is a fermental boyling up So the Action of the hungry Salt it self is made And not only upon the Vein while it gnaws and passeth thorow the same but also it operates for some time upon the same being snatched away with it Pouhontius I say far longer than Savenirius c. until that the Activities of the Spirits being worn out of exhausted as well the Agent as the Patient the thing dissolving I say like as also the thing to be dissolved do decay or faile in the same endeavour CHAP. XCVIII A Fifth Paradox 1. The virtues of a hungry Salt 2. The effect of obstruction 3. How far Fountains may act in a Man 4. Whom they may not help 5. An example of an effect by it self and by accident 6. A Woman is subject unto double Diseases 7. The faculties of the Vein of Iron 8. An objection 9. A Solution 10. After what manner Iron opens and after what manner it doth binde 11. A proof by an allied Example 12. Whether they are convenient in the Stone and how far 13 That is a Cloakative Cure which doth onely expell the Stones 14. The Waters of the Spaw are for a Cause that the Stone doth the more easily re-increase or grow again 15. Wherein the true Cure of the Stone is placed 16. From whence the remedy is to be fetched and of what sort it is 17. The first qualities are in Fountains 18. Water not Air is Internally moist 19. The Virtues of Rellolleum and Cherto 20. An objection 21. A resolution thereof WE being now about to Treat in a brief Method concerning the Virtues of the Fountains of the Spaw and being to speak by the Rule of a supply will resume that no other Natural Endowments are to be found than those which are drawn out of a hungry Salt and the dissolved Vein of Iron Wherefore seeing a hungry Salt dissolves Muscilages cleanseth them away consumes them and sends them forth therefore first of all it helps Stomacks that are beset with Muckiness also by the same endeavour it dispatcheth the same preter-natural sliminess which we have called a Coagulable excrement of things in us being crept a little more deeply and inwards as well into the innermost Chambers of the Veins as into those of any Bowell but by so much the slower by how much farther it hath taken its Journey from the mouth Hence it doth not sluggishly succour the obstructions arisen in the Liver Spleen and Kidneys and Fevers the Dropsie and Jaundise bred from thence For the matter obstructing being consumed the obstruction ceaseth which otherwise seeing it is a hinderance whereby the Spirit of Life may spring the less freely throughout all Places and perform its offices Therefore it deprives the parts which are behind it in a future order of a Vital Communion and consequently calls for Putrefactions Therefore the Waters of the Spaw being drunk are convenient altogether in all Diseases which arise from the Enemy Tartar being received and Coagulated within besides Nature So that a sufficient Root of Life be remaining that is if they are drunk seasonably enough Yet with that adjoyned Limitation that the Power of the Waters doth not Transcend the Hypochondrials or places about the short Ribs For the Waters do not reach beyond the Reins to wit unto the Heart Lungs or Brain Wherefore also the Waters of the Spaw do not succour those affects which are Naturally or peculiarly from a property of Passion unless by accident The reason is Because seeing Minerals are altogether unapt for nourishment they are banished out of the Body with the Urine the last excrement of Salts to wit the Commerce whereof the lively Arterial blood doth no longer suffer Therefore if they may seem to bring any help unto the Head Heart or Lungs all that is to be reckoned to happen by a withdrawing of the affect which causeth a distemperature therein by a Secondary Passion and consent In the next place neither do the Waters of the Spaw profit in Epidemical Endemical and Astral Diseases as are the Plague Plurisie burning Coal c. as neither do they very much profit in those Diseases wherein a Poison subsisteth being either inwardly received or bred or participated of from contagion As also neither in Diseases of Tincture such as are the Leprosie Pox or Foul Disease the Morphew Cancer Falling-Evil c. Wherefore we do not well agree with those who commend the Water of the Spaw for all Diseases altogether without Exception And so that they extoll the same even unto blasphemy To wit There is no cause that we having obtained the Fountains of the Spaw should now henceforeward be amazed at the Miracles of Ancient Waters or of the Fish-Pool of Siloah or of Jordan curing of Naaman seeing here also we see those
Quick-sighted and provident Nature comes to meet or prevent this same Dryness with a more large Nourishment of Marrow and She would have it to be Fat and less discussable or dispersable by Heates that it may vindicate the Old Age of the Bones from Dryness by its Unctuous Moisture For therefore there is a greater plenty or Marrow in four-footed Beasts that are Aged than in the little Young Ones because there is a greater necessity thereof I therefore do no longer highly esteem of the irrepairable radical Moisture for the Foundation of Life as neither being astonished at Dryness in as much as it is such neither also am I wont to measure out the Life according to the Pleasure of the first Qualities Because I knew that the Life did not wax dry as neither was it to be drawn from the Bosom of the Elements after that I beheld the interchangeable Courses of a long and short Life to be in the Center of Life CHAP. CV The Vital Air. THe Schools have not performed enough in teaching that Nourishments are transchanged first into Chyle and then from hence into the Digested Juice of Venal Blood and so that in the Liver a natural Spirit is made which by a repeated Digestion in the Heart is formed into vital Spirit and at length that in the Brain it is made animal So as that the natural Spirit should be fit for using the Parts but the Vital for quickning and conserving the same as also lastly that the Animal Spirit should be appointed for the Functions of Sense Motion and of the Mind But moreover in my Judgment it had behoved them more largely to discover the Thingliness and History of the Deed in so long a race of Studies and Repetition of Writers Indeed they know that there is a certain Spirit that Maker of the Assault according to Hippocrates which holds the Stern of Life in its Hand It was to be sought for and pronounced in what Organs or Instruments that Spirit should be made or what it should act and also they ought to have explained every Disposition the Substance thereof and the Properties of its Substance and also the manner of its making I therefore will declare what I may meet with in this respect That therefore we may be led into the Knowledge of the Vital Spirit the Blas of Man should first of all be repeated in this place but least I be tedious I will here omit it and refer the Reader elsewhere unto the Volume of the rise of Medicine I have elsewhere also delivered a Mean or Manner whereby through instilled Ferments an Aqua Vitae may be made of every Plant and Fruit whatsoever Which manner the vulgar Sort hath known and doth exercise while it frameth an Aqua Vitae or Liquor of Life out of Grains Fruits Ale or Beer Hydromel or honied Water no less than out of Juice of the Vine But an Aqua Vitae is a volatile Liquor Oylie indeed as it is wholly enflamed and likewise wholly Salt for as much as being an Air it biteth yea and being but a little while detained in the Mouth it burns and embladders the upper skin of the Gums I in this place taking notice by the way that two Beginnings of Chymistry are one only and an undivideable Simple thing I have shewn also elsewhere after what manner one Pound of Aqua Vitae being combibed in the dryed Salt of Tartar scarce half an Ounce of Salt can be made but that the whole Body may be made an Elementary Water as it was before And so that from hence it is easie to be seen that Water is by Nature a more formerly and simple Body that the Chymical Beginnings themselves While as the Water which at first was not in act in the most expurging or refined Aqua Vitae is nevertheless by its reducement thereby made its first Element of Water The which handicraft Operation moreover by transferring unto the Speculation of Life I find that the Wine in its winy Parts containeth the Aqua Vitae the Water of Life and therefore that is easily quickly and without the digested Maturities of the Liver and Gaul snatched through the Arteries of the Stomack unto the Heart or to be called unto it immediately for the supply and defect of the vital Spirit and in this respect to delude the Opinion of the Schools which presupposeth that the Spirit of the Liver ought to precede For if there be more of the Spirit of Wine in the Stomack than is meet Drunkenness follows to wit as the Spirit of Wine is more largely attracted than can in a fit Interval be changed into Vital Spirit Which thing surely proveth first of all a changing of and also the Operations of a Digestion and Ferment In the next place that also is remarkable To wit that there is a certain more mild Spirit in the Wine a Partaker of another and more noble Quality than that Spirit which is immediately drawn out by Distillation and is called refined or expurged Aqua Vitae The which is easily beheld by the Sight in the simple Oyl of Olives because Oyl being Distilled without the Additaments of Bricks or Tiles and the which therefore is called Oleum Philosophorum differs much from its Oyliness which is extracted the simple Oyl being first reduced into unlike Parts only by the Digestion and Application of the circulated Salt of Paracelsus For truly the circulated Salt is separated the same in weight and antient Qualities from the Oyl after that the Oyl of Olives is disposed into its diverse kinds of Parts For then by this means a sweet Oyl is separated from the Oyl of Olives even as also a most sweet Spirit of Wine from the Wine and that far distinct from the tartness of Aqua Vitae But in us although the meat together with the Drink do after some sort putrifie for that Purefaction is a manner and mean of transchanging a thing into a thing yet in our Digestions the Spirit of Aqua Vitae is not by such a Putrefaction and action of the Ferment of the Spleen drawn out of Potherbs Pulses Bread-Corns or Apples For truly it is not the Intention of our Nature to procreate an Aqua Vitae for it self but there is a far different Ferment in us whereby things are resolved into Chyle And a far different one whereby things do putrifie and are separated into an Aqua Vitae For this Ferment is introduced by many Mediums but that is not attained but by a specifical fermental Property of any Species For while Herbs through a long steeping in Water are made to putrifie by their Ferment or Vicar for the extracting of an Aqua Vitae the stalke branches and entire Leaves remaine in their Figure and Hardness the which notwithstanding being chewed swallowed and well concocted within do in a few hours depart into Chyle and loose the first Nature of Herbs Wherefore I have also elsewhere pressed to wit that there are as many specifical digestive
Ferments as many Varieties of Putrefactions and as many Dungs of one Bread as there are particular Kindes of Animals nourished by Bread Yea and moreover there are more Ferments for the Corruption of Bread because also Bread doth putrifie after many manners as well of its own accord as through the Odour of Places and Impressions of Agents And that which is said of Bread the same thing may be understood of other Foods The Schooles taking notice also that nothings will profit us but that which in its Root containeth the Flourish of Life therefore also they would that the Spirit of the Liver being actually natural should glisten in the Venal Blood like an Air And they have thought it to be a Vapour and therefore also they have confounded it with an Exhalation Not knowing that a Vapour is Water but that it is not a Gas a wild Spirit an uncoagulable Air and Skie Therefore they have thought that a Vapour exhaling out of the out-chased venal Blood even as elsewhere it breaths out of any lukewarm Liquors was that Spirit of the venal Blood from whence the vital Spirit should afterwards be materially framed Of which I have elsewhere profesly spoken For indeed whatsoever defcendeth into an healthy Stomack if it be concocted by the Ferment of the Spleen it waxeth sharp through the fermental and specifical Sharpness of our Species And Superfluities being first sequestred from thence it is at length turned into venal Blood Which Blood after the Bound of its Digestion is transferred into the Heart and is made Arterial Blood which in the holy Scriptures is called A ruddy or red Spirit wherein the Soul inhabiteth For it is made fit to pass over into Vital Spirit and the remainder thereof to undergo the last Digestion of the solid parts and at length without that its residence to exhale into the Air Therefore also for that very Cause it ought to be volatile and to have assumed the Disposition of a Spirit in the Heart Furthermore that Sharpness of the Stomack by Virtue of the ferment of the Gaul is converted into a Salt even as elsewhere concerning Digestions And the Actual Saltness is separated with the Urin and Sweats because it became Excrementitious But the Mass of the venal Blood it self seeing it cannot pass over into Spirit but by the Vital Ferment of the Heart I say there is made a substantial Derivation or Translation of the Venal Blood into Arterial Blood and of the Arterial Blood into Spirit wholly throughout the whole without any residence and separation of heterogeneal Parts because the Excrements are first withdrawn from thence and the Substance of the Heart is restless being continually busied about this Office of Transmutation that it may uncessantly effect Arterial Blood out of the Venal Blood and of this vital Spirit So that a certain natural Spirit doth not fore-exist in the venal Blood from whence as it were of the matter whereof vital Spirit may be made But the whole venal Blood it self if there shall be need is made Arterial Blood and from thence â—ital Spirit Therefore the making of Venal Blood in the Liver and the making of Arterial Blood in the Heart do differ For one is a true transmutation of the Chyle into venal Blood and the generating of a new Being But the other is an extenuating of the Venal Blood into a volatile Arterial Blood and into a Vital Air For venal Blood is made with a thickning of it self and with a Separation of the liquid Excrement or Urin. But the Vital Spirit is made with a melting of that which is thickned and an Aiery extenuation thereof to wit whereunto the Arterial Blood affords a Degree or Mean I confess indeed that the Spirit of Wine is snatched as a Spirit into the Arteries as a certain simple Symbolizing and previously disposed thing that it may easily passover into vital Spirit but the Schooles do from hence conclude nothing for their Spirit of the Liver Therefore let the venal Blood be the Spirit of the Liver it self coagulated and the fore-existing Matter of the Vital Spirits Which Spirit indeed hath the Nature together with the Power of a Body that it may be Spiritualized Therefore even as from the Ferment of the Heart the venal Blood is made arterial Blood and a volatile Spirit So in the Arteries as it were in the Stomack of the Heart and the Ferment of the Heart being drawn the Arterial Blood it self passeth over into the Common-wealth of Spirits Yea the secondary Humours also or the immediate Nourishments of the solid Parts are by degrees made Volatile least they should leave a remaining Residence behind them but they make an egress with a total transpitation of themselves The Heart therefore by its Ferment frameth arterial Blood out of venal Blood the which by the same endeavour it so fits and extenuates that moreover so much of vital Spirits is made out of the arterial Blood in the Arteries as it were in its Stomack as the Grosness and resisting Substance of the arterial Blood in so small a space wherein it is agitated or wrought in the Arteries permits to be made And there is well nigh a single Action while the venal Blood passeth over into arterial Blood and the Arterial Blood into Spirit Because they differ not in their Shops and likewise in the Degrees of Digestion Extenuation and Subtilizing For as much of arterial Blood is bred of venal Blood and as much of vital Spirits is made out of the arterial Blood by the same Feâ—ment of the Heart as is needful for every one of them and the Faculties of concocting are able to make Neither is it sufficient also to have known that the venal Blood doth ascend into arterial Blood but that the arterial Blood passeth over partly into vital Spirit and partly departeth into the Nourishment of the solid Parts Also that at length of vital Spirit it is made animal and the which receiveth an ultimated or utmost Determination in its Nerves so indeed that it is made visive or visible Spirit in the optick Nerves or Sinews of Sight but being exorbitant from thence and being derived into the Tongue it should be plainly unprofitable for tasting even as also the Aanimal Spirits the Authors of touching are unfit for Motion and those of this for them But moreover it behoves us to have known the Marrow of the vital Spirit For indeed of the Sharpe Chyle partly venal Blood and partly a Urin and sweat is made But that excrementous Saltness of the Urin is a volatile and Salt Spirit the which being co-fermented with Earth at length a Salta-peter is formed wherefore that Salt Spirit is excrementous The venal Blood indeed by Distillation shews unto us also a saltish Spirit plainly volatile not any thing distinguishable in Smell as neither in Tast from the Spirit of the Urin Yet essentially different in this that the Spirit of the Salt of Venal Blood cureth the Falling-sickness but the
Spirit of the Salt of Urin not so From hence at leastwise it is manifest that there is a Salt and volatile Spirit in the venal Blood But after what manner the whole venal Blood may be homogeneally transchanged by the Ferment of the Heart cannot be explained by Words because Natures themselves are not demonstrable from a former Cause For the Operations of Ferments for the transmutation of things are essential but not the accidentary Propagations of Accidents for the causing of Dipositions only The vital Spirit therefore is plainly Salt therefore Balsamical and a Preserver from Corruption That although the Aqua Vitae doth easily pass into vital Spirit yet this Spirit is not Oylie or combustile like the Aqua Vitae but the Spirit of Wine only through a touching of the Ferment is easily wholly changed into a salt Spirit and forthwith looseth its inflamable Disposition Even as I have taught in the Book of the Stone in Man after what manner Aqua Vitae may by the Spirit of Urin be in one only instant coagulated into a subtile Gobbet or Lump The which concerning the volatile Salt of the arterial Blood may through the effective Ferment of the Heart be much more evidently proved Wherefore they who for some good while do undergo the beating of the Heart although they shall then drink abundantly and that much of the more pure Wine yet they are not easily made Drunk Because that by reason of an urgent necessity the Spirit of the Wine is most speedily attracted into the Heart and Arteries which are scanty in spirits and is suddenly formed into vital Spirit It restoreth I say the Strength or Faculties neither yet doth it then make drunk because it is no longer a stranger but being drawn into the Heart it easily becomes domestical and then is on every side dispensed through the Arteries For it doth not argue to the contrary that the Spirit of Salt-peter is sharp and that therefore the vital Spirit ought to be sharp For neither was the Spirit from whence Salt-peter was made in the Earth then sharp And therefore the vital Spirit is Salt and nearer to the Spirit of Urin than of Salt-peter the which by reason of Adustion and Extraction is alwayes a new Creature of its composed Body That Foundation therefore which is laid by the Ferment of the Gaul in volatilizing and making Salt this afterwards is perfected in the Shop of the Heart For the foregoing Digestions are as so many Dispositions unto vital Functions and Necessities for a Member being once stupified if Sense or Feeling shall return that surely is made with sensible Spurs and Prickings which are the tokens of true saltness But that the whole venal Blood is a meer Salt may not from elsewhere be more clearly deducted than that because in the Dropsy Ascites and in Ulcers it is homogeneally through a most easie Degeneration changed into a salt Liquor But a salt sharp Quality and subtile Matter was suitable to the vital Spirit if it ought to be sufficient for preserving of the Members The redness also of the venal Blood assumeth a yellowness while it is made arterial Blood because that which is Red through the tartness of Salt waxeth Yellow in its dissolving Neither yet hath the arterial Blood lost all its redness for truly a Part thereof ought to remain for the Nourishment of the solid Members It is a dead or invalid thing whatsoever I have hitherto said that the Spirit of Life is a salt sharp Vapour and made of the arterial Blood by the vital Members their own Ferments I will therefore Speak of the Life of the Spirit For seeing it ought to do its Duty with the Offices of Life it was not required that it should be in the shew of a salt Liquor or arterial Blood or that it should befool us under the likeness of a salt Exhalation but because it ought primarily to live and receive the Life it was meet for it to be enlightned not indeed with a burning enflaming or fiery Light but with a simple vital Light of the Nature of soulified Formes of the sensitive Life and Soul and that indeed of a humane Species For for the Understanding thereof suppose thou that Wormâ— named Glow-wormes have by Night a Light in their Belly which not only shines like the Eyes of a Cat but also pouers forth a thin Light round about that Light is extinguished with the Life of the Glow-worme A like Light suppose thou to be which enlightneth the vital Spirit as long as it liveth it shineth and is propagated into Spirit newly made being duly elabourated And by how much the more impure and the less elabourated it shall be by so much shall that Light be the Darker But that Light is extinguished in us the Matter of the Spirit remaining in the Plague Poysons c. even as by Swooning and Beating of the Heart the Light is extinguished and the Spirit vanisheth away In time of Death also the Membrane of the Eye is destitute of a manifest Light plainly to be seen Yet the Essence of that Light in Glow-worms is not so alike to that which is in us to wit as they differ from us only in Degree But there are as many Species of these Lights as there are of vital Creatures That is unto us a token of divine Bounty that there are so many Species and vital Differences of Lights which by us are comprehended under one only Notion because that those Lights are the very Lives and Forms themselves of vital Creatures So that the thrice most glorious Father of Lights doth recreate himself in the abundance of the kinds of Lights with no less a Lavishment than as in one only humane Countenance he hath fashioned almost as many Varieties as Men because there is in his Power a certain Common-wealth of vital Lights and Band of innumerable Citizens a certain Similitude whereof he expresseth in vital soulified Creatures by a Life a Form that is by a vital Light The vital Spirit therefore Is Arterial Blood resolved by the force of the Ferment and Motion of the Heart into a salt Air being vitally enlightned which Light in us is hot but in the Fish it is so actually cold that it is never able to aspire unto a Power of Heat as long as it liveth and subsisteth Our Heat therefore is not a consumer of the Original Moisture as neither therefore through want of Heat do Fishes hitherto escape Death although their Moisture be not lifted up into an Exhalation and least of all in the frozen Sea For neither shall the Capuchin our Country-man who is cold for the greatest part of the year from his Feet even unto his Belly nor feeling himself to have Feet therefore not undergo a dayly transpiration of the nourishable Moisture or doth he refuse the Refreshment of Nourishments or is the Capuchin changed in those parts into a Fish the which otherwise should be necessary for him to be if Heat should
Ointment is called Sympathetical another Magnetical 3. What Mummy is 4. Phylosophy is immediately reproved by Reasons onely 5. The difference of Law and Phylosophy 6. From an ignorance of the Cause Magnatism is accounted a Devil 7. Who may be the Interpreters of Nature 8. Why Alchymists onely can Interpret Nature 9. He is proud who from an ignorance of the Cause believes a thing to be of the Devil 10. Who are the Devils flatterers 11. Magnetism is no new Invention 12. The Armary or Weapon-unguent 13. The intent aim remedies or ingredients and manner in the Ointment are good 14. Why the Unguent is not unlawful 15. Why it is not Superstitious 16. What Superstition is 17. Why the manner of the Unguent being unknown to the censurer can nothing disprove it 18. What Magnetism is 19. Some Effects of the Load-stone 20. The Magnetical Cure of incurable Diseases is perfect 21. Milk being burned dries up the Dugs 22. Vitriol dies through Magnetism or Attraction 23. Mummy operates from Italy even to Bruxels 24. The Carline Thistle under the shade draws wonderfully 25. Likewise the same Disease in number changeth its Subjects 26. That from Magnetism Flowers are followers of the Sun 27. Mummies which are Philtrous or pertaining to Love how they are attractive 28. That the Arcanum or secret of the Blood is the Load-stone of Alchymists 29. Herbs why and after what sort they are Attractive 30. Asarabacca and the Elder are Magnetical 31. An implicite compact or covenant is the Anchor of the Ignorant 32. Sympathy presupposeth a sense or feeling 33. The Mummy of a Dead Brother being long since impressed on a seat is as yet attractive 43. The Saphire is an imitator of the Unguent in Magnetism 35. The Saphire by touching of one Carbuncle cures others 36. Why the Prelates of the Church wear skie-coloured Rings 37. Man hath his Load-stone 38. An Amulet for the Plague 39. It is of necessity that the same accident should pass from subject into subject 40. Magnetism is an heavenly quality 41. A Thief Robber or Murderer and an honest Man or Woman afford the same Mosse of their dead skull 42. From whence and what the seed of that Mosse is 43. The fruit of the Air. 44. That Usnea or Mosse is a fruit of Fire 45. In that Mosse also is the Back of the Load-stone the scope being changed 46. God in Miracles follows Nature 47. God approves of the Magnetism of the Unguent by Reliques 48. A supernatural Magnetism proves a natural one 49. A lock of that Mosse being incarnate in the fore-head is a defence against a sword but a Thred or rag of the stole of S. Hubbert against the tooth of a mad Dog 50. A rag being incarnate in the fore-head preserves from the biting of a mad Dog for ones whole life time an impression of blood doth the same in the Zinzilla 51. Pepper degenerates into Ivy. 52. How we must judge of Persons 53. Paracelsus the Monarch of Secrets 54. Every thing hath its own particular Heaven 55. From whence inclination is 56. From whence a Disease is Astral in us 57. Whence sick persons have a fore-feeling of the stormes of the times 58. What may cause the flowing and ebbing in the Sea 59. Whence Windes are stirred up 60. The Heaven doth not cause but pronounce things to come 61. The Being of every seed hath the firmament and virtue of its own influence 62. The Vine not the Heaven disturbs Wines 63. Antimony observes an influence 64. The Load-stone directs its self but is not drawn 65. Glass is Magnetical 66. Rosin is Magnetical 67. What Garlick acteth against the Load-stone and why the same thing also concerning Mercury 68. The virtue or power of operation on an Object at a distance is natural even in sublunary things and it is Magnetical 69. Every Creature liveth in its own mode or after its own manner 70. What the Unguent can draw from a Wound at a distance 71. Every Satanical effect is imperfect 72. Why Satan cannot co-operate with our Unguent 73. What may be called the Will and Imagination of the Flesh and of the outward Man 74. A twofold Extasie 75. The Ecstatical power of the Blood 76. Corruption makes that lurking power manifest 77. The Essences of things do not putrifie 78. The putrefaction of Alchymy to what end it is 79. The Cause of Attraction in the Unguent 80. The heart is drawn by the treasure magnetically or after the manner of a Load-stone 81. Necromancy or the Black-Art from whence it is 82. What Man is as a living Creature and what Man is as being the Image of God 83. After what manner the Eagle is allured by the Magnetisme of a dead Carcase 84. How the venal Bloud is drawn in the Unguent unto its own treasure Why Eagles are allured to a dead Carcase magnetically 85. A natural feeling or perceivance and an animal feeling do differ 86. The Effects of Witches are wicked ones 87. The power of a Witch is natural and of what sort that power may be 88. Where the Magical power in man is seated 89. Whether man bears command over all other Bodies 90. Why a man may act per nutum or by his beck or pleasure 91. What the Magical faculty may be 92. The Magical power lyes hid in man after divers manners 93. The inward man is the same with the outward fundamentally but materially diverse 94. What the vital Spirit its knowledge and gift is 95. In a Carcase which dies of its own accord there is no implanted Spirit 96. The divining of Spirits according to Physitians 97. The Soul acts in the Body onely per nutum Magically 98. The Soul acts in the Body onely by a drowsie beck but out of the Body by an excited beck The knowledge of the Apple hinders Science Magical or Wise Knowledge 99. The beginning of the Cabal is drawn from God in Dreams 100. The defect of Understanding is in the outward man 101. What Satan can do in Witches 102. What are the true works of Satan alone 103. Sin hath withdrawn the endowments of Grace and hath obscured the gifts of Nature 104. Whither the pious exercises of Catholicks tend 105. The most powerful effect of the Cabal 106. There are two subjects of any kind of things 107. Man acts as well by his Spirit as by his Body 108. What kind of ray or beam is sent from a Witch into a bruit 109. How a Witch may be bewrayed 110. How a Witch may be bound up in the heart of a Horse 111. The Intention depraves or vitiates a good Work 112. The Seminal virtue is natural Magick 113. Why blood issues out of the dead Carcase when the Murtherer is present 114. Why the Plague is frequent in Sieges 115. Works of Mercy are to be exercised at least in respect of avoiding the Plague 116. Plagues from Revenge and execration are detestable 117. Why Bodies were to be removed from the Gibbet 118. Why Excrements
was presently cold they thought that those in-blown Spirits were the beginning Center and primitive sunny point and that of heat not regarding that the Spirits themselves are of themselves cold and that their heat doth perish in an instant as soon as they are snatcht away from the beam and aid of the heart A very great wonder it is that it hath been hitherto unknown and undetermined unto what heats the whole Tragedy of things vital and not vital is ascribed Whether of the two may prevail over the other in the original and support of heat For seeing neither the heart nor vital spirit of the same are from their own nature and substance originally hot for this cause it hath not been so much as once thought from whence our heat comes or from what original it is in every one of us For seeing the knowledge of ones self is the chief of Sciences as well in Moral as Natural things the Schools ought never to have been ashamed to have enquired into the Fountain of Heat and Life in things How great darkness hath from thence remained in Healing and in preserving of the Life God hath known This controversie therefore I have discussed with my self from my youth after this manner First I knew that fire even as in the Chapter of Forms was not an Accident nor a Substance and much less an Element The which I have elsewhere demonstrated with a full sail of Phylosophy And then that the Sun was hot from a proper endowment and that the fire of the Kitchin was likewise given although for the workman and a death subjected to the hands of Artificers But when as both of them forsake us that we have a Flint and a Steel from whence we make a fire To wit we strike fire out of two cold or dead things So also the waters of hot Baths under the earth are enflamed by Salt and Sulphur which are volatile things and that the arterial blood is partly Salt and partly fat and Sulphurous Then in the next place that there ought to be a smiting of Pulses together not indeed for a cooling refreshment as the Schools do otherwise dream but indeed that as butter is made of Milk by charming or shaking of it together So a vital Sulphur of the arterial Blood The which afterwards by a smiting of the same endeavour conceives a Light in the volatile Spirit and a formal or vital Light is propagated as it were Light being taken from Light To wit the salt Spirits and Sulphur of the arterial Blood do by the Pulse rub themselves together in the Sheath of the Heart and a formal Light together with Heat is kindled in the vital Spirit from the Light I say of the most inward and implanted sunny Spirit in which is the Tabernacle of the specifical Sun even unto the Worlds end In this Sun of Man the Aimighty hath placed his Tabernacle and his delights his Kingdom together with all his free gifts But the Light which is conceived by smiting together is not indeed made a new as from a Flint and Iron but it is propagated by the obtainment of matter from the sunny specifical and humane Light or is kindled and enlarged by it It is there indeed universal and vital consisting in the points of a tempered Light and it is in Nature indeed specifical in respect of its production and limited for the Life of Man but it is every way made individual by him who hath placed his vital Tabernacle in the Sun of the Species Out of which Tabernacle he thereby enlightneth every Man that cometh into this World Because the Lord Jesus is after an incomprehensible manner the Light Life Beginning Way Truth and the All of all Things For as the Life cannot subsist for a moment without the lightsome Spirit by which it is enlightned and soulified in the habitation of the Sun So neither can the Soul nor Life in any wise subsist for one only moment without the Grace of the same eternal Light But I have conceived of the quality and intension of Heat resulting from the Light as a whole humane Body weighing perhaps 200 Pounds is hot with an actual warmth and the which without that Light of Life should presently be cold and be a dead Carcass There is therefore so much Heat in the Heart as is sufficient for diffusing warmth through so many Pounds of Water otherwise cold The Life therefore of Species as it consisteth in a simple and ununited Light containes a mystery of divine providence For a fiery Light however by reason of distance it be mitigated and reduced into a nourishing luke-warmth Yet naturally it cannot stop as that it cannot conspire for the top of a connexed Light and so contend for its own ruine or destruction Therefore the Father and dispenser of Lights hath provided who sitting in the Tabernacle of the Sun hath constrained or tied up Lights by Species or particular kindes and bolts Here it is sufficient to have shewn that they are the Reliques and plainly the Blasphemies of Paganish Errour to have said A Man and the Sun doth generate a Man Seeing Life belongs not to the Sun but the Fewels Excitements of sublunary Actions alone as also the necessary supplies readily serviceable to the Life CHAP. CXIV The nourishing of an Infant for Long Life IT is already manifest that Life is not from the Stars but that from a seminary Faculty of the Parents Life is short Diseasie Healthy and Growing For it is limited according to the Disposition of the Seed and Truncks of the Body no less also according to the goodness of Nourishments and Climates Among the Impediments of Long Life is an infirm Constitution of the Young and a bad nourishing of the Infant The Young therefore being generated and brought forth the quantity and quality of the Nourishment is to be regarded seeing its little Body ought to be nourished and to wax great and so to be setled or confirmed And it is now chiefly known that the nourishable Juice in a Child is adopted into the Inheritance of the radical Moisture For Nature hath appointed Milk in the Dugs for the Meat and Drink of the little Infant which Nourishment hath rendred it self common unto him with Bruit-beasts It might be thought by some that it would be injurious unto God if we should think of any other Nourishment as if he had not alwayes chosen out of Means that which should be most exceeding good But surely shall not the God of Nature be a Step-father and Nature her self a Step-mother because he made not Bread not Wine but Grain and Grapes only Nature is governed by the Finger of God It is thus Milk therefore as an ordinary Nourishment hath afforded a sufficiency for living but not that it should be serviceable for long Life For Nature no longer meditated of long Life after that she knew her Author had cut short the Life nor would have every one to be long lived But he
treasure of life If therefore the life it self cannot preserve its own seat and treasure from corruption as long as it is in the veins when shall it preserve it and how shall it ever be free from corruption And likewise if the life doth not preserve the blood from corruption wherein it glistens after what manner shall the bones be preserved The veins therefore are ordained by the Creator that they may preserve the blood from corruption because the life is co-fermented with the blood of the veins Therefore under this Question the ornament and appointment of nature goes to ruine or the whole order of healing hitherto adored by Physicians falls to the ground But be it so by what sign do Physicians judge of putrified blood Is it not from the more white black yellow somewhat green or duskish colour Is it not from a slimy gross watery thin matter And lastly Is it not from a consistence not threddy or fibrous scarce cleaving together c. But I declare under the penalty of a convicted lye if any one will make tryal that I have examined the bloods of two hundred wanton countrey and healthy people in one only day and many of them were exceeding unlike in their aspect colour matter and consistence many whereof I distilled and found them to be alike profitable in healing For our Countrey Boores are wont at every Whitsontide to let out their blood whereby they might drink the more largely For although many of them seemed to be putrefied others cankery or black chole-ry yet especially the Countrymen from whence they had issued were very healthy Therefore they confirmed by the cause the tokens of corruption not withstanding them that their bloods were not any thing estranged from the nature of a Balsame Wherefore I have laughed at the Table of judgements from the beholding of blood let out of the veins and so I confirmed it with my self that the venal blood is commanded by Physicians to be kept that at least in his regard they may reckon one visit to the sick For if the corruption of the blood hath any where place and betokeneth the letting forth of it self from that Title surely that must be in the Plague But in the Plague the cutting of a vein is destructive Therefore there is no where putrefaction in the blood of the veins and a fear lest the putrefaction of that blood should prevail and by consequence the scope of letting out the blood is in this respect erroneous I suppose also thirty men to be oppressed with an equal Pleurisie but ten of them to pour forth blood out of a vein apparently vitiated for the blood of those that have the Pleurisie is like red wine whereunto clots of Milk have a Conflux but the remaining twenty I will cure without shedding of their blood It is certain in the mean time that those twenty have their blood no otherwise affected than the ten whose vein was cut And again That if in those twenty that were cured a vein be opened their blood shall be found rectified restored into its former state and far estranged from a pleuritical errour Therefore the blood of him that hath a Pleurisie is not corrupted although it may seem to be such The which I prove Because from that which is corrupted or deprived of life there is not granted a return unto life health or an habit Therefore black blew or wan green c. blood do not testifie of its corruption but they afford signes of its fermental angry heat or turbulency alone For first of all if the more waterish and yellow blood should betoken a vice the arterial blood should be far worse than the blood of the veins which thing is erroneous For the blood of the veins is no otherwise distinguished by the aforesaid signs than as wine is troubled while the Vine floureth for it is not therefore corrupted because the tempest being withdrawn it voluntarily cleers up again So likewise a Fever doth variformly disturb the blood and discolour it with strange faces But these masks cease the Fever being taken away Truly I am wont to compare the Lookers into the blood unto those who give their judgement concerning Spanish Wine and who give their thoughts in beholding of the urine But they will say If putrefaction be not in the blood why then doth purely red blood leap out of a vein at the third and not at the first turn or at the first and not at the third turn But that argument at least convinceth that one part of the blood is more and sooner disturbed than another not the whole or all at once For it is certain that nature tends by degrees in a lineal path unto the perfection appointed for her Therefore that the blood nigh the heart is more pure than that which is about the first shop thereof Therefore they say and err therein That a Tertian as well as that which is Continual as that which is renewed by Intervals consisteth of yellow Choler a Quartan of black Choler as also a Quotidian of phlegm but putrified ones For why was it of necessity to suppose these Humours the which I have elsewhere demonstrated to be feigned ones to be putrefied seeing they confess a non-putrefied Sunochus to be continual and more cruel than the three aforesaid Fevers Which particulars surely if they are compared with the definition of Fevers proposed now of necessity the blood in every Sunochus or continual Fever and the vital spirit in a diary Fever shall putrifie the life remaining to wit they shall attain the bound of putrefaction And then seeing the Schools confess that such putrified humours do not consist in the sheath of the heart and that therefore they are not primarily inflamed in a Fever and so by consequence that putrefaction is in vain required for a feverish heat to be kindled in the heart If therefore putrefied Humours do enflame the spirit in the heart from far that thing shall by every law of nature be made nigh before afar off and they shall the rather or more fully enflame all the blood that lyes between the heart and themselves with the heat of Putrefaction and so all Fevers shall of necessity afford a putrefied continual Fever Wherefore neither shall a Quartan Ague stop its course and repeat its return if the same putrefied matter thereof waiteth safe in the Spleen for a years space Gangrens certainly teach me that nothing of a putrefied matter for every putrefied matter is dead can long persist without a further Conragion of it self Neither do I apprehend how the Archeus of life it self shall putrefie that it may give satisfaction to Galen for a diary Fever But if they understand a diary Fever to be the daughter of that Putrefaction which at length is implanted in the spirit of life But thus all Fevers in the Schools should be Diaries Again If a diary or one dayes Fever be the daughter of Putrefaction therefore Putrefaction is presupposed to be
having Remedies besides the Diminishers of the body and strength all which I will peculiarly touch at For indeed according to the consent of Galen in every Fever a Hectick one excepted cutting of a vein is required Therefore for the Schooles and custome of this destructive Age I state this Syllogisme Phlebotomy or Bloud-letting is unprofitable wherefoever it is not shewn to be necessary or where a proper Indication is wanting unto it But in Fevers it is not signified to be necessary Therefore Bloud letting in Fevers is unprofitable The Major proposition is proved because the end is the chief Directress of Causes and the Disposer of the meanes unto it Wheresoever therefore the end sheweth not a necessity of the meanes things not requisite are in vain provided for that end especially where from a contrary betokening it is manifest that the bloud is not let out without a losse of the strength such meanes therefore are rashly instituted which the end shews to be vain unprofitable and to be done with a diminishment of the strength But the Minor proposition Horatius Augenius de monte Sancto profesly proveth in three Books Teaching with the consent of the Vniversities That a Plethora or a too much fullnesse of the veines alone that is the too much abounding of Bloud is the betokener of Phlebotomy nor that indeed directly for the curing of Fevers but for the Evacuation of a fullnesse But a Plethora never subsisteth in Fevers therefore Bloud-letting is never betokened in Fevers and by consequence this is altogether unprofitable The Conclusion is indeed new and Paradoxal yet true Which thing therefore for that cause shall be therefore to be proved by many Arguments Galen himself proves the Subsumption Teaching That at every fit of Fevers more Choler is pufft away than is generated in two dayes In the mean time the other members do not cease to be nourished with accustomed bloud That is besides the consuming Caused by the Fever they also consume their own allotted quantity of wonted Bloud The which in the foregoing Chapter from the humour cast up by vomit I have reduced into a Computation But now that very thing is to be pressed with a greater connivance Wherefore if in him that is in good health eight ounces of bloud are daily made it must needs be that as many also are daily spent for nourishment or otherwise that a man should soon swell up into an huge heap What if therefore eight ounces of bloud do daily depart from him that is in good health certainly the Fever shall consume no less Therefore seeing there is none or but a little appetite and digestion of meats and sanguification of necessity also too much abundance of blood if there were any at the beginning shall fail presently after two dayes and the betokening thereof shall cease for the letting forth of bloud in him that hath a Fever But that presently in Fevers there is no longer a Plethora as many do see this as do undergo ulcers by a Cautery To wit the which presently after Fevers are dryed up nor do they afford their wonted pus But first of all we must take notice that the Strength or Faculties can never offend through abundance not so much as in Mathuselah so neither doth good bloud offend through a too much abounding because the vital Faculties and Bloud are Correlatives Because according to the Scripture the Soul or vital Spirit is in the blood By Consequence therefore there can never be a Plethora in good blood But on the other extream I have demonstrated in a foregoing Chapter That corrupt blood is never conteined in the veines therefore if there be ever any possible plethora of the veines that ought to consist in a middle state of the bloud between a corrupted and very healthy one whether we consider the same state of decay and neutrality or next as it is mixed of both at leastwise the Galenists may remember that good proceeds from an entire cause but evil from every defect And so that this state of the blood is not called a Plethorical or abounding one but a Cacochymical one or state of a bad juyce Nor that it desires the cutting of a vein but rather a Purgation which may selectively draw forth the bad but leave the good And so that by their Positions it is not yet proved That the cutting of a vein is in any wise betokened For according to the truth of the matter I have already shewn before That a state of ill juyce doth not consist in the veins the which indeed is onely a disturbing of the Bloud for the easing whereof an exhausting of the troubled bloud is not so much signified as a taking away of the affect of the Disturber Especially because it is the more pure bloud which passing through the Center of the heart hath obtained its own refinement and therefore that which is drawn out of the Elbow and is first brought forth shall be the more pure but the more impure bloud shal be left within Furthermore since it is now manifest that a Plethora is wanting in Fevers which may a require a letting out of blood and that thing the Schools have after some sort smelt out they have instead of an indication or betokening sign substituted some co-indications or mutual betokenings as if they were of an equal weight with a sutable indication in nature and out-weighing a contrary indication the which after another manner surely seeing it is drawn from a conserving of the strength ought wholly to obtain the Chief-dome altogether by that Title that every Fever is quickly safely and perfectly curable without cutting of a vein For indeed for all so divers putrefactions of retaining Humours and Fevers issuing from thence they presently make use of the one only succour of cutting of a vein because it abundantly as they say succours and is stopped at pleasure By which distinction at least they after some sort defame their own laxative medicines For they say although the cutting of a vein by a natural and one only indication of it self seems to be required by reason of a Plethora yea nor that it doth properly take away putrified humours yet it cooleth it unloads the Fardle of the veins reneweth or refresheth the strength takes away part of the bad Humour together with the good and by derivation and revulsion stops pacifies and calls away the flux of humours made unto the nest of putrefaction wherefore nature feeling refreshment is the more prosperously and easily busied about the rest They are good words saith the Sow while she eats up the penitential Psalms but they do not profit a hunger-starved swine Such indeed are co-indications whereby they perswade the destruction of Mortals to be continued and whereunto I will give satisfaction in order But before all I will have it to be fore-admonished that although in a more strong and full body there is not a notable hurt by letting out the blood yea although the sick may
able to proceed and whether they hope that bloud being at sometime after what manner soever once putrified in the veines there is aforded in Nature a going back or return To wit from such a privation For let them shew that it is not a contradiction that it is proper to a Fever to defile the bloud it self and for this property to be taken away by the effect to wit by a removal of that which is putrified For if the more impure bloud be at first drawn out of the vein and they repeatingly open a vein in the mean time they prostrate and disturb the Faculties hence also they take away the hope of a Crisis what if then the more red bloud shall flow forth Surely they cry out as if the whole Troop of the Malady were taken away at the first turn and as if the Seat of Fevers had been extended onely from the Heart unto the Elbow but that the good bloud resided about the Liver But I have alwayes discerned evacuations of the last excrements to be fearfull in the Dropsie and therefore much more in a naked snatching away of the bloud which withdrawes in a direct passage the vital spirits from the Heart through the Wound whether that bloud be accounted bad or good or neutral First of all I have proved that as well those things offend in begging of the principle which are supposed concerning a putrified continual and burning Fever as those which are supposed concerning the emissions of putrified bloud Wherefore in speaking according to Numbers I have alwayes found Succours that are made for the snatching away of the strength to be full of deceit as that for a very little ease the Faculties the Porters of Diseases are weakened For even so as drink at the beginning of Fevers seemeth to comfort Thirst for a little space but who is so mad that he would then drink if he knew that the drink would filch away his necessary powers Therefore the ayd of cooling by cutting of a vein is unfaithfull deceitfull and momentany At length concerning neutral bloud which in respect of cutting of a vein is neither good nor evil it is not worth ones labour to speak any thing seeing that which is denyed under a disjoyning may also be denyed copulatively For whether that be neutral bloud which consisteth of a co-mixture of the good with that which is depraved by supposing that to be depraved which is not or that wherein a neutral alteration is introduced for both events the particulars aforesaid do satisfie Lastly That I may cut off the hope that is in Revulsion and so equally take away all co-indications as the wretched privy shifts of obstinacy It is a mad ayd to have cut a vein for this end they for the most part require a plenteous one whether in Fevers or next in the Menstrues for Revulsion because a Feverish matter swims not in the bloud or floats in the veins as a Fish doth in the water but it adheres or sticks fast within to the vessel even as in its own place concerning the occasionall matter I will declare But for the Menstrues in like manner because a separation thereof is made from the whole and that not but by a separating hand of the Archeus But Bloud-letting separates nothing of the separable things because it acts without a foreknowledge of the end and so without choyce But presently after the vessel is opened the more nigh and harmless bloud alway flowes forth the which because other afterwards followes by a continual thred for fear of a vacuum therefore the Menstrues otherwise by the endeavour of Nature collected about the Womb are by cutting of a vein drawn away from thence and go back into the whole Body But if Phlebotomy shall sometimes well succeed in a Woman that is plethorick and full of juyce yet surely in many others it hath given a miserable overthrow For if the Menstrues should offend onely in its quantity while as it is now collected and separated in the veins about the Womb I shall willingly admit of an individual betokening of Phlebotomy and onely in the Case supposed But the Menstrues if it shall flow in a well-constituted Womb it abundantly satisfies its own ends and in this respect Revulsion is in vain although the Supposition supposeth it to be even an impossible thing For Bloud-letting is nothing but a meer and undistinct emptying out of the bloud But the veins being emptyed they out of hand recall unto themselves any kind of bloud whatsoever from on every side Because as they are the greedy sheaths of bloud so also are they impatient of Vacuity or emptiness And therefore the veins that are emptyed do allure the Menstrues designed for utterance That is being in this respect once enrouled by Nature in the Catalogue of Excrements But Derivation because it is a sparing effusion of bloud so it be made out of veines convenient it hath often profited in many locall Diseases and so in Fevers it is impertinent But they urge that the cutting of a vein is so necessary in a Pleurisie that it is enjoyned under a Capital punishment For truly they say that unlesse the bloud flowing together unto the Ribs be pulleâ— back by the effusion of much bloud there is danger least the Pleurisie do soon kill the man by choaking of him Surely I let out the bloud of no person that hath a Pleurisie and such a cure is safe certain profitable and sound None of them perisheth whereas in the mean time under Phlebotomy many do at length perish with a long or lingring Consumption and experience a Relapse every Year For according to Galen Whosoever they be that are not perfectly cured on the fortieth day become Consumptious But I perfectly cure them within few dayes neither do they feel a Relapse Neither indeed have I alone my secrets for this purpose But moreover I have seen a Country man curing all Pleuritical persons at the third draught For he used the dung of an Horse for a man and of a Nag for a woman which he dissolved in Ale and gave the expressed strayning to drink Such indeed is the ignorance of Physitians and so great the obstinacy of the Schooles That God gives knowledge to Rusticks and Little ones which he denyes to those that are blown up with Heathenish Learning We must now see if there be any use of Revulsion in Fevers For indeed since the work of Revulsion is not primarily any other thing than the cutting of a vein whereunto the succeeding bloud is by accident hoped to come and that by the benefit of that thing it should not flow unto the place affected Upon this Position it followes That by such an Euacuation the offensive Feverish bloud so I connivingly speak shall be drawn as dispersed into the veines which otherwise lurking in its own Nest far from the Heart could not so cruelly communicate the Ferment of its own hurt unto the Heart which is to say that it should
words in the confession of Physitians 9. An argument against black Choler in the Spleen and the privy shifts of Physitians 10. The true reason whence the Spleen waxeth hard about the end of a Quartane Ague and the errour of the Schooles is discovered 11. Some remarkable things in a Quartane 12. The manner of be-drunkenning and the Organs thereof 13. A notable thing concerning a Vegetable Spirit of VVine out of Juniper-berries 14. VVhy VVines are ordinarily gratefull to Mortals 15. After what manner the Arteries draw their Remedles 16. An impediment in abstracted Oyles which is not in the Salts of the same 17. The manner of making of the Cardiack or Heart-passion which they also call the Royal Passion 18. Divers Chronical Diseases are from the Stomach 19. The ignorance and sincerity of the age of Hippocrates 20. There is no Seat for a Quartane left in the Schooles 21. A few remarkable things concerning Madnesses are declared 22. The Seat of foolish Madnesses SUrely I have demonstrated in an entire Treatise that there never were Humours in Nature which the Schooles of Medicine presuppose for the Foundation of their Art and that Treatise should profesly have respect hitherto unless it had been erelong to be repeated in a work of other Diseases Because they have every where named all Diseases by those Humours But it shall be sufficient in this place to have demonstrated by the way That Fevers do in no wise owe their original unto those Humours whether they are entire or putrified ones Now I will speak something concerning a Quartane Ague but not that it differs from its Cousin-German Fevers in its matter and efficient cause or is cured otherwise than after one and the same manner and by the same meanes whereby other Fevers are overcome but because a Quartane hath never been vanquished by the broken forces of the Schooles and so it hath made mocks at the Commentaries of Physitians and their vain Speeches concerning black Choler concerning the Spleen as the sink of black and burnt Choler and of loosening Medicines bringing forth black Choler by a Choyce A Quartane Ague therefore hath long since exposed the Doctrine of the Universities and the promises of these unto Laughter as being vain Trifles and wan Fables without strength For truly a desperate curing by Arts hath made manifest the feeble help of Medicines the vain promises of Dispensatories and the undoubted ignorance of the causes of Fevers Good God! it is now manifest that Physitians cannot onely not cure the Leprosie Gout Palsey Asthma Stone Falling-sicknesse and other Diseases conteined under the large Catalogue of uncurable ones which are never cured of their own accord but they have not known how to take away so much as a Quartane Ague which patiently expects and deludes every endeavour of Physitians The which notwithstanding Nature cures by her own power to the disgrace of the Schooles For they who attempt their Cures onely by the cuttings of a vein Sarrifyings Leeches Vesicatories and purgings of the Belly and so by diminishments of the Body and Strength and stick wholly in Heathenish Doctrines are even excluded by Nature from the true knowledge of Causes and Remedies Because first of all None of their Medicines reacheth unto the Seat of a Quartane but it first paying Tribute through the Toles or Customes of every Digestion is stript of every Faculty requisite unto so great a malady For neither ought I to draw out that thing from elsewhere or to prove it by many Arguments Be it sufficient That the Succours of Physitians have been hitherto unprosperous For they purge and cut a vein and then they leave the rest to be boren by Nature And in the mean time they certainly know that they shall profit nothing by Remedies of that sort nor that they ever have profited thereby I wish at least that they had not done hurt They ought therefore to confess that Remedies and also all the suppositions of Art faileth them in this Disease Yea neither that the wonted privy evasion of uncurableness in other Diseases is of value unto them For all the powers of the Universities being conjoyned cannot perform so much as Nature can and doth do without them of her own free accord But moreover The same shamefulnesse of ignorance and every way impotency which a Quartane hath discovered in the Schooles They should be compelled to confesse in the other curings of Fevers also if those did not hasten to an end of their own accord Wherefore I now conjecture That the out-law a Quartane in the Age that is forthwith to come shall distinguish false Physitians from true ones whom the Almighty hath Chosen Created and Commanded to be Honoured The Schools therefore define a Quartane according to the account of other Fevers by a heat kindled besides nature first in the heart from the humour of black Choler being putrified and diffused by the utmost small brances of the veins into the habit of the body The seat of which putrified Choler they nevertheless acknowledge to be in the Spleen I importunately crave at your hands I beseech you let the profession of Medicine tell me what harmony they can ever utter from so great dumness And whether it be not to have blinded the minds as well of the sick as of young beginners with prattle Let them explain why that heat is not first kindled in the Spleen where the cause or humour sitteth which by its putrefaction as they say is the cause of an unnatural heat even as while a Thorn being thrust into the finger sticking fast therein the finger it self first rageth with heat and that long before the putrefaction of inflammation Why is a Quartane so stubborn if at every fit nature opens a passage for it self whereby it may disperse the putrified black Choler thorow the veins into the habit of the body even in the very rigour of cold and straightness of the veins After what manner shall the same black Choler in number be as yet putrified after a year and an halfs space and afford an hard Spleen if at every fit it be dispersed into the habit of the body How if it was from the beginning in the Spleen with so daily a fornication of putrified matter hath it not long since putrified the Spleen The which especially is accounted by the Schools to be nothing but a sink of the worst excrement After what manner doth a Quartane after so many moneths retire as better of its own accord to the disgrace of Physitians while as notwithstanding it shall of necessity be more dry gross and shall more putrifie than at its first fits Again What humour which from its rise is evil and putrified can be at length digested Doth nature become foolish that she at length after a divorce and a year an a halfs time begins to digest the humour which in the beginning she had refused to digest it being already before of necessity plainly putrified What reason is there of the
pestilent one which image I have therefore denoted with the name of terrour as distinct from an image of conceived fear whereby a living creature is affraid A pestilent terrour therefore doth not here denote any terrour or the dread of any calamity but onely a pestilent horrid poyson conceived in terrour as well by the man as by the Archeus of the same In this Idea therefore is scituated the essence of the Pest and the thinglinesse of this whole Book I confesse indeed that the images of any fear are easily changed into the Idea of a pestilent terrour even so as a woman great with child deriveth the image of a mouse on the undefiled flesh of her Young yea hath sometimes transplanted the whole Embryo into an horrid animal or monster Because as I have elsewhere taught concerning formes formal images do mutually pierce each other and the latter doth readily draw the former into the obedience of it self which Hipocrates calls a leading of seeds whither they would not Truly to convocate a diversity of elements and a combating assembly thereof for a mixt body and likewise of complexions humors and conditions inclinations and studies sprung from thence Lastly the divisions of climates angles or quarters ages proportions strengths bignesse and interchangeable courses for a succour of ignorance that hereby we may make the more greater and more difficult calamities may increase uncertainties may rule ignorances may beget doubts may patronize impostures and promote despairs of life is nothing else but to have laboured in vain For the perfect light of Sciences is like fire which burns up every combustible matter without exception Such a Science Hipocrates had in times past obtained CHAP. XIV The property of the Pest I Have demonstrated that the passions of the mind do destroy the appeâ—iâ—e as also prostrate digestion In the next place that the first motions of cogitations do obtain their own assemblies in the midriffs Therefore also I have dedicated the mouth of the stomach unto Mercury whereunto the Heathens have attributed the sharpnesse of wit as also the sleepifying white wand of truce I have also said that the plague is originally conceived from the terrour of man and that the air which being brought out of a pestiferous body is carried into us doth at its first assault rush into the spleen which presently shakes out the same and delivers it as it were by hand unto the Oâ—ifice of the Stomach From hence are dejection of appetite vomiting head-ach dotages faintings thirst the drowsie evil c. But the Plague which is made in us even as that which is drawn in from without have their own Inns wherein every one begins to rage But as long as the Idea of sorrow and fear do besiedge the Tartar of the bloud in the Stomach and as long as the image of the terrour of the Archeus is absent the Plague is not yet present In the mean time indeed it comes to passe if they shall keep themselves the lesse exactly that the Tartar of the bloud being more and more malicious doth at length terrifie the Archeus and he stamps a pestilent poyson on himself For Plagues which are bred onely through terrour are more swift and much more terrible than those which proceed from an infected air for this perhaps strikes many to the heart because the stomach seeing at least it is a membrane yet I have placed the perturbations and first assaults even in the Orifice thereof or in the spleen at least wise in that extream or utmost part of it self which lays on the orifice or upper mouth of the stomach and from hence a ferment is bestowed that is requisite for the necessities of digestion But the Schools themselves call the mouth of the stomach by the Ftymology of the heart For a wound of that place and a wound oâ— the heart do kill with the same sumptom and alike speedily For I have seen many whose head a strong Apoplexie had made plainly unsensible and dead yet that were hot in the midriffs many hours after For a Bride in a Coach nigh Scalds is saluted by Country Musqueteers and the bullet or a Musquet smites thorow the temples of her head not a little of her brain is dashed out and her head presently dies But she being being brought to Vilvord four leagues distant from thence her pulse as yet afforded testimonies of liâ—e Is not also the vital spirit being a certain ruler of the whole body in the womb and the which is onely a membrane after the manner of the stomach and the seat of far greater disturbances than the liver lungs and kidneys Truly the members in themselves are nothing but dead Carcasses but the spirit is the Governour which quickens those members which spirit and after what sort God hath planted where he would Indeed I remember that I have often seen that those who had the Tartar of their bloud corrupted by some kind of fear of the Plague but without belief or presumption of a contracted infection diâ— undergoe an uncessant anguish and combating day and night yea although they were wise and laughed at their own perplexities yet they were not able but that as restlesse they would present the image of fear conceived before their eyes For they were like unto those who were bitten by a mad dog who will they nill they have their imagination readily pâ—yable at the pleasure of the poyson At length in the very Tartar of the bloud sticking about the midriffs I have found a proper natural phantasie which the image of fear conceived in the spleen had feigned to it self So lascivious dreams do not always follow from the imagination of the fore-past day but for the most part also from the matter it self predominating in the Testicles no otherwise also than as one that hath a desire â—o make water dreameth that he doth continually make water Therefore the terrour of the man is the occasion of the Pest and the terrour of the Archeus is the efficient cause of the pestiferous image and poyson For it is as it were the Father of the Plague the which the poysonous image being once bred although it may cease at least wise the Plague conceived is in its own image For if the terrour of the man were a sufficient cause of the Plague of necessity also the Plague should always follow a pestilential terrour which is false even as also in an inâ—ant who is void of all terrour the Plague is received at pleasure From whence it is sufficiently manifest that the Archeus himself being affrighted is the primitive efficient cause of the image of the pestilence The plague therefore consisteth of a defilement to wit of a contagion in the swiftnesse of its course in the singulaâ—ity of its poyson in the terribleness of its concomitants lastly in a difficulty of preservation and curing But indeed I leave behind me the inquisition of that plague which is sent for a punishment by reason of the hidden
incorporeal Gas which is therefore straightway comixable with our Archeus Therefore that Gas refresheth those that are affected in their womb with its smell but not the oyl not the tincture milk or floure of Sulphur But after what sort thou mayest know that Gas of Sulphur to be distinct from the watery vapour thereof kindle a sulphurated torch or candle in a glass bottle thou shalt forthwith see the whole bottle to be filled with a white fume and at length the flame to be stifled by the fume Afterwards keep thou the bottle most exactly stopt with a cork and thou shalt see a sulphur to be affixed unto the sides of the vessel and in the superficies of the water if there were any in the bottom But if indeed after some daies thou shalt put the same enflamed torch or bottle into the neck of the candle the flame is forthwith extinguished by reason of the condensable Gas of the Sulphur no otherwise than as the odour of an Hogshead putrified through continuance stifles the flame of a sulphurated candle But Hippocrates perfumed all the wine which he gave in the plague after this manner He perfumed the pot or cup of a narrow neck with a candle of burning sulphur he powred in wine to the filling of the pot a third part full and stirred the pot being exactly shut by shaking it a good while together upwards and downwards until the wine had drunk up all the Gas of the sulphur into it self For medicines to be hung on the body and Amulets or preservative Pomanders had not yet been made known But he supplyed external medicines that take away weariness or faintness in the room thereof by anointing the body with Greek Wine wherein he had boiled the most fine powder of Sulphur But he besprinkled the same fine powder being dryed in the Sun on those that were in a sweat and commanded it to be applyed with rubbings But the Pest since it never wants a Fever and that the Grecans saw the remedies of Hippocrates they began first to call the Pest and then every Fever 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or a fire Not indeed by reason of a remarkable and necessary burning heat of Fevers although it so pleased Galen For truly they called the beginning cold rigours and horrours Pyâ— or a fire as well as a burning Causon For Hippâ—crates lightly ground Sulphur with water on a Grind-stone and being again dried he kept it for his uses But he gave twenty four grains of Sulphur with salted and hot wine that he might provoke sweats But he first made the salt to crack in a glassen pot and presently afterwards he melted it by increasing the fire for else salt containeth in it excrementitious filths which at the first cracking fly away the salt cleaving asunder and leaping a little These Spirits do easily putrifie through continuance and subject the salt to a fear of contagion for they are very forraign to the salt the which although they fled away a good while before the fusion of the salt yet he made a melting of the salt that whatsoever forreign thing was contained in the salt might be consumed by the fire For indeed he saw that presently after the invasion of the Pest the appetite was prostrated and then also that fermentally putrified and burntish impurities grew in the stomach from whence arose the headach vomitings loathings doatage the drowsie evil c. which would hinder the cure of the plague Therefore he took the common balsam of the salt of fleshes which might overthrow the fermental putrified poyson and putrefactions by cleansing them away together with a conâ—â—â—ing of the strength and he gave the wine being salted hot but not luke-warm 〈…〉 restrain the loathings of the stomach and mightily provoke sweats and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sulphur that it might kill the plague as it were with its odour because salt cleanâ—â—â—h preserveth from corruption and Sulphur restrains poyson But he prescribed this sweat for three daies space at least yet oft-times he extended it unto a weeks space but they did sweat twice every day and at every turâ— for the sixth part of a day if they were able on the first daies more and on the after succeeding daies less For in time of sweating he took away all drink but the term of sweating being finished he fed them with Barley-Cream and for drink they had Greek Wine pitcht wherein were a few grains of the aforesaid salt and Sulphur But he laid the leaves of Assara Bacca being steeped in vinegar upon the Bubo unto the soals of the feet and palms of the hands which after every twelve hours he commanded to be buried because they stink greatly It came to pass afterwards that Greece be sprinkled their grapes divers times with the Brine of the Sea before they were carried to the Press For Hippocrates perswaded that thing that so together with it Inâ—ects might be driven from the grapes Hence it is that the Wines of Greece are salted even unto this day the reason of this use being unknown Unto great Buboes in the groyn and marks he applyed hot Towels tinged in rich wine wherein as I have said he had boiled Sulphur Furthermore he reserved a secret to himself through the sight whereof he attained to himself divine honours But it was the flesh of a Viper or or Snake which he cleansed for the utmost part of the tail and the head being cut off he stript off their skin casting away the bowels together with the gawl he reserved only the Heart and Liver but he drew out all their blood with the vein running down the back-bone But he boiled not their flesh after the manner wherein it is put into Triacle but he exactly bruised the same together with the bones and aforesaid bowels and dryed them in a warm Oven until they could be powdered which powder he sprinkled on hony being sufficiently clarified and boiled until he knew that fleshes in boiling had laid aside their virtue as well in the broath as in the vapours But he added unto this Electuary the Spice of his Country for to cloak the secret and therefore neither was it made manifest by the Angel But the cure contains a mystery that as Death crept in by the Serpent it self also ought to be vindicated by the death of the Serpent For Adam being skilful in the properties of all Beasts was not ignorant also that the Serpent was more crafty than the other living Creatures and that the aforesaid balsam the remedy of death lay hid in the Serpent Wherefore the Spirit of Darkness could not more safely deceive our first parents than under the Serpents skin For perhaps they hoped that they should escape the death sorely threatned by God by the aid of the Serpent Hippocrates used also wine that was pitched Wherefore it is worthy our consideration that Spain is seldom afflicted with the plague not because sins or filths are wanting where there are almost no Jakes's It s a
ibid How the Antients remedies may profit though not cure the stone 708 Why an expulsion of the stone is not to be intended 709 The quality of a remedy resolving the stone 710 56 Why stones are sometimes white 248 28 Whence a three-fold stone is made 249 3 Of the Stone 828 The flux of seeds for a stone 829 706 20 After what manner a man is made a stone 833 Of the Coagulum and Runnet of the stone by handicraft operation 840 Salt profitable in the stone 843 Of the occasion of the stone 857 Of the womb of the stone 866 Its Scituation 867 The pain of the stone from a contracture 86 Of the intention to cure the stone 701 15 874 Its cure 878 879 With testimonies thereof ibid. Of the manner of ministring a remedy for the stone 883 Of the stone that maketh gold its projection 674 58 751 807 The stone that maketh gold hath not the blessings of the tree of life 807 Sulphur only resists a fermental poyson 1158 In Sulphur is the life and death of bodies 66 14 Sulphur boiled in Linseed oyl 427 70 In oyl of Turpentine 515 The whole band of diseases hearken to some Sulphurs 577 260 39 The Sulphur of Copper hot stupefactive yet sweeter then honey 304 39 How floures of Sulphur profit those that have a Cough 309 94 Sulphur commended against the Plague 1154 Of the Gas of Sulphur 1155 The Sun scorcheth without pain 72 14 Is hot 74 23 139 41 794 The gifts of the Almighty are placed in the Sun 796 Sugar hurtful in most diseases 462 30 Loaf-Sugar not so good as the common 467 57 Swooning from the Stomack 302 303 27 What that Sweat is that accompanies death and Swoonings 42 What the Synovia is 842 389 20 Of Sympathetical Mediums 616 The cause of Sympathy 775 68 Of the Sympathy and Antipathy of things 1114 T. TAst in the midriff 909 Tartar its distillation 412 68 427 68 183 39 Why salt of Tartar dissolves crude Tartar 234 19 How Tartar is made 233 No disease ariseth from Tartar 235 1 Tartar not in foods 241 8 Tartar afâ—â—â— digestion in the stomach ceaseth to be a Tartar 242 243 Tartar not in drinks 250 7 Of the Tartar of the blood 1103 Of the original of the Tarantual 1509 The poyson of the Tarantula 787 148 What thirst is and whence 471 8 Thorn in the flesh how cured 521 Of thunder 90 17 A preservation against its effects on Beer c. 91 21 The seat of the Timpany and by what it is made 520 Why Tin is lighter than other Metals 107 20 The Toad commended against the Plague 1149 How prepared for that use 1150 How it kils the Ferment of the Plague 1151 How quickly he dies with fear Ibid. The Toad given by God as a Remedy for the poor against the Plague 1152 The bone of a Toad cures the tooth ach Tooth-ach whence caused 438. 30 247 Of the original of the tooth-stone 246 Of the flourishing and decaying of teeth 247 25 How the Transmutation of bodies is effected 115. 23 The tree of good and evil why forbidden 656 664 665 666 680 Of the tree of life 745 753 754 755 Tree of life what qualities it ought to have 808 The Cedar tree doth signifie the tree of life in this world 810 Of the preparation of the Cedar tree 811 V. VAlerian good against Inchantments 605 All Vegetables not woody contain a winie spirit 413. 73 Their Archeus hath no anatomical affinity with man 458 5 Their whole property from their seed and not from the heaven Ibid. 7 Their degrees whence different 146 88 Why vegetables unprofitable to the sick 578 Vervain commended 605 Venal blood wholly turned into nourishment 257 13 Venal blood never putrifies in its place 941 The natural endowment of the veins 942 An example Ibid. Vesicatories more hurtful then Phlebotomy 968 Vital spirit is salt 195. 19 733 734 Made of Arterial blood 196 24 732 By the ferment of the heart 733 Actuated by a vital light 734 The virgin earth 689 The Author instructed by visions 22 42 His vision of the soul 726 A vision of a Layick concerning the Lues venerea 1904 The spirit of vitriol reduced into an Alum by its dissolution of Mercury 473. 21 The dignity of the sulphur of venus and the nativity of vitriol 889 The best vitriol where to be had 891. 695 15 How vitriol may be made Ibid. The preparation of the Sulphur of vitriol 339. 9 Unguents how applicable 47 58 Ulcers their principal vice where seated 〈◊〉 18 21 23 Of the Difference of Ulcers 321. 29 The cure of Ulcers 322. 31 323 35 Volatile things fixed by fixed things  Volatiolation caused by ferments 117. 33 To provoke Urine in lingring fevers 465. 46 VVhat true provokers are 473. 19 476 31 Urinary salt made by the kidnyes 473. 19 Observations on distilled urine 847 Of the various actions of the spirit of urine 864 Urine-vessels not enlarged by drink but by the stone 708. 41 42 Urine not an excrement of the Kidneys 257 11 Of the division of vrines 1051. 1 Of the errours in the circle of urine 1052. 4 What the circle in the urine is demonstrated 1052. 5 What the yellownesse in urine may signifie 1053. 9 Watery urines after yellow ones signifie dotages 1054 VVhat a troubled urine signifies 1056. 26 VVhat the litle cloud in the urine may signifie 1054. 20 Of the several sediments of urine 1056 Examinations of urine by weight Ibid W. WArts how cured 141 55 154 VVater the material cause of things 32. 31 105 3. Proved so by an experiment 48. 11 109 30 Likened to the internal Mercury of Metals 65. 8 Never radically conjoyned with the earth 10 c. The parts of the water 71 8 410 54 What its unrestable appointment is 74. 28 Easily putrefiable under the Equinoctial 116 30 All bodies thereinto reducible 116. 33 The great use of that which comes from the Quellem 117 33 Water doth not always fal in a circular Figure 684. 50 When waters loose their life 689. 9 Waters the womb of seeds 693. 1 Why some waters hurt those that have the stone 251 Wheat changed into mice c. 113. 9 Winds whence generated 730 18 80 14 771 59 What the wind is 78 4 The vanity of the Schools defining it 85. 23 Violent ones how allayed 79. 13 Remedies for windinesse 4â—0 28 What causeth it 422. 41 Only in defective persons 424. 54 Some wind in the Ilcon c. Natural and necessary c. 428. 76 Spirit of Wine how reducible into water 69 27 105 9 106 11 VVines hurt by keeping in their Gas 107. 16 Wines profitable to our natures 966 Spirit of wine passeth into the Arteries without digestion 194. 12 731 Cold preserveth wines 232 VVhy wines wax soure 234 15 21 How wines become troubled 773 62 The labor of wisdome 184. 45 Of witches and witchcraft 568 The Devil how concerned therein 569. 1
nature disorderly touch the limits of the heart we straightway feel the numbers of beatings and the defects of intermitting storms But if an ordinary framing of smoakinesses should be in the heart how should they be seperated from the vital Spirit and by what trench should they remain divided from each other How should the expulsion of smoakie vapours be possible which should not also abundantly power forth the vital Spirit most intimately co-mixed with themselves And so as the Schooles have nothing of pure Doctrine do they also suffer no unpolluted thing no undefiled thing without an excrementitious and dungie smoakiness do they think that the essential offices of life do indifferently belong as well to a smoakie vapour as to the Spirit of life And so hitherto also to be co-mixed How should the depression of the Arterie thus far tend unto a good end and that appointed by the Creator which together with the smoakiness should also puffe out the vital Spirit thorowly mingled with it And so shall it forthwith bring death and destruction How had not that Vmpire of things most highly to be honoured even from mans Creation made death by the contraction of his Pulses Last of all if a smoakie vapour should be the Musical measure of the Pulses as they will have them what should be that seperater who should compel the smoakie vapours rather to depart into the habit of the flesh from without than thorow the chief Arteries with a straight line into the head Or if a co-mingled smoakiness doth indifferently hasten with the vital Spirit into the bosoms of the Brain why do they not continually disturb the Family-government of the Senses what if the pressing together of the Arterie be dedicated to the expulsion of smoakie vapours for since the Arteries are thumped sidewayes so also thus far they do bestow Spirit and vital Powers on the places thorow which they passe therefore that way also they should mutually expell smoakinesses which surely should be more pernicious to all the Bowels than to the Arteries themselves because these are judged to be refreshed by fresh Air but not the Bowels If therefore they will have smoakie vapours expelled by the pressing of the Arteries together let them first shew us that smoakie vapours cannot be otherwise purged than by the last or utmost mouths of the Arteries and that with the continual safety of the Spirit that is thorowly mixt with the smoakinesses Truly the Schooles do support their defiled Doctrine by a smoakie vapour and by a blinde perswasion of sluggishness do subscribe their Genius unto Galen Seeing therefore they have been ignorant of the matter heat residence content and circle of the Urine but have passed by the efficient cause of Pulses but have fled back chiefly to heats and colds and have neglected their true ends the whole significative knowledge of healing hath remained polluted Therefore the Schools are prophesied of as it were from a three-legged stool as well in the knowledge of Diseases as in the progress and end of the same which thing I shall hereafter much more plentifully prove Therefore Endemical things do affect or stir all things whereby and which way they enter to wit the Head Breast and the Dependants on these And by how much they do prevail by so much do they operate and effect For some do imprint a spot or defilement on the part and afterwards depart Such as are misty or clowdy things stinking things things putrified by continuance c. But some do enter in the shape of a smoak and are breathed into Minerals which are again divers wayes coagulated within For some are spewed-forth spittings if they are not hurtfull But others do for terme of life toughly adhere on the walls of the pipes of the Lungs and do exercise their tyranny for their entertainment Of this sort is whatsoever doth fume out of the veins of Minerals wherefore also the Fume of Minerals by reason of its malignity an Arsenical poyson have become Sunonymalls or things of one name to wit the Arsenick and smoakie vapour and smoak of Metalls fall together or agree in one Whence are hoarsnesses tremblings of the heart faintings Asthmas Pleurisies Inflammations of the Lungs Coffs spittings of Bloud Consumptions Imposthumes full of matter c. In the mean time it is not manifest that Endemicks or things proper to people in the Countrey where they live are drawn by the Arteries neither that the same are immediately affected But if Mercury doth bring forth tremblings that at least is impertinent to the Arteries Neither also do they therefore tremble into whom Mercury is driven by Ointments But they are bladdered in the mouth throat the Uvula falls down and their teeth are ulcerated do shake or are loose and wax black their head swells and they spit stinking things greatly Also Guilders Diggers and Seperaters of Mercury because they do inspire a deadly poyson into the head and Sinnewy parts they do work or effect Endemicks in us as much as they can CHAP. XXVI The Spirit of Life 1. The Doctrine of the Antients concerning a threefold Spirit 2. They have stated whence we must begin 3. The spirit of wine doth contain onely two Chymical Beginnings flexible at the pleasure of the Artificer 4. Vital spirit out of spirit of wine 5. How drunkennesse comes 6. How the spirit of wine and Aqua vitae or Water of life do differ 7. Whatsoever is stilled onely by fire doth go back from the virtues of its former composed body 8. The ferment or leaven of the stomack and of bread differs 9. The Plurality of ferments 10. Gas being unknown hath brought forth many absurdities in the distinction of things 11. The soul is in the Arterial bloud and not in the venal bloud 12. The Venal blood is without a spirit of the Liver 13. Drunkennesse 14. The progresse of the vital spirit through its offices 15. The declared disposition of the spirit it self 16. What things are by sense reckoned to be one are severed or discerned in their effects 17. From whence the spirit of life is Balsamical 18. The spirit of Aqua vitae only by touching looseth its oylinesse 19. It is presently made a Salt 20. The whole venal blood is turned into a Salt 21. Of the life of the vital spirit 22. The light is now and then extinguished in the matter of the spirit 23. There are as many particular kinds of sublunary lights as there are of vital lights 24. The definition of the vital spirit 25. The heat of life is not the Constituter of its own moisture 26. That heat is an adjacent to life 27. The undistinction of the Schools of the effects of heat and of a ferment 28. Whence heat is Escharotical or the maker of an Eschar in us 29. Whether the animal Spirit be distinct from the vital I Have discoursed already before of the Archeus as it were the Vulcan in the seed and after what manner he may dispose