occasional ones of diseases are bitter sharp salt brackish c. But that the spirit is he that maketh all assaults Galen Juniour unto Hippocrates by five hundred years afterwards easily stained much paper and by his prate allured followers unto himself But posterity having admired this prattle followed the same it hath always had that in the greatest esteem which was of the least worth And then the world every where grew aged in frivolous judgments always esteeming that to be of great weight which was most like unto its own unconstancy CHAP. II. The Schools Nodding or Doubting have introduced Putrefaction 1. The Schools have been constrained to devise another thing in Fevers beside heat 2. Another defect in the definition of a Fever 3. The Schools contradict the principles laid down by themselves 4. That the essence of Fevers is not from heat 5. They by degrees are forgetful of their own positions 6. The spiciness of Roses is most hot 7. Whether a Feverish heat be rightly judged by the Schools to arise from Putrefaction 8. A malignant Fever wherein it differs from other Fevers 9. A Crisis of Fevers by sweat is most wholesome 10. Why the Schools have fled back unto Putrefaction 11. A blockish comparison of heat in horse-dung 12. Why horse-dung is hot 13. A degree of the heat of a putrifying matter is not sufficient for heating the whole man in a Fever 14. Putrefaction is no where the cause of heat 15. Dung waxeth not hot from Putrefaction 16. Why they have not drawn a feverish heat from hot Baths 17. The ignorance of the Roots hath wrested the Schools aside unto the considerations and remedies of effects 18. Dung looseth its heat while it begins to putrefie 19. The great blindness of the Schools 20. Galen convicted of error 21. That the blood doth never putrefie in the veins and so whatsoever they trifle concerning a Sunochus or putrefied Fever is erroneous 22. The foregoing particulars are proved 23. The natural endowments of the veins 24. Either Nature goes to ruine or the Doctrine of the Schools 25. An example from the variety of blood 26. A ridiculous table of blood let out of the veins 27. An argument from the Plague against the Vse of the Schools 28. Again from the Pleurifie 29. The heats and turbulencies of the blood do not testifie the vices thereof 30. A wan deceit of the Schools 31. To suppose putrefied humours in Fevers is ridiculous 32. Against the definition of Fevers of the foregoing Chapter some absurdities are alledged 33. A frivolous excuse by a Diary 34. The foregoing definition of Fevers is again resisted 35. The unconstancy of the Schools 36. That the blood doth not putrefie in the veins 37. Corruption from whence it is 38. That the blood of the Hemeroides is not putrefied 39. A wonderful remedy against the Hemeroides or Piles by a ring And likewise for other Diseases THE Schools meditated that an heat did oft-times spring up through exercises not unlike to the heat of feverish persons the which notwithstanding seeing it was not a feverish one they indeed judged heat to be of necessity in Fevers not any one in differently but that which should be stirred up by putrefaction Now they are no longer careful concerning heat as neither concerning the degrees or distemperature thereof but rather concerning the containing cause thereof For neither hath a heat graduated besides nature seemed to be sufficient for a Fever unless that heat also spring up from putrefaction which particle surely hath been dully omitted in the aforesaid definition of Fevers Therefore the essence of a Fever is now no longer a naked heat neither shall this heat distinguish Fevers from the diversity of heat although a Species doth result from thence whence the essence is but from the varieties of the putrefied or at leastwise from the putrefying humours It was finely indeed begun thus to wander from the terms proposed that when as they before respected nothing but heat which should exceed the accustomed temper of nature they afterwards require heat and a subject of putrefaction which heat they will have to be kindled in an offensive putrified matter but not any longer first in the heart But seeing that of heat there is not but only Species in degree but very many moments or extensions of the same and there are very many particular kinds of Fevers neither that the specifical multitude of Fevers can proceed from one only Species of heat besides nature Therefore in the Essence or Being of heat another thing is beheld besides the degree of the same Heat therefore shall not constitute the Essence of a Fever but that other thing by reason whereof the diversity of Fevers breaks forth If therefore putrefying of divers matters be the efficient cause of the diversity of Fevers heat shall be thing as well caused from putrefaction as the Fever it self and so seeing the action of causality of the putrisied matter involveth some other thing in it besides heat it self a Fever shall not be heat Now the Schools do confusedly adjoyn very many things on both sides that if one thing do not help at leastwise another may help them So that although they toughly maintain the aforesaid definition and adore it yet they by degrees decline from the naked distemper of heat unto the putrefaction of Humours Neither do they stay in these trifles but moreover they flee back unto hot remedies as having forgotten their own Positions And that whether they attempt Purgations or next whether they shall convert themselves unto the proper specifical Rdmedies of Fevers For what is now more solemn in healing than to have given Apozemes of Hop Asparagus c. and to have seasoned the same with Sugar For what is more hot than the spiceness included in Roses whether thou respectest its savour or application without which notwithstanding the Rose it self is a meer dead carcase what doth every where more frequently offer it self than to have mingled the corrosive liquor of Sulphur or Vitriol being through the perswasion of gain manifoldly adulterated with Juleps for Fevers In the next place to have drawn forth those which they feign to be guilty humours by Rhubarb and Scammoneated Medicines Therefore before all we must profesly examine whether the heat of a Fever owes its Original to Putrefaction Wherefore first of all I have plainly taught That a feverish heat doth in no wise causally depend on the peecant matter And then I have learned that a malignant Fever alone differs from other Fevers in this that its own offensive matter hath a beginning-putrefaction adjoyned unto it The which if it shall afterwards creep unto its height until the putrefaction be actually made and shall remain within it straightway brings death of necessity But if it be driven forth in the making of the Putrefaction as in the Measills an Erisipelas c. it is for the most part cured Because health for the most part accompanies a motion to without
anon on the side vain presumption hath in times past crept in that hereafter it may not any way trouble me He will send his dew upon the Corn if happily it shall please him to increase what I have sowen for the use of my Neighbour In the mean time I wish Oh ye faithfull in Christ that I be judged an unworthy evil ignorant and rash man so my Neighbour shall not feel dammage in healing thereby For he shall not esteem me unprofitable and ignorant in vain yea if these things shall not become guilt unto me I attribute it to his bottomless clemency which turns all things into good to those that love him for his great goodness sake unto whom I humbly offer return and lay down my vain prayses from the weakness of my confession and submission CHAP. II. The Authours Studies 1. The Birth and Life of the Authour 2. The Authour hath laughed at the masked Industries of Professors 3. The nakedness of the Authour 4. He hath prosecuted more solid Sciences at leasure 5. He did vilifie Astrology 6. He despised a Canonship 7. What furtherance there is of Studies among the Jesuites at Lovaine 8. Stoicisme displeased him 9. Stoicisme is to be despised from a Command 10. The Authour is snatcht into Medicine as it were by chance 11. The defect of Herbarists 12. Medicine onely flowes down from above and therefore it cannot be delivered by Rules 13. Those that are instructed in an infused knowledge are not to be taught by Authours 14. The juggle of a certain Professour of Medicine 15. Why he left off the Study of the Law 16. How great the Authours barrenness and nakedness was by studies 17. What he hath done for the beginning of Studies 18. Practise hath discovered the nakedness of Physitians 19. A Prayer for the Errours of the Schooles 20. Raphael is promised in a Dream IN the year 1580 the most miserable one to all Belgium or the Low Countries my Father died I being the youngest and of least esteem of my Brethren and Sisters For I was brought up in Studies But in the year 1594. I had finished the course of Philosophy which year was to me the seventeenth Therefore since I had onely a Mother I seemed at Lovaine to be made the sole disposer of my Right and Will Wherefore I saw none admitted to Examinations but in a Gown and masked with a Hood as though the Garment did promise Learning I began to know that Professors for sometime past did expose young men that were to take their degrees in Arts to a mock I did admire at the certain kinde of dotage in Professors and so in the whole World as also the simplicity of the rash belief of young men I drew my self into an account or reasoning that at leastwise I might know by my own judgement how much I was a Phylosopher I examined whether I had gotten truth or knowledge I found for certainty that I was brown up with the Letter and as it were the forbidden Apple being eaten to be plainly naked save that I had learned artificially to wrangle Then first I came to know within my self that I knew nothing and that I knew that which was of no worth For the Sphere in natural Phylosophy did seem to promise something of knowledge to which therefore I had joyned the Astrolobe the use of the Ring or Circle and the speculations of the Planets Also I was diligent in the Art of Logick and the Science Mathematical for delights sake as often as the reading of other things had brought a wearisomness on me Whereto I joyned the Elements or first Principles of Euclide and this Learning I had made fociable to my Genius or natural wit because it contained truth but by chance the art of knowing the Circle of Cornesius Gemma as of another Memphysick came to my hand Which seeing it onely commended Nicholas Copernicus I left not on till I had made the same familiar unto me Whence I learned the vain excentricities or things not having one and the same Center another circular motion of the Heavens and so I presumed that whatsoever I had goâ—â—â— concerning the Heavens with great pains was not worthy of the time bestowed about it Therefore the Study of Astronomy was of little or no account with me because it promised little of certainty or truth but very many vain things Therefore having finished my Course when as I knew nothing that was found nothing that was true I refused the Title of Master of Arts being unwilling that Professors should play the fool with me that they should declare me Master of the seven Arts who was not yet a Scholar Therefore I seeking truth and knowledge but not their appearance withdrew my self from the Schooles A wealthy Cannonship was promised me so that I would make my self free to Theology or Divinity But S. Bernard affrighted me from it because I should eat the sins of the people But I begged of the Lord Jesus that he would vouchsafe to call me thither where I might most please him For it was the year wherein the Jesultes had begun to teach Philosophy at Lovaine the King Nobles and University being against it and that thing together with them was forbidden by Clement the Eighth But their Scholars aspring to their Degree they had assembled them to the School houses but others and the more rich they did allure with the pleasant Study of Geography and one of the Professors Martine del Rio who first being the Judge of Turma in Spain and afterwards wearied in the Senate of Brabant being allured to the Society and had resorted thither also did expound the disquisitions or diligent examinations of Magick Both the Readings I greedily received And at length instead of a Harvest I gathered onely empty stubbles and most poor patcheries void of judgement In the mean time least an houre should vanish away without fruit I rub'd over L. Annaus Seneca who greatly pleased me and especially Epictetus Therefore I seemed in moral Philosophy to have found the juyce of truth and then presently I thought this was that for which Pythagoras might require the strict Silences of so many years an excellent indgement and therefore notable obedience At length a few years being changed I saw a Capuchin to be a Christian Stoick Indeed Study for Eternity smiled on me but for so great austereness my more tender health was a hinderance I prayed the Prince of life divers times that he would give strength whereby I might contemplate of the naked truth and immediately love it Thomas of Kempis increased this desire in me and afterwards Taulerus And when I presumed and certainly believed that through Stoicisme I did profit in Christian perfection at length after some â—ay and weariness in that exercise I fell into a Dream I seemed to be made an empty Bubble whose Diameter reached from the Earth even to Heaven for above hovered a flesh-eater but below in the place of the Earth was
whereby they might have something to admire at and talk of to deceive the time as they say and so to neglect the Tree of Life which is appointed for the healing of the Nations But rather that man having eaten of the forbidden Tree of Knowledge of good and evil and having experimentally known evil whereby he is expelled from the Tree of Life which before the Fall was his food and is become captivated in Understanding Will and Affections from whatsoever may be known of God either within in the light of his Immortal Mind which by Creation was in the very Image of its Creator or without in his visible Creation in whose invisible Power and Unity all things consist and subsist might come to know himself and his Creator in the Unity of the Spirit and all other things in that Unity so neither was it translated into our Mother Tongue to any other end than that naked and simple Uniform-Truth might appear to the confounding of that which appears to be Truth but is not but is masked various compounded and confused whose false Plea is Antiquity and chief support the self-ends of Ambition and Avarice It is a saying in the Scriptures He that is first in his own Cause seemeth just but his Neighbour cometh and searcheth him Also That the rich man is wise in his own conceit But the poor that hath Understanding searcheth him out How truly these sayings may be applied unto this Author with respect to the Schools both of Logick Natural Phylosophy Astrology Theology and in particular those of Medicine both as to the Theorie and Practick part thereof I may singly refer the judgement thereof unto him that hath the least measure of true Understanding without any further enlargment because such a one who with the Lamp or Candle of God being lighted in him whereunto the Author bears his Testimony in opposition to blind Reason in the Chapter of the searching or hunting out of Sciences is able to see in his measure eye to eye or as Face answereth to Face in a glass Nevertheless for the sake of some simple-hearted Reader who though not yet come unto such a discerning so as to separate the light from the darkness may notwithstanding truly hunger and thirst after the knowledge of the Truth I shall speak somewhat That the Schools of the Gentiles have had their time is well known wherein they have become vain in their imaginations exercised themselves in vain Phylosophy and opposition of Science fasly so called as the Apostle Paul observeth and whereof he admonisheth the true Christians as to take heed they were not deceived by it And although Histories mention That at the coming of the First-born Son into the World whom all the Angels of God were to Worship the Heathen Oracles at Delphos and elsewhere were struck dumb and gave no Answer as a sign that all Falshood false Voices deceitful Juggles vain Inventions c. were to give way and be abolished at the appearance and rising of the Day-Star and Sun of Righteousness on and over the Earth the Star of which Star the Wise men of the East saw and by its direction came to Worship the Child laying down all their wisdom at his Feet for a lively token that all true Wisdom and Science was to be received from him in whom all the treasures of Wisdom and Knowledge dwell and not by the dim and dark illustrations of mans own Reason and Discourse Yet such hath been the subtilty of the fleshly Serpent that under the pretence of owning and professing the Name of Christ he hath taken up in his Paganish means and instruments to build withal calling the dregs and dross of the Minerva of the Heathenish Schools Hand-maides unto Divinity and true Principles of Medicinal Science but this counterfeit fiueness can no longer dazzle or blind the eyes of those unto whom God hath given eye-salve that they may see and gold tried in the fire for such are able to discern an Image from a Man and true and pure Mettal from counterfeit Coyn so that the abettors of such deceits shall proceed no further but their folly shall be made manifest to all men forasmuch as that which alone tends to the healing of the Maladies of mans Spirit and the breaches there which Sin hath made is seated in the Invisible Life of God as is applied thereunto as a Remedy by the virtue of Christs Blood alone who is the Lamb of God and a quickening Spirit And so also seeing that which tends to the Healing of any Disease Radically in the Body is the Internal Faculty or Property seated in the first Being of Medicines which by due preparation being uncloathed of their gross corporeal cloathings are made fit to be applied by the Wisdom of a true Physitian unto the Archeus or vital Air of the Body wherein its Diseases Radically dwel not in Relolleous qualities nor in feigned Elementary complexions as in the following Treatise is clearly manifested And so that nothing can be a true Handmaid unto Divinity or Medicine but the gift of him who is Lord of the whole man And that which gives the Children of Wisdom an ability to justifie Wisdom her self and a Power to judge and condemn the Wisdom of this World whether it be conversant about things Visible or Invisible things Temporal or Eternal is the Son of God by whom the World was made and all living Souls created even the everlasting Father of Spirits who hath committed all judgement to the Son in whom they all subsist who filleth all in all this Son of God is the Eternal Eye of the Father which runs thorrow the whole Creation beholding the evil and the good it is that Eye which knows and sees the essence and frame of all things it doth not behold any thing in its essence to be evil because every thing in its Essence and Being is good and that because it is one and true but that which is double varie-form seeming or false that it sees to be evil and that is the fleshly and sensual apprehension and desire in man which vailes or taints his Spirit of Understanding and Will that they are not able to give a right tincture or rightly to apply themselves unto Objects intelligible or desirable whereby irregular and evil effects in Word Action and Conversation do visibly appear even as an Engine whose innermost Spring or Wheel being defective all its other parts and motions are out of order for the Body is but the Shell or Vessel of the Spirit That eye being opened in Man or Candle lighted so far as it is lighted or opened makes first to behold the evil and the good and the evil from the good in a mans self and so far as he doth this he is truly said to know himself for he consists of darkness and light till by a holy war the light hath comprehended the darkness The truth of this is not to be disputed for it hath been experimentally
and appropriating the same to our defensive faculties in which hitherto there hath been an universal wandring But the finding out of the Remedy doth presuppose the aforesaid knowledges and moreover of the faculties and powers I say the manner and the meanes of acting but the application of those Remedies their preparation and deriving or extracting to be according to the safeguards and scopes or iâ—â—ents of the parts It also necessarily contains the knowledge of simples their powers or vertues their actions changes defects alterations interchangeable courses and connexions or dependances as well amongst each other as in respect of the vitall powers But every one of these do require the gift of God in a peculiar thing to wit understanding and experience of selection or chusing out of Seâ—uestration or separation of preparation and graduation or subliming of which I will shew it hath not as yet been treated of by the Schooles The Summary of the second Columne 1. An unwonted kinde of Doctrine is to be required 2. That Art hath stood by Conjectures hitherto 3. The Authour excuseth his roundnesses 4. He had no light from Predecessors 5. Why all things are new and unheard of 6. The Prerogative of Physitians before other Artists and Professions 7. The signes of a true Physitian 8. The Prerogatives of Physicians out of the holy Scriptures 9. The resigned liberty of the Authour COLUM II. I Ought from the beginning wholly to set upon Philosophy A matter I say never theoretically or speculatively searched into and lesse proved and known by exercise that is I have determined to lay open an unheard of truth For unless we shall deal with Diseases even like as other Arts do with their objects and unless we shall be able to promise and foreknow an undoubted end of Diseases by answering for the most part the wished desire of the sick after the manner of other Artificers it is a sign that the meanes and end do stand committed to a conjectural and uncertain Art where ignorance being the leader and the way a path of uncertainty darkness doth at length lay hold of him that goeth and leadeth thorow unknown paths I know many will be angry with me especially those who ascribe my roughness and severity in reproving to intolerable boasting And then as well those whom all things displease that are not brought forth by their own will or judgement do scoffe and abhorr all new things as those who thinking that they know all things do refuse to learn Notwithstanding I could not because of haters bury my Talent in the Earth and not make manifest my Zeal to my Neighbour Therefore the free gifts and knowledge given me I will discover to my Neighbour without envy deceit hope of gain or the vain glory of ambition and will willingly shew as much as my experiences have made sufficient hoping that the truth being once shâ—wen those that are endowed with a richer Talent will be hereafter more profitable to the Common-wealth than my selfe for so it becometh that Disciplines by proceeding by additions should be daily enriched and therefore thus far shall those that come after be obliged to those that have gone before Indeed it is believed to be of great help to have rowled over the Books of many that were before me because it is easie to add ones own to the inventions of others But in the business which I have taken on me all kinde of help from Scholars hath been feeble and therefore the Counsel and aid of my Auncestors loose unto me Because where I declare that the very quill of all Writers hath been ignorant and diseased it is very easie to discern that no mans judgement hath at all profited me but greatly hurt me Therefore that the Writings of my Auncestors have fought with me for some years for the glory of truth I do sincerely and candidly protest and profess But since I draw out all things new and unheard of I will not interpret others inventions as neither will I contend with their Authorities and I have seemed to my self to be a new Authour of Medicine hitherto known onely by way of name And therefore have I put the gifts to usury for which God the Creditor hath ingraven me his poor Debtor in his Book All things are Paradoxes or against the common opinion I confess for if they should otherwise appear I should think my self to be an unprofitable brawler one prodigal of my dayes and an unprofitable presumptuous repeater Wherefore if it hath well pleased the Father of Lights in the dayes of our Auncestors to increase the number and tartness of Diseases I likewise may believe that I do not suppose it an unsuitable thing that goodness have opened its Treasures that at length she may quickly safely and gloriously anoint the marks and wounds which the Father of mercies hath inflicted to wit he who appointed a Physitian or a Mediator between God and man from the beginning yea he made it his delight that he would be overcome by a Physitian indeed he testifieth that he created and chose him to this end for a peculiar Testimony of his praise It is so in truth for no sooner doth he punish weaken and threaten to kill man but he desireth a Physitian opposing himself that he may conquer himself being omnipotent also in sending deserved punishments by the proper gifts of his Clemency This is the Charity of the most high upon all frail Creatures to be esteemed which he hath bestowed on Physitians chosen by himself from Age to Age. He he is incomprehensible sweetly disposing all things But of this sort are Physitians which are fitted from their Mothers womb for this the word The most High hath created him importeth exercising his gift with respect to no gain and they are nakedly cast upon his good pleasure yea the Command of him who alone being truly merciful commands us that under pain of infernal punishment we be like to his Father Obey those that are set over you is a Precept indeed but Honour thy Parents honour the Physitian is more strict than to obey seeing we are constrained even to obey our youngers For the Physician is a Mediator between the Prince of life and death I desist timely enough considering the benefits undeservedly bestowed on me Moreover I neither require the Reader to be courteous nor do I fear the scoffer For it may be lawful to displease either to whom it is lawful to dispraise all pains and knowledge For God hath so appointed that new things do for the most part procure their hard censurers and ungrateful ones For I have renounced with great endeavour to please Courts and Nobles also to hang on the opinions of others alwayes esteeming this to be a servile thing even as on the contrary it is plainly a free thing not to submit with that Being which is subject to none but God For although it was hard in the beginning yet it being accustomed to me I have chosen that
substance But it is no wonder for truly they have not known some Creatures some whereof they have brought back into a substance to wit the fire substantiall forms c. but others they have surrendred into meer accidents as the Rainbow Light the Magnall c. The which notwithstanding I shall demonstrate in their place to be created things of a neither sort But let it be enough to have said it in this place But if the Rainbow should be immediately in the Air and not in a place it must needes be that by any little winde it should straightway flow abroad and be puft away by blowing together with a Cloud or the Air which is false in the Rainbow the which doth also remain a great while under the Windes sometimes without any presence of Clouds and yet in the same constant figure of a Bow or Semi-circle therefore the Rainbow seeing it is immediately in place it is a new figure of a coloured Light Indeed the Rainbow began supernaturally for a Sign and Mystery of the Covenant struck with Mortalls and since it hath at this day its Root in the Air without any matter yet after the manner of naturall things I do reverence its efficient cause and its presence and do ponder with my self that the Rainbow is at this day given for a Sign of the Covenant even as in times past Paracelsus supposeth the Rainbow to be the Evestrum of the Sun but the Evestrum he calls the Spirits or Ghosts of men The which from the absurdity of it self alone as sufficiently rejected I passe by For truly the Sun hath neither a Soul nor being as yet alive hath an Evestrum after its Buriall There are some who will laugh at me for these daily Miracles But certainly while I do more fully look into things I see divine goodness to be actually alwayes every where and immediately President or chief Ruler because all which things he in very deed even from end to end reacheth to strongly and disposeth of all things sweetly For in God we live are and are moved in very deed and act but not by way of proportion or similitude For truly when the Lord the Saviour said I am he to wit by whom ye are live and are moved he withdrew onely that his power whereby they were moved and straightway all the Souldiers fell on the ground And although the Instrument in nature whereby we are moved be ordinary yet there is another principall totall and independent cause of our motion and the originall thereof being a miraculous hand doth concur in every motion So also in the Rainbow the Sun and place do concur as it were second causes Yet there is another independent totall miraculous and immediate cause which hath directed the Rainbow to the glory of his own goodness and of the Covenant stricken not onely indeed with Noah and his Family but with the Sons of men his posterity even to the end of the World And so from the same originall and for the same end for which the Rainbow began it is promised to endure as long as Mortalls shall be and seeing it is a sign of the Covenant with the Sons of men but not onely with the Sons of Noah it also includes a certain Covenant or agreement Therefore there is a miraculous thing in the Rainbow that its colours are not in any body but immediately in place it self like light and that immediately from the hand of God without the concurrence of a second cause Nor is it a wonder that from the condition of the Covenant a supernaturall effect should interpose Because that in many places continuall miracles do offer themselves Therefore as the Rainbow is a sign of an everlasting Covenant and a Messenger of divine goodness so Thunder causeth an admiration and adoring of the power of God For there is nothing in the Catalogue or number of things whose rains the Almighty Creator doth not immediately rule Surely he every where inforceth his love and fear and so will have man to be ordinarily put in minde of his power According to that saying The Voyce af Thunder hath stricken the Earth For a sudden and monstrous Blas is stirred up in the Air. The Heaven is oft-times clear straightway also being without winde it is suddenly bespotted with a black Cloud For often times it thunders the Heaven being clear without any small Cloud And so Thunder doth not require a Cloud but if it doth suddenly stir up any it is made as the cracking noyse shakes the Peroledes and as Gas settles downwards into a thick Cloud being drawn together by the cold of the place Therefore the Doctrine of the Schooles is frivolous determining that an exhalation is kindled between the sheath of the Clouds that it dasheth forth Lightning and that there are so many rentings of that Cloud as there are sounds and cracking noyses For I have seen in Mountains wandring Clouds and most cold in the touching yet none of any firmness or strength that they being discontinued can utter so great a noyse or cast down Lightning of so great a power by a mooving downwards and with so violent a motion and that besides the nature of ascending fire I have seen I say Lightnings about me and have heard Thunder also under my feet Notwithstanding I have even least of all discerned those firmnesses of Clouds and trifles of Thunder I say I have seen Lightnings and Thunders diversly to play under my feet where at first there was no Cloud and a Cloud to descend as if it had been called to them by the voyce of the Thunder And so I have beheld Lightning with a magnifying of the Divine Power but not with fear although I have been twice in a house that was smitten with Thunder For I by so much the more admiring have praysed the magnificencies or great atchievements of the Lord by how much the nearer his effects were unto me I have seen also once nigh Vilvord and again at Bella in Flanders a certain black Sheath as if it were a long Horsemans Boot to fly among the Groves of Oaks or Forrests with a great cracking noyse having behinde it a flame as it were of kindled straw but great Snow succeeded it Therefore seeing Thunder hath no cause plainly naturall in the Clouds of a Meteor I believe that it hath wholly all its cause not above but besides nature and so that it is a monstrous effect For first of all we are bound to believe that the evill Spirit is the Prince of this World and that his Principality doth not shine forth amongst the faithfull unless onely in the office of a tempter For so it is said that the Adversary as a Roaring Lyon goeth about seeking whom he may devoure but that not from the office of his Principality Therefore he hath obtained the Principality of this World that he may be a certain Executer of the judgements of the chief Monarch and so that he may be the Umpire or
greatest evils and those mostly to be pitied Because Physitians deceiving the World by a vain Doctorship did perswade it that they had thorowly viewed all things neither that there was a Medicine for so great an evil because the Brain had equally put on an unequal distemper as it were a Garment yet they being asked which was the primary distemper of the qualities could not hitherto express it by a suitable Etymology Wherefore the barren whisperings of the Schools being despised after that I had taken notice that hypochondrial madnesses were without controversie belonging to the Midriffe I at first began to doubt whether that cursed poyson should be brought unto the Brain through certain singular or particular Arteries But at least that suspition presently displeased me because every one should labour with an unexcusable madness unless perhapt in wise men those Channels should remain perpetually stopped and so they should be diseasie persons that they might not become such Likewise I have noted a difference between feverish doatages and madness because this indeed might very often remain safe for a long time without a lavishment of the health also in late Nephews without the discommodities of the seed and life Indeed I often left off the matter then to me unsearchable and I oftentimes from compassion took it up again And at length I saw clearly that I was supported by false principles that I was led aside by the credulity and authorities of the Heathens and deluded by the unknown qualities of Diseases And that thing I thus at first conceived and by degrees being more and more confirmed I stript my self of the Doctrine which I had supped up in the Schools concerning the Soul and concerning Diseases And then from the search of the functions of the understanding I committed my minde in rest and poverty unto the Lord that he might perform what should be his good pleasure concerning me yet I was not so indifferent but that I alwayes had a desire to profit my neighbour Therefore I begged of the Lord that I might become known to my self not onely in acknowledging my own deep nothingness morally but that as a natural Phylosopher I might behold or clearly view the very powers of the minde For truly I did suppose nothing was alike pleasing or profitable after the wisdom of Divine things as once to behold my Soul as the Image of God Wherefore I revolved the question concerning the Seat or Marriage-Bed of the immortal Soul and therefore I diligently enquired with my self whether it were so wholly in the whole Body that without a dependance on the Bride-Bed or Central Seat it should wander as a banished person not being tied unto certain Cottages or mansions and it being wholly so in the finger that this being cut off the whole should depart from the whole or through a hastening or speedy chance of fear it should return inwards Therefore I found the soul to be homogeneal or one and the same in kind simple and not to be divided else neither could it be immortal And then I knew that its whole did shine only radially on the ignoble parts after the manner of the light of the Sun which should in the mean time as it were lurk in its Throne or Seat and from thence should shine throughout the whole body being altogether unknown to the sensitive soul whose life neverthelesse the mind it self should be Verily even as the God of all is intimately present with every one of us yet is he naturally unknown nor felt or perceived by us And then a debate arose in my mind whether there were many centers and those divided according to the vital necessities of the radicall bowels But at length I knew that the mind was more tied up to one bowel than to another as well in respect of the offices of seeing as of understanding And at length therefore I was reduced unto the individual bride-bed of one bowel And while I enquired into the head and heart and weighed the doubtfulnesses of Authours I presently for certainty found that I which I formerly until now detested should depart into the precepts of the Heathens who as they were denied the knowledge of the true God so also the knowledge of the divine image which neverthelesse is the object of healing Therefore I being destitute of authorities and companions knew not whence I might begin the judgment of so great an heap untill at length God permitting it I being destitute of humane help and endeavour under many years diligent search and hope of knowing the bride-bed of the soul an unwonted chance befel me the history whereof I will declare For I was diligently heedful about the poysons of Vegetables believing that the poysons of so great moment were not hurtful to Adam before sin Seeing the Almighty created neither death nor a medicine of destruction and so to have sent forth such cruel things not indeed that they might kill man but because he was constrained in the sweat of his face to eat his bread to which diseases he was made subject also in sweats that he should extract Medicines for Diseases And therefore I did promise to my self that that poyson after the manner of a Keeper and a huske did cover some notable and Virgin-Power created for great uses and the which might by Art and Sweats allay poysons and cause them to vanish Wherefore I began divers wayes to stir or work upon Wolfs-bane And once when I had rudely prepared the Root thereof I tasted it in the top of my tongue For although I had swallowed down nothing and had spit out much spittle yet I presently after felt my skull to be as it were tied without side with a girdle Then at length some businesses of my Family unadvisedly befell me I cast up a certain account wandred about the house and finished all things according to what was requisite At length this besel me which never at another time that I felt that I did understand conceive savour or imagine nothing in the head according to my accustomed manner at other times but I percieved with admiration manifestly cleerly discursively and constantly that that whole office was executed in the Midriffs and displayed about the mouth of the Stomach and I felt that thing so sensibly and cleerly yea I attentively noted that although I also felt sense and motion to be safely dispensed from the head into the whole body yet that the whole faculty of discourses was remarkably and sensibly in the Midriffs with an excluding of the head as if the mind did at that time in the same place meditate of its own counsels Therefore I being full of the admiration and amazement of that unwonted percievance I noted with my self my own notions and began the examination of the same and of my own self after a more precise manner And I plentifully found and sifted out that I did far more cleerly understand and meditate all that space of time And so that
others even sick solks do move themselves freely For the Stomach is loaded and burdened and the concoction thereof is not yet finished and therefore it happens to those that lay on their left side to wit which way the mouth of the stomach is wrested From whence it becomes first of all evident that the stomach also doth command the motion and especially that in this it doth govern the sleep dreams and also the motion For the dreams of the Mare are almost always the same as also the impotency of moving as long as the stomach being thus ill affected is stretched forth in sleep For the Schools do assign the causes of the Mare to be grosse vapours invading the thorny marrow And indeed they are carried into vapours by reason of the momentary solving of that distemper For if the sleepers are forthwith awakened the Mare also presently ceaseth And so those vapours ought to cease at the will of the awakener In the next place I hardly hear that grosse vapours should be accused in many or most causes of Diseases I hitherto confess that for fifty full years I never as yet saw a grosse vapour of distillations There are indeed corporeal exhalations in which a volatile matter is sublimed and doth climbe to the sides of the vessel So indeed out of Sulphur Orpiment Woods Arsenick Sal-Armoniack Camphor Urine and likewise from Mercury Lead brasse-Oar Brasse c. grosse smoakinesses do ascend upwards but vapours to wit watery ones I never saw or knew to be grosse unless among University-men who are ignorant of vapours yea however grosse they should be they should at least both loose their grosseness at the pleasure of the awakener and the heat which had stirred up those vapours should presently be stopped Both of them surely ridiculous things Again they conjecture the marrow to be affected by reason of motion denied in the Dream And so every affect of the marrow and every stopping vapour should cease at the will of the awakener which is alike full of frivolous rashness But how shall one laying with his face upwards send grosse vapours out of the stomach into his loins and the marrow enclosed within the turning joynts and covered with membranes to wit whither in another place they say that not the more thin windes do pierce especially because such a Scituation of him that layes down should of its own nature rather banith vapours out of the stomach into the bowels or should carry them upwards thorow the stomach into the Navil than downwards unto the marrow being shut up and loaded with the bowels What community passeth betwixt the speech with the thorny marrow or why shall grosse vapours out of the stomach desire onely the back-running sinews For the Mare doth not onely cause a hearing of inward whisperings and granteth to discourse also to fear but also external true and appearing objects are heard But he cannot move his tongue how much soever others may speak in time of dreaming Do the Schools perhaps think the motions of the tongue to be made by the thorny marrow Therefore those grosse vapours shall be far different from dreamy ones they not hindering the use of motion of the tongue yea of the whole Body For while they apply themselves to the sinews that they may afford the causes of unmoveableness the Schools themselves become dumb and unmoveable While they shall never understand what they say as neither after what manner those grosse that is impossible vapours shall pierce the stomach bottom of the belly hollow vein extended through the back with a beating Artery its companion and likewise the ligaments of the turning joynts And how those things shall be silent appeased and cease at a moment if haply he be awakened who suffers the distemper of the Mare Surely they had more rightly learned the action of the government of the Duumvirate to wit that an impediment brought on the stomach in its vital government aloâ—â—â— doth without vapours or Truncks trouble the Brain doth vitiate the sinews and first conceptions as it interrupteth the comforts of the spleen For so it happens that those who have the Apoplexie and Palsey do eat hear and sleep c. yet that they cannot speak For the Schools do accuse the back-running sinews to be stopped Why therefore shall not the Mare have regard to these sinews rather than to the thorny marrow Why do Remedies for the Duumvirate help those that have an Apoplexie a giddiness in the Head that know not how to go and speak those very Medicines I say being as yet present in the hollow of the stomach but are unprofitable to the back-running sinews and head Hath a Pie perhaps those sinews stuffed together before speech Shall a Cow which thrusts forth her tongue moveable into the nostrils have her tongue bound and doth she want back-running sinewes Or else she shall have them in vain if they are perpetually and naturally stopped A certain voluntary command is brought down from the Head unto the sinews of the tongue that is denied unto four-footed beasts but not unto some Birds Likewise that thing not at the first turn but by degrees through an accustomed going But he that hath an Apoplexie doth not put this command into execution because he is dismayed or astonished almost like a four-footed beast Indeed the conception of an Asse God permitting it once passed thorow unto his tongue Not indeed that the Asse was the Instrument of the Angel For then he had spoken the iudgements of God but not his own conceivings neither had he complained of his stripes From occasion of the Asse I will speak my own In the year 1643. the day before the Calends of the 11th month called January I sate beginning to write in a close Chamber but the cold was great and I bad an earthen Pot or Pan to be brought with burning Coals that I might sometimes comfort the cold stiffness of my fingers My little Daughter comes unto me who as soon as she sented the hurt or offence wiâ—hdrew the Earthen Pan and unless she had chanced to come I being choaked had perished For I presently felt about the mouth of my stomach a sore-threatned swooning I arose from my Study while I would go forth abroad I fell like a straight staffe and was brought away for dead For there was a two-fold affect one of the bruised hinder part of my head which filched away my tast and smelling but did over-cloud my hearing The other was a sounding affect stirred up from the stomach For in the first dayes my Head turned round with giddiness as oft as I looked on one side much more if upwards I thought that that befel me from the stroak of the fall with the naked hinder part of my Head suddenly and from my whole statute on a hard stone But by little and little I was better assured and I for many dayes revolved all things within my self I knew therefore at length that my giddiness proceeded
some plaâ—sible or timorous conceit with a desire or turning away doth go before And presently after there follows an appetite of the conceits with desire or fear Which things in this place I have thus enlarged that the power of a similitudinary or likeâ—ous creation of the Divine Image may bring us into the likeness of creating a Divine â—ove in the mind To wit while it self by its own motion not by a beam only of it self dispersed into the mortal Soul even as in Women great with child hath already been related to be done and by its own proper wishing is carâ—yed totally inward into the love of God Ah I would to God we might be led thither CHAP. XLVIII The Asthma or Stoppage of Breathing and Cough 1. The Pores of the Lungs and Sinews do lay open as long as we live 2. Nothing rains down from the Head to the Lungs 3. That Remedies are badly applyed to the Head in an Asthma 4. What the Vulcan the corrupter is 5. By what errour sweet Remedies and Lohochs or Ecligmaes were brought in 6. What was said is proved 7. A censuring of usual and ordinary Medicines 8. They have not distinguished the Remedies of the Conghâ—and Asthma 9. Aâ—twofold Asthma 10. The catamity of the Femal Sex 11. The heedlessnesse or rashnesses of the Schools 12. Vain experiments or attempts 13. The activity of the Womb in an Asthma 14. How the Womb ruleth and is ruled 15. An Enemy in the Womb. 16. They have erred in distinguishing 17. A Woman twice suffers every Disease 18. A sub-division of the Asthma 19. The Asthma hath been hitherto unknown 20. Why Physitians may hear that which they would not hear 21. A History of an Asthmatical Consul 22. A History of a young noble Man a Hunter 23. A A History of a Canonical Man 24. A History of a Monk 25. A History of a Citizen 26. A History of a Man of Sixty years old 27. A Searching out of the nest in a dry Asthma 28. Why its nest is in the Duumvirate 29. Why an Asthma is an Epilepsie of the Lungs 30. The quality of an Asthmatical Poyson 31. A History of a Countess 32. The place of the Poyson in the Consul was divers from that in the Hunter 33. How the Seeà and Fruit of an Asthma do differ 34. Why it suddenly invadeth 35. Why a dry Asthma is without suspition of a Defluxion 36. Remedies are not to be applyed to the Head 37. A censure or judgment of Remedies 38. A Paragraph or Summary sentence of Paracelsus concerning an Asthma 39. In what the deceit of Remedies may be 40. Remedies proper to an Asthma 41. The causes of a Womb-Asthma are by accident 42. A History of that which went before 43. A Doubtful Asthma between a dry and a moist one 44. Crafts which cause a moist Asthma 45. A moist Asthma from Endemical things drawn in 46. A History of an Asthmatical Man who was presently choaked 47. An erroneous judgment of the Lungs grown to the Pleura 48. Anatomy being founded on bad principles is oft-times childisher a mockery 49. From whence death and suddain choaking is 50. Things worthy of note about the Asthma of him of sixty years of age 51. It is proved from burtful things often eaten 52. That that Asthma was from the Spleen 53. The reason of the Schools concerning a climbing motion in an Asthmatick person is rejected 54. A fourfold vapour 55. An examination by the rule of a false supposition 56. A privie shift 57. Some considerations for the questions proposed 58. A reason drawn by conjectures 59. Confirming signes 60. A moist Asthma 61. It differs from its companion the Cough 62. From what causes it may arise 63. A promiscuous Asthma 64. An appropriated Remedy as well for the moist as the dry Asthma 65. Concerning the Cough from a distillation or pose 66. Why the Snivell doth varie in the running down of a pose 67. Some Observations 68. That for a Cough Phlegm doth not descend out of the Head unto the Lungs 69. A judgment or censure of the deeper Remedies 70. A History of a Snorting old Man 71. The Authors opinion 72. Of what sort the decision of the Question is 73. Both the Keepers do hasten to the Proof together with a Histery of 〈…〉 Latex 74. How much and how far the use of a Cauterie may answer 75. 〈…〉 applying of drying drinks 76. A consideration of Ecligmaes 77. A co 〈…〉 of the fume of Sulphur unto drink BEcause an Asthma or stoppage or difficulty of breathing hath been translated unto the trifles of a Rheum or Catarrh and the affect hath not been known and scarce healed hitherto Therefore I am constrained to write particularly concerning the Asthma To which end somethings out of those that have been afore alledged are to be repeated To wit that the Lungs is passable with pores or little holes as longas wolive no otherwise than as all the Sinews are The which is especially manifest in Opticks if one eye being shut the apple of the other seemeth to wax great But in death they are shut which otherwise in those that are alive are passable and the light of the eyes of dying persons doth visibly perish because the Optical or eye pores being shut the visible Spirit ceaseth and leaveth off to issue thither This my thing Hippocrates already knew in his age and therefore he declared the whole Body to be perspirable or breathing thorow and compirable on breathingly solding together And then I suppose it hath been already sufficiently demonstrated that nothing falls down from the Head into the Wind pipe â—r Lungs the which notwithstanding is frequently and plenteously spit or reached out by the Cough so that neither is there an entire place for a feigned Distillation or Catarrh But whatsoever the Cough casts forth that that is made in the Pipes of the Lungs through their proper vice Therefore that they have erred hitherto by reason of ignorance of the part commanding making or committing and receiving and by reason of rash thoughts of the matter and manner of making It is no wonder therefore if there hath also been nothing done in curing Because Remedies have been applyed to the Head that it might not make or not send matter or that matter might not of its own accord slide into the Lungs which was never in the power of the Head but is constantly made in the possession of the Lungs themselves And therfore the sick have remained without cure because all the care of Physitians was conversant partly about the Head which is guiltless in this Disease and partly about the preventing and more easie ejection of filths But not about the amending of that Vulcan the corrupter which of the good nourishment of the Lungs frameth the aforesaid Phlegms Indeed the ignorances of the former causes hath alwaies made the Schools to direct their intentions of healing unto the effect latter thing For when they diligently observed that
which is the first and easiest sequestration of Heterogeneal things There are not a few things also which it fixeth before they were volatile or on the contrary And then among some volatile things it separates odoriferous things from things not odoriferous which distinction is falsly reckoned of the pure from the impure For truly the action of the fire is to burn and therefore it burns as well the pure as the impure And then a third separation is made by digestions and proper ferments as the parts which do stick fast with a stubborn continuity do depart from each other through a discord of the ferment For so Bodies do in the fulness of their last life voluntatily decay and entertained faculties do come to light Moreover by boyling and melting the parts formerly ruled by one rein do now act on each other under which degree they attain other virtues Therefore Chymistry produceth those things which else should never be made or had in Nature and that not onely in separated volatiles but also in things residing and the which residues are therefore calcined But if by a co-mingling and co-fermenting of the composed Body new faculties do arise that very thing is more beholdable in Alchymical things not only because Art doth wholly imitate Nature in all her operations but also in a peculiar efficacy of a moist influx and melting which do perform various operations under the fire and change the Nature For so the spirit of Salt-peter doth elevate a moist Sulphur and embrination or sharp waterishness of Vitriol from whence are poysonous waters the Spirits of both which notwithstanding being separated were fit for Healing and grateful to the Stomack In the last place Chymistry doth bring up some more milde things unto a degree as poysons may be made of Honey Manna c. most things how violent soever they are do also wax milde under the Fire So that fixed Alcalies is they are made volatile do equalize the powers of great Medicines Because by the virtue of Incision Resolving and Cleansing they being brought even unto the entry of the Fourth Digestion do fundamentally take away the toughnesse of things coagulated in the Vessels For Chymistry doth so resolve the most hard and compacted things that they being not onely forgetful of their former curdling and constancy against the Fire do retire into a tameable juyce and being occult are made manifest but moreover they become social unto us Yea it doth not onely so prepare things themselves but it also effecteth means whereby Bodies may be opened For so coagulated things do depart into the Family of resolved things fixed things are changed into volatile and on the contrary crude things are ripened and things Heterogeneal or of diversity of kind are divided into their Classes's or Ranks In the next place drowsie or sleepie things do attain degrees of Virtues and many new things spring up which have remained unknown in the Schooles of the Gentiles Finally and finally Chymistry as for its perfection doth prepare an universal Solver whereby all things do return into their first Being and do afford their native endowments the original blemishes of Bodies are cleansed and that their inhumane cruelty being forsaken there is opportunity for them to obtain great and undeclarable Virtues But how much purity the Understanding may attain under this Work the Adeptist hath onely known Ah I wish the Bottle once possessed by me had not been taken away But God hath known why he hath given to the Goat so short a Taile Let his Name be exalted throughout Ages and let the alone sanctifying Will of him onely be done CHAP. LXI The Preface 1. The Authors intention 2. The Authors excuse 3. The event is suspected from Divine Ordination 4. A wish of the Author 5. A reason of doubting of the fallacy of the Devil 6. How the Author knew that he was not deceived 7. A Reason teaching that this Talent is of God 8. The judgement of quick-sighted men 9. The whole light of Healing hath appeared in one only moment 10. What the Author hath conjectured from thence 11. Why the Author hath written sharply against the Chaires 12. The event is intellectually foreseen 13. Fevers are frequently stirred up the occasional cause being absent 14. A Relation of terms seeing it is not a Being it doth not cause a Being in act To what end the dissection of a man of sixty years old was re-minded in his sleep I Have deliberated in the good pleasure of God to make manifest that before the world and especially in the Schools the causes of Diseases the knowledge of their essences and their Remedy have been hitherto hidden To wit that the essence of Diseases have not yet been pierced by so many Ages and Judgements of men Truly I have earnestly and notably grieved that this Ignorance of Ages past and of the present Age is true and so that it ought to be discovered by me an unprofitable old Man It hath seriously grieven me that they have been careless as well for their own life as for the life of their Neighbours and that Physitians should seem to have studied only for gain but that such was the ordination of God that as long as the Schools did adhere to Paganim Doctrines they should also persevere in the aforesaid darkness until at length in the fulness of times there should be one who should open the essence and thingliness of Diseases unto his Neighbours and that indeed before the very Chaires of Medicine to wit that as it were in a Fountain the errors of Heathenism being driven away the Truth may hereafter shine and as many as had not shut their eyes through obstinacy may repent Truly I propose to the whole World and to our Posterity a matter new and plainly to be admired And ah I wish that I alone who do first make manifest these things may therefore contract on my self and sustain the reproaches nor that the life and health of my Neighbour may suffer For I had willingly been silent neither had I divulged my Talent but that I knew this one only Talent to have been given me for the life of my Neighbour And while I do as yet contemplate with my self of the greatness of the thing in the succession of so many Ages and their fatal ignorance and the continued sluggishness of Body or negligence in a thing I say of so great moment as is the life of Man I cannot but many times for amazement look back repose my quill and doubt of my own fallacy of rashness To wit that in the Universities themselves wherein fresh the more fervent wits and those not yet defiled with gain are exercised a Disease is as yet altogether unknown to wit the adequate or suitable object of the Medicinal faculty the object I say of so many readings established by Princes Surely I had wholly doubted of my own rashness unless he who giveth such a Talent were the dispenser of the same within and
by a small Remedy they would be willing to learn how to help so cruel a Malady Divines indeed and Lawyers have handled their own Examinations but the Schooles of Medicine I accuse of neglect For I judge that to be done because the evil Spirit is the Prince of this World who therefore hath every where obtained his Patrons in the Chaires Courts and Pallaces whereby himself sits as it were President And the whole World is in very deed placed in Malignity For some of these being the more inclinable unto Athiesme do deny Devils Juggles like as also Enchantments and they affirm that they cannot be induced to believe the contrary unless they shall see them Whence at length they deride among themselves the Immortality of the mind and the Fear of God as Politick Inventions for the restraining of the common People And then others according to the Decree of the Holy Scriptures do indeed believe Devils and Infernal Guardians to be Yet that they are not Cacogeneal or of an evil property or nature to Humane society but rather fellowly and near friends And so they esteem bewitching Juggles for deceitful Fables melancholly Trifles and old Wives Dreams There are also Lastly others among the Learned who being admonished by the Authority of the Holy Scriptures of the Works of the Devil also of the Enchantments of Witches or Sorceresses do admit of them indeed Yet they esteem them to be meer Arts nor to be condemned by any other Title but that they are throughly taught by Satan and are onely Instituted for evil And these are the most audacious in all wickedness and at this day cloak Faith with Hypocrisie I therefore since the dayes of Plato do behold three Patrons of Witches to have now constantly flourished among Athiests And I guess that so cursed an Infection hath not hitherto persisted but by the same president In the mean time no Physitians that I know of except one only Karichterus hath handled this matter Who indeed hath proposed the manner of making and some remedies of curing but not a little suspected of vain superstition Neither also hath he touched at the Theory because he seemed to have been ignorant thereof Physitians in the mean time being greatly afraid least they should be accounted guilty of a Magical Crime while they should by a strong fortune be reckoned to have conferred a help which they know not on their Neighbour under so great straits of miseries Yet that privy shift hath been commonly perswaded by the subtilty of Satan that they might seem to have neglected the searching out of a remedy for the assurance of their own fame and conscience But they passing by their languishing Neighbour as the unbelieving Scribes and Pharisees do forsake them in their greatest desolations For none is otherwise reputed to have carefully heeded the Disease or to have known the structure of the same for which he describeth a remedy And none is believed to have given poyson to drink who enquireth into the Causes and discerns the remedies And least of all is he judged to have inflicted a wound who being sent for hath set to his helping hand compassionately and freely As neither is he a Thief who discovers the dens and counsels of Thieves Far therefore by that privy shift that it should be accounted for aâ— infamous thing to have known the means progress ends and cure of or medicine against enchantments seeing these things ought to be known and had from elsewhere than from the Teacher the Devil For seeing the Devil is restrained within the Court of Nature we are not to despaire but that the most bountiful Jesus hath substituted remedies for so cruel maladies unto his own Glory who hath never been wanting to his own Goodness Glory and Wisdom A good Man therefore proceeds in a strait way neither doth he look behind him nor careth he what the World doth judge of him to wit most of whose judgements are foolish and false For it is sufficient for a good Man that the hinderer or destroyer of a Malady is voide of crime Therefore according to my capacity I will shew how far the Devil is concerned in the actions of Sorcerers or Witches And the which as to a fundamental concernment I will rehearse by eight Positions 1. That every vital Form is a vital Light of its own Body 2. That although the Forms of inanimate things do differ from Souls in the degree and disposition of that Light At leastwise they all do agree in something which is essentially lightsome 3. That by reason of their Light they immediately touch and pierce each other And so Forms being connexed do operate on or into each other even as one Light doth divide another in the midst for the Sun-beams being collected by a Glass into the Crest for although they shall co-unite into a point yet they again proceeding from thence those which were in the Glass on its right side even unto the Crest do afterwards pass thorow it being rebounded in the Glass unto its left side yet they keep the identity or sameliness of the former Light undefiled as neither therefore by reason of the penetration made in the Crest do they labour with contagion The which I have elsewhere mechanically demonstrated by a Figure 4. That therefore formal Lights which are diverse in the general or particular kinde do immediately pierce and communicatively operate without wearisomenesse on each other like Light 5. That all the forms of Bodies are true Lights yet not substantiall ones although Entitated or made Beings for the reasons elsewhere alleadged concerning neutral Creatures But the mind of Man alone is a Formal Immortal and Un-obliteral substance In this respect also it operates with a superiority toucheth at and pierceth every other form inferiour unto it as elsewhere concerning the searching out of sciences by that title especially recieved into Faith and Nature because it is the true Image of God and the Kingdome of God inhabits therein And who therefore hath put all things under its feet 6. That therefore the evil Spirit hath not a power from his Creation of reaching any Form that in it he can perfect his own will by the absolute command of his Beck For he is a Spirit abstracted from a corporeal Being and bound and forthwith after Sin a most miserable Scoffer or Mocker 7. But only a local motive power of Bodies hath remained unto him and the motion whereof doth turn to the hurt of Mortals For neither can he beat down one only window of himself without the help of the liberty of his Clients 8. For neither doth he move the Elements by touching seeing that he wanteth extream parts whereby he may touch Bodies not indeed those which he taketh to him whereby he may lay hold of or move any thing but by his Beck only he moveth with a beholdable Aspect such as is that of the Stars on Meteours by Idea's or of our will on its own Organs Which mutual power
manifest how most nearly a single Life doth come unto the Primitive state of Innocency and so that also from thence we may learn that the intention of the Creator was in a single Life For now and then that word of Truth comes into my mind which requireth the state of little Children in those that are to be saved under the penalty of infernal punishment and that we must despair of Salvation unless we are made or become like unto them In whom notwithstanding I find a suddain speedy undiscreet and frequent anger stripes kickings lyes disobediences murmurings reproaches a ready deceit and lying in play an unsatiable Throat impudence disturbances disdaines unconstancy and a stupid innocency lastly no acts of devotion attention or contribution But yet those are not the things in little ones which are required for those that are to be saved under pain of an Eternal loss In the next place neither do little Children want their pride of Life and despising of others and especially their hatred of the poor also a frequent desire of revenge cruelty an itch of getting or attaining the concupiscence of the Eyes and are wholly and perpetually addicted to and drowned in self-love But neither are those the things required in them that are to besaved under Gods indignation But they want the concupiscence of the Flesh alone This indeed is the Mark which with so loud sounds it required for those that are to be saved Because it is that which was of a primitive intention in Creation And therefore from an opposite sense I argue That the chief fault of the Fall of the Apple being eaten was convenant about the infringement of that chast bashfulness that is that Original sin was scituated in the breaking of Virginity in the act of Concupiscence and propagation of feed But not in the very act of disobedience and despised Admonition and distrust of the truth of the divine Word For B. Hildegard also in the Third Book of her Life seemeth to have testified the same thing The Author saith She freed the Matron Sibylla of the City of Lausaâ—ium beyond the Alpes who required her help by a Messenger from a daily Issue of Blood by the subscribed Letters being sent unto her Thou shalt put these words between thy Breast and 〈◊〉 in the 〈◊〉 of him who rightly disposeth all things In the Blood of Adam arose Death In the Blooâ— of Christ Death is extinguished In the same Blood of Christ I command thee Oh Blood that thou contain or stop thy Flux And the Matron was cured by these written Words the which others have many times experienced Therefore Death was extinguished by the effusion of the Blood of Christ and the particiâ—â—â—â—on thereof in being born again that is by the offering up of Chastity to God the Father for those that are to be renewed in his Blood And moreover if we do well mind it is acknowledged that God hath loved women before Men in their Sex by reason of an inbred bashfulness Unto which Sex therefore he hath freely given Devotion as a gift of Nature whereby â—ere should be some kind of natural faculty and virtue proper to that Sex a Medium unto Salvation For the first Apostoless before the coming of the Comforter by one onely Sermon converted Samaria the head of the Israelitish Kingdom otherwise most stubborn Only the Women from Galilee being constantly although disgracefully serviceable adered to Christ at his Death and under all ignomiâ—â—y he being left by his disciples the witesses of so many Miracles and that at the first blast of adversity For the poor Women rejoyced in their reproaches so they might but follow Christ carrying his Cross upon his back Magdalen also first preached the Gospel of his Resurrection unto her own who did not believe and confirmed them in Faith who doubted and deserved to be the first beholder of Christ after his Death because she sought the same with the fervor of the greatest Devotion God I say hath heaped very many Diseases Adversities and Subjections on this Sex that it should be by so much the more like and nearer to his Son But the World despiseth Women and preferreth Men But in most things the Judgements of God are opposite unto the Judgements of the World so that also the World despiseth the Poor of whom Christ calleth himself the Father but not of the Rich. Then in the next place Christ calls himself in many places The Son of Man But seeing he had not a Man unto his Father therefore by an Antonomâ—sia he calls the Woman the Virgin Man by an absolute dignity of Name and worthy of or beseeming the Femal Sex as if for that reason the name Man ought thenceforth after sin to be proportioned and stands for the Woman in the more famous signification Shewing at leastwise that in thing the Mother-Virgin was after the sin of Adam the one onely Man such as the Divinity had espoused unto it self in the Creation of the Universe for the replenishing of the places laid waste by the Evil Spirit And that what Eve ceased to be through an infringing of Chastity that Mary the most glorious Virgin was to wit The one only Mother of those that are to be saved in the Regeneration of Purity But neither 〈◊〉 I undertaken a laudatory Oration in behalf of that Sex Only it is sufficient to have shewn that God hath loved the Femal Sex by reason of its love of Chastity For a Virgin thinâ—â— on the things of her God The Apostle also Commands Widows which are truly Widows to be honoured And in the old Law those were reckoned impure as many as even conjugally had known their Wives if they were not seriously washed and were to be driven from the Temple unless they were first duly rinsed He also violently fell by a sudden Death because such an impure Man although from a good zeal put his hand to the tottering Cart wherein the Ark of the Covenant the Image of the God-bearing-Virgin was carried Indeed on both sides the Truth being agreeable to it self doth detest and attest the filthyness of impure Adamical generation For the Impurity which had conceived a contagion from any natural Issue whatsoever of Menstrues or Seed and that by its touching alone is reckoned to be equal to that which should by degrees creep on a person from a co-touching of dead Carcasses and to be expiated by the same ceremonious right That the Text might agreeably denote that Death began from the Concupiscence of the Flesh lying hid in the fruit of the Apple Therefore also the one only healing Medicine of so great an impurity contracted by touching consisted in washing under the likeness whereof Faith and Hope which in Baptisme were poured into us are strengthened For as soon as Adam had known by Fratricide that the first-born of Mortals whom he had begotten in the Concupiscence of the Flesh had slain his guiltless and righteous Brother and fore-seeing the wicked Errors of
it is certain That the Heaven hath received no other Law since Transgression because the Earth alone hath undertaken all the Curse on it self For from hence I have sufficiently demonstrated elsewhere That the Heaven is free from our sins neither that it playes the part of a revenger of iniquities But if some places are subject unto Death and certain Diseases that is not to be attributed unto the circulation or whirling of the Heavens blind influxes of the Stars But it is altogether proper unto the dispositions of the Earth For although Eastern Provinces may seem the more fruitful or happy that is not to be attributed to the Heaven Seeing that in a circle every part subjected under the same circle is alike Oriental or Easterly Otherwise a Circle should not want a Beginning End and Extremity of parts Therefore there is an inbred goodness in the soil and the fertility of the ground is holpen by the continual cherishment of the Stars and a perpetual familiarity of visitation Truly under the circle of the Sun Climates have an ordinary and equal heat and so that as many fruits as by ripening do ascend unto a degree of perfection by reason of heat are there more happy the which otherwise through want of heat are not alike perfect But the heat of the Sun hath respect unto Fruits but not to Long Life which is of no less length of continuance in Cold Mountanous and Northern places than else where under the Hot or Torrid Zone Surely the favours of the Soyl do not depend on the Stars as neither the prolongations of Life The Stars are daily wheeled about and do daily almost equally affect the Climates of the Earth which are under them but they do every Year receive their Winter and Summer according to the access and recess of the Sun In the mean time the Tracts of the more adjoyning Lands do far vary from each other They are therefore the particular gifts of the Soyl but not of the Heaven which therefore keep a stable goodness as it were Provincial to the same Tracts of Land In the holy Scriptures indeed The Land of Promise floweth with Milk and Honey being fruitful in Wine Corn Pulse and rich fruits of the Tree And likewise scarce requiring dunging and the toyles of Labour And then I see other Coasts of the World to owe and pay the Tribute of the Land of Promise For from both the Poles continual Rains do steep the Earth that the promised Soyl may without the trouble of Rains take unto it self its due Water and that Aegypt may repay the favours of the Soyl of Heaven with a double usury of fruits For Seas and Rivers strivingly hasten unto those places with a speedy course Yea and from beyond the Tropick of Capricorne Nilus brings down his melted Snows through Aegypt unto the Mediterranean Sea as it were a Yearly Tribute of Nature that may water the more fruitful Countries if not with Rain at leastwise with Dew and the blackish cloudy Waters of Nile and that the Vapours being lifted up from the Sea throughout the Soyl it may most plentifully repay a plentiful Dew round about And so that the whole World seemeth readily to serve those more fruitful Regions Under the Aequinoctial Line it Rains many times every Day because the Tributary Waters do not reach thither But they are supped up in the Countries which God in times past appointed unto his own People but now unto Barbarians by reason of Transgressions fore-monished of by the Prophets He therefore blessed the Land of Promise for the People of Israel from the beginning but for Reasons foreknown to himself from Eternity and the which he fixed stable into Nature Yea he not onely appointed the Tribute of the whole World unto these Lands but unto most of them he added Reasons Idea's Seeds and Gifts whereof the more intemperate Climate are destitute Nor all that for any other ends than because it so well pleased him for his hidden Judgements But these things do not make for the consideration of long Life for in Is-land Men are found to be of a Longer Continuance of Life than in Palestina Phaenicia Aegypt c. Oftentimes also in Mountainous and rough Hills Older Men are met withal than in a pleasant Champion To wit that we may know that the Prince of Life hath granted a long continuance of Life unto so miserable places and to a singular tract of Land which he hath denied unto whatsoever the most pleasant and wealthy Countries Nature therefore is subject unto the Soyl even for a stability of Life For we measure a Diseasie and short Life from Endemicks Doth happily an Endemical Being breath out of the Lands wherein Life is prolonged No surely And it is sufficient that a place doth want malignity that a continuance of Life may be attained so far as is from the nature of the Place Lastly Fountains are either without Savour or Mineral they not being those which may have positively a long continuance of Life But as being those which unsensibly mow down the daily Superfluities or growths of oily Dregs and in this respect Life is not untimely taken away by and by Neither also doth much and a sweet temperature of Air prevail hereunto For truly in the rough Hills of the Forrest of Arden of Scotland and Spain in our Champion a longer Life doth for the most part occur than in Aquitane For Hieres is a Valley nigh Apulia environed with Mountaines being fruitful in the sweetest Fruits where the most sweet Station of the Spring is almost continued Yet having Inhabitants of a shorter Life being deformed with a pale Countenance so that it hath crept into a Proverb of those that were Sick and Recovering Thou seemest to us to be a Stranger come from Hieres For the pleasantnesse of Fruits takes up the suspition of a Mineral Endemick Also not onely Mountainous Colds do extend the Life but Old Age is frequent among the Aethiopians Let therefore those places be fit for Long Life which being not polluted by any Endemicks have moreover not unwholsome Waters nor the which are infamous for a stormy Wind. CHAP. CIV The Radical Moisture THe Schooles with one Voice promote the Radical Moysture of Life For they declame That from it and in it we live and that that onely being consumed we die For they who together with Aristotle attribute all things to heat as to an active Principle do not say That the Radical moisture is the Beginning as neither the Inn of Life unless they derive the Primateship on Heat in the moisture But the moisture hath more pleased others From whence they being sore afraid through the sloath of a diligent search least they should erre they will have our Life to depend on and be prolonged as well by moisture as by heat without distinction And so they denominate it not indeed heat but composedly Radical heat or the first-born moisture That indeed the first-born or original
no Subtilties but those which are sifted about Charity and which regard and preserve the Life of thine own Image For I grieved at the first at so great rashness of belief of Principles and at so great a sluggishness of Mortals about things of so great moment and the pitty of this thing increased with me dayly Hence at length I having obtained a little Light I knew with great grife that the Errours of the Schools ought by me plainly to appear But indeed in the entrance that thing seemed to me to be full of untamed arrogancy that I the least of all should brand all before me with the ignorance of Phylosophical truth but should attribute to my self only the obtainment of healing Therefore I oftentimes begged of the Lord that he would re-take that his own Talent from me and vouchsafe wholly to take it away and to bestow it on another more worthy than my self For I knew that he who had well lay hid had well lived at least-wise morally and in this ulcerous age Therefore I resisted and a good while deferred to propose this ignorance of the Principles of Medicine to its own World until that now being an old Man the last necessity constraining me and being placed in an Agony of Death I promised the Lord that I would sincerely divulge his Talent least I should at sometime be accounted in the strict Judgment of God to have come into the world in vain and to have departed as unprofitable from hence For by a Vision in a Dream I understood that I was more afraid of gainsayings than of Gods Indignation that Nature was crafty as long as she made a pretence for Pride in purely obeying God by reason of deceitful humane respects Also I saw not that my own Arrogancy which was placed rather in fear did make me less freely or generously to perform what was required against Judicious Men that would rise up against me for so many ages past than in purely obeying the most glorious Giver of Truth Yea that I did not commiserate my Neighbour and that I buried my Talent in the Earth in looking back on the uncertain Censures of the World concerning me I knew indeed the doores of Medicine to have been locked and the Bars and Bolts thereof to have been covered with rust for so many ages but I doubted to open them as if I should presume the Office of a Porter to be meerly my own and not to be given to any other Therefore I resolved with my self to do what Charity not arrogancy perswaded to be done as knowing that he is not injurious who beholds a publick good although it may make those blush who have rashly subscribed to the trifles of Heathens unto the dammage of mankind At length therefore I stood as a middle man between the shame and sore fear of the greatness of the thing and many times reposed my Pen And again I seriously begged of the Lord that he would vouchsafe to chose another more worthy than my self Wherefore the Lord being deservedly wroth suffered this Evil and unprofitable Servant to be sifted by Satan For an Order whose Zenith or vertical Point is the house of Powers and whose Nadir or Point under their Feet are other Orders began undeservedly to persecute me by unworthy Wiles I knew presently that the hand of the Lord had touched me And therefore in a full tempest of Persecutions I wrote a Volume whose Title is the Rise or Original of Medicine that is The unheard of Beginnings of natural Phylosophy wherein I have discovered the accustomed Errours of the Schools in healing I have I say afforded and demonstrated new Principles as also hitherto unheard of Speculations of Diseases that the Universities leaving the Vanities of the Heathen may for the future accustom themselves to the Truth For from thence I found a rest in my Soul such as I never found in the times of my Prosperity so that I being full of suspition grieved that so great Storms did not any thing disturb the rest of my Soul or sleep of my Body Wherein O God my Protectour I am not able sufficiently to praise the abundance of thy bounty which suffered not my Soul even in the least to fall out of a full enjoyment of peace under so great straits on every side I fearing this one only thing least as an unprofitable Servant I should be buried with my small Talent Whosoever therefore thou art who interpretest my Zeal to be proud boasting thou mayest do it for me so thou shalt not hurt thy self for I will rejoyce to bear back all confusion for the good of my Neighbour and of Posterity and I shall enjoy my wish whether in the mean time my boldness shall turn unto me for rashness or not For God the Sower will water what he would have to grow And moreover in the Book of Fevers I have declared the Beginnings of my repentance and in what manner I desisted from Galen and Avicen to wit by reason of the discerned falshood of the Pillars of Medicine from whence a singular boldness of confidence thenceforth increased in me being as yet a young man whereby for my Neighbours sake I willingly exposed my self to the infurious Censures of all and the number of dayes by degrees running on the Lord beheld the Candor of my Zeal and granted me now a Man to see that whatsoever is taught in the Schools of Medicine is full of Miseries and Ruine and that it should be a laughing stock to Posterity Good Jesus how greatly was I then amazed at the greatness of thy Clemency which reveals those things unto little ones which were denyed for so manyages to men otherwise most religious and ingenious Moreover although I was from thence more assured that the manifestation of my Talent of truth received lay heavy upon me yet Nature is ready to find out excuses and deceives it self and its own Sorrows by the Props of Reason its Chamber-Maid I presently therefore fie it sâ—ames me of my own unconstancy shook off the undertaken burden again from my shoulders and said who am I oh Lord for the more solid things are defective unto me which I should substitute in the room of those that are to be depressed For what things I before believed were commanded me I again suspected to be suggested by the subtilty of Satan because secret Remedies were wanting unto me to wit the Letters Patents or Signes of my message Wherefore in my youth I had a good while perswaded my self that the very Art of healing was nothing but a meer imposture devised by the idle Greeks being at first framed for the destruction of the Romanes their subduers and afterwards confirmed for the Calamities of Men whereunto humane Credulity by reason of a conceived hope had easily subscribed and so that that Profession of Medicine had brought forth its own authority because for the most part we too readiâ—â— believe those things which we too greedily desire Indeed I knew
prepared of Whale-bone Thus therefore thou hast a thin flexible pipe which doth not any thing pain in sending of it in although it be forty times thrust forward into the Bladder and in one only day At the first turnes indeed it pains about the muscle of the Bladder as being unaccustomed thereunto but the sore fear of the Contraction thereof soon ceaseth but the urine is drawn away as oft as one listeth And the Bladder being emptied there is at length cast even into the Bladder by a Syringe being equally suited unto the pipe behind whatsoever one will Onely let the Liquor that is to be sent in be unpainfull nor unacceptable But it is a Syringe unto whose pipe I have said that utmost end of the Catheter that hangs out is to be fitly suited Let praise Eternal be unto God in the Highest and let it please him to bedew and make my services and desires fruitfull which are offered for the help of mortals CHAP. VIII The Author offers a dainty Dish to young Beginners 1. Questions of most learned men 2. The Author's Answers 3. The Author despiseth Judgements had or to be had concerning him 4. A satisfaction concerning Horizontal Gold 5. Things of a different kind concernnig the Sulphur of Venus or Copper 6. That the Sulphur of Venus is not the innermost essence of a perfect mettal 7. A proof of a remaining external Sulphur 8. The dignity of the Sulphur of Venus 9. The Indistinction of thr Authors of the Young Beginning of Chymistry 10. The Authors Answers unto their Objections 11. Some unknown things hitherto concerning Vitriol 12. The name of Vitriol whence it is 13. The nativity of Vitriol 14. The difference of the goodness of Vitriol 15. The Greeks yield the Victory to the Germanes concerning Minerals 16. The errour of Paracelsus about the estimation of Vitriol 17. A demonstration of the aforesaid errour 18. What kind of Vitriol is the best for healing 19. The best and unusual manner of distilling of Vitriol 20. The wonderful properties of this spirit of Vitriol 21. Some remarkable things redounding from thence 22. The distillation of salts 23. The commendation of Daucus or wild Carret seed 24. Our Country wood for the stone of the reins and the choice and preparation thereof 25. The use of the Birch-tree THrough occasion of my Book concerning Fevers men of great note wrote unto me from divers coasts of Europe desiring a clearing Comment about the remedies there delivered They confess indeed that they acknowledge in the boldness of my promise the true remedies of any fevers whatsoever to subsist but that they grieve at the too much obscurity of my writing First therefore they enquire what Horizontal gold may be Secondly They desire the making or composing of the Element of the fire of Venus or Copper Thirdly Whether or no that may not perhaps be the spirit of Vitriol rectifie Some also add threatnings that unless I shall publickly satisfie their wished desire my book will be hereafter forbidden as another Prince of Matchiâ—vil Because that otherwise my Book standing the Universities of Medicine do consider that they shall soon be of necessity as rubbish and that Galen should soon beg his bread from door to door Good men indeed do consult that what things I have brought into publick concerning the unheard-of Doctrine of Fevers and concerning the detestable abuses of Blood-letting Purges and Remedies were out of compassion to my neighbours but the explications are wanting and a more manifest speaking as I being silent as it were under a sealed Charter all things may be for the future confirmed by the experiences of any whatsoever and the out-cries of the miserable sick First of all I have answered that the secret of the liquour Alkahest of Paracelsus doth hinder to wit the teacher and also the dispenser whereof the Almighty hath decreed to remaine even untill the confusion of the world for reasons in part known to Adeptists And therefore that I shall leave the manifestation of that Arcanum to the treasures of the good pleasures of God But as to the judgments in the meane time to be had concerning me I little dwel upon or esteem them For neither am I the first as neither shall I be the last rebuker of those men who never have had regard unto the censures of the world that have been made of me nor do I with choise the which notwithstanding many others do esteem of my esteemers Because in God I love alike but no man therefore at all because he flatters me For I know that I have God for my Protectour who forsaketh none that calleth on him For snares of tribulations have rained down upon my head I stood firme for neither have they in any wise opressed my soul They have fallen down on the earth I have trampled on them with despite and presently as dung they have putrified of their own accord But the authours hereof being confounded have blushed I wish that God may pardon them I know in the next place that God will cherish the seeds which he hath planted and the which he would have to grow with his dew from above Neither hath he suffered me to be carefull for the good will of the world for the consent of the Schooles or shouting out-cry of the vulgar For he can and will do all things whatsoever he will according to his good pleasure when the world shall deserve to be comforted by true medicine in their sicknesses Ah how swollen a Bubble is Ambition which always dependeth as hung up on other mens wills or judgments How boldly last of all do the judgments of other men alwayes judge Especially those which are ruled by a continual prejudice But I speak to the questions proposed That as Sol or Gold is reckoned to be bred in the Horizon of the Hemisphere So Mercury when it is made Diaphoretical or transpirative sweet as hony and fixed like Gold is Gold in its own Horizon and it is as much more Noble than Gold in medicinal affaires as an Oriental Pearle is more Noble than a Scoâ—â—â—h one For Mercury as long as it is metallick Mercury is like unto the first Being of mettals and exceeding near unto it But when it is co-melted with Gold all its medic nal virtue is shut up and sealed yea it is so turned inward that it denies the natural endowment which it owes to mans nature for its sicknesse For the sulphur of Venus after its seperation from its own body and rising againe is made as it were a glorious Sulphur and therefore tingeth the sulphur of Mercury the which in the powder of Iohannes De Vigo is turned outward by mineral Corrosive Sulphurs immediately and they do mutually embrace each other in an unseparable bride-bed and therefore the virtue of faculty of both those sulphurs doth then stand most outwardly For from hence through a co-planting or conjoyning of their faculties the Mercurius Diaphoreticus resulting from thence doth perfect
manner of a stroak The place therefore of the nativity of an Apoplexy is in the Midriffs and therefore it hath also the foreshewing signs of giddiness of the head of benummedness nauseousness c. The place therefore of an Apoplexy is in the Archâ—us of the Midriffs but in every of the parts for a particular astonishment because through the errour of Digestion the Liquor that is immediately to be affimilated by reason of the defect of the Archeus degenerates into an Anodynous poyson and is made the occasional matter of so great a malady an excrement I say being sealed by an Idea of the abhorring Archeus is sealed on the dreg who is to shew forth an equally aged memory of his own hostility But that it doth not depart from thence nor obey Remedies known by the Apothecary the very Quartan-ague teacheth the which hitherto repeates its Tragedy at pleasure to the disgrace of Physitians If a Quartan-ague be uncurable by the Schooles much more an Apoplexy For the stupefactive poyson of an Apoplexy is milder indeed in it self than that of the Falling-sickness but it far more cruelly molesteth with its invasion For besides astonishment it strikes the mind begets a deep drowsinesse and a Catochus or unsensible detainment But if besides it also attaines a sharpnesse it produceth malignant Ulcers according to the mortifying of the Anodynous poyson But because that poyson is brackish therefore it threatens Atrophia's or Consumptions for lack of nourishment For I have observed a Chymist who had been a good while occupied about Râ—gis's to have fallen into terrible beatings of the Heart at length into paines of his armes and his mouth was pulled on the right side he suffered also restless nights and deep paines of his armes the which notwithstanding were not exasperated by touching He had also consumed with a notable leanness by reason of the conceived brackishnesses of the waters in the mean time any the more external Remedies were attempted in vain for neither did I spare costs or service for him but he being fully restored by a Laudanum onely for thirteen dayes administred soon after recovered the habit of his body and former strength For because the harsh brackishness of the Liquors had defiled the sensitive Spirit the product whereof pierced the Archeus his mouth being pulled together unto one side and his fingers being wâ—ithed side-wayes resembled a certain Apoplectical Being But because it ascended not from the Governour of the Midriffs but only the Odours of the waters had immingled themselves with the inflowing sensitive Spirit there was not a perfect Apoplexy of that man although otherwise one giddie enough But because I call that a brackish Anodynal or stupefactive which in Opium is a bitter one but not in Henbane or Mandrake and a very sweet one in Vitriol and Sulphur This first of all discovers the Errours of the Schooles while as from commonly known Savours they divine of the faculties of Simples But indeed I know that the interchanges of things or the maturities of days are not yet digested nor likewise That Truth instead of falshood will please every one therefore I will subjoyn some Anguishes which the Apoplectical Rules of the Schooles have brought forth unto me For while I insisted more than was meet in the examination of Minerals I felt from the Fume of some of them an Apoplexy to be at hand with a defect of my left side and so that I had fallen headlong down if I had as yet but one onely turn breathed in the ayr of that place Wherefore I learned first of all that the Palsie is not more latter that an Apoplexy in duration Then again that there is no stoppage in the bosomes of the Brain For I was already almost prostrated and unlesse I had turned away my head from whence the stinking cruel blast breathed I as Apoplectical had rushed down and I was ready to fall And then my arm did already decay and my leg being stupified failed of sense and motion But the Schooles will never answer to these particulars if nothing of phâ—egme had ever fallen into the fourth bosome of the Brain how was the effect in me before its Cause But if any thing thereof had fallen down which had at least stopt up the half of its Bosome which way retired that phlegme so speedily Or why is not every Apoplexy likewise by the same endeavour voluntarily cured the phlegme which is the Effectresse thereof vanishing but if they had rather privily to escape that my Apoplexy came from the mischievous vapour and not that to be from phlegme At leastwise why was that cruel Fume brought sooner unto the fourth Bosome than unto the former ones and those nearer and more obedient unto the Nostrils unlesse perhaps the former were Leprous and sluggish and without Sense Yea all the sinews which are deputed unto the Senses alone receive their sensitive spirits from the former Bosomes But in the former Ventricles of the Brain there was no sign of the hurting of Sense yet there is no coming from without unto the fourth Bosom but through all the foremost ones Sense likewise except that it was the more dull on one side and motion remained and also a Judgement perswading a departure Therefore had the phlegme waited now for some years at the coast of the fourth Bosome that the Odour of that Fume being once repeated it the signe as it were of a Trumpet being given might rush headlong into the pit Why therefore fell not the phlegme down in me a leaping Run-away For in the Falling-sicknesse the chief powers of the Soul and Senses on both sides go to ruine motion onely surviving when as notwithstanding every sinew even that which is dedicated to motion feeleth Therefore the Brain and all its Bosoms ought to be affected on both sides where the more internal senses together with the more external ones are laid asleep as if they were extinguished How therefore doth motion alone remain After what manner in the Falling-Evil Apoplexy and Palsie are the senses laid asleep when as in the Apoplexy and Palsie the Organ of motion onely is besieged for one half They will say that in the Epilepsie the foremost parts of the Brain do suffer but the hinder ones remain safe First of all Why therefore are the joynts contracted if the Organs of motion are free The memory is especially hurt in the Falling-sickness shall therefore that also â—e onely in the forepart of the Head But that which is required being granted why therefore hath every sinew designed for motion leaping through the Thorny marrow from the hinder part of the Brain lost Sense but not Motion Therefore the Brain in the Falling-Evil is sore smitten as well behind as before by Midriff-Causes Foâ— oft-times some one that is about to dye doth as yet feel or perceive speak and hear motion in his lower parts being taken away a good while before by the displayed sinewes of the Thorny marrow The Brain being
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
happily any good thing shall therein offer it self Truly I was a Glutton of Books I had collected all remarkable things into common places so as that few exceeded me in diligence but most in judgement In the seventeenth year of my youth I read Lectures of Chyrurgery before the Students in the Colledge of the Physitians of Lovain being appointed thereunto by the Professors Thomas Fienus Gerardus de Villeers and Stornius Alas I presumed to teach those things which I my self was ignorant of I fitted together Holerius Tagautius Guido Vigo Aegineta and the whole Troop of Arabians the which surely all together understood not the perfection of Chyrurgery Afterwards I desisted having admired at my own rashnesses and inconsideratenesses that I should presume only by the reading of books to teach those things which are not well learned but by sight and the handling of the hands by long use and a sharp judgement For an unconsiderate presumption blew me up because I had been voluntarily by them chosen hereunto and had my Professors both my Auditors and the Censurers of my readings For I trusted to writings as it happens to children reading from Baiardus and Malegigius At length being amazed with my self I certainly found that the event answered not the Doctrine and that Professors gave me not more light in practising than the writings of the Antients In the mean time it often came into my mind what the Schools thunder forth out of Avicen to wit that confidence on the Physitian is of greater weight to the sick than the Physitian is with all his instruments I therefore suspected that it was a feeble succour of the Physitian before which an imaginary aid of confidence should be preferred For if any one being glad or joyful be cured by laughter at leastwise let the medicine be ridiculous where the Physitian shall cure the sick party by laughing and confiding for that is not the medicine which the Almighty hath created from the earth Then also that Maxim of the Schools appeared ridiculous affirming that the capital betokening of curing is drawn from things helpful and hurtful because that Maxim ordinarily presupposeth that uncertain and hurtful medicines are wont for the most part to be sent afore Helpful ones also if any shall be given that they are administred by chance and without knowledge which things surely do define medicine against the will of the Schools to be a conjectural Art and that the knowledges and cures of diseases do begin a posteriori or from the effect from errours from the tryal and conjecture of that which is uncertain yea that that which should afterwards be searched out should be alike uncertain The Poet hath deservedly cursed that medicinal Maxim Careat successibus opto Quisquis ab eventu facta notanda putat I wish that he who e're he be may want successes rare Who from th' event doth straightway think deeds to be noted are I therefore grieved that I had learned that Art and being angry with my self grieved who was Noble that against the will of my Mother and my Kindred on the Fathers side being ignorant thereof I as the first in our Family had dedicated my self to medicine I long bewailed the sin of disobedience and it grieued me of the years and pains bestowed in a choise profession And I ost-times humbly intreated the Lord with a sorrowful heare that he would vouchsafe to lead me unto a calling not whither I was carried of my own free accord but wherein I might well please him most And I made a vow that I would follow and obey him to the utmost of my power whithersoever he should call me Then first as having been fed with the forbidden fruit I acknowledged my own nakednesse Because I found neither truth nor knowledge in my suppositional docttrine supposing it especially to be a cruel thing to heap up moneys by others miseries Also that it was an unseemely thing to translate an art founded in charity and bestowed under the condition of exercising mercy into gain since the Noblenesse of charry is estranged by a stipend which wants a price out of it self because it is greater than all price Wherefore I presently entitled my inheritance on my sister a widow and transferred it by a gift among the living because she could scarce conveniently want it I therefore being a young man altogether unprofitable in all things an unthrifty man and who had rashly applyed my self to studies commended my self to God with an intention of going far from home of forsaking medicine and of never returning into my Country Because I cleerly then beheld my own innermost parts I discovered and divorced the vanities of my former presumption and literal Learning I therefore proceed on as uncertain unto strangers under hope that the Lord would clementiously direct my course unto the end of his own good pleasure But by how much the more I detested medicine and cast it far from me as a juggling deciet indeed by so much the greater occasion of healing invaded me For an Idiot associated himself with me who had known at least the manual instruments of the art of the fire I presently as soon as I beheld the inward part of some bodies by the fire percieved the seperations of many bodies then not yet delivered in books and at this day some being unknown Afterwards an earnest desire of knowing and operating dayly increased in me For not much above two years after I had gotten such houshould-stuffe to my self whereby I was though absent in great esteem among the sick also with Ernestus Bavarus the Electour of Collen and he called me unto himself for help But then it as yet more shamed me of my late and learned ignorance Wherefore I presently resigned up all books and I percieved my self more to profit by the fire in conceptions attained by praying than in any kind of books which sing always the same Cuckows note And then I cleerly knew that I had vitiated the passage of true Phylosophy Obstacles and dificulties of obscurities on every side appeared the which not labour not time not watching lastly nor the lavishments of moneys could from any worthinesse disperse but the one only and meer goodnesse of God alone For neither did carnal lust nor drinking bouts withdraw even one only houre from me but continual paines and watching were the thieves of my time For I willingly cured the poor and those of a mean fortune being more stirred up by humane compassion and a moral affection of bestowing than from a pure and universal charity or dear love reflexed on the Fountain of Life For it happened that a Consul or Senatour being at somtime willingly about to make use of my endeavour I denied to giue it him presentially as being unwilling to forsake many that were poorer least I should be accounted to have neglected many for one Notwithstanding God from the free grace of his own good pleasure turned this pride into good For it shamed me to
barren from the mixture of â—oiled honey They require also a mixture and digestion from the feeble Feverish person â—especially from the stomach being vitiated by poyson and from the Archeus being inwardly prostrated and confusedly tumulting Wherefore they perform little of help and the least of comfort For the cocted Trochies of the Viper since by the admonition of Galen they are the Capital Simple of Triacle do easily teach that the water of Triacle is plainly ridiculous For if the Viper stated the Triacle water with virtue in distilling why have the Trochies of the Viper in its first and Galenical cocture put off all that prerogative of healing What therefore shall I do with those who are always learning and never coming unto the knowledge which they profess to teach For most men as Seneca witnesseth have not attained unto that Science because they thought that they had attained it At length neither hath it been sufficient to have concealed the names of those humours which they have imagined to putrifie before the plague and to be the accompanying cause hereof But moreover in skipping over that they pass over the very thingliness of the corruption which now and then finisheth its Tragedy in a few hours For Physitians seem to have rested on a soft pillow while their Neighbours house is on fire and their head being once elevated on their elbow to have declared the Arrest The plague is a contagious disease from putrified humours being connexed to a Fever most sharp and exceeding dangerous which being said they having very well fed to have bent down their head again for their afternoon sleep which sleep under so great light hath again closed their eyes The world in the mean time bewails its condition seeing the effects not the causes as neither in the next place the remedies to be noted by this judgement Wherefore the Country people with both hands scratching their hair on their Temples pronounce another Arrest There is no need say they of much study nor of so many books that any may say the Plague is mortal and contagious the which every one hath learned by his own malady Therefore it shall be better to ask counsel of faithful helpers no longer of drowsie ones who are Fugitives from the Plague and ignorant of remedies CHAP. VIII The Seat prepared IT is not sufficient to have demonstrated that the causes of the Pest are unknown to the Schools unless I shall declare my own experiences the cause of the plague its divers progresses in the making its strange properties in its being made its preservations and cure At first therefore I will repeat what I have demonstrated elsewhere to wit that in Nature there are at least two causes and no more Indeed the matter and efficients which efficient in the plague I call the Archeus Vulcan or Seed at leastwise for the matter there is not a certain undistinct hyle or matter which never existed nor will be in nature and it serves for Science Mathematical and not to a contemplater of Nature Therefore I behold the matter of the pestilence with relation unto its internal efficient The matter therefore of the plague is a wild spirit tinged with a poyson But that matter tends unto the end proposed to it self after a three-fold manner because it either comes to us from without and being totally and perfectly pestiferous exhaling from a pestilent sick person or dead carkass or place or Utensile being defiled or it is drawn inwards being as yet crude from a Gas of the earth putrified by continuance which afterwards receives an appropriative ferment within and at length by degrees attains a pestilent poyson in us Or also a total destruction of us is now and then materially and formally finished within without an external assistance But that there are not more manners whereby the plague is made is manifest from the division For either it is wholly generated within without a forraign aid or it happens on us from without and that is either perfect in the matter and form of a poyson wanting only appropriation and application or it is as yet crude imperfect and as it were an Embryo Whence at leastwise first of all it becomes easie to be seen that the Pest doth not always first invade the heart For I have seen him who in touching pestilent papers at that very moment felt a pain as it were of a pricking Needle and straightway he shewed a pestilent Carbuncle in his fore-finger and after two daies died Furthermore the aforesaid three-fold matter however plainly venemous the first is yet on both sides it holds it self within the number of an antecedent cause For no otherwise than as poyson taken in at the mouth is not the disease it self or death but only the occasional cause thereof For not any thing that is corporeal acteth immediately on the liâ—e oâ— vital powers because they are those which are of the nature of Coelessial lights but first it is received and made as it were domestical and when some poyson is now made a Citizen of our Inn to wit it being swallowed or attracted notwithstanding also it cannot as yet enter or be admitted unto the hidden Seminaries of the vital powers because it is in its whole essence external but first the poysonous quality by acting on the life stirs up the Archeus otherwise the Author and workman of all other things to be done under his own government into its own defence For otherwise a pestilenâ— poyson acteth not like a sword which equally wounds all it toucheth at in the same moment of it self but the pestilent poyson is not able to strike any The Archeus therefore since from his own disposition he hath animal perturbations passions confusions and interchangeable courses he suddenly brings forth the image of his own alteration conceived and decyphers that Idea in the particle or small portion of his own proper substance wherein it is conceived which Image of Death being thus furnished is the Pest or Plague it self For truly I do not judge the plague to be a certain naked quality although it existeth not elsewhere than in a body as it were accidents in a subject of inherency but the plague is a Being a poyson of Nature subsisting by it self in us and consisting of its own matter form and properties the which I have elsewhere most fully demonstrated in the Treatise of Diseases But here it is sufficient to have admonished that the life operates nothing by conquering or destroying unless by the vital motions of the sensitive Soul which is not wont but to operate by Idea's on the Archeus the Executer of any motions whatsoever even as neither doth the Archeus operate after any other manner on the body Wherefore it is to be noted by the way in this place that the inward material and immediate cause of a disease is the disease it self 〈…〉 wise than as the material cause in a man is his very body persevering from the 〈…〉 unto old