Selected quad for the lemma: heart_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
heart_n	part_n	spirit_n	vital_a	3,441	5	10.7507	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A35976	A late discourse made in a solemne assembly of nobles and learned men at Montpellier in France touching the cure of wounds by the powder of sympathy : with instructions how to make the said powder : whereby many other secrets of nature are unfolded / by Sr. Kenelme Digby, knight ; rendred faithfully out of French into English by R. White.	Digby, Kenelm, Sir, 1603-1665.; White, R., Gent.	1658 (1658)	Wing D1435; ESTC R27859	54,616	164

have a ring of gold on the other it will become white and covered with mercury though it doth not any way touch it Moreover if you put a leaf of gold or a crown of gold in your mouth and if you put but one of your toes in a thing where mercury is the gold which is in your mouth though you shut up your lips never so close shall turn white and laden with mercury then if you put this gold in the fire to make all the mercury evaporate and that you reiterate the same thing your gold will be calcind as if you had by amalgation joyned mercury therewith corporally And all this will yet be done more spee dily and effectually if in lieu of common mercury you make use of mercury of antimony which is much hotter and more penetrating and though you drive it away by force of fire it will carry away with it a good quantity of the substance of the gold in such sort that reiterating often this operations there will no more gold remain for you to continue your experiments If then that cold mercury doth so penetrate the whole body we ought not to think it strange that subtill atoms of fruit composed of many ignited parts will passe with more facility and quicknesse I will further make you see how such spirits and emanations do suddenly also penetrate steel though it be a substance so compacted cold and hard that the said atoms may keep their residence there many moneths and yeers Within a living body such as is mans the intern spirits do aid and contribute much facility to the spirits that are without such as those of fruits are to make their journy the more easte to the brain The great Architect of nature in the fabrick of human body the master-peece of corporal nature hath placed there some intern spirits to serve as centinells to bring their discoveries to their General viz. to the imagination who is as it were the Mistresse of the whole family whereby a man might know and understand what is done without the Kingdom within the great World and that it might shun what is noxious and seek after that which is profitable For these sentinels or intern spirits with all the inhabitants of the sensitive organs are not able to judge alone insomuch that if the imagination or thought be distracted strongly to some object these intern spirits do not know whether a man hath drunk the wine which he hath swallowed if perchance seeing a person who comes to salute him he fixeth his eye upon him all the while or if he listens attentively to the air of some melodious song or musicall instrument for the inward spirits bring all their acquisitions to the imagination and if she be not more strongly bent upon another object she falls a forming certain Idaeas and Images because that the atomes from without being conveyed by these intern spirits to our imagination erect there the like edifice or else a model in short resembling the great body whence they come forth And if our imagination hath no more use of those significative atoms for the present she rangeth them in some proper place within her Magazin which is the memory where she can repeal and rebuke them when she pleaseth And if there be any object which causeth some emotions in the imagination and toucheth her more near than common objects use to do she sends back her sentinels the internal spirits upon the confines to bring her more particular news And thence it proceeds that a man being surprized by some particular man or other object who hath already some eminent place in his imagination be it of desire or aversion then that man sudendly changeth colour and becomes red then pale then red again at diverse times according as the Ministers which are those intern spirits do go quick or slow towards their object then they return with their reports to their Mistress which is the imagination But besides these passages we speak of which go from the brain to the external parts of the body by the ministery of the nerves there is also a great road from the brain to the heart by which the vital spirits do ascend from the heart to the brain to be animated and hereby the imagination sends unto the heart those atoms which she hath received from some exterternal object and there they make an ebullition betwixt the vital spirits which according to the intervening atoms either cause a dilatation of the heart and so gladden it or they do contract it so sadden it and these two differing and contrary actions are the first general effects whence proceed afterwards the particular passions which require not that I pursue them too far in this place having done it more particularly else where and more expressely Besides these passages which are common to all men and women there is another that 's peculiar only to females which is from the brain to the matrix whereby it often falls out that such violent vapours mount up to the brain and those in so great a number that they often hinder the operation of the brain and of the imagination causing convulsions and follies with other strange accidents and by the same channel the spirits or atoms passe with a greater liberty and swiftnesse to the womb or matrix when the case requires Now le ts consider how the strong imagination of one man doth marvailously act upon another man who hath it more feeble and passive We see dayly that if a person gape those who see him gaping are excited to do the same If one come perchance to converse with persons that are subject to excesse of laughter one can hardly forbear laughing although one doth not know the cause why they laugh If one should enter into a house where all the World is sad he becomes melancholy for as one said Si vis me flere dolendum est primum ipsi tibi Women and Children being very moist and passive are most susceptible of this unpleasing contagion of the imagination I have known a very melancholy woman which was subject to the disease called the Mother and while she continued in that mood she thought her self possessed and did strange things which among those that knew not the cause passed for supernatural effects and of one possessed by the ill spirit she was a person of quality and all this happened because of the deep resentment she had for the death of her Husband She had attending her four or five young Gentlewomen whereof some were her Kinswomen and others served her as Chambermaids All these came to be possessed as she was and did prodigious actions These young Maids were separated from her sight and communication and as they had not yet contracted such profound roots of the evil they came to be all cured by their abscence and this Lady was also cured afterwards by a Physitian which purged the atrabilious humors and restored her matrix to its former

execution of a Criminal who had his neck broken according to the laws of France whereof the took such an affrightment that made so deep a print upon her imagination that presently she fell in labour of her child and before they could carry her to her lodging but she was brought to bed before her time of a child who had his head severed from his body both the parts yet shedding fresh bloud besides that which was abundantly shed in the womb as if the headsman had done an execution also upon the tender young body within the matrix of the mother These three Examples and many others truely alleadged which I could produce although they mainifestly prove the strength of the imagination would engage me too far if I should undertake to clear the causes and unwrap the difficulties which would be found greater then in any of those instances wherewith I have entertained you because that those spirits had the power to cause such essential changes and fearful effects upon bodies that were already brought to their shapes of perfection and it may be well believed that in some of them there was a transmutation of one species to another the introduction of a new informing form in the subject-matter totally differing from that which had been introduced at first at least if that which most Naturalists tell us at the animation of the Embryo in the womb be true but this digression hath been already too long Est modus in Rebus sunt certi denique fines Quos ultra citraque nequit consistere Rectum To return then to the great channel and thread of our Discourse the examples and experiments which I have already insisted upon in confirmation of the reasons which I have alleadged do clearly demonstrate that the bodies which draw the atomes dispersed in the air attract unto themselves with a greater power and energy such as are of their own nature then other heterogeneous and strange atomes As wine doth the vinal spirits The oyl of tartar fermented by the levain of Roses draws the volatil spirits of the rose The flesh of deer or vemson buried in crust attracts the spirits of those beasts and so all the other whereof I have spoken The History of the Tarantula in the kingdom of Naples is very famous you know how the venome of this animall ascending by the hurt that the party hath received being pricked therewith towards the head and the heart doth excite in their Imagination an impetuous desire to hear some melodious aires and most commonly they are delighted with differing aires Therefore when they listen to an aire that pleaseth them they begin to dance incessantly and thereby they fall a sweating in abundance in such sort that this sweat makes a great part of the venom to evaporate besides the sound of the musick doth raise a movement and causeth an agitation among the aerean and vaporous spirits which are in the brain and about the heart and diffused up and down through the whole body proportionably according to the nature and cadence of such musick as when Timotheus transported Alexander the Great with such a vehemency to such and such passions as he pleased In the like manner also when it happens that one Lute doth sound it makes the strings of the other to shake by the motions and tremblings which it causeth in the air though it be not touched otherwise at all We find also oftentimes that the sounds which are no other thing than the motions of the air cause the like movement in the water as the sharp sound which is caused by rubbing hard with ones finger the brim of a glasse full of water doth excite a noise a turning and boundings in the water of certain drops as if the water did dance according to the cadence of the sound The harmonious sounds also of bells in those Countries where they use to be rung to particular tunes doth make the like impressions upon the superficies of the rivers that are nigh the steeple specially in the night time when there is no other movement which stops or choakes the other supervenient one For the air being contiguous or rather continuous with the water and the water being susceptible of movement there 's the like motion caused in the fluid parts of the water as began in the air and the same contact which is betwixt the agitated air and the water which is by this meanes also moved happens also to be betwixt the agitated air and the vaprous spirits which are in those bodies who have been bit by the Tarantula which spirits by consequence are moved by the agitated air that is to say by the sound and that the more efficaciously that this agitation or sound is proportioned to the nature and temperature of the party hurt And this intern agitation of the spirits and vapours helps them to discharge the vapourous venom of the Tarantula which is mixt among all their humours In the like manner that standing puddle waters and corrupted aires being putrified by long repose and the mixture of other noisome substances are refin'd and purifi'd by motion but winter approaching which devoures these bealts people are freed from this malady but at the returne of that season when they used to be pricked the mischief comes again and they must dance again as they did the year before The reason is that the heat of summer doth stir and raise up the venom of the beast whereby it becomes as malignant and furious as it was before And the poison being heated and evaporating it self and dispersing in the air the levain of the same poyson which remaines in the bodies of them who have been hurt drawes it unto it self whereby such a fermentation is wrought which infects the other humours whence a kind of smoake issuing and mounting to the braines of these poor sick bodies doth use to produce such strange effects It is also well known that where there are great dogs or mastiffs as in England if any be bitten perchance by any of these dogs they commonly use to kill them though they be not mad for fear that the levain of the canine choler which remaines within the body of the party bit draw unto it the malignant spirits of the same dog which might come to distemper the spirits of the party And this is not onely practised in England where there are such dangerous dogs but also in France according to the report of father Cheron provinciall of the Carmelites in this Countrey in his examen de la Theologie mystique newly imprinted and which I have lately read I will say nothing of artificiall noses that are made of the flesh of other men for to remedy the deformity of those who by an extream excesse of cold have lost their own which new noses do putrifie as soon as those persons out of whose substance they were taken come to die as if that small parcell of flesh engrafted upon the face did live by the spirits