of the Principle And that they may adorn the four Elements with qualities they attribute to every one one the highest quality but another a slack one and the Schooles command nature to obey their fictions Therefore they say that the Air is slackly bot because they will have it neer to the seigned Element of fire that is or because it borroweth that slack quality of its Neighbour and it changeth its proper and native disposure at the pleasure of its Neighbour and that impertinently while the speech is of native properties Or because it hath that quality of its own disposition and although slack therefore notwithstanding it shall also have such a Neighbour which thing is alike impertinent and naught And that they may prove the moderate heat of the Air they carry on the like foolish invention of an Antiporistasis or a compassing about of the contrary To wit that the Air in its uppermost part is hot by reason of a nearness of the fire and so they seign not an essential heat but a begged and improper one by accident and that nigh the Earth it is likewise hot from the reflexion of the Sun-beams Which heat is for a little space a stranger by accident and therefore a seigned property of the Air. But they will have the middle Region of the Air to be wonderful cold by reason of an Antiperistasis To wit because both parts of the hot air doth compass it about Whose like they say doth happen to deep wells they being cold in Summer and luke-warm all the Winter But I wonder at the deep or profound benummednesses of the Schooles and the drowsie distemper of the auntients 1. Because from this their whole Structure it appeareth that the air is generally cold but not meanly hot 2. For truly the fire is not an Element in nature and much lesse is it under the hollow of the Moon neither therefore can it make hot the uppermost part of the Air except by a Dream 3. For if the Air be hot by it self and of its Elementary property then is it alwayes and every where hot even in deep Wells 4. But if it be hot through any other thing proper of familiar unto it which makes it hot then besides that it should have something besides it self mixt with it from whence the Elementary simplicity of its own Body should cease it should also alwayes and every where actually be hot or lastly should be hot by reason of something applied to it acting by accident Which thing is impertinent as often as the thing to be proved is taken as concerning essential things Therefore if the Air be not by it self hot it must needes be cold by it self Since those two do subsequently exclude each other in nature 5. If the fire be never cold or moyst and the water be never dry so the Air can never be lesser than intensively or most moyst and slackly hot if the Schooles speak truth 6. They would have that to be the middle Region of the Air which is scarce distant half a mile from us being unmindeful of their own Doctrine To wit that the Diameter of the Air exceedes the Diameter of the Water ten fold but that this is greater than the Diameter of the Earth two fold which fiction being granted the Semi-diameter of the Air should be deeper than 570000 miles Therefore half a mile should be as nothing in respect of the middle Air. Oh ye Schooles I pray you awake For if the Air should of its own accord and of its own nature be hot by what cause at length should it be cold in its middle part For is it because its Neighbour on both sides is hot But then the Air would not propose to it self wrathfulness but rather joy from the agreeableness of its neere nature For why doth the Air put off its natural property because it did on both sides touch the luke-warm Air agreeable to it self For how shall luke-warm powred on luke-warm wax cold because it doth finde luke-warmness on both sides Or if cold be placed between two Colds shall it therefore wax hot in its middle I cannot sufficiently wonder at the unpolished rudeness of the Schooles who deliver the Doctrine of Antiperistasis which desireth so great credulity not judgement For although that fiction should please us while the Air is hot about the Earth but certainly it could by no meanes in the Winter seasons For truly neither then indeed is that middle Region of the Air adorned with a native heat 9. It is a wonder I say that such absurd falsehood and Doctrine hath not yet breathed out of the Alps. And so hence it is manifest that the Peripateticks do even from a study of obstinacy teach known falsehoods least they should not swear in the words of Aristotle or that no judgement at all is left them that they may ingeniously perform their office and that they may think they have done enough if they follow the herds of those that went before them Therefore Antiperistasis is a dream of his who when he knew not the least thing in nature yet would seem to have known all things and to be worshipped for a Standard-defender by the Schooles his followers But because Aristotle fleeth to the heat of Wells in Winter for the demonstration of an Antiperistasis that shall straightway fall to the ground through the instrument whereby we measure the just temperature of the encompassing Air Wherein we see by handicraft-demonstration that the Air in deep Wells and Cellers is stable in the same point of heat whether it shall please us to measure it in Winter or lastly in the greatest heats of Summer 10. But it being granted that there were not an equall temperature in Wells but yet surely it would be a foolish thing for the Air otherwise naturally moderately hot sometimes to be cold sometimes again to be hot as it were through despight by reason of the applied alteration of the encompassing air 11. The holy Scriptures declare the Snow to be colder than the water because Snow is water in which the utmost power of cold is imprinted and the Air to exceed the Snow in coldness hence it is read He that spreads abroad the Snow and the Wooll that the Wheat may be kept safe under the Snow from the cruelty of the cold Air as it were under a woolly Covering For we see by handicraft operation that a member almost frozen together waxeth hot again under the Snow and is preserved from putrifaction or blasting because else the Air would straightway proceed wholly to congeal it or if it be suddenly brought to the fire it dieth by reason of the hasty action of another extream Therefore this is to have gone thorow meanes if it be to go from the cold air thorow Snow water and then into a slack luke-warmness Therefore Snow is lesse cold than air 12. But why to the moystness of the water do they implore its thickness for moystening which is a ridiculous
Meteor is reckoned by the holy Scriptures among wise men Which square if Astrologicall Predictions shall through a rash boldness exceed they are not onely vain and conjectural but driven out of both Testaments of the holy Scriptures with the name of Sooth-sayers of Heaven So that St. Ambrose doth rightly compare them to Spiders Webs which indeed do serve to take flies and gnats ensnaring themselves but by a stronger living Creature they are most easily broken asunder So indeed these Predictions do catch onely those that are apt to believe and lesse firm in the faith But that they are vain in themselves and framed by conjecturall Rules I prove because they are supported with a double foundation to wit with none at all and by a false one that which concerns nothingness is that they will have attributed to the Seven Planets the figure inclinations strength or valour wit fortunes and death of him that is born Seeing God hath appointed the Stars onely for signes seasons dayes and years but not for the causes of Predictions And so if those Predictions do contradict divine appointment for that very cause they are null and false Secondly because it is not yet agreed among Astrologers hitherto concerning the Scheme or order of the Heavens To wit whether Mercury and Venus are carried in particular Orbs beneath the Sun according to Ptolomy and all the antient Judiciaries Or whether they are rowled about in like or equall Circles round about the Sun Which thing the Optick-Tube or Glasse hath thus searched out therefore the Aphorismes of Predictions supported by that foundation that those two Planets are alwayes lower than the Sun do fall to the ground And then if two of the Planets Venus being the greatest or chiefest Star except the Sun be carried about the Sun and they are of so great power in judgements and so near to us those spots or Stars in the Sun or most near to it shall likewise be of far greater authority to refell all the Aphorismes of the Antients And the Stars which have lately been found to be moved about Jupiter shall conjecturally convince of the Rules of Almegistus whether they were written from a foundation That in the mean time I may be silent touching the opinion of Copernicus which at this day doth not want its followers and those of no small authority although they do presse their consent under silence which opinion notwithstanding once breaking forth will ruine all apparitions in the Heaven and Predictions Fourthly the point of nativity is uncertain and seeing that the Stars do vary in every point Every prediction is of necessity uncertain I being sometimes deceived in my younger years have attributed very much to the significations of the Stars but when I could not satisfie my self that by the remarkable accident of him that is born I could finde the point of his Nativity which is plainly necessary if those accidents do any way proceed from the Stars at length in behalf of a great Nobleman I described or wrote down his accidents to wit That in the eleventh year of his age a Wife of six years was married unto him he having obtained the degree of Knight of the Garter having travelled far even to the nineteenth year that he had received a wound in a Duel that his right thigh was broken by chance in a Coach the precise houres being adjoyned with very many observations of things The Countrey where he was born being added on the ninth day of the fourth month called June and the houre between seven and ten in the forenoon of the year 1604. I my self went to the most skilfull Judiciaries the Question being also sent away into other Countries with a promise of 600 Crowns to him who could divine or tell the point of his Nativity to us known from the aforesaid accidents At length none touched at the true point but he that came nearest did differ as yet the space of seven points above half an houre from thence There were in the mean time Standard-defenders who denied that such a point was between the seventh and tenth houre by which such accidents could be signified but indeed that point was found to be presently before the fifth houre in the morning yet in the truth of the matter he was born at London I being present seven points after the ninth houre Solar or according to the Sun and not horologiall or according to the Diall or Clock Afterwards therefore I with a notable repentance lamented my aptnesses of belief Moreover touching the falseness of the foundation of Predictions it as yet more clearly appeareth For indeed they themselves do confess that their Eccentricks or things not having one and the same Center c. to be meer fictions and almost impossible to save or preserve their speculations which soundeth that they are ignorant of the Orbs or Circles of the Heavens and the carryings of the Stars And so these absurd fictions being supposed it s no wonder that many near akin to them do follow I have known a remedy whereby otherwise the young would stick in the birth for the space of a day and houres and that drink being taken the Woman brings forth presently after a quarter of an houre and so the point of Nativity is deceived and likewise Herms's Scale of Empsuchosis or quickning but this Remedy I have written else-where to consist in the Liver and Gaul of an Eele being dryed and powdered Lastly the falshood doth more appear for they say that Saturn is a cold and dry melancholy Planet and therefore envious and stirring up to thefts and treacheries plainly evill because of the nature of the Earth But that Mars because he is hot and dry not the Sun is evill cholerick a Warriour murderer and cruel because of the nature of the Element of fire But that Jupiter and Venus are of the nature of Air merry sanguine good even as the Moon and Mercury being cold and moyst are of the nature of water and phlegme And so also therefore of a middle nature But a moderateness agreeth to the most hot Sun not a humour nor an Element Wherefore either the Sun shall languish by reason of injury or the feigned powers of the Elements are badly attributed as causes of the properties of the Stars whose property it is not to change but to give an alterative Blas to these inferior Bodies Wherein many falshoods come to hand For first of all they do causatively â—ink evill within the Heaven Secondly That the qualities of the Earth are evill or naught Thirdly They place the fire among Elementary Bodies Fourthly The Stars also even the two Elements which God had made were not to be good 5. They falsely compare the Stars in their causative property to Elementary qualities 6. Therefore they do falsly attribute to the Stars a causall virtue of fortune wit c. with respect to the first qualities Wherefore since there are in the judiciall part of Astrologie so great nakednesses
as it were the sheath of the Earth nigh the Poles is deeper than under the compass of the Sun for if Lucifer or the Day-star being willing to place his seat over the North may be understood to have been guilty of pride Truly if he were not higher in the same place that should not be imputed as a signe of arrogancy especially since in the places where the holy Scriptures were written the Pole-star hath alwayes seemed very neere to the Horizon neither doth the Heaven there promise any thing of height as to sight But in our Horizon I have seen the whole Body of the Sun to have given a shadow on the pin of the Diall a little after the ninth houre in the fourth moneth called June but in the morning I have seen the whole Body of the Sun above the Horizon about the fourth houre for it did not as vet cast a shadow by reason of the thickness of the Air and Vapours Therefore the shorâ—est night is onely of seven houres at the most but in the Winter Solstice the Sun ariseth â—5 minutes before the eighth but sets 27 minutes before the fourth Therefore the shorest day is at least 7 houres and 42 minutes But it dâ—rogates or takes away from the roundness of the Sphere to have more of light than darkness At length modern or late made Navigations have seen the Sun under the North for a moneths space before that the perfect roundness of the Heaven had suffered that thing CHAP. XI The Air. 1. The Dreams of the Schooles concerning the maystness of Air. 2. A foolish or unsavory objection 3. They preâ—uppose impossibilities 4. The Air is never made Water through a condensing of its parts 5. They beg the Principle 6. A ridicuâ—ous thing of the Schooles concerning the â—â—tive heat of the Air. 7. The old Wives fiction of an Antiperâ—stâ—siâ—â—â— compassing about of the contrary 8. The deep stupiditâ—â—â— of the Schooles are discovered 9. Arguments 10. Another alike stâ—pidity 11. That the Air is colder than Snow 12. An Exhortation of the Authour unto young beginners A Mathematicall demonstration that the Air and Water are primigeâ—iall or first-born Elements and ever unchangeable by cold or heat into each other THE Schooles with their Aristotle do hitherto endow the Air with eight degrees that is to be most moyst but to be hot unto four degrees or to a mean but they give the greatest coldness to the water with a slack or mean moystness And so they command the Air to be twice as moystas the water for that because the Air by its pressing together and conjoyning doth generate the water But I pray you what other thing is that than to have sold Dreams for truth For if the Air be co-thickned the moysture thereof shall be also more thick greater and more palpable in water than it was before in Air seeing that condensing cannot make a new essential form nor is it a principle of generations what other thing is that than impertinently to trifle At least the water should not be but Air co-thickned in the moysture to ten fold or rather to an hundred fold and more active and therefore and straightway it should moysten more and stronger than the Air by a hundred fold So far as it that therefore the water should be lesse moyst than the Air. But if a naked condensing doth dispose the Air to a new form seeing the same disposition of the inward efficient is the necessary cause of that thing generated it must needs be that the same doth remain in the thing produced and so if the Air co-thickned be water there shall now be but two Elements to wit Water and Earth Whiles the water shall be as moyst as while it was being at first Air to wit wherein the condensing alone came which is a co-uniting of parts but not a formall transchanging of a thing into a thing For truly the form every way re-bounding from the moysture of the Air being condensed into an hundred fold it shall be even moyster and shall more moysten by an hundred fold than the auntient Air. But surely the water doth not moysten by reason of thickness for otherwise the Earth should hitherto more moysten because moysture onely doth moysten and not thickness For else Quick-silver should more moysten the wooll or hand than water For whatsoever doth more moysten that it self is also more moyst and on the other hand whatsoever in an Elementary nature is moyster that likewise doth more moysten Nature laughs to require belief of things known by reason of sense from a Dream and even till now to teach the shameful devises of Airstotle for truth But the Schooles will say we must thus teach it for a Maxim That by reason whereof every thing is such that thing it self is more such as though that for the honour of a Maxim we must belie God! But the water is not moyst but for the Air therefore the Air ought to be moyster than the water But they shall sweat more than enough before they will prove the subsumption or second Proposition but the Air is neither moyst nor hot in it self and whatsoever of moysture there is in it that is a stranged contained in it never touching at the nature of Air although vapours may be contained in the porinesses or hollow places of the Air. For what doth it belong to the nature of Glasse if it shall inclose water within it For I shall teach by and by that it is impossible for Air and water to be changed into each other And so by absurdities the Schooles do wholly suppose impossible speculations For it also contains an absurd and impossible thing that Air condensed should be made water and be the perpetual matter of Fountains For there hath been Air pressed together by some in an Iron Pipe of one ell almost the breadth of fifteen fingers which afterwards in its driving our hath like a hand-gun discharged with Gunpowder sent a Bullet thorow a Board or Plank Which thing verily could not be done if the air by pressing together might by force be brought into water Especially because that experiment did no lesse succeed in the deepest cold of winter than in the heat of Summer What if therefore the Air being pressed together by force in a Pipe and cold season be not changed into water by what authority shall the Schooles confirm their fictions touching the co-thickning of the Air for the springing up or over-flowing and the continuance of Fountains For Cold hath not the Beginnings Causes and properties of generating in nature Yea no moysture at all is found in the aforesaid Pipe and moreover wet Leather in the end of a Hand-Pistoll drieth presently It is also a ridiculous thing to prove the Air to be moyst by the original of Fountains and likewise to prove the rise of Fountains from the supposed moysture of the Air. Both Arguments of the Schooles is from the scarcity of truth and a childish begging
retorted or struck back by an Alembick it returns into its antient weight of water Yet it may be doubted whether water consumed by the cold of the air is not changed into the nature and properties of air Because after the floud the Almighty sent the windes that they might dry the face of the Earth And even unto this day water is sooner supt up under the most cold North than in Summer heats Also a Fountain falling into a place or Vessel of Stone or Marble under the most chilled cold with a continuall Gulf the motion of the steep falling Fountain hinders indeed the water from congealing yet a certain vapour is seen to ascend which being straightway invisible is snatched away in the Air. That which is presupposed is that the every way nature of air is at least consumed by cold if not by heat First of all I answer that absurdity being granted the Schooles in the first place have not any thing for themselves from thence that therefore the air by it self should be moyst so far is it that the air as they determine should be far moyster than the water Because it is at least water dried up For that which is transchanged doth alwayes loose the properties which it had in the terme or bound from which and borroweth the qualities of the thing transchanging For however either the whole air was sometimes water or that onely should be moyst which was born of water but the other first-born air should be dry from its Creation And so there should be two aires essentially different But that the air in its own purity is dry by an inward property it appeares from the objection of the aforesaid cold because if the air from its Root were moyst windes had not been sent to dry the Earth But if indeed through the windes the waters of the floud were truly changed into air there should be much more air after the floud than before Consequently either some part of the World had been empty or certainly now by reason of a pressing together and thickning caused by a new air of so great an heap we should be choaked which thing shall hereafter be manifested by the handicraft operation of a Candle or an equall part of air ought successively to had been annihilated or brought to nothing under the generation of so great a new air For the Text will have it that so deep waters and the whole superficies of the Earth also was dryed by the windes Or if before the floud the waters had been air in the floud-gates of Heaven in like manner therefore in the whole floud there had been an emptiness in those floud-gates of Heaven to wit if the water be thicker and more condensed by a hundred fold at least than the air Therefore I lay it down for a position That the water doth never perish indeed not through cold or that it can be changed by any endeavours of nature or art and likewise that the air in no ages or by no dispositions not so much as in one onely small drop can be reduced into water For the water doth not endure an emptiness as neither the co-pressing of it self in being pressed together by any moover Onely it is pressed together in a seminall in-thickning through a formal transchanging of it self But on the contrary the air cannot subsist without a Vacuum or emptiness which thing I will prove in its Chapter and therefore it suffers an enlarging and straightning of it self Therefore there are two stable Elements differing in nature and properties among themselves because it is impossible for them to be changed into each other I confess indeed that out of the Stone-Vessel of a Fountain a watery exhalation doth ascend like a mist from the smallest Atomes of the water which exhalation although departing but a little from thence it be made altogether invisible it doth not therefore corrupt the Doctrine delivered For truly of one equall agent there is one onely and equall action Wherefore if cold doth first change the water into an icy exhalation the same cold cannot afterwards have another action upon that exhalation than of more extenuating and dispersing the same so as that through its fineness it may soon be made invisible And afterwards may be made more and more fine For neither could the hundredth extenuation of the same exhalation more transchange the water than the first Because it is an Element and Body impossible by its appointment to be reduced into a greater simplicity since subtilizing made by the division of parts is nothing but a certain simple shifting For example Beat Gold into Plates and then into the thinnest leaves but thence into the Gold of Painters straightway again make it smooth or plain in a Marble Morter And then with minium or red Lead and Salt bring it into an impalpable or exceeding fine Powder seperate the minium by the fire and wash away the Salt with water and repeat or renew it often as thou listest At length also with Sal armoniac Stibium and Mercurie Sublimate drive it through a retort and renew that seven times that the whole Gold may be brought into the form of a flitting Oil of a light red colour For it is a very smooth yea and a hard sound that which may be hammered and a most fixed Body which now seemeth to be turned into the nature of an Oil. But truly that dissembled Liquor is easily reduced into its former weight and body of Gold What if therefore Gold doth not change its antient nature by so many manglings nor doth by any meanes loose its own seed much lesse doth water a thing appointed for a simple Element by the Lord of things for the upholding of the Universe Although water should be potent in the three divulged Beginnings and should truly consist in Salt Sulphur and Mercurie mingled together yet it suffers no seperation of the same things by reason of the most exquisite simpleness of its nature and the most firm continuance of its constancy For Bodies when they are made subtile or fine to the utmost that they could be no more fine if they should continue in making them fine at length they depart into another substance with a retaining of their seminall properties And in this respect the Alkahest of Paracelsus by piercing all Bodies of nature transchangeth them by making them subtile Which happens not in the Elements Water and Air because by reason of their highest simplicity and priority of their appointment they refuse to passe or to be transchanged into any thing that is before or more simple than themselves Therefore when exhalations being gotten with child by the odours or smells and seeds of compound Bodies are translated from the lower parts to the middle Region of the air there through the most subtile dividing of the vapours by cold as much as is possible for nature to do they are reduced indeed into their most simple and primitive purity of Elementary water but in
than the stars yet the seeds of these are not more ignoble than the seeds of plants or annexed to the stars by the band of a greater subjection Because the Stars were before the Creation of sensitive things therefore it was meet that the Blas of men should not indeed follow the guidance of the Stars but only that it imitate the motion of those not as of motive powers but no otherwise than as by a free motion we do follow the foot-steps of a Coach-man or Post for so our bowels have perhaps assigned the Planets as their fore-runners For every bowel forms a proper Blas to it self within according to the figure of its own Star which also hence is called Astrall or Starlike Because it imitates the foot-steps of the Heaven as well in the priority of the dayes of the Star its fore-runner as in the Laws of appointments in nature Otherwise In infirmities as all the endeavour of nature is sumptomatical so then the Blas of man goes before and fore-sheweth future tempests whereas otherwise in health a humane Blas doth ordinarily follow after the remarkable successive changes of times or seasons But bruit beasts as they were created in a day before man so their Blas doth alwayes go before and fore-run the Blas of the Stars Wherefore many Prognosticks of a Meteor are drawn naturally from beasis And superstition hath had access thereto which hath added Divinings and Sooth-sayings to the credulous and superstitious Yet the Blas which is by the will of living creatures directed to a local motion surely that is by no means connexed unto a Supernatural or Coelestial circumvolving motion Because all carnall Generation flows out of the power of the Seed and the power of the seed from the will of the flesh Therefore fleshly generation hath a Blas of its own readily serving for the uses of its own ends flowing out of the Beginnings of its own Essence which are the will of the flesh and the lust or desire of a manly will Therefore there is in us a twofold Blas To wit One which existeth by a natural motion but the other is voluntary which existeth as a mover to it self by an internal willing Hence therefore it is impossible that the predictions of the Stars should rightly conclude in us It hath now been sufficiently demonstrated that there is something in sublunary things which can move it self locally and alteratively without the Blas of the Heavens and an unmoveable natural mover The will especially is the first of that sort of movers and moveth it self also a seminal Being as well in seeds as in the things constituted of these Moreover as God would so all things were made Therefore from a will they were at first moved For from hence whatsoever unsensitive things are moved they are moved as it were by a certain will and pleasure or precept of nature and have their own natural necessities and ends even as is seen in the beating of the Heart Arteries expelling of many superfluities c. For Galen hath artificially enough distributed the Pulses yet being by Aristotle deluded therein who supposed the end and efficient to be externall causes and thought the ends of Pulses to be their totall Causes For he passing by the proper Blas of the Pulses searched only into the ends and necessities of nature for which things sake indeed the Pulses should not be made but rather measured or modelled And therefore he hath distributed the differences of Pulses into a Scheme or Figure only by their ends And so that therefore he hath not reached their more potent and efficient respects Therefore he hath reduced the Causes of Pulses unto two heads of necessity To wit To the cooling refreshment of the heart to which end the Heart and Arteries should at once dilate themselves and to the casting out of smoaky vapours stirred up by heat For which cause indeed the Heart and Artery should at once presse themselves together and fall down at once for fear of choaking which two by variously interweaving them with their Correlatives according to strength swiftnesse weaknesse hardnesse and greatnesse he hath compiled the differences of Pulses by an artificial diligent search And I wish that his other writings did not bewray that these things were transcribed our of some other Authour But the Antients being not contented with two ends to wit cooling and refreshment and expulsion of smoakinesses have added a third which was the nourishment of the vital spirit by aire As if indeed aire could ever be made vitall spirit For if the Spirit be increased or nourished by aire adjoyned to it seening a Simple Body is not to be digested now only by mixture vitall spirit should be made of aire and now all things shall no longer be nourished immediately of those things whereof they consist Therefore it hath been the ignorance of the Antients who knew not the constitution of the vital spirit thinking that a little water being co-mixed with much wine or a little Tinne co-mixed with much melted gold should be made wine or gold I will tell here what I have perceived after that I made more use of discretion than of the sloath of assenting Therefore I began first to consider That heat was not primarily and of it self in the heart but to be a companion of the life and soul a sign and mean of operation in living creatures that are hot from the nature of the light of the Sun But in fishes that the life is of the nature of a cold light and therefore that it subsists without an actual that is a true heat And therefore that a Pulse is not made in nature for a cooling refreshment of the 〈◊〉 and puffing out or dispersing of smoaks a dissected Frog will teach For in a living Frog thou shalt see his Heart and Arteries to be moved his Heart at every Pulse or by dilating to wax red and by contraction or pressing together to wax more pale although it be not transparent Notwithstanding seeing the Antients thought heat to be the cause of Pulses yet there is none that hath decyphered that heat by its heats by what way reason and mean that heat is stirred up kindled and doth persevere in us because none hath meditated of life and forms And therefore none also of the efficient cause of Pulses None indeed hath hitherto doubted that heat springs from the Heart and none contesteth but that the young is at first nourished by its mothers heat untill that through maturity of dayes a fewel of its own be kindled in it But what that fewel is and why it being once kindled doth not presently dye and doth continue even to the end none hath diligently searched into because all have passed by the life The Schools indeed do feign a fiery heat in us contrary to Aristotle who will have this heat to answer in proportion to the Element of the Stars and hath distinguished it from an Elementary and Fiery one also that it lives
now made cold then afterwards hot that the whole Body may be cold and hot at the successive change thereof But they are the works and signatures of life not the properties of diseasie Seeds in the matter but meer pessions of the Body thus moved by a Blas from the heat and cold of the Archeus And therefore neither do they any longer happen in a dead carcass as neither after a Disease obtains the Victory neither also when the Disease ceaseth the occasional matter in the mean time remaining 3. That the very thing which worketh heat in us doth efficiently also produce cold Not indeed privatively in respect of heat because cold is a real and actual Blas of the Archeus 4. That no curing is made by contraries as neither by reason of like things because a Disease consisteth essentially in the seminal Idea and in the matter of the Archeus but at leastwise substances do not admit of a contrariety in their own essence 5. That a Disease is primitively overcome by extinguishing of the Idea or a removal of the essential matter thereof 2. Originally by allaying and pacifying of the disturbed Archeus And 3. From a latter thing to wit if the occasional matter be taken away which stirs up a motive and alterative Blas of entertainment that the Idea or Disease may be efficiently made 6. That both the inward causes connexed in the Archeus is the very substantial Disease having in it its proper root But the occasional matter however it be received in the Body is alwayes external because it is not of the inward root and essence of a Disease 7. That Symptoms are accidents by accident breaking forth by excitation or stirring up according to the variety of every Receiver And it is rather a wandring error or fury of our Powers 8. That the Archeus which formed us in the Womb doth also direct govern move all things during life Therefore occasional causes are perceived only in the Archeus who afterwards according to the disturbance thereby conceived doth bring forth his own Idea's which immediately have a Blas whereby they move direct and change and finish whatsoever happens in health and Diseases But the parts of the Body as well those containing as those contained and likewise the occasional causes of Diseases of themselves are dead and idle neither can they move themselves or any other thing Seeing nothing is moved by it self which is not by it self and primarily vital except weight which naturally falleth downwards 9. That the products and effects of Diseases are seminal generations so depending on the Seeds that they do shew forth the properties of these 10. That heat cold heates c. seeing they are not the proper causes of a Disease nor the true products of Diseases but only the symptomatical accidents and signatures of Diseases therefore also neither do they subsist by themselves but they do so depend on Diseases that they depart together with them like a shadow Because they are the errors of a vital light or an erroneous Blas stirred up from Diseases 11. That Diseases are seminal Beings except extrinsecal ones wounds a bruise or stroke burning c. and therefore effects of the Archeus resulting in a true action from the occasionals of the exciter accidentally sprung up in an Archeal error of our Powers 12. That although without the will of a living Creature contraries should be found in nature yet by these there should be no possible restauration of the hurt faculties as neither a pacifying of the Areheus and by consequence no curing if that be even true That Natures themselves are the Physitiannesses of Diseases and that the Physitian is their Minister Truly that thing is proved by the Fire the which by reason of the most intense coldness of the Aire which I have elsewhere proved to be far more cruel than the cold of the Water doth the more strongly flame and burn So far is it that Fire should be exstinguished by cold which is falsly reputed its contrary And moreover neither have the Schooles known that Fire is not extinguished by Water because it is cold moist or contrary to it but by reason of choaking onely The which we daily see in our Furnaces For as the Fire is momentany and connexed unto it self by a continual thred of exhalations hence it is stifled almost in one only moment for so the water because it is fluid enters into the pores of the burning matter and by stopping them up doth suffocate or quench the Fire so also a Mettal or Glasse being fired and burning bright do shine long in the most cold bottom of the Water and in the mean time a Coal being fired is choaked in an instant under the Water Because the pores thereof are presently stopped Therefore Copper burning bright is sooner extinguished than Silver and Silver than Gold But Glasse being fired because it wants pores shines longer under the Water than a like quantity of Gold Yea hot Water doth sooner quench Fire than cold because it sooner pierceth the pores Therein also they have remained dull that they considered our heat alwayes by making a comparison of it with Fire For although the Fire be a Being of Nature yet because it was directed by the most High for the uses of Mortals that it might enter into Nature as a Destroyer and might be as it were an artificial Death therefore it prosecutes its own artificial ends but hath not any thing in its self which may be vital or seminal There is therefore no Fire in Nature if it hath not first arose unto a due degree for a Destroyer wherein it is nothing or little profitable for the speculation of Medicine Surely our heat is not graduated and therefore neither is it fiery neither doth it proceed from the Fire as being weakened or diminished but it is the heat of a formal light and therefore also vital neither therefore doth it subsist in its last or highest degree even as the fire doth For it admits of a latitude and its degree is made to vary according to the provocation if its Blas For although it be from a formal light and in that respect doth live yet through a Blas it doth oft-times ascend higher or is pressed lower as well in healthy persons as in sick folk In the next place it more highly deviates through furies and then it as burnt up uncloaths it self of a vital light and assumes a Caustical or burnt Alcali which thing is seen in moist and compressed Hay where Fire voluntarily ariseth So in Escarrie effects our heat being forgetful of its former life passeth into a degree of fire For through a congresse of lightsome beames and a degeneration of the salt of the Spirits even as in Hay true Fire is bred and would burn us if the Archeus should expect this end of the Tragedy before death Our heat indeed is in the Fire as the number of Two is in the number of Forty yet the Fire is not in
the mean time they do now and then assoon as may be reach the Air but sometimes they run head-long down by long journeys and Pipes of Earth and rockie Stones before they yeild themselves to the Light yet there was the same reason necessity and end of their Institution on both sides to wit the will of him who created all things for our uses But it remains to crave leave that Aristotelical spirits may indulge my liberty if I shall judge it a dream impossible to Nature that Fountaines should be bred from a co-thickning of Air For indeed that also is chiefly true That Air was never nor is it to be in any Age Water even as neither was Water to assume the Form of Air. For they are first-born Elements and the constant Wombs of things stable from the Creation of the World and so remaining unto the end thereof But whatsoever hath through the ranks of Generations subscribed it self unto successive change whether it may seem to be Earthly Stony or Liquory it derives all that from the mass of three Principles dedicated unto the Tragedy of Generation but not from the first Elements which rejoyce not but in a stable continuance and the which do again lay up their deserved Youngs into their antient â—â—ceptacles until the seeds are ripe for the Generation of a new Off-spring which Seeds the same Principles of Bodies being in the mean time thorowly changed by Digestions do again cloath and re-assume For from an invisible and incorporeal seed entertained in the Wombs of the Elements and putting on the Principles of Bodies all Generation in the Universe which is called voluntary is made Others have called that thing a Flux from a Non-being unto a Being which things that they may become more perspicuous it is to be noted that unto the production of every thing two onely Sexes if not one promiscuous one at least have concurred Therefore also by the same Law of a worldly harmony there are Originally two onely Elements in the Universe to wit the Air and the Water which are sufficiently insinuated from the sacred Text by the Spirit swimming upon the Abysse or great Deep of Waters in the first beginnings of the World The Earth therefore and the Fire or Heaven if they are Elements they are called secondary ones proceeding from the former For whatsoever of Earths rocky Stones Gemms Sands c. doth exist or flowes forth into a stinking Vapour or is at first changed into Ashes a Calx or Lime or at leastwise through the Society of some Addittament into a Salt the off-spring of Waters presently afterwards they all the volatile Summe exceeding or over comming the fixed Summe are made aiery and vapoury Efluxes rushing-into water with a hastened Violence And so that whatsoever is earthy hard solid and compacted seeing all that is reducible unto a more simple thin pure and former remaining substance pardon the Novelty most resplendent Prince it must needs be that it hath no Efficacy of an Element at all but that they are more latter things than Air and Water In like manner we say of the Heaven that the Heavens shall be changed shall wax Old and Perish and so that the Heaven and the Earth shall at length Perish the like message of which Destruction thou shalt not find concerning the Air and Water In the next place the Water or Air could never in any Age be reduced into any other former Body by Art or Nature This therefore is the Face this the Ordination this in the next place is the Office Combination Fate and End of the Elements to wit that the unchanged Essence of two most simple Bodies and their unmixed substance may afford a vital Womb or Prop unto Seeds and Fruits until at length the number of things to be generated being accomplished the heap of Principles together with the Seeds do constitute strange Families and Colonies their Bride-bed being separated in a more blessed Seat For the very many Dreams wherewith the World hath suffered it self to be hitherto circumvented the handicraft Operation of the Fire doth deride with loud Laughter Who indeed will deny but that the Water is easily changed into a Vapour But that Vapour or Exhaltation is so far from being Air that the Powder of Marble or a Flint may sooner be Water as we have shewn For a Vapour is in very deed materially and formally nothing else but a heap of the Atoms of Water lifted up on high The which our School shews forth more clearly than the Light at Noon The Air therefore whether it be received in hot or cold Glasses and pressed together therein shall never afford Water but according to how much of a Vapour that is of an extenuated Water it shall contain within it But the Water is seperated into very small conspicuous Drops against the Sun thorow the Glass at the Beginning of Distillation as long as the sides are cold to wit while through the vigour of Heat it flies away extenuated into a Vapour And that thing indeed happens no otherwise than by a proper Magnal which in things mixt and so also in the Water it self is the Skie thinner than the Air and dis-joynable from the same and sustaining its compression and enlargment contending for a middle thing or Nature between a Body and not a Body receiving the Impressions of the External Stars of its native Soyle being altogether intimate in all things by reason of which alone and not of Air we draw our Breath a proper Magnal I say and a spiritual Being in the Water doth indeed lift the Water on high it being lightned by Heat procuring a divulsion or renting asunder of the Magnal which same rent Magnal detains a quantity of Water proportioned unto it self which is rent upwards as well in the Glasses as in the Clouds and doth preserve them from falling until through the compression perhaps of succeeding Atoms as it comes to pass in distillation the former do grow together into drops and do enclose the former Magnal or vital Being within themselves Or the same Magnal of the Water being rarified through Heat and being straightway after condensed through help of External Cold doth constrain and restrain those same its own Atoms of small Drops within the Limits of its command I return unto thee Stagyrian Aristotle If Air be co-thickned into Water seeing thou teachest Air more to excell in Moisture than Water I pray thee why shall Cold which is natural to the Air change the Nature of the Air into a matter which is too moist of its own Nature In the next place now Cold and no longer Heat shall possess the vital Principle of Generation Wherefore although a Vapour be Air generated of Water formally transchanged and of the same again alike water doth grow together Now thou differest from thy own self who admittest of so frequent and easie a return from a privation unto a habit At length take thou also this handicraft Experiment Air may
some other place namely in the heart alone Again from the same position it followes that that there may be a Fever it is not-required that the offending and feverish matter be enflamed but some other inflameable thing primarily residing in the heart and from thence slideable throughout the whole body For this inflameable body I together with Hippocrates call the spirit which maketh the assault But this last matter I have brought hither not from the minde of the Antients but it is extorted and by force I have commanded it to be granted me Whereof in its own place when I shall discourse of the efficient cause of Fevers At least wise that being now violently begged it followes that the peccant matter of Fevers is not properly enflamed neither that it is in it self primarily or efficiently hot nor indeed that it makes hot besides nature if the first inflameable body ought to be kindled in the heart Therefore neither is the peccant or offensive matter in a Fever hot beyond or besides the degree of nature But that which is kindled in the heart was not kindled before the comming of the Fever and so it every way differs from the peccant matter in Fevers At length it is also from hence fitly concluded that in whomsoever they intend to slay a Fever by cooling things as such they do not intend to cure by a removal of the causes by a cutting up of the Root and a plucking out of the fountaine and fewel of the Fever but only they intend to take away and correct the heat which is a certaine latter product entertained with-out the feverish matter To wit they apply their remedies unto the effect but not unto the cause For truly the heat of Fevers is kindled in the Archeus which maketh the assault and the root of Fevers is the peccant matter it self They have regard therefore only unto the taking away of the effect following upon and resulting from the placing of that root for the sake whereof the Archeus is enflamed not indeed by the root but by heat drawn from elsewhere while as indeed he enflames himself by a proper animosity and by his own heat being beyond a requirance extended unto a degree wherein he is wholly troublesome as he is enlarged beyond the amplenesse of his own necessity Foâ— neither must we think that any heat is so in a hateful feverish matter which with me they name the offensive one that it afterwards makes feverishly hot the whole entire body For truly that for which every thing is such that very thing they will have to be more such And then also because every calefactive or heating agent doth throughout its own specie's more strongly act on a near object than on an object at a distance wherefore if a feverish matter should make the other parts hot by its own heat it should of necessity be that the center or nest wherein that peccant matter of a Fever is received should be first roasted into a fryed substance before that any distant object should be made hot thereby Yea if the peccant matter should be hot of its own free accord and the Fever should be that meer heat besides nature every Fever as such ought to be continual nor should it have intermission until that all the offensive matter were wholly consumed into ashes Neither therefore should there be any reason of a repetition or relapse seeing the peccant matter should even from a general property always make hot for the consuming of it self And moreover a dead carcase also should be hot as well after death and be more ardently tortured or writhed with a Fever than while it lived because the same matter in number from the obedience whereof death happens even still persisteth in the dead carcasse and seeing they suppose it to be hot by a proper heat of putrefaction and since it is more putrified after death as also after death more powerfully putrifying and affecteth more parts co-bordering upon it than while it lived therefore also it should be more actually hot after death than in the life time But surely this errour is bewrayed For a Fever which made a live body hot ceaseth presently after death and all heat exspires with the life The which ought to instruct us that the heat of a Fever is not proper unto the peccant matter or its inmate and that the heat of the offensive matter doth not efficiently and effectively make hot in Fevers Therefore it is perpetually true that the peccant matter makes hot occasionally only but that the Archeus is the workman of every alteration and so by this title that which efficiently primarily immediatly always every where maketh the assault and that he alone doth not make hot according to the maxime Whatsoever utters healthy actions in healthy bodies that very thing utters vitiated ones in diseases For that spirit heats man naturally in health it being the same which in Fevers rageth with heat For example The thorne or splinter of an oake being thrust into the finger and actually and potentially cold presently stirs up a heat besides nature in the finger Not indeed that hot humours do flow thither as if they being called together thither by the thorne had exspected the wound of the splinter and the which otherwise as moderate had resided in their own seates For truly the blood next to the wound first runs to it and preventeth the passage for other blood coming thither And that blood also by it self is not hot but for the sake of the vital spirit Therefore the inflamation and swelling together with an hard pulse pain and heat do proceed from the spirit alone causally but from the infixed thorn occasionally only Surely it is an example sufficient for the position manner knowledg and cure of a Fever To wit the cause offending in a Fever is not hot of it self but it makes hot only occasionally and upon the pulling out of the thorne or occasional cause health followes The Archeus alone every where effectively stirs up the Fever and the which departing by death the Fever ceaseth with it Therefore heat is a latter accident and subsequent upon the essence of a Fever For indeed the Archeus enflames himself in his endeavour whereby he could earnestly desire to expel the occasional matter as it were a thorne thrust into himself But whosoever takes away this thorne whether that be done by hot meanes or by temperate ones or at length by cold ones he takes away the disease by the Root and it is unto nature as it were indifferent Because for that very cause the animosity of the Archeus is appeased and ceaseth Wherefore heat however it being besides nature increased may be a token of Fevers yet it is not the Fever it self neither therefore must we greatly labour about it in time of healing For from hence Hippocrates hath seriously admonished that heat and cold are not diseases as neither the causes of these but that the causes to wit the
learn the wit of Aristotle ready in founding Maxims that as oft as he found any thing agreeable to his own conceipts he would presently draw it into Rules under an universal head by binding or tying up the Roots of weaker authority that were taken from one to another Which Maxims indeed of his the following age wondered at to wit being prone to sloath and therefore easily worshipping him and those Maxims Also oftentimes he brought learning by demonstration into Nature by a forced Interpretation as that he would have natural causes wholly to obey numbers lines and letters of the Alphabet by a rashness altogether ridiculous By way of example he taking notice that fire did sooner burn about dry Wood than moyst he thereupon straightway meditating on a general Maxim would That the act of active things should onely be on a matter disposed which thing notwithstanding is enclosed with many ignorances For first as soon as he saw the fire an external Agent to agree with combustible matter he shewed hence also that every other Agent in Nature ought to act by the meanes of fire not knowing the fire not to act by meanes of a seminal Agent and to be a peculiar Creature Therefore with the like ignorance he judged every efficient cause like the fire to be of necessity external He was also deceived in this that he determined every natural Agent to require a disposed matter when as otherwise the Agent in Nature doth dispose of the matter that is subject unto it For neither doth any counsel of a natural Agent act for any other end than that it may dispose the matter subjected to it unto aims known to it self at least appointed for generation Indeed out of one onely juyce of Earth and one onely Garden four hundred Plants do grow and fructifie For if the Agent doth finde a friendly disposition in the matter 't is well indeed but if not he easily prepares the same for himself What if hereafter I shall plainly shew that all tangible bodies do immediately proceed out of the one onely Element of Water by what necessity I pray you shall the Agent require a fore-existing disposition of the matter or if the disposed matter do fore-exist who shall be that disposer or fore-runner of the Agent By it self sufficient to the disposing of every matter wherein it is But if thou sayest the Ferment At leastwise thou oughtest again to have known that both causes differ not in Nature from the thing produced unless in ripeness nor is the Agent to be distinguished from the Ferment The which if the Schooles seasoned with the Discipline of a better juyce did know they would also know Aristotle to have revolted from his own Rules which being at first true he erected into the premises of Scientifical demonstrations He had even become mad about the wondrous generatings of stones in us And although before the Elements of Euclide sprang up he was more ignorant of the Mathematicks yet Aristotle being far more skilful in this than in Nature endeavoured to subdue Nature under the Rules of that Science For he knew the Circle to be the most capable of figures in a plain Therefore he suddenly forced it into a general Maxim that also Ulcers and wounds that are round were more hard to be cured then any others that were alike in extension But truly a piercing wound by a broad Dagger is more difficult than a round one in the flesh But in Ulcers the Fistula of the fundament or weeping Fistula are more laboursome in healing than any Ulcer of the shanks or leggs extended into a Circuite Indeed he thought being deceived with the aptness of Rules the incarnating of a wound to promote it self onely by an external working Plaister and that outsideness not onely to be in relation to the superficies of our Body but in a figural respect of the distance of the lips of the wound in order to its Centre I will relate a Story A Trooper infects his Wife with the Pox or foule Disease but this through extream want of a remedy enlarged it self into an eating sore or Ulcer One at least I saw wasting the fleshy membrane or coate from the Ear into the neck shoulder and elbow behinde thorow the shoulder blades the whole side of the ribs and breast Which membrane as it is fatter in Women so it contains a deeper depth She said she had many other and lesse sores thorow the bottom of the belly into the legs and she shewed a humane body almost without a skin The Woman was carried by my authority into the Hospital of Vilvord the Nuns refusing but might prevailing also sometimes for a while commands the Nuns The chief Chyrurgion Tow being steeped in Aqua fortis with incredible pain toucheth the quick muscles and smites the house with a miserable howling But passing by I asked why he had done that He saith it is an ulcerated Cacner and wholly so and by how much the sooner she died by so much the happier she would be The complaining Nun hearing that said she was not bound by the rules of her house to entertain the Cancer Leprosie or Pox c. Forthwith therefore before the twilight they bring forth the Woman to the Suburbs and laid her on the Dunghill But a poor Country man pitying the unknown Woman makes her a little Cottage of boughes against the Rain but he applieth some Colewort leaves to the abounding or running filthy matter and to drive away the unkindeness of the Air. He tells the chance to me I gives her the Corallate of Paracelsus prepared by the white of an Egge and in twenty six dayes she was wholly well For the great Ulcers with a hastened force were covered with skin some exceeding small chaps from the beginning keeping a longer continuance A little after a certain Kinsman dying bequeaths to this most poor Woman a House and Land Her Husband perished behinde the hedges She marries the second time being now rich in a Herde a flock and in Lands For I having admired in her Husband and the Chyrurgion robbers or murderers in the Monks lightness in the Countryman the Samaritane and in the Woman Job I knew the God of Job to be the same and the continual almighty Ruler of the Universe From whom although man hath privily stolen the Titles of Majesty Highness Excellency Clemency and Lordliness he hath reserved at least one onely perpetual one to himself which is that of Eternity In respect whereof man is a Mushrome of one night on the morrow rotten Therefore let the Schooles know that the Rules of the Mathematicks or Learning by demonstration do ill square to Nature For man doth not measure Nature but she him For neither shall a Heathen man that is ignorant of the wayes shew more the wayes than a blinde man colours not seen before Therefore besides the ignorance of Nature in its Root and thingliness or what it is the Schooles have not known the causes number requirance
power is an accident and no accident or quality can be a partaker of a Body but on the contrary a Body is a partaker of accidents 4. That souls do not differ but in respect of that body which at length he calleth meer heat notwithstanding that all Souls are a power partaking of a heavenly Body therefore Souls do not differ in respect of that Body in which he hath said they all do agree or if there be any difference between Souls let it be in respect of the matter of a Body or of an unnamed Client or retainer being neglected by and plainly unknown to Aristotle And so in so great a dress of words he hath spoken nothing but trifles 5. If Souls do differ onely for that bodies sake the act shall be now limited by the power the Species or particular kinde by the matter not by the form 6. The Seed contains the cause of fruitfulness it is a Childish and triflous thing because the Seed ceaseth to be Seed if it be without the cause of fruitfulness 7. Every power of the Soul is a partaker of some other body than those which are called the Elements Yet he would have the bodies of all soulified or living Creatures to be of necessity mixt of non but actual Elements 8. The Seed is not fruitful but by heat As though Fishes were not more fruitfull than four footed Beasts and as though Fishes were not actually cold 9. He knew not another moderate heat from live Coals which nourisheth Eggs even unto a Chick And he knowes not that all heat is in one onely most special kinde of quality being distinguished onely by degree 10. He is ignorant that heat onely makes hot by it self and that it should make fruitful by accident And therefore although that heat be the principle of motion and the power of the Soul that is Nature by it self yet as it should make the Seeds fruitful by accident it should be the beginning of motion by accident Therefore in respect of the same Nature it should be a beginning by it self and by accident or with relation to the same Nature it should be Nature and not Nature 11. He confoundeth the quality of heats with the spirit and air of the froathy Seed which notwithstanding do differ no lesse than in predicaments 12. Heat is the spirit of the froathy body and the nature which is in that spirit is heat Therefore the spirit shall be in the spirit 13. Nature is in that spirit and that spirit is not nature defined by Aristotle for the subject of natural Philosophy yet that spirit is the Principle of motion in the Seed and of life in living Creatures and he much more strictly denies the froathy body of the Seed to be of the account of nature as though the seed of things were a froath and not the more inward invisible kernel in a corporeal seed but that onely the power of Souls which with him is nothing but heat were nature 14. Because every power of the Soul is encompassed with heat he excludes out of the account of nature any other bodies and accidents 15. That power of Souls for whose sake Souls do differ is onely heat not indeed a fiery one but agreeing in proportion with the Element of the Stars that is it hath not been understood by Aristotle nor is it to be any way to be understood by the Schooles how heat doth agree with a body with an Element what agreement there can be between such various dependants of predicaments 16. He denieth this power of Souls to be of the race of Elements That plural number rejecteth not onely one Element but by reason of the strength of negatives all Elements 17. Every power of the Soul is a meer heat not indeed answering to the heat of the Element of the Stars but altogether to the Element it self 18. For truly he acknowledgeth no other heat than that of fire nor any other Element of fire than that which is of the kitchin because he distinguisheth Elementary heat from the Element of the Stars yet by his own authority he hath inclosed fire that is not of the kitchin between the Heaven and the Air. 19. At length as oft as he was positively to tell what nature was the privy shifter saith sometimes that it is the power of the Soul sometimes the fruitfulness of the Seed and at last he neither perceived nor ever knew what the heat not fiery was and makes a fifth Element of the Firmament of the Stars after he hath cast away the other four by denying them Therefore he runs about in denying by far fetched speeches and least he should be laid hold on he denyeth nature to be of the race of Elements As if it were enough to have said there is a Chymera or certain fabulous Monster not of the Elements but of the fifth Element of the Stars It is not a body not an accident but a heat answering to the Element of the Heavens not to the heat of the same 20. And he would not say that indeed these things are so bur that they seem to him to be so Seeing that according to the same man many things may seem to be which yet are not 21. And if thou wilt not believe it go to see or expect it for ever 22. As though the whole action of nature were made by heat 23. Also that Mettalls which elsewhere he writeth to be co-thickned or condensed by their own cold because they do abound with heat should now be out of nature 24. And as though the seeds of Vegetables because they are not froathy should not be endowed with fruitfulnesses or should not contain nature in themselves 25. Therefore he denieth the heat of living Creatures actually hot to be Elementary the which notwithstanding I shall at sometime in its own place prove to be true being unmindeful of his own maxim that the cause is of the same particular kinde with its thing caused He knowes not I say that our heat doth make any other things to be hot by a naked Elementary heat And likewise that since not onely Elementary heat which he placeth in the sublunary fire distinct from the common or kitchin fire but also the kitchin fire do heat us in a degree fitted to us Therefore they ought to be of one and the same species or particular kinde 26. At length he rashly affirmeth that nature or the power of the Soul or seminal truths are nothing besides that heavenly heat 27. Therefore he acknowledgeth heat actually cold in Fishes to be the cause of fruitfulness seeing it distributes from every power of the Soul For that is to have sold trifles instead of Phylosophy And as oft as he feareth his toyes are not saleable he provokes us to the Element of the Stars after that he had provoked us it seemes by one affirmative and many trifles of denyalls to the proportion of the Element of the Stars Surely it is a shame for Christians
the air which is contrary to his supposition for seeing the air is of the same heat about A and about D the Liquor B C shall also necessarily take rest Because the quality of the air which encompasseth is the moving cause of the water B. C. acting with an equall strength and giving an equall tenour Now through the supposition of that which is false I will demonstrate what may follow upon his ignorance Let I say the water B. C. according to his observation be changed into air In the first place this observation cannot be admitted without rarefying caused by heat Nor can that rarefying be granted without an increase of place beside the heat And the increase of place cannot subsist without the enlarging or breaking of the Vessel Because he confesseth the Glasse to be exactly shut with a continuation of the Glasse without ruine or poriness 2. A transchanging of the water into air cannot be granted without co-thickning and restraining and restraint is not given without the addition of parts by pressing together actually within the same space or magnitude Which ought altogether to be named a condensing of the air which in this place cannot be made but by cold alone which supposeth the air to turn into water therefore not the water into air Since therefore neither heat nor cold can turn water into air much lesse shall that which is temperate do that For that this doth not beget an alteration in those Elements Likewise air is not turned into water because this conversion cannot be admitted being made by rarefaction because the rarefying of the air doth not happen in this place without the mediation of heat But Heer will have it that the air is co-thickned into water by cold Therefore water shall not be generated of air by heat 2. That transchanging of air into water cannot be admitted but by condensing and restraining which cannot happen in a Glasse perfectly shut but by cold Which agent upon the air being shut up within A and D should change it into water according to the supposition of Heer For so water had been increased by generation in Vessels perfectly shut Which contradicteth his own words This pretious Liquor perished it is no more it hath ceased to be and that indeed in the raging winter Therefore since neither heat nor cold can co-thicken air into water much lesse shall that do it which is temperate Therefore never It is a wonder therefore why it hath not hindered the drying up of the Liquor in Vessels Since according to his own prattle those should be onely buried under the Snow that they might be filled with water Now there shall not hereafter be need of rain if the Cave being perfectly shut and cold continual Cisterns should be made And likewise when the water should over-weigh the air that water shall fall into the bottom of a great Vessel very closely shut from whence as oft as one would list the water should be drawn out And so that Vessel should be changed into a winter Fountain For as Heer saith The Vessel was very closely shut it wanted little holes neither had it need of opening as well for the entrance as the transpiration of the air But if a new air might afterwards enter the same way and by the same meanes whereby the water that was changed into air the Glasse being shut flew out Hereafter therefore sweet water shall not be wanting to Marriners in a Ship if by the cold of the night the air growes together by drops into water Venice and Antwerp shall frame Fountains in the belly of a Brasse Cock which in the Pinacle of the Temple sheweth the windes For by the night-cold the air shall weep being turned into water And although the Pipe be moyst to those that play on Flutes that is not from the air Otherwise Organ-Pipes also should be moyst within which is false For the air utters the sound or tune and the salt vapour drops water out of the Pipe They having pressed air of one ell together in a gun to the space of 14 fingers even in the cold of winter and so far is it that the air so pressed together in excelling cold was changed into water that it cast out a leaden Bullet thorow an Oken Plank more strongly than a hand-Gun or Pistollet Now I will proceed to prove that thing by positive Reasons Because an applied esteem or thinking hath on every side overshadowed the Schooles with a manifold absurdity CHAP. XI The Essay of a Meteor 1. A vapour raised from the heat of water differs from that which is made by cold 2. That Air is not made of water 3. That air can neither by art or nature be brought into water 4. That the Air doth not subsist without an actuall vacuum or emptiness 5. It is proved by Handicraft operation that the subtilizing or rarefying of Art however exact or fine it be is nothing but a sifting 6. By handy operation the same thing is shewen in the sifting or making of leaf-Gold 7. The water is examined by three proportionable things and the Doctrine of necessity in the highest degrees of cold of the middle Region of the Air is delivered 8. The likeness of Mercury with water 9. The nature of Mercury 10. The rashness of antient Chymists concerning Mercury 11. That earth and water are never made one thing by any co-mixture 12. How art exceedes nature 13. The Earth is properly the fruit of the two primary Elements 14. A neere Reason of an uncapacity in Mercury of being destroyed 15. Aquae fortesses do not operate upon the Center of Mercury 16. Nor the Spirit of Sea-salt upon the body of it 17. The inward Sulphur of Mercury 18. How water may give a weight more weighty than it self 19. After what manner there is an ordinary piercing of Bodies in the way of nature 20. In the way of nature there are not the three first things although in its own simpleness there is a conceivable difference of kinde which is to receive the Seedes 21. Smoak is meer water 22. Why Clouds do stink 23. What the Dew is 24. What a mist is 25. Wherefore it behooved the Air in the middle Region of the Air to be cold 26. In this cold all seeds seperated by Atomes or Motes do die and therefore the water returns into the simplicity of its own Element but in Earth and Water if things are spoiled of their seed they do not return unto that simplicity but do conceive a new seed 27. By Handicraft operation the errour of Paracelsus is laid open 28. The errour of the Galenists about the savours of things Elementated 29. What the Gas of the water is 30. The unconstancy of Paracelsus concerning the seperation of Elements from Elements IT is already sufficiently manifest that the water by the force of heat is lifted up in manner of a vapour which vapour nevertheless is nothing but water made thin and remains as before and therefore being
water pressed together into the room of one part where Gold is framed of water Wherefore so far is it that the piercing of dimensions becomes impossible seeing that nothing is more natural or home-bred to nature than to co-thicken the body of the water but indeed although there may something appear in the water like to the three first things yet also there is no hope that they should be rent asunder from each other because in the every way simplicity of the water an adequate or suitable Sulphur is after a certain sort hidden which cannot be seperated from the other two but they all do accompany together Those are not the three true Principles which are abstracted or seperated onely by the Imagination The water therefore since it doth on every side vary off-Springs according to the diversity of their seedes thus so many kindes of Earths Mineralls Salts Liquors Stones Plants living Creatures and Meteors do rise up in their particular kindes from the blast or inspiration of the seedes For the water putrifies by continuance in the Earth is made the juyce of the Earth Gums Oyl Rosin Wood Berries c. and that which of late was nothing but water materially now burns and sends forth a fume or smoak Not indeed that that fume is air but is either a vapour or a drie exhalation and a new fruit of the water not yet appointed to be wholly turned by its seed It is proved For the Body of the air cannot make a shadow in the air but whatsoever doth exhale out of a live Coal doth make a shadow in the Sun For since the air hath a limited consistence and thickness and that agreeable to its own simpleness it followes that whatsoever is thicker than the air that is not air Moreover that which being made thin by the heat of the fire doth now exhale is as yet thicker than the air and so for that cause makes a shadow surely that shall become far more thick in the cold and shall be made visible in Clouds Whatsoever exhalations therefore do from the Earth climbe upward and are joyned in Clouds for this cause also those Clouds do stink no otherwise than as water doth under the Aequinoctial line and there the Ferment and Seed of their Concretion or growing together being consumed they are turned into pure water no otherwise than the water is after it hath escaped and overcome the bounds of its putrefaction which it had conceived under the line The dew therefore is a Cloud belonging to the Spring not yet stinking falling down before it can touch the place of cold So a mist or fogg is a stinking Cloud not as yet refined through the putrefaction of its Ferment because as many as have passed over the Alps with me have known how greatly Clouds taken hold of with the hand do stink but the Rain-water collected thence how sweet and without savour it is and almost incorruptible For when any thing doth exhale whether it be in the shew of water or Oil or smoak or mists or of an exhalation although indeed it brings not away with it the seedes of the Concrete or composed Body at leastwise it carries the Ferments upward which that they may be fully abolished from thence and that the remaining matter may return into water it behooves that they be first lifted up into a subtile or fine Gas in the kitchin of the most cold air and that they passe over into another higher Region and do assume a condition in the shape of the least motes or Atomes And that the Ferments do there die as well through the cold of the place as the fineness of the Atomes as it were by choaking and extinguishing For cold is therefore a principle not indeed of life but of extinguishment To wit as it doth sub-divide the parts of the Atomes as yet by more subtilizing them even as I have above taught And so that Woods are also the sooner consumed by fire under cold as if they were driven by a blast From which necessity verily that place was from the beginning alwayes chilled with continuall cold Because the Authour of nature least he might seem to have been wanting to the necessities of his Creature hath every where fitted ordinations according to necessities Therefore cold is naturall and home-bred to that place but not from the succeeding Chymera of an Antiperistasis Indeed the matter of fruits being brought thither must needes return into their first Being and the infections of the Ferments are therefore first to be removed by the mortifications sub-divisions subtilizings piercings choakings and extinguishings of the cold The Air therefore is the place where all things being brought thither are consumed and do return into their former Element of water For in the Earth and water although Bodies sprung up from seedes do by little and little putrifie and depart into a juyce yet they are not so nearly reduced into the off-spring of simple water as neither into a Gas For Bodies that are enfeebled or consumed do straight way in the Earth draw another putrifaction through continuance a ferment and Seed Whence they flee to second Marriages and are again anew increased into succeeding fruits But the fire the death of all things doth want seedes being subjected to the will of the Artificer it consumeth all seminall things but brings over their combustible matters into a Gas. Paracelsus affirms that three Beginnings are so united in all particular principles that one cannot wholly be freed from the other by any help of art But saving the authority of the man our Handicraft-operation containing his secret Samech hath affirmed that which is contrary to his assertion by the Spirit of Wine being turned into an un-savoury water And so neither can that man cover his ignorance Indeed the Spirit of Wine being wholly capable of burning made void of Phlegme or watery moysture and Oil it alwayes for the one half of it passeth into a simple un-savoury and Elementary water by a touching of the Salt of Tartar on it Again the same thing is made by repetition as to the other part For that man was ignorant of the thingliness of a Gas to wit my Invention and next of the properties of cold in the Air yea he thought that the vapour of the water was plainly annihilated which sottishness of that his proper form of speech is least of all to be winked at in so great a Distiller Especially because he would have the Elements to be seperable from feigned Elements rather than the three first things Wherefore from the dissection of the water delivered it now sufficiently appeares that the simple water is not crude or raw and that fire doth not take away the crudity from it which it hath not Because the whole action of the fire is not into the water but into that which is co-mixed with it by accident Galen according to his manner transcribing Diascorides word for word and being willing to measure the Elementary
silent concerning the Equinoctial Line and its wonderfull properties that a Canon being discharged on one side of the Stone not any noyse or trembling should be heard on the other side thereof the which therefore is called a mute one So also we must needes consider that there are side folding-doores or Gates of Peroledes in the Air because the windes going forth for the most part with a side motion are also by the Blas of the Stars agreeably carried a crosse their bounds From the aforesaid Doctrine of Gas I at length object against my self If the water be frozen by cold into snowes Hail and Ice then the water shall not be dissolved by cold into Gas if of a uniform Agent and Patient there ought to be the same action and effect Where I must seriously note That the Water freezeth it self but is not frozen efficiently by another For although cold may be hitherto thought to congeal yet that is onely occasionally not effectively The water therefore after the sense of its measure perceives the cold of the air not indeed a certain absence or privation of heat even as I have already demonstrated by an ordinary example in Helvetia but as a positive cause in a naturall quality For truly first of all it is without doubt and is manifest by the sight that the cold Air doth by degrees consume Water Snow and Ice yet these two more slowly and the other more swiftly In the next place it is easie to be seen that whatsoever the Air thus privily steales away that presently for that very cause passeth over into an invisible Gas If therefore the cold of the Air should harden water into Ice a further action of the Air would also the Ice being now made continually cease but the consequent is false therefore also the Antecedent For the Sulphur of the water doth easily wax dry and is divided by the cold wherefore the Mercury and Salt of the water perceiving the frost of the Air that would seperate the Waters from the Waters and that they ought to suffer the extension and drying up of their Sulphur and so an alltogether violent impression of the seperater and that they do desire to remain as they are Hence the whole water at once doth arm it self by a Crust that it may resist the seperater Which thing indeed it could not accomplish but that also some part of the Sulphur hath already suffered an extenuating of it self and so also in this respect the Ice doth swim upon the water But that the Sulphur of the water although it was extenuated in the Ice yet hath not laid aside the nature of water is proved by handicraft-operation Fill a glassen and great Bottle with pieces of Ice but let the neck be shut with a Hermes Seal by the melting of the glasse in the same place Then let this Bottle be put in a balance the weight thereof being laid in the contrary Scale and thou shalt see that the water after the Ice is melted shall be weightier by almost an eighth part than it self being Ice Which thing since it may be a thousand times done by the same water reserving alwayes the same weight it cannot be said that any part thereof was turned into air For such is the continuance and constancy of the Elements that although the water departs into a vapour into Gas into Ice yea into composed bodies yet the auntient water alwayes materially remaineth in some place masked by ferments and seedes coming upon it and else-where onely by the importunities of the first qualities made to differ in the Relolleum of Paracellus that is without a seed But from what hath been said before Some remarkable things do arise 1. That the water hath a certain kinde of sense or feeling and so that all Beings do after some sort partake of life Come let us worship the King by whom all things live 2. Seeing that the water doth not incrust it self in the fabrick of a vapour therefore a vapour as well in the cause as in the manner is more acceptable to the water than a Gas is And that thing doth argue in the water something like to choice 3. And that therefore a vapour doth sooner return into water than into Gas 4. That the changing of water into a vapour is in respect of the seperater oblique or crooked and as it were by accident but that Gas consisteth of a proper appointment of the air whereby the air doth seperate the waters from the waters 5. That the air is far more cold in it self than the water 6. That it is dry by it self 7. That the unity or connexion of entire parts is as acceptable to nature as the dividing of the same is to things opposite 8. That the fabrick of Gas shall afford another intimate principle to the water since it hath not a compositive beginning or part that is the cause of some small difference of kinde besides that which is touched by heat in the rise of a vapour 9. That all created things by how much the more simple they are by so much the more of the same kinde yet an every way most simple homogeniety or sameliness of kinde is not found in bodies 10. That the Sulphur of the water being extenuated in the Ice is the cause of smoothness in congealed things but not the enclosing of a forreign air because alwayes and every where water doth exclude the Wedlock of air 11. That the cold and dryness of the air can act nothing else into the water but to extenuate its Sulphur But that the congealing or hardening it self is an action proper to the water whereby it puts a stop to the seperater 12. That the air acts upon the water without the re-acting of this and the suffering of the air since it is appointed by divine right the seperater of the waters 13. That even in unsensible naturall things re-action differeth from resistance For truly there is no re-action of the water on the air and yet the water is with a resistance 14. That the Schooles have erred because they have dictated every action of nature to be made with a re-acting of the Patient and a suffering of the agent 15. That the changing of Gas into air is impossible 1. For otherwise the air should alwayes increase into a huge body and by consequence all water had long since failed 2. Because besides that which I have elsewhere demonstrated that the air can by no meanes return again into water the same thing is manifest from the but now aforesaid particulars 3. For truly it is proper to water to suffer by air and not likewise to re-act on the air Therefore air being once made by water should alwayes remain air seeing a returning agent is wanting which may turn air into water 4. But for air by it self to return into water opposeth a generall Maxim That every thing as much as in it lies doth desire to remain in it self 5. Especially because air
and connexion Whither when the light of the Stars shall descend the folding-doores do open and shut themselves Therefore let the Key-keeper of the folding-doores be the motion of the Stars Which also moveth the Peroledes or Pavements of the Air. Therefore all heat is not made by fore-existing fire or light nor doth cold shew a naked absence of heat But the motive Blas of the Stars is a pulsive or beating power or virtue in respect of their Journey through places and according to their aspects Which circumstances in the Stars do cause the first qualities on these inferiour bodies no otherwise than bashfulness anger feat c. do stir up cold and heat in men And that thing the Stars have by the gift of Creation The Winde according to Hypocrates is a flowing Water of the Air but I defining it by its causes say that the Winde is a flowing Air mooved by the Blas of the Stars And that for a naturall winde but otherwise it is often granted to an evill Spirit that even without a Blas he should stir up windes or increase a tempestuous Blas Therefore the Air unless it have a Blas remains quiet nor hath it the principle of motion from it self but it comes to it from elsewhere Therefore the motive Blas stirreth up Windes Tempests over-flowing of Waters by running thorow the divers Peroledes of the Air sometimes upwards sometimes downwards across long-wayes side-wayes into all the Coasts of the Earth although the Elements have no need of motion yet mans necessity requireth that motion But seeing nothing was for mooving of it self except the Archeus granted to seedes it hath well pleased the Eternall to place in the Stars a flatuous violent motive force not much unlike to the Command of his mouth So that Blas is for a testimony to us that God of his excelling goodness hath made the Elements and Stars for us by measuring out bounds of these according to our Commodities Blas therefore mooveth not so much by light beames and motion as motion but as the Stars have come down unto certain places whereunto these Stars do owe their offices Therefore there are stable properties in those places but if they are not stable that happens in respect of other Stars brought with them by an analogicall or proportionable motion for the interchangeable courses of continuance Blas therefore as a Masculine thing in the Stars is the generall beginning of motion it seemes no lesse to respect the Earth than the Air and Water For the Moon according to the holy Scriptures ruleth the night as the Sun doth the day although the Moon for her own half runs not under the night For the Globe of the Earth is divided into four parts into two accesses or flowings and recesses or ebbings of the Ocean daily And it spends almost 28 houres therein and so much the lesse by how much the Sun and Moon shall in the mean time depart from or draw near to each other Blas therefore stirs up also a raging heat in the waters the winde being still But the alterative Blas consisteth in the producing of heat and cold and that especially with the changings of the windes But the Stars neither have nor give moysture or dryth of themselves For neither is moysture to be considered in nature as naked quality without a matter and therefore neither is it brought down from the Stars unto us For all moysture is from the water which was before the Stars were born Therefore Paracelsus erreth who saith that rains snow c. are so the fruits of the Stars that they are boyled to a ripeness in the Stars as it were in bottles Dryness also was in the air the seperater of the waters before the Stars nor is it to be considered without a body in manner of a quality But heat and cold are rather qualities abstracted from a body Therefore there are onely two great Lights and therefore two onely qualities of them are spread into the air from whence all Meteors are stirred or mooved For the heat of life is the property of the Sun but cold of the other Star Also the other Stars have given their names or honours to these two Lights As often therefore as the Stars of the nature of the Moon are brought thorow places of the Sun a luke-warmth is made in the air but if Stars of the nature of the Sun do run down under the same places heat is made according to which qualities of the air the Gas of the air is also diversly altered Hence indeed Blas heats after the same manner thorow the soils of the air therefore Gas also is either detained in its pavements or soils or is brought downward to us So as that the atomes of Gas being invisible through their too much smallness loosing their constriction and excess of cold do again fall together or decay into the smallest drops and hasten downwards But if indeed the luke-warmth doth affect the lower Peroledes when Gas being provoked by Blas wandereth downwards Summer Snowes are made Surely Gas being grown together through frost a luke-warmth presently arising it is melted and rusheth headlong downwards For the Mercurie of the water resolveth its Salt and the Sulphur doth as it were rowl up these two And so they fall down into rain But if indeed that thing happens in the upper Perolede the drops descending are frozen in the middle cold pavements and so they are cast down headlong into Snow and Hails But if luke-warmth do bear sway thorow some continuall Peroledes of the air daily rains do accompany it Hence also it appeares that an unequall Blas in divers soils of the air doth bring forth divers effects For oftentimes the lowermost Peroledes are luke-warm and the day is plainly clowdy and there are very many Clouds But else the second and the third Perolede are luke-warm the lower being cold whence are Snowes And so the other Troop of Meteors is caused unto us Therefore I am now confident that by Gas materially and by Blas operatively and motively their causes and manner do more clearly appear than heretofore they have done From whence Astrologers and Physitians shall be able from a founder ground to presage of some things In the mean time I leave the matters of presages untouched which God by his ministring Spirits hath laid up among his signes of good or ill Onely I will relate what Fryer Stephen of Lusignan the last of the Family of the Kings of Cyprus of the Order of S. Dominick in his description of Cyprus printed at Paris in the year 1580 page 212 rehearseth in French to this purpose About the end of the year an Earthquake happened at Famagusta which continued eight dayes But afterwards raging or Whirle-windes arose passing over the Island and entring into the Market-place of Famagusta for there by beating down a great Pallace they presently take away very many Houses with some Men. So that if some Marriners had not by the chance of
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
meer Fire with every thing requisite thereunto And then that the same Light of the Sun falling upon the Icy Glasse of the Moon doth loose the property of his own heat and is made a cold light Which comes not to passe if it shall fall upon Ice Glasse Water a white Wall c. Therefore the Moon hath powers or faculties whereby she altereth the Sun-beames And that cold Blas ought to be of the nature of her own light if between the Agent and Patient a co-resemblance ought to interpose For truly another cold object re-percussing or smiting back the Sun-beames cannot therefore change these into cold beames Truly neither heat cold rough brickle sweet or bitter do act on the Light but onely visible and dark objects therefore the Moon hath a lightsome force or power of her self which as it is such doth act upon the hot light and changeth it into a contrary property What if the Astrologer doth foretell the future Colours of Eclipses do not those Colours promise some certain light proper to the Moon For truly they are not conjectured of from a Mean or vapours because colour cannot be foretold from the quantity of vapours in the calculation of a future Eclipse Therefore let the Colours of the Moon failing of light be the tokens of a light proper unto her And in this the beames of both Lights do differ That the Sun strikes his light by beames in a right line but the Moon doth never respect the Center of the World or the Earth in a right line but her center is alwayes excentrical For she respects the Center of the World onely by accident that is when she is con-centricall with the World And therefore as oft as she is con-centricall in full Moon and new Moon there is an Eclipse Therefore the Dragons Head and Tail are night-points wherein onely the Sun is directly opposed to the Moon in an excentrical Diameter Therefore the Moon-beames do not strike the Earth in a right line but they are dispersed into an excentricall space and so she by way of influence or by the action of government of which in its place displayes her forces on the night or on Nadir the point underneath the Horizon right opposite to our feet whether she accompany the Sun or indeed be estranged from this Sun by a full Diameter For such is the appointment of the Moon which the exundations or Spring-Tides of the Sea do confirm which are wont to be no lesse under the Moon laying hidden than at the full of the same Therefore one end of the Lights is to rule the day and night next another end is to seperate the light from the darkness and another end to seperate the day from the night Neither is that repetition to be imputed to a Solecisme or incongruity For truly the Sun shining or the Moon restoring her Light received from the Sun the Light indeed is sufficiently seperated from the darkness but the Light of the Sun never rules the night as neither doth he shine in the night therefore that the Moon likewise may satisfie her appointment she can never rule the night by a borrowed Light of the Sun Which thing sufficiently appeareth at leastwise while she runs with the Sun by day according as by night Therefore if then also the Moon ought to satisfie the divine intention she must needes have also by all meanes another light whereby she may shine all nights and may rule the night and a far other manner of powring forth her light than that wherein she reflecteth the Light of the Sun Indeed the Moon sends forth her proper displayed Light beyond no lesse than beneath the Hemisphere of the Air Water and Earth which way the supposition of the Center of the Universe maketh or tendeth according to the Opinion of Tycho Yet so that the action of government of light and influence operates more powerfully in the night from whence the Sun is absent the which that he may seperate the day from the night ought to seperate the properties of the Moon from his own although the Moon be conjoyned with him Diseases belonging to the Moon do prove that thing which are exasperated a little before night also at the new of the Moon And so she worketh thorow the bones and Marrowes of those who are shut up in their Bed-chamber which thing is not so proper or natural to the Sun Therefore the Moon doth sometimes make a stronger influence on that part of the Sphere that is opposite unto her than on the part where she is placed This light being unknown to the Antients hath been called an influence But I had rather reserve the sense of the Scripture because it is said The Moon was created to give light by night that is all nights indifferently even so as the Sun gives light by day Therefore that which they have called an influence is the property of the Moones light and that is not to have named a thing from the effect but from the causes The Bat Dormouse Mouse Owl and whatsoever Creatures do distinguish their objects afar off in the night under the thickest darkness and do note the swiftest motions of objects which our eyes can scarce observe at noon-day some of whom although they may bear before them a Grayish or Skie-coloured brightness yet they never enlighten the mean by that brightness that they may see perfectly through it at a far distance Therefore there must needes be some continual light in the thickest night and shut up Den for which lights sake such living Creatures do perfectly see But if it be unperceived by us and yet doth in truth exist it is no wonder if the light proper to the Moon hath deceived our eyes But that it may be plainly made known that night-wandring Animalls do send no light out of their eyes which may be for the enlightning of a medium or mean to know distinctly an object placed afar off and so that those Creatures do see onely for the light of the Moones sake Let a Looking-glasse be placed between the Eye of a living Creature and its object and that under the thickest darkness and surely thou shalt not finde the least reflexion of light in the Glasse yet if thou shalt put a small Candle at the utmost end of a large Hall but if in the other furthest end of the Hall there be a hole thorow which that feeble light may passe into another dark Hall or room in whose end let a Looking-glasse be truly that weak light being shaken by the direct beame of the flame of the Candle is received and will appear in the Glasse yet it is not sufficient for a man to discern any object Therefore much lesse shall the brightness or shining of the Eyes a beam whereof doth not fall and appear in a nigh Glasse be fit to enlighten the mean that they may perfectly discern all things For there is under the Earth a light even at midnight whereby many eyes
water is a transitory Relolleum because it is violently brought in For therefore the fire ceasing from which it was produced of its own accord it presently is diminished and ceaseth being no longer cherished That the heat in the hot water being divided throughout the least Atomes of its subject perisheth of its own accord but is not overcome expulsively by a contrariety Because a Relolleum is an efficient quality not proceeding out of the Ferments and Seeds of things And it is twofold to wit One in its own body but the other in a strange body Amongst proper Relolleum's some are seperable As cold in the air and water but others are unseperable as heat in the light of the Sun Candle and Fire which can never wax cold A strange Relolleum is violent by which if it be not nourished it therefore perisheth by its moments and degrees And therefore it is called transient as is heat in the water Therefore aire and water are not made hot by the fire through contrariety but by the generating of a strange Relolleum as it acteth that which was commanded it to act after a different manner of acting with seeds And therefore it neither acteth to or for a form In like manner when water extinguisheth fire or fire lifts up water into a vapour that never happens by the force of contrariety Because the whole fire of the universe cannot blot out or lessen the least moistness from one only drop of water Wherefore the contrariety of the fire should be in vain and foolish or its fight vain and invalide But that aire cannot in any ages by Art or Nature be converted into water or this likewise into aire as I have elsewhere demonstrated by Science Mathematical and by other means sufficiently enough demonstrated For neither is the fire quenched by the water by reason of the presence of a contrary cold in the water For so hot water should not quench fire And fire burns more strongly under the blowing and cold of the North than of the South and the coldest blowing of Bellows doth the more kindle or enflame the fire Therefore water slayeth fire but not fire water Also fire gives place not being overcome by cold but being choaked it perisheth And so hot Oyl doth extinguish a bright burning Coale If therefore contraries ought to be under the same generall kind fire cannot be contrary to water seeing fire is not a Substance even as I have sufficiently demonstrated elsewhere Lastly If they were contrary they should be primarily by themselves substantially and immediately contrary as simple bodies and that being granted their action ought to be a like and equall sight which thing I have already before shewn to be false even as also that nothing is contrary to substances For by the beholding of which two things to wit The fire and the water the Schools have feigned every contrariety of Mixtures and Complexions in the Universe What wonder is it therefore that the contrariety of nature dreamed of in the Schools is now to be had in suspition Seeing their own privative contraries are without contrariety likeness or equality combate co-mixture and grappling of forces Furthermore moysture and dryness are qualities scarce to be understood in the abstract even as otherwise heat is considered in the hand besides or without the fire yea in its improper subject as is the water but moystness and dryness are rather very Bodies themselves qualitated or endowed with qualities Neither therefore are they attained by parts and degrees with the leave of the Schooles after the manner of qualities For moystness is not properly produced but a moyst Body being added to a dry one more of the moyst Body is applyed and so moystness improperly waxeth great That is moysture increaseth quantitatively but not qualitatively But water doth never wax dry although it may deceive the eyes by vanishing away Even as concerning Gas elsewhere Again Siccum or Dry soundeth properly ex-succum or without juyce and contains onely a denyall of moysture But although through the admixture of dry water may seem to be diminished in Clay yet the water doth alwayes keep its own intrinsecall moysture As also the dry Body keeps likewise its own dryness Because there is not a piercing co-mixture of those in the Root but onely an applying of parts Therefore moysture and dryth are so tied to a Body that they can in no wise be distinguished from it And therefore they are not Relolleum's in manner of heat and cold which are brought in by degrees The whole water indeed vanisheth away into a vapour yet it never assumeth even the least quantity of dryth But if of meal and water pulse or bread be made and at length the nature of a fermentall seed being conceived they do passe into a Stone yet truly those things are coagulated ones which do cover and vail the antient moystness of the water but at length the antient water is fetched again from thence For it was not dryed up nor hath it perished although it were coagulated by the seed of things For I have demonstrated elsewhere mechanically and mathematically that all solid Bodies are onely of water nor that they do admit of the congress or concourse of the other Elements Or that every rangible Body is at length resolved into a simple Elementary water such as falleth down through Rain yea being of equall weight with its former solid Body which onely head destroyeth the compact temperature of the Elements and the intestine and uncessant Warr of qualities in us wherefore it behoves the Schooles diligently to search for altogether other causes of Diseases which I have declared by the unheard of beginnings of naturall Philosophy Therefore it is a part of blockishness to be admired at to have dreamed that moysture cometh to a thing by degrees and likewise that moysture and dryness are slackened in the Elements And so that it is a huge fiction to have introduced these stupid Dreams into the Families of Diseases and Cures and confidently to have built upon these the whole foundation of healing So that throughout the whole ranks of moystures and dryths they have married each other as well by their mutuall kinne as by the bawderies of heat and cold To wit for one onely fault that their Neighbours might mournfully deliver their substance unto their vanities of temperaments Being altogether ignorant that there is no piercing of moyst with dry in nature no radicall union co-mixture or radicall temperature whereby they may divide between each other in the bosom of a Form And I do propose one question at least to all by me resolved elsewhere how many contrary Elements soever they hitherto suppose to conflux into the constitution of Bodies which are believed to be mixt Since indeed they suppose two weighty ones to wit the water and Earth and two light ones And likewise do suppose a penetration of Bodies to be impossible in nature Thirdly also seeing they suppose that Gold without controversie
have taught That qualities are and do operate in the Elements without respect to contrariety But now I descend unto a Systeme or collection of things First of all Oneness or a Unite is not contrary to a Binary or that which is twofold although they go back divided by interchangeable courses Likewise neither are upwards and downwards East and West contraries but oppositions of Scituations which do vary through respects And so that which is above in respect of another thing is beneath neither therefore is the right eare contrary to the left although opposite For neither do I speak of contradictory terms which do only contradict in a Relative respect but have not hostile Properties in things Neither also is my speech concerning privative things Yea neither do I deny contraries in the wrathfull power but I constantly affirm onely this one thing alone That God hath not made contraries in nature which by hostility may kill and set upon each other Or I deny contrary properties in natural things That is I deny positive and reall contraries to be in the order of natural actions For vertue hath it selfe opposite to vice from the disposition of the thing depriving Neither also is a flying creature contrary to a creeping one for the same Silk-worm is both Neither is generation it self contrary to corruption but there is one only flowing of the Seeds from point to point by wearying withdrawing losing or extinguishing the strength or faculties Likewise neither is great contrary too little nor straight too crooked Seeing one and the same thing may sometimes be small sometimes great strait and crooked Let the same judgement be of sweet and bitter hard and soft rough and smooth heavy and light sharp and blunt coagulated and resolved or of white and black For all the powers of things are in themselves absolute neither do they respect others that are diverse from them Because every thing is even as it existeth by it selfe But for that they are opposed by us even as if they did disagree among themselves that is unknown to things and plainly by accident or forreign unto them In the mean time a Hatchet doth not cut wood or a Knife cut bread by reason of contrarieties or hostilities but every property acteth without reflexion on an opposite one that which it is commanded to act It is a foolish thing to will things to be contrary wherein there is no pretence of hatred disagreement victory or superiority And therefore neither is there any intention of contrariety in nature Therefore every thing acteth even as it is commanded to act For within an egg-shell a war of contrariety is not inclosed although the Seed may flow through various successive alterations of dispositions far unlike from each other a Unity and concord of nature is on every side kept which is no where contrary to it self yea it abhorreth every contrary and whatsoever disturbeth unity For indeed there is in the Seed a transchanging of the water existing in the earth of a Garden and so that one onely water passeth into a thousand hot sharp bitter sour and cold Herbs For not because any Seed is contrary to the juice or water in the earth or that another sharp simple doth envy a sharp one that is neighbour to him which doth lesse answer to him in the resembling mark of unity far be it For they proceed indifferently from the vitall Beginning of their own Seeds wherein hostile contraries are not entertained For accidents seeing they are the dispositions of Seeds or of absolute Beings in themselves not of Relative ones and therefore ignorant of contrarieties they follow also the guidance of their own Seeds whose instruments and products they are Therefore the Table of repugnant things admits of contraties onely in the sensitive and wrathfull power of free Agents Secondly It admits of privative things Thirdly Last of all of those things which do contradict in Relative terms Since therefore there are not things absolutely contrary in nature how carelesly it hath hitherto been proceeded in the fictions of Complexions and healings of the sick they shall see whom the mournings of Widows and Orphans shall one day accuse to wit That for one only sluggishnesse they have rashly subscribed to stupid heathenish Doctrines And so that indeed they have not hitherto so much as known the definition of nature which I thus define Nature is that command of God whereby a thing is that which it is and doth what it is commanded to do But that fitly because the Schools reject their own Theorems or Speculations And do seem to set their Speculative Art to sale the which as oft as they please they do not follow For in the Plague and Malignant Feavers they give Triacle and other things not obscurely hot as also medicines causing sweat to drink the indication or shewing token of heat being neglected Also an Erisipelas the most fiery of Apostems as they say they cure by applying of the best Aqua vitae Lastly If nature the Physitianesse of her self can overcome diseases by her own goodnesse but not by a fighting quality Let them shew I pray what kind of cold it may be in a Feverish body which may slay the heat of the same Disease at set hours And moreover if nature be her own Phyfitiannesse what necessity is there I pray that the disease should be bounded by a Crisis or judiciall period where there is no strife nor disease cited heard or admitted for judgement Where the Patient in the Beginning is more able to strive than himself being brought nigh a recovery of his health To wit After many labours pains fastings watchings and evacuations So now he of necessity ought rather to faint for feebleness than to overcome strife and to conquer his enemy by his own power Yea if any strength had been known to have been in the entrance of the Disease plainly it ought to have been judged in the Beginning when as he had a judge and witnesses in his behalfe and an equall cause against the Trayterous disease At least it is an unjust thing and worthy of loud laughter that the Judge himself be a party in the Crisis Let sports depart in serious matters For if Nature be ignorant of contraries as I have shewn surely these could not fight in us and least of all so long as the creature stands in need of help or ease and the disease was present For truly our nature doth alwayes work a univocal or single thing whether it resolveth coagulated things or at length coagulateth resolved things For it doth no otherwise than as Gold-finers powder which giveth a hardnesse to Lead a difficult melting to Quick-silver and Tinne both which qualities it taketh away from Iron Not indeed Because that powder is contrary to it self and to Metalls which it perfecteth in working and adds to these what is wanting to themselves to wit That one only powder doth afford to every one of them their own and far diverse
there was need of a greater moment and necessity And so that neither is the Pulse any more to discuss or puffe away the smoakie Vapours of the venal than of the arterial Bloud not of this more than of that but it meerly especially serveth besides the framing enlightning and continuation of the vital Spirit to prepare the arterial bloud in to an exspiration without a dead Head which thing indeed is altogether requisite to nature Not indeed to chase away smoakie vapours bred by heat although no smoakie vapour doth properly exhale out of moyst Bodies but rather to hinder least by the ordinary endeavour of heat vapours which they undistinctly call smoaks should be bred Or by speaking more properly least vapours departing out of the venal Bloud the other part of the venal Bloud being thickned should cause a totall destruction To which end behold that the finger being pained hot and wounded presently an unwonted Pulse doth bewray it self in that place because the Air is hindred from entrance unto the bloud there chased out of the veins and detained in the lips of the wound And there is a fear least the bloud should grow together and harden into corrupt matter But corrupt matter or Pus being made that fear is diminished because it stops in the deed For before the wound a hidden Pulse straightway a violent one ariseth in the same place even before heat or a presupposed smoakiness were present In like manner also as soon as any night doth invade the inward membranes the Artery doth presently after a wonderfull manner wax hard throughout the whole man and brings forth a hard extended shaken Pulse yea and a Pulse like a Saw But by no meanes as the Schooles think that the Arterie is dried that it may foreshew in the heart and open to a Physitian the quality and nature of the part affected which is ridiculous for nature doth every where intentionally employ it self in the ripenings promoting or removing of Causes but never at all in uttering or setting forth the pathological or sumptomaticall Signes the diagnostical or discernable signes or prognostical or foreshewing signes For these are signes by accident and to be noted and observed by the Physitian besides the intent of nature For if in the progress of nature a thing conringent or happening be drawn into our knowledge that is unto it by accident and wholly forreign which the Stars excepted doth work nothing with an incent of foreshewing But whatsoever it doth that is by a Command which is the natural endowed property thereof The Artery therefore doth not produce a hard Pulse for that it self is made more withered and dry because there should never be any hope after the dryness of the membrane of a softer Pulse as neither of a re-moystning of the part once dried up Old Age it self being dry or withered and without juyce is a witness Neither lastly doth the Pipe or Trumpet of the Artery wax hard for a sign but for the cause end and meanes of another intent to wit if the lesson of the Schooles be true that the Arteries do beat to the end that they may draw Air which refresheth or cooleth the heart Surely if they were alwayes mindful of that their own Doctrine as they ought the Arteries should at least by that hardness of extention more fitly breath-in Air Seeing otherwise a soft Artery doth by attracting fall down it creeping and being watery slides on it self and so that its mouth which in the hardness gapeth in the looseness is closed Therefore a hardned Pulse doth betoken a contracted Artery but not one that is dryed up For if the Pulse should be uttered to this end that the defect and quality of the parts should be bewrayed Surely in an Apoplexie there should be a most soft Pulse because the Brain being wholly a marrowie part shall be concluded to be offended which at the same time is alwayes hard and strong So also the breaking of a Bone should make the hardest Pulse of all And corrupt matter being now made the Pulse should be more great and frequent than while it is making Because the fore-going labour hath brought forth a want of Spirit and the present corrupt matter or putrefaction doth want a speedy discussion Likewise in an enflamed tumour or a Phelgmone the contraction of the Pulse should be more fit or due and far more manifest than the dilating thereof which things seeing in the truth of the deed they are not so the Schools must needs have erred in the ends of the Pulses And moreover the Coat of the Artery at the coming of sweat however it was before harder it again waxeth soft to wit seeing there was a greater necessity of expelling smoakiness than of attracting Air. I say the Artery ought to be both spreading and more hard with a frequent pressing together but not to fall down with a great Pulse more slowly after the manner of waters At length in affects of the Lungs the neighbouring cords being on every side filled with so many veins arteries and gristles the Pulse is loose and watery and in the vomiting of corrupt matter with some kinde of intermission The Lungs I say being opportunely importunate in its own expulsions of smoakiness should want a most hard extended and strong Pulse Whether perhaps is the double Coat of the Artery now besmeared with a future sweat Doth it hitherto wax moist with a strange moisture or else is it void of moisture whether it doth retake its hardness after the hour of sweat and shall almost recompence at pleasure it s own driness by a successive or coursary softness For how full of weakness are the medicinal speculations of the Schools For truly in the aforesaid affects of the Lungs a most loose Artery and watery Pulse do plainly shew unto us that breathing is given for the service of the breast For nature is conscious that there would be no need of a provoked Pulse as neither of an extended Artery when as breathing hath undertaken its office first for the breast and consequently or secondarily for the rest of the body by that very thing is shewn us that the use of breathing was chiefly appointed for another end and over another part than for and over that which the Pulse is As oft therefore as there is need of very much aire for the blood dispersed thorow the Veins to volatize that which threatneth to be hardned so oft doth the Artery strain extend and contract it self but is not dryed But that air is attracted not for the nourishment of the Spirits or the expulsing of smoaky vapours But altogether that as that which is in it self the seperater of the waters from the waters it may adde a spur to the Ferment of the last Digestion that after the performance of its offices it may expell the whole nutritious liquor without any residing remainder of it Therefore the in-breathed air is serviceable to this Ferment not for cooling or refreshment
Some of our Religious Country-men are almost for a whole year so cold from the Foot even to the Belly that they do not feel that they have feet wherefore they should likewise be longer lived than us yea and their Legs should be like young mens when as their whole Breast is crisped with old wrinckles if primogeneal moisture being consumed by heat should afford an unavoidable necessity of death And likewise as well Fishes as those Religious men ought to refuse the daily refreshments of nourishment because scarce any thing doth exspire thorow the pores or if heat should be of the essence of our life certainly the part languishing with continual cold should either die or at least should be changed into a Fish Whence it is plain that heat is onely an adjacent to our life and its concomitant token but not the primary foundation thereof Therefore the Schools may see how unfitly they have hitherto circumscribed the whole constitutive temperature of nature in heat For far be it hereafter so blockishly to phylosophize and not to know that the consuming of moisture by heat which is terminated with in-thickning is one thing and that which is wholly moved forward to transpiration by an extenuating Ferment is by far another For this leaveth no residence behinde it but that a Sandy Stone or Coal But if an increased heat doth sometimes rise up in us so that it is that which doth as it were burn the members gangrene them and like fire make an Eschar or now and then doth eat into the flesh like a Dormouse those indeed are the works of corrosive degenerating lawless Salts that are banished from the vital Common-wealth So also by laxative poysons and Fluxes the whole venal bloud is resolved into putrefaction and the venal bloud being resolve by other poysons into a liquor Sunovie or Gleary water poyson jaundous excrement c. doth flow sorth oft-times most sharp and oft-times raging without a Corrosive For such kind of errors do happen in the life for therefore in a dead carcasse they do cease as they by a proper Blas do put on the animosity of nature corrupted by the Life and the life doth enflame a sword whereby it doth manifoldly hurt it selfe even as sometimes concerning diseases At length whether there be any Animal spirit to be distinguished in the Species from the Vital or whether the disputation thereof be a true brawling about a name I have shewn what a thing is in it self whereunto a name adds nothing or can take away nothing The vital spirit doth climb through the chief Arteries into the head But in the heart or middle of the Brain there is one onely bosom which being beheld above seemeth double but its Vault being lifted upwards it sheweth a onenesse Moreover in this bosom the Arteries do end into a certain wrinckled vessel plainly of another weaving or texture than is the other compaction of Arteries Hereby indeed the vital spirit flowes abroad and exspireth into the bosom of the Brain for the service of the chief faculties to wit of the imagination judgement and memory Hereby also it proceeds to be distributed into the small mouths of the Sinews beginning from the Brain So that if it be to be called Animal as receiving or under-going in the Brain a limitation of the part it doth obtain the properties fit for an appointed function yet it doth not therefore seem diverse from the vital by its matter and efficient cause For truly in the largeness of its own vital light it is capable of all those Properties without the thorow changing of its native essence For that Spirit which is thrust forth unto the tongue doth exercise the tasting but that same doth not tast in the fingers but doth every where receive a particular Character of Organs or Instruments and puts on a particular property The which if thy mind carry thee to distinguish from the vital spirit there shall again be as many essential divisions of the spirit as there are offices and as many as there are services divided by the pluralities of offices In the mean time understand the thing and call it as thou listest For I am not contradictory to the Schools out of a stomackful passion for I being admonished by a superiour Authority ought only to have laid open their errours and to teach things unknown Let they themselves likewise disclose my errours or mistakes with an equal mind surely I shall rejoyce if so be that onely my neighbour do obtain the profit which I wish CHAP. XXVII Heat doth not digest efficiently but only excitatively or by way of stirring up 1. Heat is not the proper instrument of digestion 2. What hath deceived the Schools herein 3. The defences of the Schools 4. The rashness of Paracelsus 5. The anguishes of the Schools 6. They forgot their own Maxim concerning contraries 7. They have constrainedly made heat and the predicament of heat more powerful than fire 8. Digestion and Seething do differ 9. Ferments are angry because they are put after 10. What the univocal action of heat is 11. A fish digesteth without heat 12. There is no place for potential heat in things to be digested 13. An Argument of hunger 14. Another from the unity of specifical heat 15. The third from a Maxim 16. Another Argument 17. Why sowre belching after the savour of burntish ones is good 18. Why one sick of a Fever abhorreth fleshes 19. From the scope of healing 20. The admiring of Paracelsus 21. An error of the same man 22. The digestive sorce of Hens 23. The Authour being as yet a Boy learned the true cause of digestion 24. He knew resolving to be from sowrnesse 25. We grow old only through extream want of Ferments 26. The quality of a fermenting sowrnesse 27. Whence is the dislike of some meats 28. The forces of ferments 29. Mice accuse the Schools of errour 30. Why the Ferment of the stomack is divers from it self 31. A commendation of the Spleen 32. Degrees of heat and cold do vary 33. The errours of the Schools concerning the degrees of Elements 34. The degrees of Chymicall heat 35. The Authour hath made degrees of distinction 36. Moisture and drynesse are not to be considered as qualities 37. Why they do not admit of degrees 38. Hence trifles were introduced by the Antients into the doctrine of the Elements BEcause the whole foundation of nature is thought to hang on the hinge of heat and the Elements mixtures and temperaments are already banished far off therefore to establish the progeny of the Archeus and vital Spirits we must hence following speak of digestions The which because the Schools have enslaved to heat I will shew that heat is not the proper instrument of digestions Indeed the metaphor of digestion hath deceived the Schools to wit it being by a Poetical liberty borrowed from a rustical sense introduced they have made concoction of the same name with digestion And as they knew seething
or boyling to be concoction therefore they translated digestions to boyling and on both sides where they thought heat to be the natural total and one only cause of them For they saw that by seething and roasting very many things waxed tender and were altered Therefore a liberty being taken from artificial things they translated a Kitchin into the amazed transmutations of the bowels and meats not indeed by way of similitude but altogether properly and immediately and by thinking the matter passed over into a belief and then into a true opinion and all the offices and benefits of our nature they translated into heats and temperaments as it were into totall causes Especially indeed because they perceived the bellies of men and four-footed beasts to be actually hot even so that afterwards they laboured more for increasing of heat than for strengthening of digestion For neither have they diligently searched further into it although the event did for the most part deceive their hope Thinking it sufficient that heat might be found as well in boyling as in the natural digestion of the belly from which they slumbered as expecting abundant help to themselves In the mean time they were in doubt when they took notice that meats were not by seethings wholly transchanged into juice by a total metamorphizing For fleshes the vessel being shut they resolved into a consummated Bâ—oth a true portage being pressed out and melted but indeed they observed their errour because fleshy tough and hard remaining threds did abide and never melt by a true transmutation into juice yet through an aptnesse of belief and antiquity of errour they suffered their eyes to be vailed seeking privy shifts and biding places they presently thought themselves safe while that they had implored the divers degrees of heat if not also its particular kinds and general kinds as is a fiery elementary radical correspondent to the element of the stars c. yea and the moments of heats for a help of their excuses So that every degree should almost in every moment have its own constitutive temperature in digesting In which stupidity Paracelsus also involved himself who will have one only bread in so many particular kinds of living creatures to receive a specifical diversity of venal bloud and dungs by reason of the moment of degree alone in heat As if the Latitude of heat could frame a species or vary in the substance But while the Schools did presume to have taken away every knot in the Bulrush they afterwards fell into the spongy differences of digestive heat natural and likewise into that of besides and against nature And at length they ought now and then against their will to fly back unto the sacred Anchor of hidden secrets or properties in digestions So indeed that there should be some certain heat the Authour of digestion as well in diseases as in health Having forgotten in the mean time that as they had feigned one only kind of contraries and both to be said or declared after like manners that there should be one only and a uniform condition of both Wherefore they forgot to devise the like particular kindes and properties of colds to wit of what so it that natural digestive cold besides and against nature should be And likewise they ought to have taught some radical and primogeniall cold So that if radical heat doth answer in proportion to the Element of the Stars and doth differ in the whole general kind from any other luke-warmth also radicall cold ought to differ in as many numbers and faculties from any other cold unlesse through the great want of truth they forsake their own wisdom as barren So indeed although heat not natural should proceed into natural and this into it by an unheard of license of seeds yet they have banished native and feverish heat into distinct species yea also into generall kinds that they might save the effects attributed to digestive heat So that while they would believe that some Birds do digest those things which otherwise do defend them against the fury of the fire they have acknowledged some fire to be more powerfull than fire For a Dog doth digest swallowed bones which fire never dares to convert into Chyle Therefore The diversities of which effects have constrained the Schools to erect heat into the Latitude of a predicament opposite colds being in the mean time neglected When as in the mean time there is only a specifical diversity of heat which is not able to with-draw it from the number of other things For truly whatsoever is cast into the stomack digestion being at length finished is transchanged and far separated from boyling and other coctures after whatsoever degree prepared Because the one only ignorance of ferments hath caused digestions and the remedies of unconcoction to be unknown and a faulty argument to be promoted of not the cause as of the cause where it is not an idle brawling as it were about a name while fermentall effects are ascribed to heat Because the resolving of this question doth change the intentions of healing Therefore I willingly accustome my self to enquire into the proper causes to wit at the meditation whereof profit follows diseases tremble or the strength or faculties are made vigorous Therefore ferments are worthily wrath because they are against their will believed to war under a Relolleum or quality not having a seminal Being For it never belonged to heat to withdraw a thing into a formal transmutation Seeing heat by it self and primarily doth nothing but make hot but by accident it separates watery things from stiff or tough things Which univocal or single action of heat is no wise a digestion being wholly included in transchanging For although digestion doth happen in us heat accompanying it yet that is not heat although it be by accident connexed with heat For therefore in a Fish there is no actual heat neither therefore notwithstanding doth he digest more unprosperously than hot Animals Neither is he after the manner of men badly affected by things cast into him Therefore it is a frivolous thing to flee to potential heat for a fish For in sensible things known by sense the touching only is witnesse and judge but not to flee to dreams For if digestion be to be attributed to heat not actually hot but to a virtual power I now enjoy my wish For otherwise what is that I pray but ignorantly to brawl about heat as such And in the mean time to confesse that there is something besides a sensible heat which is the containing cause of digestion For what can more foolishly be spoken than that potential heat doth actually make hot and that digestion is made for this heatings sake Can a thing in power now act actually But at least in a Dog-like hunger there is a most swift digestion and implacable hunger Therefore a troublesome and offensive heat even then ought to be felt in us hot creatures if digestion be made in us by actual
by a sharp or soure thing and so that a ferment doth inhabit in the stomack which should change all things cast into it although sweet presently into a sowreness Wherefore also all things are sharp which are given to drink to him that wants an appetite as are Oyl of un-ripe Olives Vinegar juice of Citron of Orange Mùstard also Salt and Salt-peter as it hath a spirit in it that causeth hunger and most pleasingly sharp And likewise the Berbery Rasp Cherries Quinces c. In this respect they give content to silk folks that want digestion or concoction Therefore the contemplation of this ferment is so necessary that it is chief in the Government of life and therefore it is to be grieved at that the knowledge thereof is hitherto suppressed in the Schools And although the dryth of the whole body waxeth strong with old age yet we do not wax old unlesse by the penury poverty and extinguishing of some ferments For truly the Stag Crow or Raven Eagle Goose c. in their first yeers of youth are far more dry than we yet they remain alive for some ages yea Youth is voluntarily renewed to the Eagle and Stag. But that digestive ferment is not placed in any kind of sharpness only For neither doth Vinegar or the Broth of Citron leaven or ferment the meal yea neither is leavened meal therefore the ferment of the stomack but this is a sharp hungry stomatical specifical and humane ferment Indeed so specifically distinct throughout all the species of Bruits that it is appropriated to themselves For Mice Dormice and Swine do sooner perish with hunger than they do eat of a Ring-Dove or Wood-Culver But in a man it for the most part aspireth to the largeness of a general kind In the mean time many do abhorr Cheese Wine Milk or do despise other things because they do not digest them And therefore what things soever do strive with our digestion are specifically contrary to the property of that Ferment and do endeavour to oppress the Ferment Therefore the Digestive Ferment is an essential property consisting in a certain vital sharpness or soureness mighty for transmutations and therefore of a specifical property For the Falcon dyeth before he will eat up Bread I have already said elsewhere that if the venal bloud be stilled by whatsoever degree of heat yet it is alwayes thickned waxeth dry and leaves a Coal behind it yet that and the same venal bloud doth wholly exhale by our Ferments with an unsensible transpiration Seeing therefore heat doth alwayes univocally or singly operate it cannot by digesting change the meat into Chyle into bloud into a nourishable liquor and at length banish it by an unsensible efflux without any remainder of it self One only heat cannot I say in a Youth change venal bloud into bones and likewise in the breaking of a bone constrain the venal bloud into a callous matter which in those of ripe yeers and likewise in healthy people doth wholly fly away into exhalations unless besides heat there are other powers knowledges and perceivances the chief effectresses of these things For truly it is proper and natural to heat to consume moisture and to retain the thicker part by drying up For Mice are fed only with meal without drink and do resolve it into their own Juice or Chyle which thing surely is far diverse from the scope of heat Therefore heat is not the Authour of digestion but there is a certain other vitall faculty which doth truly and formally transchange nourishments And that I have designed by the name of Ferments But there are many Ferments in us even as I shall by and by explain concerning digestions But seeing the Stomack doth now and then want a Ferment it is manifest from thence that its own Ferment is not proper to it selfe but that it flowes thither from elsewhere and is inspited And therefore the Spleen doth so rest upon the stomack that Hens have their spleen most unitedly heaped about their stomack and therefore do they also the more strongly digest I do here lay open the blindness of the Schools exceedingly to be admired and bewayled with tears of bloud who have dedicated that Noble bowel of the Spleen for the sink of the worst melancholious excrement by the assistance of which one Bowel we live and do possess life and the golden Kingdoms of Saturn But they have devised that the sharp and black excrement which being now and then seasoned with too much Ferment is rejected by the Spleen by reason of the indisposition of the Bowel is therefore black Choler which things shall hereafter in out Duumvirate and likewise concerning Digestions be made more cleer Moreover before the conclusion of this question we must note that among Physitians there are only four degrees of heat and as many of cold in Simples to wit from the temperate degree even unto Causticks and Escharrers because they treat only of a virtual and potencial quality the which I shall sharply touch in its place elsewhere For therefore the fourth degree of heat is with Physitians in the nature of things and temperate as to the touching But the Phylosophers do measure heat according to the sire and so even to the fire they feign eight degrees whereof the fifth sixth and seaventh they have not yet designed because men are wont to believe their positions They will have the eighth to be only in the Elements and into this they have believed the passage of the Elements to be for they supposed to have proved something in the fire as if Kitchin-fire were an Element and never elsewhere But I have already before demonstrated this whole opinion to be of no value First of all it is ridiculous that they have made the degree of heat in the fire equall to the cold of the water to the moisture of the air and to the dryth of the earth Wherein they being notably deluded neither therefore have they bravely shewn the same degrees to be so violent elsewhere as in fire Indeed in this eighth degree they affirm That the Elements do destroy devoure and consume each other no otherwise than as fire doth consume wood And then he Chymists after the custome of Physitians have made only four degrees in the fire it self taking little care to themselves touching the other Elementary qualities because they had enslaved themselves only to the Art of the fire which degrees indeed they distinguished so that the first is from a luke-warmth under a wandring Latitude even unto the fire of sublunation or cleering up of Oylie spirits But the other from hence even to the sublunation of dry spirits And then a third is even unto an obscure fierynesse But the last is even unto the utmost power of the flame of a Reverbery or striking back But I for a more cleer doctrine do in Chymicals distinguish the degrees that the first may be where the greatest cold is more remiss or slack For I who conceive
the proportion of the dregs and sharpness But red French Wines unless they shall keep their Lee and the which they therefore say is the Mother or Nurse they dissolve their own Tincture and drink it up together with their own sourness and therefore those of two years old become discoloured unless they are exceeding generous For truly the tincture of Wines is a certain separable Body But generous red Wines because they do more slowly wax sour or sharp they are kept for many years But those bearing a little white unless they are severed from the Lee they presently grow weak For the Lee being taken away when their sourish part doth not finde an object which it may dissolve the Wine remains in its own former State Therefore Tartar is no longer Wine or Lee but a neither thing constituted of them both But that the thing is on this wise it plainly appeareth because more Tartar is dissolved in ten ounces of Rain-water than in two hundred ounces of Wine however it be stirred by boyling To wit by reason of the sharpness of the Wine whereby the Tartar was coagulated Lastly six ounces of Salt of Tartar do dissolve seven ounces of crude Tartar because the Lixivium or lye of that Salt doth drink up the sharpness of the Tartar But that Tartar doth consist of the Lee of Wine and not of Wine onely Printers do prove who do prepare the Lee of Wine or Tartar to be a suitable Ink for them And both of these in distilling do belch forth altogether the like Odour and the like Oyl But Tartar is not dissolved in cold water because the Lee of the Wine doth so compass the Salt in the Tartar that cold water cannot the more fully dissolve it by piercing Therefore seeing the Nativity of Tartar doth not elsewhere consist than in winy juyces actually consisting of Spirit of Wine and lightly waxing soure by reason of the flight of the Spirit inward Let the Schools of Paracelsus from hence know how badly the Speculation of Tartar doth suit even with those Diseases for whose sake it was invented For truly our Stone is by no meanes solved in boyling waters because Tartar is rather to be reckoned among the number of Salts or juyces coagulated with Salt than among Stones CHAP. XXXI The rash invention of Tartar in Diseases 1. No Disease doth arise from Tartar 2. Galen is unsavoury about the matter of the Disease of the Stone 3. Galen was often deceived herein 4. He thought the Stone to be hardened in us by the Element of fire in the middle of the Vrine 5. Some ignorances of the same man 6. A neutral Judge is called for 7. The drowsiness of the Humorists unexcusable 8. An explaining of the thing granted 9. Paracelsus came nearer unto the nature of Stones 10. But he also slid in stumbling 11. Paracelsus recanteth 12. His rashness brake forth from the ambition of a Monarchy 13. Blockishness is the Companion of ambition 14. The nodding unconstancie of Paracelsus 15. He was deceived by the Metaphor of a Microcosme or little World 16. His hidden boasting 17. The like boldness of Aristotle 18. That the Metaphor of a Microcosme differs from the truth 19. Paracelsus hath not sufficiently trusted to his invention of Tartar 20. Two ignorances of the same man are demonstrated 21. The Rise of hereditary Diseases 22. The Schools have erred in both extreams 23. The Phylosophy of Paracelsus concerning Tartar is rustical or rude 24. His errour is proved 25. The incongruities of Paracelsus 26. Paracelsus was ignorant of a formal transmutation of things 27. He blockishly proceeds SEEING that Tartar hath first entred into Medicine for the consideration of the Stone I have finished a Treatise touching the Disease of the Stone and I have shewen in print that Tartar is a stranger unto the nature of the Disease of the Stone Now at length I will make manifest that plainly no Disease doth arise from Tartar but that the meditation thereof in Diseases is vain Galen had known a man to be grieved with Stones and Sands in his Reins and Bladder but he knew not to what cause he might ascribe so great a hardness in us at length I found that not any thing can be condensed or co-thickned except one onely excrement which I call muck or snivel but he names it Phlegm or a waterishness And when he discerned the Stone to grow in the remote and so in the ultimate Coasts of utterance and did think that nothing had access thither besides his own humours he boldly affirmed that the same thing doth happen in the Urine and therefore that the Stone cannot otherwise be constituted than from a watery Phlegm VVhich thing because he marked with the Element of water and watery properties therefore that it ought to grow together at the water-pipes in us The Invention smiled on him especially because a Stone being brought into the Bladder there was a continual voyding of muck together with Urine Therefore he thought that our fire because he believed it to be one of the four Elements which do concur unto the constitution of us was necessary for the hardening of the matter of the Stone and that the Phlegm should dry up even in the middle of the waters seeing he knew no other operators in nature besides heat and cold For he knew not that all things did at sometime arise out of nothing now at length that from a necessitated continuation in nature all things afterwards should flow forth from a certain Genealogy of Seeds but not that from a casual conflux of Elements and by the virtue of supervening heat and cold they are so fitly adorned with vital powers Neither considered he that those first qualities at the most and utmost could not generate or contribute any thing unto a new Being but onely occasionally to promote or fore-flow the vital dispositions of seeds in their own simplicity but not as the Elements should be combined Surely it grieveth me for his pains and that all posterity of sick folks doth hitherto pay the punishment of its own credulity because he never deservedly measured or of himself once desired the Causes of the Disease of the Stone as otherwise he ought before he erected a method of healing So his Soul is made the Chamber-maid of his own desires and he feigneth plausible reasons to himself according to the appetite of disturbance which removed it from its place to a consent of himself Therefore a strange Judge is called unto the Reasons found out by us least being credulous we worship our own fictions and love them as it were Sons and pledge for the same against equity as Parents Therefore let the fire the sieve of Reasons be that Judge But the art of the fire was not yet known in Galens time but it was hidden among privy Counsellers under an Oath in the silence of Pythagoras For Galen never law even the distillation of Roses Therefore in so great a want of knowledge his
wheresoever the beginning of conceptions is felt But those are called forces which are not in our power because they are the first conceits of the sensitive soul as yet out of order and not yet diligently examined by the command of the minde But that which I write touching the seat of the sensitive soul I understand also for the immortal minde For truly the minde hath not a subject more near and like to it self wherein it may be entertained than that vital light which is called the sensitive soul wherein indeed the minde is involved and tied by the bond of life by the Command of God But the sensitive soul perishing through the annihilating of it self the minde cannot any longer subsist in the Body and therefore it hastens to the Being of Beings that it may passe unto places appointed for it Therefore the radical Bride-bed of the sensitive soul is in the vital Archeus of the stomach and it stands and remains there for the whole life-time Not indeed that the sensitive soul is entertained in the stomach as it were in a Sack Skin membrane pot prison little Cell or bark neither is it comprehended in that seat in manner of Bodies enclosed within a purse but after an irregular manner it is centrally in a point and as it were in the very undividable middle of one membranous thickness And it is in a place nevertheless not plainly locally But because every Soul is a light given by the Father of Lights and Creator of things but I have proved elsewhere that lights are immediately in place and mediately in a placed Air So also the sensitive Soul is in a place or seat whereof I write at this present But the minde seeing it is a lightsome substance it pierceth a created light which is the sensitive soul and this likewise pierceth the minde and blunts it with its contagion of the corruption of Adam of which in the Book of long life concerning the entrance of death into man Therefore the frail mortal sensitive soul is a meer vital light given by the Father of Lights neither is it declarable after another manner or word seeing that in the whole World it hath not its like besides the light of a Candle the which because it burns may be compared to a spark yet onely by an analogical and much unlike similitude and as it were by the more outward husk Therefore indeed that sensitive soul although it be locally present and be entertained in a place yet it is not comprehended in a place otherwise than as the flame of a Candle is kindled in an exhalation and the light in that flame is as it were life in the aforesaid soul yet vital lights are never parching but are separated by as many diversities as there are differences of souls And from thence is God called by S. James the Father of Lights Therefore the heat of things soulified is not of the Fountain-light of the soul but a heating light of the vital life and so it is the product of life but not the life it self And therefore also it is emulous of a Sunny light even as in a Fish the vital light is actually cold because it is of the nature of the Moon And for that cause God made onely two and sufficient lights for the life of sublunary things yet the light of which light or the souls themselves are the subjects of inherency And they are altogether neither Creatures between a substance and an accident because of the Country of the intelligible world Therefore in the sensitive soul for neither ever elsewhere in frail things as it were a spiritual light made by the Father of Lights is the Immortal minde conjoyned and the which also by the hand of the Almighty every where present or by an Angel is co-knit unto the sensitive soul by the bond of life that is of a vital light which is an unseparable property of the aforesaid light But the immortal minde it self is a clear or lightsome incorporeal substance immediately shewing forth the Image or likeness of its God because it hath received the same engraven on it in creating or in the very instant of enlivening or quickning For both souls are created at once and conjoyned by God who will never attribute his own Honour of Creator unto any Creature But before the fall of Adam there was not a sensitive soul in man but by what meanes or after what manner that together with death hath descended at once into humane nature that shall be shewed in its own place At least by the coming of the sensitive soul death hath entred and the corruption of our whole nature and the Majesty and Integrity of our former nature was obliterated or blotted out For truly while the minde did immediately perform the offices of life neither was the sensitive soul as yet present immortality was also present neither had beast-like darkness occupied the understanding And so man indeed suffered Ship-wrack in his own nature and that an unrestorable one but by the new birth under the calamities of tribulations maâ—â—s exalted in a far more excellent manner while from the image of God he is taken as adopted for his Son Furthermore it is altogether necessary that every motion of the first force and of the first conception of the soul doth happen in the chamber of the soul which thing although it be chiefly felt about the Orifice of the stomach and God be admirable in his works because indeed it hath well pleased him to dispose such admirable powers in the membranes of the stomach womb and skins that cover the Brain because they do bear before them as it were a certain image of a Common-wealth yet I have found the Spleen readily to serve for the ferment of the stomach and for the Sun Cocter and Directer thereof Therefore I have decreed to call the conspiracy of both Bowels the Duumvirate or Sheriff-dome For although the digestive ferment and the like aids may seem to shew forth a Family-service of servants yet the service of houshold-servants in vitals as it contains a power and strength so also it promiseth dignity and authority So that as in the stomach there are feelings faintings of the whole body and most sensible manifest and open priviledges of coctions neverthelesse the vital breathing-hole causing the digestions of so manifold arteries and so mightily of the stomach hath commanded that without a duality disagreement or powerful preferrence there ought to be made one Family-administration of both Bowels indeed by divers offices into one conspiring scope although both do singularly attend on their own work therefore also separated in place Truly there is one onely endeavour of the Duumvirate and agreeing and set harmony of intention Therefore the neighbouring Spleen doth lay on the stomack without as if it would nourish the same by a lively co-weaving of arteries Not indeed that the arteries do give all force or virtue to the Spleen but they have themselves as
that the period of motions and of those unfoldings and the variety of Agents is therefore to be attributed to a re-acting of the Patients To wit even as while an external luke-warmth bringing up Eggs unto a Chick for neither of them doth re-suffer reciprocally For neither doth the vital Spirit in an Egg any way re-suffer any thing by the luke-warmth as neither that luke-warmth by the vital Spirit of the Egg. Hitherto tendeth that which I have proved before To wit that altering things do not act by contrariety Therefore their Patients do not fight in defending themselves nor re-act by contrariety That maxim also is false That every Agent doth of necessity act in an instant and that its action is retarded or fore-slowed onely by a resistance and re-acting of the Patient Because in all particular seeds their own and certain period of continuances and dispositions is essentially included For the falshood of that maxim hath flowed from hence that the Schools being deluded by Aristotle have thought that the fire is to be compared unto other Agents the which when they saw to be any where almost in a moment they believed that the same thing was likewise to be wrested unto other Agents Through occasion whereof I must now speak of irregular and differently inclined Agents In the first place it is manifest that the fire doth suffer or undergoe nothing at all by the re-acting of a combustible object For otherwise a small quantity of fire should be sufficient for the burning of the whole Universe if it were capable of burning which could not be done if the combustible matter should re-act even but never so little Truly a River suffers nothing if a staffe shall swim on the same and as yet lesse doth the fire suffer if it burn Saguntum or if Gun-powder be fired In Nature also no seminal Beginning suffereth by the matter into which it works Because it disposeth of the same without re-acting even as it hath begun plainly to appear in denied contraries Moreover that the falshood of the aforesaid maxim may be the more beheld take notice that all particular seeds have their own periods and moments appointed by the Creator wherein they do promote their course unto a ripeness For Conies Dogs Birds Men Horses Elephants do nourish within perfect and bring forth their own Young at their appointed termes of time Not indeed that the seminal matter in a man is rawer colder and more rebellious than the seed of a Cat But God hath set the bounds of every one of them according to his own good pleasure the reason whereof to enquire into belongs not unto mans judgement For if the disposition of a seminal matter be of a longer labour that proceeds not by reason of its resistance or strugling strength as neither from the weakness wearisomness idleness or disturbance of passions of the Agent For truly every Being in Nature operates without labour and passion and therefore without cessation rest intermittency and trouble Seeing indeed all particular things are made by reason of the communicating of a Ferment and limitation of appointment For all particular things do purely operate by a reflexion of their own appointment according to the ordaining will of their Creator For so Christians were to philosophize But in local motion motive virtues and so also in the exercise of Science Mathematical the maxims of Aristotle are indeed serviceable the which by a violent Command and unfitly the Schools have introduced into nature For if moyst or wet Wood be not so obediently burnt up as dry that doth not therefore come to passe through a re-acting of the wood or with a suffering of the fire For although the wood should cease from all combustion the fire should not therefore suffer more by the wood than by Gold which is not to be burnt yea if in wet wood as such there should be a certain operative resistance to wit a re-acting surely water should also longer and more strongly resist fire than the Rosin of Wood or of a coal But the consequence is false For the water doth most swiftly and first of all fly away out of wet Wood before the fire enflames the Rosin of the Wood Therefore the slowness in wet Wood doth not argue a re-action of the matter or strength of the suffering Wood But the fire follows its own laws of appointments whereby it separates first the more volatile things and next in order things lesse swift of flight For so although the fire be subdued by wet Rosin which by it self otherwise had presently been in a flame with the same fire yet by reason of the aforesaid lawes it patiently expects the torture of the fire and a departure of that water Iron also being placed between stubble and fire hinders indeed the enflaming or burning up of the stubble but there is not therefore any re-action of the Iron on the fire or suffering of the fire by the Iron which thing surely hath not been narrowly enough searched into by the Schools For although these their maxims have place in corporeal actions wherein the Agent of necessity cherisheth and toucheth its own object and thus far inspireth its own virtue into the same yet that is altogether impertinent in Agents which do act on things placed under them which are far separated in place For truly besides the actions of the Heavens which are carried by influence in-beaming and motion without the touching of an Agent but by a Blas onely do disperse the Seminaries of their own virtues Sublunary things are not properly deprived of a Blas Because fermental Odours do produce most active and seminal effects and do transchange in nature their object by their own perfume and do draw it after them into their protection Likewise also a radial or beaming action doth concur into nature For the Elks hoof is thus said by its touching to preserve the heart and head from danger yet the Seat of the evil is not in the finger as neither is there a passing from bound to bound Neither is the Hoof therefore diminished of its strength by acting but rather is confirmed as also the Load-stone is comforted by the communication of Iron For a clear sign that an Agent suffers not a whit by reaction in seminal or beaming actions and by consequence that neither doth the Patient therefore re-act Therefore Medicines against the pain of the Head or Amulets or preserving Pomanders have a Blas whereby they do constrain objects to obey them like the Heavens and they act onely by their own and not on a strange and nearer object And they draw out their deserts or worthy virtues without all corporal eflux motion passion or weakening I know indeed that the Schools do not bear these things but that they refer these effects into vapours lifted up from the womb or the least toe because they are such who have sunk themselves in the Clay of a dreggy Minerva or wit But if a Maid which hath the
the Headach ariseth from over-eating or drinking 4. Paine ariseth from a contraction of the Coats of the Brain without a Vapour 15. A Position for the Duumvirate 16. The Conclusion THe Heathen Poet doth morally yet from a homely judgement call Sleep the Image of Frozen Death But I seeing that I know Sleep to be a natural power dismissed from the principality of the Stomack into the Brain and to be committed to the charge of the Power of Government that it might be put in execution being a Christian do believe that God alwaies to be sanctified When he intended to frame Woman of the rib he cast a Sleep upon Adam Not indeed as a privative Being but as an actual real faculty and meerly positive And therefore that the Power of Sleeping is vital necessary and consequently natural For I may not believe that God made Death in man or the image thereof Neither was it meet that the image of Death should go before sin and the occasion of Death The Schools indeed teach that Sleep is caused by vapours lifted up out of the Stomack into the Brain stopping or intercepting the passages of the Senses Motion Speech Judgement c. which things surely I being as yet a young man judged to be ridiculous For in very deed so a disease had been before sin because sleep should be a disease to wit there had been a flatulent and vapoury Palsie and Temporary madness both in a body then as yet not capable of suffering and in a life immortal It s a shamefull thing therefore that the blockishness of Paganisme should as yet be seriously taught in the Schools especially by Christians better instructed Yea the Schools do erre in their own position proposed For those that sleep do move and turn themselves up and down some do walls about do feel the stings of a gnat or flie so as that they do thereby awake others also do speak and oft-times aptly answer At length as the Schools do badly accord with themselves while they confound sleep and waking Catarrhs with the same root causes and manner of making so I after that the toyes of a Catarrhe were hissed our rejected also the assigned causes of sleep as vain fables Last of all the Schools also lay hands on themselves while they teach that from Opiates things as they say most cold and rather things powerfully restraining every evapouration at least wise they are feigned to restrain c. Vapours for Catarrhs more than Coriander from their own nature Sleep the Drowsie evil yea and death are most readily brought on a man and so much the more speedily by how much the Opiate shall be of a more gradual cold in quality and quantity And that by how much the more of sincere Opium shall be taken and the more inward cooling made by so much the more plentiful and more continued vapours should be brought from the stomack into the head also although the mouth of the stomack be shut But surely it is a stupid devise that sleep should be made by cold Neither is it to be understood how one onely grain of Opium can cause a sufficiency of cold in the Stomack and had actually driven a sufficient quantity of vapours into the Head How likewise it shall belong to cold to stir up vapours rather than to restrain them But these things we may suppose to be granted by the rule of falsehood And that Sleepifying vapours are derived upwards from the meats also that the Sinews the authours of the senses and motions are stopped by these vapours But I would they had first considered that the roots or first extremities of the Sinews are continual to the Brain and thornie marrow and that the other extremities or outmost ends of the Sinews do end into the more outward muscles or into the very Organs of the Senses and so that therefore sleepie vapours first ought materially to pierce and plainly to be imbibed into the substance of the brain and thornie marrow and to obstruct both before that they should according to the position of the Schools cause sleep And which way should these vapours incline from the Stomack and pierce thorow the whole Substance of the Brain by what meanes should they reach even unto the very innermost and altogether continued root of the Sinews it self which is unseperably connexed to the Brain In the next place how could he that is awakened at the will of the awakener be so speedily loosed and freed from those impediments Or what may detain those vapours there for so many hours without their co-binding or co-thickning into water for truly those vapours being once constrained a passage should lay open to the Spirits which should presently shake of the sleep Or what at length may hinder that new vapours should not continually make towards the same beginnings of the Sinews and being there Coagulated should not bring forth of necessity daily Catarrhes or rheums and undoubted palseys Surely if an Anatomist or a man in his right mind doth but once at least rudely contemplate of these things he ought of necessity to admire with amazement at these fables of heathens especially because they have no affinity or connexion with the principles of our constitution It also happens that some one is many times awakened in one only night that he ariseth and goes to sleep again and so almost at his pleasure there should be so many obstructions of the Sinews in one night yea in one hour I passe by in the mean time that sleep is stirred up an Opiate being as yet materially within the Stomack even as unvoluntary experience hath often taught Therefore either so small a quantity and onely the Odour of the Opium ought to fume up into the Brain or it self being there detained should send away sleepy Vapours its Vicars But not the first because before that the Opium could strike the sense of Tasting or Smelling the Opium should be continually percieved in the Tongue Palate Nostrills and Jawes and that before Sleep which is not done Moreover the Sulphur of Vitriol which is an exceeding Sleepifier seeing it is fixed cannot shake its Vapours into the Head as neither dismisse from it its Vicary partakers Truly I conjecture that the Greek Authors of Sleep or those that were riotous when they perceived that themselves being drunk were given to Sleep judged that they were to derive all Sleep from no other thing neither that Sleep could any longer creep on us not so much as late in the Morning and the Meats being now digested but only from Meat and Drink I find also in the Schools the material causes of Giddiness of the Head not a whit to differ from the causes of natural Sleep All which things I have elsewhere concerning Rheums proved to be meer ignorances and unsavoury consents having arisen from a sluggishness of diligent searching and a readiness of subscribing But I pray what is that which is so cold in Opium which causeth Sleep against my
now what he would in times past it is not our part to aske of God a reason of his own will therefore it is a foolish Argument God doth not now do what he did in times past therefore he cannot do it The Hebrew people was a small people out of whom Christ ought to arise and that people were on every side beset with Enemies and the which unless they had been supported with the stretched-out Arme of God and as it were by a continual miracle they being presently brought to nothing had yielded as a prey to the Conqueror from whence notwithstanding it was decreed that the Messias should arise But the condition and Law of Christians is far otherwise For the Israelitish people in the hardness of their hearts did measure the grace or favour of God by the abounding of Wealth Of-spring Fruitfulness of Fruits and their peaceable Possession But we have known that offences should be necessary in the Church Tribulations also how great soever yet not worthy to be reckoned with the Expectations of the Age to come And likewise it hath so pleased God that for unjustice Kingdoms are translated from Nation to Nation But that I may shew that there is the same God of the Christians which there was in times past to the Hebrews I must not indeed run back unto the written Chronicles with which Atheists the Bibles themselves are of no credit the Argument of Atheists is to be overthrown Seeing their understanding admits not of that which is not introduced outwardly by the Senses Their whole Faith is from a knowledge but that knowledge is founded in a present Sensibility a fore-past Observation renouncing of Histories and succession of Ages for otherwise there ought to be no less Authority of sacred than of profane Writers Yea all the knowledge of Atheists descends to the Eyes to Sight Numbers Lines Figures Tones or Sounds Weights Motions Smells Touchings Handlings and Tasts that is it wholly depends on a brutal Beginning and they are unapt to understand those things which do exceed sense For that is the cause why they exclude themselves from the intelligible world and do kick against the corner Stone But at leastwise they confess that they do see and know those things which they are ignorant of which thing happens in the Speculations of the Planets But I wish that Atheists may measure the compass of the World I say the real distance of Saturn from us for they shall confess for that very cause even against their wills the distance of so many thousand Miles which their understanding it self will contradict by seen dimensions or they shall of necessity incline themselves to confess that a three-fold circuite of Saturne in respect of his own Diameter could not have arisen from himself or of his own accord but rather that there is some Author of these of infinite power wisdome greatness and so also of Duration c. But if the Atheist doth think that the Orbs of so incomprehensible greatness and so regular a constancy of successive changes have been thus of their own accord from everlasting at least wise the perpetuity of that infinite Eternity ought to follow a certain Law Order and ordained Government which did require a certain presiding or overseeing or ruling Being everlasting in continuance great and powerful Most miserable therefore are they who by an utter denial of all things do exclude Faith and the rewards of Faith For let us consider the Circle of the Earth to be cloathed with waters or that place without Earth and water to wit that all things do of their very own forceable Inclination fall towards their Center So that if two men were there to wit from East and West these should touch each other with their Feet and should look upwards with their head even as we and the Antipodes at this day This I say the Atheist doth believe although sense hath not suggested it unto him For weighty bodies do teach indeed their own ready Inclination of falling downwards but that the Heaven is on every side aboue in respect of one Center and that such is the property of this Center that there is not another like unto it neither yet hath the Atheist seen that property but nevertheless he believes it yea whatsoever he may at any time frame he alwayes finds the contrary and without that property of a Center he believes I say that same one only natural property in the universal Center but he never beholds or looks into the working cause thereof or that which is like it in the least and he had rather through unbelief exclude it from himself But at least if there be not a God nor he every where present and giving all things to all it should be all one if all things were confounded should fall upwards or downwards whether weighty Bodies did rush downwards or upwards whether Plants and Beasts did perish or not Therefore the constancy of order perseverance of the Species or particular kinds do of necessity require some primitive Fountainous Being from whence they began are and do propagate by a continual thred and the which doth govern all things at his own pleasure or by his own beck and gives a constancy and Succession of Continuation least all things should go to ruine and be confusedly Co-mingled Indeed he beares a universal care and keeps things in their essence or being In the next place let the Atheist consider the flowing and ebbing of the Water To wit that no water doth ascend of its own accord yet that the water of the Sea doth alwayes ascend as well in the flowing as ebbing of the Sea He believes this because he sees it but the cause thereof he believes not because he seeth it not neither hath the knowledge thereof entred by sense because it is that which contradicteth his senses But he at least ought to believe that those things do happen by a cause although he hath not known the same by which notwithstanding every thing hath drawn such a property For although all particular kinds should have this kind of power of seeds and gifts from everlasting yet nevertheless there is not a certain universal property in the Universe which may have respect unto all particular things that they may be ordained and which may know all particular things newly risen and to arise unless it be out of and besides the nature of all particular things Otherwise there should be innumerable Deities as there were in times past and moreover there should be continual Divisions and Dissolutions of the species or particular kinds For the Atheist denies to believe what things he knows not by sense he sees indeed the water to be moist but he knows not what that is which is moist in the water or why it is moist Therefore he believes that which he doth not know and that which he doth not pierce that is as the Beast doth for neither shall Humane knowledge ever raise him up
a sleeping Asthma by reason of the difficulties caused in the parts busied in Meditating So also Giddinesses of the Head which Survive from Yester-daies Gluttony or Drunkenness or from the Tossing of the Sea are taken away by Vomiting for not because those filths contain a whirling in them but because they do trouble or hinder the Duumvirate in the Mouth of the Stomack Now I will Speak of the man of sixty years old For this man in the beginning never suffered a disturbance of breathing but in an ascending and swift Motion And else he hath an open free breathing and that according to his wish Wherefore he wants the Asthma of a Proper Name For although he hath tender Lungs and those impatient of cold and through colds fruitful in much excrement yet in respect of these he undergoes rather a Cough than an Asthma But why is his breathing straightned in time of Motion Is it from a matterâ— Imposthume or a corrupt swelling enclosed within But it is manifest that not from either of these two because being out of Motion he feels neither pain in his Brest neither doth he draw constrained air in rest That which is to be noted in him is a Quartane making its residence in his Spleen of a Child and sometimes stirring up his swoonings in so tender a health and Commotion of his Lungs the which sleep failing doth not bear the labour of Cogitations but it frameth Snorting Phlegms for it cleerly appeareth what I have elsewhere said that the Lungs in man is a Member which first dieth and the rather in this man who was given to Spittings from his Youth What if the Lungs do breath air into the Breast through a thousand Pores or little Holes and 50 of the same are stopped up shall not spitting out by reaching occasionaily increase in cold Seasons But at least wise the doubt is not solued why he walking with a swift pace up a steep place or in a plain doth not equally pant for Breath as in climbing with a slow step or why his hear then beateth But the Schools have added a ready cause To wit because every Motion doth of its own nature stir up Smoaks and therefore the more Smoakinesses do accompany the greater Motion for expelling whereof a more swift Breathing is required but they say nothing For truly besides the supposition of a false-hood the same doubt doth as yet remain as before To wit why a swift motion in a plain and a swifter together with a jogging of the whole Body in descending doth not stir up so many Smoaks as a slow motion in climbing a steep or hilly street by degrees doth For the trouble of slow ascent is not of the Bowels or Lungs but of the Shanks or Legs shall therefore those plenty of Smoakinesses be made in the Muscles of the Legs which may provoke the Breast to pant for Breath and the Heart to beat And shall Smoaks find a way from the Superficies to the Center which nature should rather expel by the pores than to call back inwards And then let them explain what they understand by the Etymology of Smoaks For their Aristotle reckons up only 〈◊〉 to wit a moist one which he calls a waâ—ery vapour and a dry or oylicone which he names an exhalation Also Chymistry adde a third unknown to the 〈…〉 a body it self doth ascend from things to knit unto it in manner of a Smoak and 〈…〉 it self to the Ribs or sides of Vessels it is called a Sublimate so Sulphur Arsâ—â—â—ck Camphour Mercury the fire-stone Zinck Sal Armoniac c. do afford their own vapours undistinct from their auntient Body I in the next place have adjoyned a forth Smoakiness To wit while a solide Body by virtue of a ferment is disposed into a flatus or windy blast or wild Gas But seeing the Peripateticks have acknowledged only the two former the Galenick Schools have also undistinctly understood them both by the name of Smoakinesses But first of all that waterish vapours cannot be admitted I do even from hence collect To wit because then Sweats flowing forth more plentifully in Summer also the Body being quiet they should of necessity more vex this Aâ—ehmatical man even than an ascending upwards in a more cold Air which is false But if therefore under the name of Smoakiness they do understand an exhalation It is certain in the first place that those are not stirred up unless the watery ones shall first fail seeing that doth not so come to pass in living Persons of necessity also for want of a Smoakiness the Schools do not understand themselves in their aforesaid Reason as neither in either Columne of the Pulses demonstrated in the Chapter of the Blas of the pulses Neither at length that by the name of Smoaks both vapours together are understood it is manifest For if by a like degree of heat dry things with moist cannot equally climbe or be seperated from their whole entire bodies it follows that the Smoaks assigned are not to be granted nor are they for the cause But go to let impossible and unnamed Smoakinesses be supposed which they will have to breath forth out of us by an unsensible transpiration yet they are not yet examined whether they war under the vapours or indeed of exhalations Because the Schools have been ignorant that the whole blood in us is blown away by a far different help than that of heat But at least wise by the rule of false-hood let us examine where those supposed Smoaks are stirred up by an ascending upward that a moderate one which else in a more swift going are quiet For are they stirred up in the Lungs themselves So that they may spur up these unto the necessities of passing away But the Lungs are never moved whether the Legs do ascend or descend And the Lungs are otherwise supposed to breath freely in the aforesaid old man what therefore doth ascending touch the Lungs that they may Belch forth the more plentiful Smoakinesses But if Smoaks are stirred up in the Legs as labouring the more strongly why at least wise after feeding is ascending more difficult as to the Breath than with a fasting Stomack Do therefore the Schools understand the Smoakinesses of Meats But why shall those molest the Legs after meat But if the more plentiful number of Smoaks are reckoned to be made in the Heart or the Shop-bowells yet this at least is to confound the Spirit of Life with a Smoak a Bowel with an emunctory to have held the reason alleadged in the Chapter of the Blas of man of no esteem But if therefore Smoaks are judged to be the Smells vapours arising from meats but they will have them to be brought in a straight line to the Head so to bring forth Catarrhs at leastwise they are in no wise brought into the Heart For neither is it a meet thing but it is a new invention that the heart should be provoked with the Smells of
thirst remaining safe For that thirst doth proceed as a forraign excrement doth cause the nourishable juice of the stomack to melt For truly while I describe my feelings or perceivances I am not so much besides my self as that I shall deny the excess of an external heat to burn and cause a wound or ulcer or that cold excelling doth mortifie as if it did burn But in the Dream proposed I onely perceived them as they are serviceable to the speculation of healing Therefore the examples of excessive heat and cold are like a sword but not to be referred among the occasional and internal causes of diseases to be considered by a Physitian If indeed according to the speculations of Medicine health is expected by the removal of those wherefore the speculation of external and antecedent Causes is not curative but onely now and then significative and directive For a wound being once inflicted although the sword be taken away the wound is not healed neither is the fire to be taken from the hearth although it hath at sometime burnt or scorched some-body in the same place For truly the causes of Diseases are inward as they are connexed occasions therefore the consideration and removal of those is truly medicinal But the Schools when they saw the fire to burn its objects likewise also cold to mortifie and destroy and so the body of man by those external qualities excelling to be diversly disturbed they for that cause thought that Effects which should have heat adjoyned unto them were raised up by fire and in this respect that in Feavers two Elements did strive in us whereof the Water should alwaies obtain the former part of the victory but the Fire the latter part thereof to wit that the Fire did cause Erisipelas's the Prune or burning coal the accute or Persian fire the burning Feaver c. That it did likewise harden by drying or exsiccation of Schirrus's Stones Bones and Knots They have also decreed Remedies beseeming such rules by contrarieties not knowing after what sort the spirit of life may stir up heats and colds without fire or icy cold because neither from the Elements of our body or from feigned humours But they have on both sides neglected the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or violent assailant of Hippocrates Even as I have sometime by one example of a thorn thrust into the finger demonstrated wherein the Heat Pain Inflamation Feaver do not efficiently proceed from the fire of the thorn but because the sensitive Spirit doth grievously bear the forreign thorn So indeed heat and cold are accidents impertinent to the nature of a Feaver even as in the Liver are felt its heats because in the same place there are its thorns and the heat is not the cause but the effect of the thorn And therefore the alterations which do happen in the vital Family-admistration and do cease in dead carcases do not depend on the fire or icyness of the body or humours but on the Beginnings of life Yea if the Schools had touched at the matter as it is they had found that natural artificial Baths c. do not dry and burn us up but rather moisten us unless their heats are inordinate and of daily continuance yea neither then indeed otherwise than because more is consumed than is received doth the body accidentally wither At length I presently after the first qualities perceived the theevish adulteries of Merchants wherewith they load defile estrange and substitutively dissemble foreign Medicines or Drugs who have no need of my Doctrine because they are such as are not moved with the fear of Hell I presently after perceived two distinct Savours at least of things if not sometimes three or four one to wit whereby things are sharp bitter salt c. but the other which is called specifical being appropriated to the seed The first therefore I perceived to be the dignities and offices of Salts not indeed of Salts separated from the three first things or as they say drawn from corporeal Beginnings but of Salts glistening in their composed body But the other of the savours I perceived to be the seminal nature of Odours performing or at least unfolding the office of Forms in concrete bodies for Salts as being most sensible do first offer themselves to the taste whereunto therefore Hippocrates hath attributed the knowledges of diseases to wit bitter salt sharp and brackish pointing forth diseases But heats and colds he rather understood to be subsequent affects or passions than diseases But I do ascribe their judgement to the taste by reason of the aforesaid tastable qualities wherein for the most part a more profound power or faculty sits and containing the seminal and efficient cause But not that therefore the judgement concerning diseases doth belong to the tongue and the pallate but I name it the taste by reason of the tastable qualities Otherwise it is the feeling wherewithal the Instruments are strongly endowed whose sensitive force by an approximation of touching makes the signs of friendship or enmity about the hidden thing perceiveable After this manner therefore I perceived that it is the offices of the salts exceeding in force which do unfold the vertues of the subordinate forms of their concrete body and carry them unto the Archeus as it were their object whereon they act Therefore I perceived that Cures as well by Mediciues as by Nature are made by an appeasing of the disturbed Archeus and the removal of the seminal and diseasie character produced by the Archeus This indeed I have perceived to be the nearest safest and highest or chiefest curing But that which succeedeth by the help of secrets is busied about the taking away of the product And therefore I have perceived that Arcanum's do operate as Salts Indeed such cures do happen by removing of that which is hurtfull and by adding that which is defectuous for else those things which do hinder increases or appropriations have rather a regard unto prevention than unto curing it self but hurtfull things are taken away by resolving cleansing exhaling or expelling which properties are agreeable unto Salts But the removals of that which is hurtfull are not duly wrought by poisonous melting and putrifactive things as neither by the withdrawings of the venal blood and life But the adding of that which is deficient I have perceived not to be done by a proper means and therefore that we go back or decline by little and little through great want of the Tree of Life the which be it spoken of the vital faculties but not of the want of the venal blood which is restored by the kitchins But I have perceived that Nature doth voluntarily rise again and repair some of her defects if she shall be made to sit up after her prostrating To which end also balsamical and tinging things do help I perceived also that in the stomack is bred a soure salt partly volatile and partly fixed But that both are afterwards changed by their
past dissolved Gold yet I less profited by its potable juyce than by the decoction of any Simple But afterwards I could dissolve Gold and mock it with the face of Butter Rosin and Vitriol But I no where found the virtues attributed to Gold because it was also so reluctant to our ferments I perceived therefore that Gold without its own proper corrosive is dead dead I say unless it be radically pierced by its own corrosive Not indeed that it doth then resemble the Nature of the Sun and doth add any thing unto its vital faculties but onely that its whole body doth by purging unsensibly cleanse in a unisone tone or harmony Yea also the pretious Pearles called Vnions are by that corrosive changed into a Spermatical Milk which is sociable with the first constitutives of us and in this respect are they a Remedy of the Consumption Palsie c. At length I perceived That the liquor Alkahest did cleanse Nature by the virtue of its own Fire For as the Fire destroyeth all Insects so the Alkahest consumeth Diseases In the next place I perceived That Mercurius vitae reckoned by Paracelsus among his four secrets besides the fiery force of the fire of Hell doth clarifie the Organs no otherwise than as Stibium doth purify Gold from things admixt with it which same thing I judge concerning the tincture of Lile a Sunonymal Nature in the mean time desireth as it were by a new spring to rise again under these Medicines Yet we are without hope of restoring into our former state seeing an infusion of new faculties arguing immortality is wanting unto us For it is appointed for every living Creature once to die Because there is nothing in Nature which can have an equal prevalency with the Temple of the Image of God Therefore I perceived That all renewing Medicines do operate by refining and in this respect by exhilarating otherwise there is not a true renewing of Youth And then I perceived That Secrets which do cure by resolving and expelling do nothing but awaken the faculties placed in us the which impediments being removed do as it were bud again under a new spring Lastly I perceived That there were Simples wherein a proper issuing of the forme doth not operate but the command of a strang form and character doth happen unto them that they might cause a contagion between Symbolizing or co-resembling things and from thence are Sorceries and Inchantments For whatsoever things are prepared by a voluntary Blas are for the most part propagated to the functions of local motion they are directed I say unto the Sinewes being most apt for the stirring up of pains and sicknesses or griefs For neither have they poysons or ferments unless an evil spirit do add them or couple them by functions vanquished by himself for then they do excell other poysons being a-kin to the poyson of the Plague Yea I perceived That even all poysons besides corrosives did act by reason of a specifical property emulous of or imitating the imaginative faculty placed in the seed formally inbred and having the powers of a ferment equivocally acting I perceived moreover That every thing doth variously diffuse its activities according to the manner of the thing receiving and of application For bread operates otherwise within in us and otherwise in all bruit beasts and otherwise in the Stomack Liver and in the other Kitchins by reason of the diversities of ferments So I perceived that flesh applied to the outward parts doth presently putrifie which within is resolved by the ferments and at length assimulated unto our parts To wit I have perceived Polenta or Barley floure dried by the fire and fried after soaking in water to besmear and soften the outward parts which within nourisheth heateth bindes the belly and moves flatus's For every Simple being outwardly applyed doth under the sixth digestion display its virtues with us the which within is almost in its first progresses for the most part subdued A live man being long detained in the water would putrifie but dead flesh being alwayes well rinced in a new stream doth put on the nature of Balsame So the Stomack although it be perpetually moist yet it doth not thereby putrifie For the operations of Nature Galen was ignorant of because he smelt not out the properties of ferments But Paracelsus hath caused the incongruities of an Idiotisme in affirming that Oyles and Emplaisters are digested and transchanged into new flesh in a Wound even as meats are in the Stomack But he is ignorant that there is no passage into the sixth digestion but gradually by precedent digestions For this cause there is no venal blood made in the Stomack as neither is any nourishment made by a Clyster detained in the Colon or confines of the Ileon however the Schooles may whisper to the contrary For Brothes do presently putrifie in the Bowels neither is there a making of Cream but far be it that blood should be made if it shall not be first a Cream neither is the Liver the shop of the Cream much less is there an incarnating in the Stomack But least of all that of an Emplaister flesh or blood should be made For the skin being opened putrifaction is presently introduced into it no otherwise than as the shell or peel of an Egg being bruised there is corruption For hence is there a weeping Liquor Sanies Pus Sandy-water Latex Wormes c. for preventing whereof the whole care of the Chyrurgion diligently endeavoureth and the which being separated the flesh doth voluntarily grow but not by applyed Remedies I have also perceived that Salts which are domestical unto us are fitter for seasoning of meats also for dissolving and exterging or clean wiping away of filths than that they are promoted into nourishment But that Oyles are scarce proper for sanguification but least of all those which ascend by the fire But that distilled waters have small conditions of medicine Because Nature doth every where rejoyce in nourishment caused of Bodies existing in their composition And therefore artificial Salts do pierce deeper than Oyles the which do resist sanguification neither are they thoroughly mixed And therefore the Salts of Spices or sweet smelling things which are made of their Oyles do supply the room of their first Being Magisteries are to be had in great esteem because the substance of these is entire digestible and obedient to the ferments And therefore Nature refuseth meats which are hidden in their Essences by reason of their difficulties of fermentation For all things that are too much graduated do draw after them the middle Life of the Blood but they are not easily subdued by the ferments In brief Those things which do the more stubbornly keep their middle Life are not easily vanquished by our Archeus neither are they onely stubborn in digesting but they are obstinate in perseverance and do act on us so far as they are not subdued But Verdigrease Crocusaeris Cerusse Precipiate Sublimate c.
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
wicked natural Means required from his Bond-slaves For every thing shall be judged guilty or good from its ends and intents And it is sufficient that Sympathetical Remedies do agree with things injected in natural Means or Medium's CHAP. LXXXV Of Things Inspired or Breathed into the Body AN undistinct novelty of things hath long detained me in mental Receptions Now at length I prosecute the third kind of things Received I call them Things Inspired for they enter into us from without and for the most part together with the Air To wit out of Dens or Caves Fens Mines Mountains Windes Provincial places Serpents or Creeping Things Filths dead Carcasses or growing Things For they are the Exhalations of Things which do treacherously and unsensibly filch away our Life For Illyricum and Dalmatia being in times past populous Provinces and likewise Alexandria sometimes most famous although they have the Ground of a fertile Soile are now almost forsaken by reason of a cruel Poyson which presently tends unto the conclusion of Life So an Alchymist daily draws a wild and pernicious Gas out of Coales Stygian Waters and fusions of Minerals and the which being once attracted inwards doth disturb the Archeus according to the disposition proper unto every Poyson So the Air being infected with the importunate or unseasonable ferments of a place produceth a Gas which affords accustomed sicknesses unto places The which others have rashly referred unto the Tartars of places For truly any kind of Smoakinesses do through delay defile the Walls of their Vessels To wit from whence under the sixth Digestion diverse Excrements are forged most apt for the putrifying of the last nourishments and corrupting of the Vessels because if the smoakinesses of Salts are encompassed with an hurtful mixture they being presently melted within do pierce and gnaw the tenderness of the Pipes Yet they are more mild than those which are there collected by a dry Smoake or Fume For if they shall besiege the tender branches of the rough Artery they stop them up cut off the hope of dissolving whereto if the excrements of the place do grow so as that they shut up the Air behind they are made continual guests and do stuff the part that they are also corrupted and become an Imposthume full of matter But those things which enter together with Vapours the watery parts being consumed they are cruelly joyned unto the similar parts For so many Endemical things have made Provinces unhabitable And moreover the Sea however it be Salt yet it is not free from so great Evils The which Shoares by the Scurvy and a various slaughter of Fevers do testifie and the Equinoctial Line most manifestly of all In the next place the Ministers or Servants of the Sick do inspire or breath in cruel things being now fermented by a mark of resemblance So they which Guild do Melt Lead Copper Fire-Stones c. the Diggers and likewise the Seperaters and Boylers of Minerals For although they do not presently take away Life at least-wise they shorten it and subject it to divers disasters So they which labour in Sublimed Cinnabar Arsenick Orpiment and in Stibium and they who prepare Minium Ceruse Verdigrease the Azure of Zaffar or Saffron and which do serve Painters For things from under the Earth are far more constant than to hearken unto our heat than to be tamed or expelled thereby and much less that they should depart into nourishment For therefore the Products of these are wont to remain for Life unless through the ascending brightness of a more bountiful Sulphur those very enemies are converted into Friends or do seasonably depart For the Diseases of Minerals have been touched by none but Paracelsus but have been neglected by the Schooles who have alwayes dreamed of new Illiad's or commendatory Fictions upon the Commentaries of their Ancestors and therefore have been very like to the Levites passing by in Jericho Because they have scarce lifted up their head above Heats and Colds For truly I have sometimes proved that the Stomack drawes the odours of things in the cup of things given to be drunk Indeed the places about the short-ribs do tremble at the offered cups with however a grateful smell they are masked therefore also the Air bringing the Odours unto the Stomack it passeth through the Midriff For from hence every Endemical thing is born immediately to affect the hollow bought of the Stomack and there to imprint Odours Smoakinesses and Ferments So as that they being married unto the nourishable liquor they confound the services of Digestion and bring forth divers Excrements For so the Plague with Endemicks breathed into the Body do for the most part originally rage about the Stomack For the passage of the Wind-pipe seeing it stood subjected unto the Inclemencies of the Air is to be believed to have received its Armories from the goodness of God no less than the bladder of the Gaul-Chest have been fenced against the Urine and its Gaul But the Membrane of the Stomack being of a great heap is for the most part busied about its own Digestions is interrupted with Endemicks is disturbed by an Endemical Being Therefore the Cough Asthma's Imposthumes full of matter Heart-beatings and very many Anguishes do occasionally depend on Endemicks being imprinted upon the hollow bought of the Stomack There is the same reason of malignant Fevers of Camp and other Diseases which do popularly molest Fernelius being not contented with the Doctrine of Galen seeking the seat of all Fevers beneath the Pylorus hath not rid himself of feigned Humours nor hath ever dreamed any thing of the hollow bought of the Stomack and that a light Endemick being breathed in should be sufficient for transplanting of the nourishment of the sixth Digestion Tell me what the Air the tempest of Times or Seasons can concern the equal temperature of Humours For shall the hot Air of a scorching day bring forth Choler or an Excrement which a more temperate day had transchanged into the venal blood of Life Shall thus therefore the primary Shop of Humours be by every prerogative of right constituted in the Lungs I have learned that the Digestions are substantial generations of the transchanging Archeus not of internal heat and least of all of the external Air And that the Digestions are troubled by the drinking in of an hurtful or at least a troublesome Endemick Also that the errors of Digestions do scarce want a diseasifying Product because it is proper to a Digestion to produce something in Digesting I deny not indeed that intense cold or heat do hurt the tender Lungs or Brain seeing they do also scorch the skin But doth such a kind of dammage consist onely in a degree more superiour than humane Nature And there is a certain largenesse in every degree which consisteth beneath an hurt I now have respect unto things Inspired But Mineral Inspirations do expect no hope of Remedy from Vegetables I grant indeed that perfumes do hinder a
and double Fevers Neither doth it also forbid a primary Disease to be con-folded with its own or with a secundary one bred from else where In such a manner as is a primary Fever which brings forth a Product from whence there is a resolving of the Blood into the putrifying Disease of a malignant Flux matched with a feverish Ferment At length neither is there a necessary passage of the three first Digestions unto the sixth by the fourth and fifth Because the greatest part of the venal Blood never comes unto the Heart and much less is it snatched into its left Bosom Because all particular parts are nourished no less with Venal than Arterial Blood From hence indeed it happens that the Vices of the three first Digestions do oftentimes immediately pass over into the sixth And therefore the transchanged Retents of the three first Digestions if they shall reach unto the sixth they offend not by transmission of a proper name but only by transmutation because a transmission from the third into the sixth Digestion is regular lawful and ordinary I will add concerning the Spleen If from the first Digestion a sharpness of the Chyle be immediately brought unto the Spleen A Quartane Ague is soon present to wit from a curdled Retent being there a stranger But if the sixth Digestion in the Spleen be troubled seeing it is the Couch of the first Conceptions The Excrements or things transchanged which are made of its proper nourishment are for the most part endowed with an imaginative Power such as occurs in many Simples and which is most plainly to be seen in the Spittle of a mad Dog and the which therefore I call inebriating or be-drunkening dreamifying or befooling Simples For therefore of one Wine there is a many-form condition of drunken Men That is one only Wine doth stir up diverse Madnesses For a mad Poyson halts with the similitude of Wine For a mad Poyson by reason of its excelling Power doth not follow the conditions of the Man but the very Conditions of the Man are constrained to obey the Poyson As is clearly seen in the Poyson of him that is bitten by a Mid-dog Poysons therefore which of a degenerate nourishment are bred in the sixth Digestion do follow their own Nature For by how much the nearer they shall be unto assimilating by so much the more powerfully do they infatuate For by how much the nearer the Ferment of the Bowel and an in-beaming of the implanted Spirit shall be present with it by so much also the nearer it calls unto it the Idea of a certain imaginative Power which at length it transplanteth into a venemous Poyson not indeed so destructive unto the Life as unto the Power of that Bowel But from what hath been before declared any one shall be hereafter able to erect unto himself the Stages of Diseases But it hath been sufficient for me to have shewn that every primary Disease doth objectively and subjectively fall into the Archeus and so into the Life it self whereof to wit it is immediately formed But that a secondary Disease fals objectively indeed into the Archeus but subjectively into a Matter either the solid one of the part containing or the fluide one of that contained And thus indeed to have shewn Diseases to be distributed in Nature by their Causes Roots and Essence according to their Inns I repose my Pen. Barrenness also seeing it is among Defects beside Nature hath hither extended its Treatise Wherefore Coldness Heat or moistness is not in either of the Sexes the cause of Barrenness however lowdly others may sound out this thing For truly first of all there is no dryness possible in living Creatures or the vitious moisture of the Womb is not of the complexion but a meer superfluity of Digestion or Transmission So in the next place Heat and Cold are signs of Defects in Nature but not Causes Because these Qualities do want a Seed vital Properties and potestative Conditions Therefore indeed Barrenness and Fruitfulness is in every Climate of the World Yet an Aethiopian Woman is far hotter than the most hot Woman of Muscovia But the excrementitious and superfluous Moistness of the Womb is an Effect of Diseases Yea if it shall be a companion of Barrenness yet not the containing Cause thereof For an internal Cause differs not from the Being it self So neither is the Defect of the Menstrues the cause of Barrenness if that Defect contains a denial or proceeds as an Effect of a nearer Indisposition Women of unripe Age have oft-times conceived even also before their Menstrues and those of more ripe years their Menstrues being silent Also oft-times Women affected in their Womb being trampled on by many Perplexities do succesfully conceive and accordingly bring forth In the mean time some Barren Women are in good health Also many conceive while their Menstrues is urgently present As also the Menstrues being afterwards silent hath deceived many of Conception Some Women do take notice of their Menstrues all the time of their bearing but many for some months only For indeed although Barrenness may after some sort bespeak a privative respect yet it is meerly a positive and diseasie Being for it ariseth from singular positive Defects Because by it self and in self it is a Malady of Nature Even as fruitfulness bespeaks an entire Cause For in a Man which is not Gelded not an Eunuch not hindred or disturbed not mischieved Barrenness hath scarce place For from hence an Old-man doth as yet generate Whence it follows that there is not so much perfection to be attributed as neither to be required in the Male as in the Mother But I call those hindered Males who do labour with a Gonorrhea or who have from thence retained a Vice And likewise who do labour with the notable Vice of some Bowel In a Woman the Menstrues abounding being Deficient Irregular Watery Yellow looking Blackish Slimy Stinking a Pain in her Loyns Belly Hips and movings of the Womb upwards downwards to the Sides are indeed Witnesses and Signs of the Sicknesses or Feeblenesses of the Womb and therefore also they fore-slow overflow Conception move Abortions and gushings forth of the Courses yet they do not altogether take away the hope of Conception nor are they the Disease which is called Barrenness For indeed old Women are Barren without all those For I find the one only suitable and co-equal Cause in Time and Age to be described in the holy Scriptures for a positive Being which is called Barrenness in these Words God opened the Womb of Sarah For it is the Gift of God derived into Nature whereby the Parchment or Membrane of the Womb being most exactly shut in its Foldings is opened and enlarged at the co-agreeing moment of Conjunction There is I say an attractive drawing Blas whereby for fear of a Vacuum or Emptiness an attraction of the Seeds and a suitable filling up of the opened Wrinckles follows that opening To wit the
not done by a voluntary Resignation or by a tyring of the former Raines but by the necessity of a new seed being brought in upon it and by a ripened impression or from an actual disposition of â—n Archeus as a new Being in possibility But seeing that which not as yet is is not able as yet to act it behoved that that Being should after some sort fore-exist in possibility or power that it may fit or suit the lump of the former Being subjected unto it self for a future Being But the fore-existence of that same Being subsisteth in a certain seminal spirit wherein the Types and shadowy foreknowledges of things that are to be performed in its Tragedy do inhabit But this spirit I name the Archeus or Master-workman call thou it as thou wilt Be it sufficient to know that nothing doth arise anew in Nature without a seed In the next place Every seed operates by dispositions its Handmaids which it propagates in the matter for its intended desires But the mediating Instruments whereby seeds do dispose of their matters I call Ferments For even as the sour odour of an earthen Vessel constraines the milk the odour of Leaven infects the Meal and the hoary odour of a Hogshead converts the Wine into a losse of itâ— strength c. So in the urine there is its own seed for Duelech for I distinguish the stone from sand onely in quantity and signifie it by the one onely name of Duelech also it s own dispositive Ferment which is sometimes scituated in a naked smell or odour For truly in an old and strong smelling Urinal or Chamberpot the urine doth sooner stonifie than otherwise in a â—eat one Yet that fermental odour is not proper to the Urinâ— but a forreign stranger which sometimes also so increaseth it self in the Kidney that like Gorgon it alwayes and uncessantly labours in the framing of Duelech as if it laboured for its own perfection For so the Archeus of the parts is unvoluntarily drawn unto a strange scope or aym and through the importunities of a strange Ferment is led aside whither he would not Paracelsus therefore erres who sets down a certain Tartarous muscilage being dispersed through the veines to be as it were the first and espoused matter of the stone and exhorts that it be withdrawn by certain laxative Medicines But I have given satisfaction unto these Trifles as well in the Treatise concerning the causes of Duelech of the Antients as in that of Tartar For it is sufficiently manifest that in mans urine even in that of healthy Folk there is alwayes an immediate invisible matter and seed For Duelech whether the while Duelech break forth into act as long as the urine is ripened in our possession or after that it hath flowed out of us The urine indeed containes essential beginnings for Duelech but it is unto it by accident that they are ripened or not and although the urine hath in it self the seed and matter of the stone yet it is not the womb of the stone but onely the matrix of a stone-seed which seeks and findes a womb for its self either within or without For as the Being in act ought to perish if the Being which is in possibility and after some sort seminally fore-existing ought from thence to arise it is of necessity that the essence and matter of the urine whereof Duelech is made should first decay if Duelech be made from thence wherein notwithstanding a small space of delay doth interpose There is indeed in the urine a fit matter and there is in it a seed for Duelech yet it likewise stands in need of an actuating and exciting Ferment which may procure the seed to bud Because the transmigration or passing over of a thing argues a decay of it self by a neutral state through a proper mediating Ferment Therefore the corruptive Ferment of the urine is the exciter or stirrer up of the seed Therefore I have shewn by handicraft Operation that the urine is longer preserved undefiled under the Balsame of our Family Administration and under an illsmatch'd heat than that which else in a cold Urinal hearkens to corruption a few houres after and therefore also defiles the Urinal with sand For the Kidneys being after any manner polluted have now conceived a corruptive Ferment of the urine There is indeed in the Kidney it s own excrementitious Ferment from Nature but that is not yet sufficient for the propagation of the stone There is therefore a Duelech in the urine as a Being in possibility which breaks forth into act while the corruption of the urine or of the former Being hovers over it In the mean time it is true that some Provinces do bring no sluggish ayd unto the frequency of the stone For Illyricum was once populous but at this day almost a Desart because it cuts off the life by a cruel exhalation For there are some places as it were subject to the Scurvey Asthma or difficulty of breathing or to the Falling-Evil Not indeed as Paracelsus supposeth because such places are fruitfull in Tartars Because that since those of Europe who are carried in the same ship and have used the meats of our Country are afflicted with forreign and local Diseases For truly there are some seeds of Diseases in places and they forge fit matters for themselves if they do not find them obedient or espoused to themselves Let those Trifles depart which suppose and require a naked allusion of a tartarous fore-existidg matter and so a muckinesse for Duelech and do found them on a feigned Allegory of Artificial things As if there were no other consistency of the stone than what might answer to a dryed muscilage As if a snivelly Spittle cannot be generated of drink that is not slimy As though the generation and hardening of every rocky stone ought to be enrouled in snivel and heat For if the heart as it is hotter than the bones so also should be harder perhaps their Positions might deserve credit But Nature despiseth similitudes that are fetch'd from Artificial things Therefore I understand that a dungy Ferment of the Kidney being too much exalted doth afterwards dispose the Coagulater the Spirit of urine and the matter of the volatile earth that they may grow together into the seed of Duelech For there is not a transchangative principle in Nature out of the Ferments that are inbred or obtained even as elsewhere of Ferments except in Artificial things constituted by the fire From whence also every similitude drawn from the same is unfitly applyed For Potters earth is after one manner burnt into a stone without a seed and every stonification that is derived from a seminal Beginning happens after another But that there is an earth in urine first the mechanical distillation of urine proveth And then of the blood of distilled blood there at length remaines much earth which otherwise in time of nourishment as being wholly volatile exhales is consumed neither doth
necessaries of its own Constitution from excrements Yea it should rather follow that seeing the Leprosie is such an abundant productress of salt in the excrements the venal Bloud also shall not want its own salt Even as while there flowes a continual Sunovie or gleary water and that plainly a salt one out of ulcers the remaining bloud doth not therefore want its salt or sense is not diminished in the flesh but rather encreaseth the pain and sharpness So also in the Dropsie a salt water doth sometimes forthwith extend the Abdomen or neather Belly yet do not dropsical persons want the sence of Touching For Paracelsus elsewhere defineth the venal Bloud to be the meer Mercury of man from which those excrements are sequestred in the shew of a putrified sulphur and likewise of a Whey-ie unprofitable and superfluous salt Elsewhere again as being unmindfull of himself he defines the Bloud to be the salt of the Rubie As though salt were the Tincture of the Rubie or that the Tincture of the Bloud were from a salt For he makes his three first things mutable at pleasure no otherwise than as the Humourists do accuse their Humours and Heats at pleasure and which more is do say that the same are the causes of Diseases and Death and also the Authors of sensation and motion Fye must we thus sport at pleasure with Nature Diseases the Bloud and Death of our Neighbour For Medicine is plainly a serious thing and man shall at sometime render skin for skin For salt doth not appear in the Bloud flesh solid parts c. except in the last and Artificial separation of those Beginnings after Death and that indeed by the fire To wit after that the sense of Touching hath been a good while extinct Those Dreams of the principles do not serve for the Speculation of motion and sense A mark imprinted by the Devil on Witches is wont to bewray these because the place of the Brand is voyd of feeling for their whole life and that mark being once impressed hath its own natural Causes of unsensiblenesse after the manner of the Leprosie yet enrouled in a certain and slender Center For the Witch her eyes being covered if a Pin be in that place of the Brand thrust in even to the head that prick is made without feeling At leastwise that place should by a wonderful priviledge be preserved all her life time without salt and putrefaction seeing that otherwise the life according to Paracelsus is a Mummy with a comixture of the Liquor of Salts Far more sound therefore is the doctrine of Hippocrates which decreeth the Spirit or aiery and animal flatus or blast to be the immediate instrument of Sense Pain Motion Pleasures Agreement Co-resemblance Attraction Repulsing Convulsions or Contractures Releasement also of any successive alterations whatsoever so that it appropriates to self sensible Objects and from thence frameth unto it self Sensations themselves For it happens that if by chance that Spirit be busied by reason of profound speculations or madness that the body doth not perceive Pains Hunger Cold Thirst c. For I remember that a Robber deluded the torture of torment by a draught of Aqua vitae and a piece of Garlick the which he at length wanting confessed his crimes But the astonishment and unsensibleness of the Leprosie is in the habit of the flesh and sinewes subjectively or as in their Subject but not in the compass of imagination but effectively and occasionally in a certain poyson But that bloody Anodynous or stupefactive ice and well nigh mortifying poyson is communicable and effluxive through a horrid and stinking Contagion whence the holy Scriptures command the Leprousie to be severed from the company of men But this icie poyson begins from without and therefore they feel inward pains and likewise external cold and heat yet not wounds or a stroak The Mange and Scab is manifold and the Pox or soul Disease infamous through a defiling poyson But they differ in kind as well through the nature of the poyson as the diversity of Subjects For indeed the Scab infects only the skin so as that the skin cannot turn the nourishment designed for it self into a proper nourishment but it translates the most part thereof into a salt and contagious liquor to wit the which is of the property of an itchive and nettlie or hot stinging salt c. Therefore scabbedness doth not require internal remedies but only local ones which are for killing of that itchive salt But the Pox doth chiefly affect the venal blood with a biting mattery and putrifying poyson But the Leprosie doth chiefly infect the inflowing spirit with an Anodinous icie poyson Indulge me Reader that through the scanty furniture of words I am constrained to use an illusion unto names Because as the essences of things are unknown to us from a former cause and therefore proper names do fail those essences we are constrained to boâ—â—ow and describe the conditions of poysons in diseases from the similitude of their properties that if not by reason whereof it is yet at least because it is the definition may proceed from Cousin-Germane Adjuncts or Properties So I say that the Poyson of the Falling Evil is a be-drunkenning sleepifying and also a swooning one together with an astringency neither therefore is it contagious because intrinsecal and not fermental so the Leprosie hath an anodynous or stupefactive Poyson not indeed a sleepifying one but an icie or freezing poyson well nigh mortifying together with an infection of the sensitive spirit and therefore mightily contagious especially in a hot and sudoriferous or sweaty Region For even as cold takes away the sense of touching by congealing and driving the faculties inward so also the Leprosie hath chosen to it self and prepared an anodynous or benumming poyson not a coolifying and sleepifying but by another title a Freezing one no otherwise than as Kibes or Chilblanes are bored with Ulcers as if they were scorched with fire the which notwithstanding do oftentimes happen unto those before or after winter who all the winter in the Chimneys felt no cold The poyson of the Leprosie therefore doth in this respect co-agree with cold effectually although not in the first Elementary quality thereof neither therefore doth it also totally mortifie after the manner of a Gangreen but only the part which it sealeth with the Ulcer Yea neither also doth it straightway extend it self far from thence because it is from a conâ—stringent icie poyson the Author of unsensibleness But it is of a difficult curing by reason of its freezing and almost mortifying Contagion and that an oppressive one of the sensitive spirit because as it is intimately co-fermented with the sensitive spirit while it hath issued forth unto the utmost parts therefore it is difficultly taken away unless by remedies which have access unto the first closets or privy Chambers of us to wit that so they may confirm the spirit of life whereby it may overcome
less suddenly leap on it unless through a passage of the sinewes common with the thorny marrow But it is like to a dream that in a sound body but not in a complaining one the sense of a finger doth forthwith fail through phlegm which was noâ— before perceived in the more nigh sinews or otherwise by a Vapour bred after an irregular manner being not dismissed or descending thither as neither presently bred in the part when as otherwise all hospitality of a forreigner is even from the beginning manifestly troublesome to nature But hath that Phlegm or that Vapour perhaps crept sideways into the utmost nerve of the finger But then the Maxim of of the Schools should perish which ascribeth the dispensations of any Humours unto the Spirit making the assault For those Humours are not in us or in the nature of things and if there were any an ambulatory or walking power should noâ— therefore belong unto them and much less in those being now excrementitious because all natural motions in us hearken unto the faculties of vital things For if Phlegm and the gross Vapour thereof were in nature at leastwise in this place as they are diseasie they are reputed by the Schools to be Excrements whereof there is not a going noâ— voluntary Motion or Progress Therefore they should of necessity be driven away by some other Not indeed by the Archeus who seeing he acts all things and that well should not therefore drive that unto the sinews which he was otherwise accustomed regularly to drive unto the skin Doth therefore Phlegm perhaps being extenuated into a Vapour by heat proceed upwards But then not downwards into the steep finger At leastwise according to the Theoreme of the Schools concerning Catarrhs That Vapour should presently again grow together into drops but it should not wonder about in the shew of a Vapour unto the utmost parts of the Nerves as neither should it hasten through the Palm of the Hand unto one only finger But why should it rush on a sudden like a weight into a small nerve more flender than a thred Into one I say and not into another But if the Vapour doth enter sidewayes why in one only instant is it imbibed without a foregoing trouble Why is it not rather dashed into the flesh than into the extream part of a small nerve which is encompassed with its own membrane Why doth the cause which begat one only Atome of Phlegm or of a gross vapour continuall produce no other besides that one only Atome For that sudden stupefaction doth oft-times begin from the little finger and ceaseth at length in that when it hath reached to the third or fourth Now and then also all the fingers do suddenly assume the paleness of death unto the half of their length or beyond even when it is without astonishment a drowsie motion c. If therefore that were from a vapourie matter at least that matter shall not be made in the brain or thorny marrow For truly then also it should portend an universal passion Therefore that Vapour shall be bred in the sinew or tendon but then they would be all stupified at once but not successively Neither am I perswaded why that Vapour existing without the sinew in the tranquility of health should be pressed inwards unto the sinew or tendon when as after another manner there is in us an uncessant transpiration outwards At leastwise why this should not continue seeing it hath the same Workman Matter and shop within it Wherefore doth that astonishment presently cease if a matter should subsist such as should be one of the four Humours everywhere swimming together with the venal blood If the cause now defluxeth from the common Nerve of the Palm of the hand into one finger already vanquished Why therefore doth it afterwards flow down unto another healthy finger and not stay in the first Why if it be ptopagated from one only little Nerve into all of them doth it not also molest all of them at once but subsequently and a good while after Wherefore is the feeling hurt and not the motion if they are from one only and a like cause if it be brought down through one only small sinew the Author as well of Motion as Sense The cold of the hands alone causeth an astonishment from without and a pain within without any falling of vapours or humours thereinto At length the sinews are not inserted into the fingers but into the tendons Why therefore is the feeling hurt and not the motion Why is not the Stupefaction extended throughout the whole palm of the hand at once which is covered with one tendon If the Tendons suffer this threatned Palsey now that is to have departed from the communion of the Nerves unto the thick not bored nor pip-iâ— trunks of the Tendons Not passable ones I say if therefore not subject to the Incidencies of Phlegme A certain man had retained his Spleen affected from a Quartan Ague and likewise a stupefaction of his left hand together with a mortal paleness frequently returning in hast But what community of passages doth the Spleen hold with the Nerves of the fingers to wit that it may transmit Phlegm and gross Vapours unto the fingers alone For doth the Milt send vapours into the Brain which with the substitution of authority and action it will have to be from thence assigned unto the fingers of its own side or unto those opposite thereunto Shall therefore a stopped Spleen evaporate more unto the Brain and Marrow of the back than an healthy one not being hindred and burdened with continual black Choler Certainly I have prosecuted the unsensibleness and astonishments of particular members that we might the more rightly understand a total Apoplexie In the mean time I pity the Schools that they have not more exactly examined their own fictions of Humours and Vapours and the so speedyed and ridiculous falling down of these neither that they have once considered that as the cold of the encompassing Air is stupefactive so that they have not distinguished the nature of the Palsey and the colike positive passions of the sinewes from co-like privative ones That from thence they might have learned that positive effects can in no wise consist without a stupefying dead matter and quality The which if it be sufficient for creaâ—ing an astonishment when it shall have touched at the Sensitive parts from without what may it not be for effecting if it locally stir the sinew it self Truly if that which toucheth thereat in manner of a Vapour according to the Schools shall presently afford an effect about to perish the Senses Why have they not likewise once considered that through a more tough matter it shall be able to stir up a stubborn and durable Palsey Moreover Wheresoever such an anodynous matter is enclosed in the Duumvirate of the body I understand the Stomack and Spleen it shall stir up a sudden swooning and positive Apoplexie But the Palsie is for
From hence it is that Fevers do about their end provoke voluntary sweats And a Crisis or judicial sign which is terminated by sweats is most exceeding wholesome and by consequence also sudoriferous Remedies But they fled together unto Putrefaction that they might find the cause from whence they might confirm first cold and presently afterwards heat They therefore assume that Horse-dung which is actually cold doth voluntarily wax hot by reason of putrefaction But how blockishly do they on both sides deceive the credulous world For Cowes-dung of the same nourishments hath better putrified and been digested than Horse-dung yet it waxeth not hot Also the dung of an Horse which is fed with grass or Fetches waxeth not hot even as while he is fed with grain yet that hath putrefied no less than this They have not known therefore that heat follows the eaten grain but not the nature of Putrefaction Therefore they foolishly transfer a feverish heat unto humours putrified in a Fever from the heat of the dung not yet putrefying The Schools thefore have not known that by how much the nearer Horse-dung is unto a beginning-putrefaction by so much the more it is deprived of all heat And neither therefore shall the same dung ever putrifie if it be spread broad But only while as be ing moist it is contracted into an heap no otherwise than as Hay or Flowers if they are pressed together being moist are inflamed before putrefaction They have been ignorant I say that dung waxeth hot by its own spirits of salt being pressed together Again although dung do wax hot in the making of Putrefaction yet all heat ceaseth before the Putrefaction begun is in its being made And so the heat of the dung squares not with a feverish matter if the putrefied matter as they say layes hid long before in Receptacles and indeed in a Quartane always and very long Yea neither is the degree of the heat of dung suitable that it may be dispersed from its putrefied center even unto the soals of the feet but that it should first burn up the center of the body where that putrefied humour should overflow Therefore the example of dung is plainly impertinent to Fevers and so much the rather because they do not teach that Cold is before Heat in time And moreover in nature Putrefaction no where causeth heat and much less in vital things For in a putrefying body Cold must needs be if it be spoyled of life which life in us is the fountain of heat For in the interposing dayes of intermitting Fevers we complain not of heat or Cold molests us when as notwithstanding they suppose the humours to be putrefied Therefore if Heat and Cold do causally succeed in that which is putrefied and Cold be always before Heat in the comming of Fevers Cold is more native to a putrefied matter than Heat For therefore we measure the long continuance of the Disease by the duration of cold in an Ague or Fever but not by heat At length I have shewn that all feverish heat is wholly from the Archeus and therefore that it ceaseth before death when as notwithstanding Cold and Putrefaction do the more prevail It implies also that the heat of a Fever should be from a putrefied matter and that it should be first kindled in the heart it self from whence the Putrefaction is banished In the next place Heat is not kindled in dung from the Putrefaction it self For if it be daily be-sprinkled with the new urine of a horse it will not so much as wax hot in a years time But it is certain that urine doth not preserve from putrefaction but more truly that it should increase it For they should more truly have drawn heats out of Baths or Lime But they were rather ignorant of the Causes of these Heats Wherefore they have judged it a more easie matter to have accused the putrefaction of one horse-dung Neither was there any reason why they should horrow the essence of a Fever rather from heat than from cold and other symptomes Seeing they are the alike and fellow accidents of Fevers Therefore they have alwayes endeavoured to beat down the accidents of the Product because they have been ignorant of the roots But since it is now manifest that material things are the matter it self after what manner will they cure who convert the whole hinge of healing only unto heats At leastwise the similitude of horse-dung and of a feverish heat ascribed unto putrefaction hath fallen For dung when it begins never so little to putrifie it puts off heat And as long as it can be hot Artificers extract Salt-peter from thence But if it shall wax cold they leave it to Countrey Folks as unprofitable for themselves But the Schools accuse the Putrefaction or Corruption of Humours and indeed of one and the same Humour as well for Cold as for Heat and both in a heightned degree And by consequence that one and the same thing should immediately effect two Opposites out of it self Therefore it must needs be that either of these two is by it self but the other by accident If therefore Cold be the Off-spring of Putrefaction by it self it cannot in any wise essentially include heat but only by accident But if Heat be the son of Putrefaction by it self verily neither then should a Fever begin from Cold. Nevertheless it is clear enough from the aforesaid particulars that the Schools do suppose Putrefaction to be the essence of Fevers But Heat and Cold to be accidents accompanying the Putrefaction Wherefore Galen saith When blood putrifies Choler is made which Text if they shall admit of that Choler shall be putrified in its own birth or not If putrified it should cause a Tertian but not a Sunochus or putrified burning Fever Let the Schools therefore know that the blood is never putrified in the veins but that the vein it self also putrifies as in a Gangrene and in Mortifications And so they beg the principle who let forth the blood lest it should putrifie in the veins Like-wise they who affirm a Sunochus to arise from the blood of the veins being putrified And also they who say that the blood while it purrifies is turned into Choler The which particulars I thus prove The veins retain their blood fluid even in a dead carcase by the consent of all Anatomy but the blood being chased out of the veins straightway grows together into a clot But the coagulation of the blood is only a beginning of Corruption and way of separation of the whole Therefore if a vein preserves its blood from corruption in a dead carcase much more doth it do that in live bodies It being an argument from the less to the greater Forreign excrements indeed putrifie in the veins to wit they being the Retents as well of their own as of another digestion as concerning digestions elsewhere but the blood never Because it is that which according to the Scriptures is the seat and
good to be done as neither should every thing desire to be and be preserved In Science Mathematical indeed it is determined as impossible to proceed from extream to extream without a mean and that Medium wholly denyes all interruption the which if we shall grant in natural things with a certain latitude we shall as yet be accounted to have done it out of hand and that in the best manner And so that neither is it lawful to wrest that of Science Máthematical unto curings I confess indeed that it is not lawful to draw out a dropfie abundantly by an incision of the Navil at one only turn as neither to allure forth all the corrupt pus out of a great Aposteme nor to bring one that is frozen by reason of cold immediately to the Chimney nor abundantly to nourish him that is almost dead with hunger Yet surely a slow and necessary progress of Mediocrity as such or a proceeding from one extream unto another doth not conclude that thing as if nature were averse unto a speedy help Since this betokening is natural nearly allyed pithy and intimately proper unto her self But those things are forbidden because a faintness of the strength depending thereupon would not bear those speedy motions The Schools therefore by a faulty argument of the cause as not of the cause drive the sick from a sudden aid which they have not that they may vail their ignorance among the vulgar with a certain Maxim being badly directed For as often as a Cure can be had without the loss of strength for the faculties do always obtain a chiefdome in indications by how much the more speedily that is done it is also snatched with the greater Jubily or joy of nature Even as also in Fevers I have with a profitable admiration observed it to be done with much delight Therefore in the terms proposed if a Fever be a meer heat besides nature and all curing ought to be perfected by contrary subduers Therefore it requires a cooling besides nature to wit that contraries may stand under the same general kind That is every Fever should of necessity be cured by much cold of the encompassing air especially because the cold of the encompassing air collects the faculties but doth not disperse them But the consequence is false Therefore also the Antecedent Therefore the Schools do not intend by cutting of a vein the cooling or heat but chiefly a taking away of the blood it self and a mitigation of accidents which follows the weakened powers or they primarily intend a diminishment of the strength and blood It being that which with a large false paint they call a more free breathing of the Arteries But I do alwayes greatly esteem of an indication which concerns a preserving of the strength and which is opposite unto any emptying of the veins whatsoever because the strength or powers being diminished and prostrated the Disease cannot neither be put to flight neither doth any thing remain to be done by the Physitian Therefore Hippocrates decreeth That Natures themselves are the Physitianesses of Diseases because the indication or betokening sign which is drawn from a preserving of the faculties governs the whole scope of curing As therefore Reason perswades that the strength is to be preserved so also the blood because this containeth that Hippocrates indeed in a Plethora of great Wrestlers or Champions hath commanded blood to be presently and heapingly let out and that saying the Schools do every were thunder out in the behalf of the cutting of a vein But that is ridiculously alledged for the curing of Diseases and Fevers For he bad not that thing to be done for fear of a Plethora however their veins may sufficiently abound with blood but only lest the vessels being filled they should burst and cleave asunder in the exercises of strength otherwise what interposeth as common between healthy Champions and the curing of Fevers For there is no fear of a Plethora in him that hath a Fever neither that a vein should be broken through exercises and moreover we must note that the emptyings of the blood are on this wise That the exhausting of the strength or faculties which is made by carnal lust is unrepairable because it takes away from the in-bred spirit of the heart But the exhausting which is made by the cuttings of a vein is nigh to this because it readily filcheth away the inflowing Archeus and that abundantly But a Disease although it also directly oppose the strength yet because it doth not effect that thing abundantly but by degrees therefore it rather shakes and wears out the strength than that it truly exhausteth it Therefore the restoring of the faculties which are worn or battered by a Disease is more easie than that of those which are exhausted by cutting of a vein For they who in Diseases are weakened by the cutting of a vein are for the most part destitute of a Crisis and if they do revive from the disease they recover by little and little and being subject to be sick with many anguishes in a long course of dayes and not without the fear of Relapses But they who lay by it with a Disease without cutting of a vein are easily restored and recovering they soon attain unto their former state But if they being destitute of remedies shall also sometimes come unto an extremity yet Nature attempts a Crisis and refresheth them because their strength although it was sore shaken by the Disease yet it perished not as not being abundantly exhausted by the lettings out of blood Wherefore a Physitian is out of conscience and in charity bound to heal not by a sudden lavishment of the faculties as neither by dangers following from thence nor also by a necessary abbreviation of life according to the Psalm My spirit shall be lessened therefore my days shall be shortened And seeing that according to the Holy Scriptures the life glistens in the blood however plentifully thou shalt dismiss this thou shalt not let it forth but with the prejudice of life For the perpetual intent of nature in curing of Fevers is by sweats And therefore the fits are for the most part ended by sweats But the cutting of a vein is Diametrically opposed unto this intention For truly this pulls the blood inwards for to replenish the vessels that were emptied of blood hut the motion of nature that is requisite for the curing of Fevers proceeds from the Center to without from the noble parts and bowels unto the skin But that the cutting of a vein doth of necessity weaken although the more strong and plethorick persons may seem to experience and witness that thing to be otherwise If the sacred Text which admonisheth us That the life inhabiteth in the blood hath not sufficient weight in it at leastwise that shall be made manifest if thou shalt offend in a more liberal emission of blood For the strength and sick person do presently faint ot go to ruine Therefore in Science
air from the scope proposed by the Creator But I have elsewhere shewn in our Physicks that Water can never by Art or Nature be changed into Air nor likewise this into Water If therefore Phlegm resemble Water because it containeth it and Blood Air the adopting of any Phlegm into blood shall never be able to subsist And by consequence it is a feigned thing whatsoever hath hitherto been diligently caught concerning the union of Humours and Elements their Likeness Commixture Complexion and Necessity yea if phlegme be not as yet mature and through an over-hasty swiftness of time it be only in the way unto bloud and therefore left in the veins and mixed with the blood that it may be perfected and at length may nourish now not only the Liver shall be the shop of the blood but any Pipe of the veins shall have the nature of a bowel and because it containeth its properties and offices it should be preferred before the Liver in sanguifying and in the perfecting of the blood Yea neither should Phlegm be essentially a separated Humour from the blood no otherwise than as a sour grape differs not essentially from a ripe one Therefore by the same title the whole Chyle of the stomack shall be Phlegm Again since Phlegm is attributed unto old age defect and imperfection therefore also nearer to death then Choler and hence also more an enemy to nature the workman of things had seemed to be the more severe who had left such an enemy to be suitaably mixed with the bloud throughout all the veins and had not designed a receptacle for it He I say who madâ— not death had from the beginning coupled the necessities of a defect unto humane nature In the next place since that being granted Sanguification should not be the proper office of the Liver and the Liver shall be able to operate more perfectly and more at a far distance in the windings of the hollow Vein than near in its own house unless the Schools had rather to attribute Sanguification independently to the veins Finally if Phlegm differs not but only in maturity it is not an Humour essentially distinct from the blood and by consequence the Quaternary of Humours passeth into a Ternary And then as Galen witnesseth more of phlegm by two-fold is daily made which he proveth by a Tertian Ague than of Choler How much Phlegm therefore shall not be made in healthy persons and those perfectly digesting And how much of phlegm shall not be daily generated in the more cold bodies if Humours are made according to the dispositions of Complexions Yea from thence it follows that every digestion is alwayes of necessity and naturally defectuous and vitious Because nature shall never attain the end and purpose of nature If phlegm be naturally generated as a fourth Humour of the blood After another manner phlegm ought to fail in temperate bodies together with both the Cholers Why I pray is blood abounding turned into Fat since it is far more easily as they say concerning the Drawers forth of Choler changed into Choler and loads nature with a less weight than Choler which so obediently obeys a calling Solutive Medicine But why doth he that lives soberly in a temperate complexion as they call it daily lay up both the Cholers into their own Receptacles Doth it not rather from thence plainly appear that the Gaul and Spleen are nourished by some other thing and by a vital liquour than that which being banished from the blood hath attained the conditions of an excrement But go to yet what is that Humour in the Gout which is troublesome with so cruel a pain I indeed have elsewhere on purpose proved That it is a sharpness Wherefore also according to the institutions of the Schools it is cold and therefore different from Choler and Fire Yet in the Gout which they call the Hot one for by how much the sharper it is by so much also the more cruel they complain of most sharp pain and heat Therefore Choler either shall be sharp nor any longer bitter or the Schools have forgotten a fifth Humour Let the same equal Judgement be in the Colick and wringing of the bowels In the Erisipelas also or Anthonies fire the Humour is sharp because it is that which waxeth mild by soapie Remedies Therefore Choler or Gaul is not bitter And then in Caustical and Escarrhotical affects namely in the burning Coal Persian fire c. there is a Caustick or burning Salt of the condition of Alcalies but not a bitter one Even as neither in the Cancer Wolf all running cancrous Ulcers and those causing the greatest pains For the salt which gnawes is no way bitter Wherefore effects that are most fiery in us deride the vain device of Choler Especially seeing they who imitate the nature of Fire are not the Clients of a Cholerick Humour Therefore if according to the admonishment of the Word of Truth The Tree be to be judged of by his fruits but every thing by its Works and Properties I see not from what Use End Necessity or Rashness they have feigned yellow Choler to be fiery For there was no necessity like a Fable to feign three daily and domestick constitutive Humours of us that is without which we cannot live which never were in the nature of a thing or do suggest any necessity of themselves But what or what sort of bowel shall separate both the superfluous Cholers from the choice blood of the veins The Reins indeed separate the Urine for the Bladder Shall therefore both Cholers want their own Separater Or shall excrementous Choler go of its own accord unto its own sinks For there is not so great a necessity of the Urine as well in its Being as in its Separater as there is of both Cholers if both the Cholers are simply necessary as to their Being For truly Birds could commodiously want Urine Why therefore was nature less careful that she might make a bowel for the expurging of Choler than she was for the ejecting of Urine Shall therefore the Chest of the Gaul and Spleen perhaps strongly attract both the Cholers unto themselves without the aid of a Separater Yea seeing Sanguification is a Simple single action and of a natural scope surely one only Liver could not produce four Humours at once out of an Homogeneal liquor diverse from each other in their whole Element and separate two only as hurtful far off from each other Otherwise if the Liver should be sufficient for the separating of its own Liquors it had separated the Urine by a stronger right and had made the necessity of the Kidneys altogether vain In the next place if it doth not sequester all the Choler out of the blood not so much as in the most temperate strength nature shall alwayes of necessity offend even in the abounding of both Cholers in the excess of heat for the forming of Choler and of Cold also for Phlegm and likewise shall contiaually offend
the intestine or inward hope and rules of death diseases as also of health Which things notwithstanding have not stood believed God the Creatour so permitting it as the ordained principles of nature but by the inbred hatred and suggestion of the Divel and through a continued sluggishnesse of the schooles in subscribing Against all which one only argument ought to suffice to wit that I have removed the fire out of the number of Elements yea and the account of substances and have demonstred a co-mixture of Elements requisite for the constitution of bodies which are believed to be mixt to be impossible So as that none of a sound mind can or ought henceforward to admit of a necessitated equality of Humours with the Elements For the fallacy of Humours as well as of Elements hath been the more hidden or obscure and lesse passable in the people but that it hath been consented to by Learned and judicious men is to be had in compassion due to ones neighbour the which as it blowes away the credulities of the people so it accuseth the dulnesse of the Schools and their constant sluggishnesse or carelessnesse of diligently searching But because the mad toy of a Catarrhe hath likewise wondrously afflicted the world and I having often searched with my self into the occasions to wit from what fountain so great an hereditary blindnesse of the Schools and so inveterate an obstinacy in affirming might proceed at length I knew that the Ignorance of both the erring or wandring Ceepers had given an occasion of sliding into the miserabled and subscribed a confession of Humours falling down For truly any one being oft-times by the more cold aire suddenly stricken in his throat neck teeth or shoulders he also as credulous supposeth according to the assertions of Physitians that believed Humours do flow down unto the places smitten with cold When as otherwise cold as in its own nature it is repercussive should rather divert the fall of Humours from it self which are thought to be subservient to a Catarrh or rheum But much blood-letting and frequency of a solutive medicine at this day as they diminish the strength of the parts and dismisse it being diminished on posterity so it s no wonder indeed that the parts being smitten by the indrawing of an unjust aire or otherwise with an excelling injury of cold and being before weakened do easily suffer in the proper functions of their offices and digestions to wit that they do make manifest degenerate products as the cause of the malady bred in the same place but not defluxing thither from elswhere Although in the mean time those strange products have nothing common with the four supposed Humours and much lesse do they convince of a future flowing down of these The falshood whereof notwithstanding is of so great moment that the position of the asserted Humours cannot but include a dullnesse and unconsiderateness of the Schools in their own principles of healing with a most destructive abuse unto mortals of necessity Because that from thence the art of healing adisease health the necessity of life and at length of death do follow The which therefore I in this place for the benefit of my decieved neighbours will the second time more cleely explain But at first I will retake the position of the Schools wherein they feign the blood to be composed of four diverse and con-nexed Humours For we see after the contusion or bruising of a member first a swelling followes which presently for the most part looks red and afterward is changed of an Azure colour straightway after it looks black and blew afterwards it is black and last of all it waxeth yellow and is largly dispersed into Circles Therefore according to the Humourists that blood first passeth over into black Choler and this at length into yellow Choler And so the more liquid Humour should the more stubbornly resist and black Choler should be of a far more easie dispersing than yellow Choler And so black Choler should not be made of Yellow but plainly a after retrograde manner this should be changed into yellow Choler which is against the will of Galen who never knew black Choler to be returned into yellow But rather he writeth that all the blood doth by its alienations immediately and naturally contend into yellow Choler Hitherto hath the unheard of doctrine of Fevers in the Chap. of solutive medicines regard To wit where I have shewn that the blood of the veins is through its corruption diversly transchanged according to the poyson of the solutive medicines For truly that thing happeneth in bruises and blood being chased out of the veins and by degrees made destitute of the fellowship of life doth by little and little also hearken as well to the affects of the parts as to the various corruptions of the blood But not that the variety of dead excrements or unlikenesse of corruption can or ought to testifie a composition of the blood Yea truly the Schools suppose for the institutions of medicine that yellow Choler is one of the four constitutive Humours of the blood to wit a gawly and bitter one and therefore that that Yellow and bitterish Humour which is sometimes rejected by vomit is Choler it selfe yea Gaul it self and essentially co-incident in identity or samelinesse with the aforesaid Choler and original Gaul both which they contend to be daily framed out of the meats at the constitution of the blood To wit Choler for the composition of the blood but Gawl to be banished as an excrement under the Liver into its own sheath that it may from thence go forth through the filths of the paunch But that which is rejected by vomit is yellow bitter sometimes Leeky and of a cankered colour From hence indeed they prove that that very original Choler which swims on the blood that is let out of the veins ought will they nill they to be naturally bitter and Gauly and again on the other hand with a scantinesse of truth that the constitutive Choler of the blood ought of necessity to be bitter And moreover although that bitter excrement and which is rejected by vomit doth altogether differ from the Choler left in the blood after its separation from thence by reason as they say of its abundance excesse and meernesse attained in seperating yet in the essential and actual truth of the thing they will have it to be the same to wit as well that which is rejected by vomit and that which is as yet left for the composition and requisite integrity of the blood as that third which redounding from the daily food is brought unto the little bag of the Gaul and from thence they say to be carried forth for the tinging of the excrements as well of the belly as bladder The which to wit they seriously affirm to be one and the same Choler and meer single yellow Choler and Choler I say to be one only Humour in its root of the four constitutive
Chymistry to be the Chamber-maid and emulating Ape and now and then the Mistriss of nature do subject the whole of nature unto Chymical speculation Therefore the second degree in nature may be heat as is that of water not yet frozen The third is where it is remisly cold even as Well water Otherwise absolute heat is deceived at our touching which is luke-warm and it is thought to be cold whatsoever doth heat lesse than it self And seeing the touching is more or lesse hot it makes and unconstant token or signification of heat At length a fourth degree is that of a gentle luke-warmth The fifth is now luke-warm The sixth is ours The seaventh is now Feverish The eighth is of a May Sun The ninth is distillatory and that which now overcomes the touching A tenth distilleth with boyling up The eleventh sublimes Sulphur and dry spirits A twelfth doth melt and sublime the fire-stone The thirteenth is in a somewhat brown fierynesse The fourteenth is a bright burning fierynesse The fifteenth Lastly is the ultimate vigour of the Bellows and Reverbery Lastly Although heat and cold are real qualities and do undergo degrees yet moisture and drinesse are not to be considered but in their own Concrete or composed body and therefore neither do they constitute qualitative degrees but only quantitative ones Because moisture in one only drop is as deeply moist in dry white earth as in its own Element because moist and dry do co-mingle themselves in their root neither do they mutually enter and pierce each other And therefore neither do they mutually dispose of and affect each other formally For those kind of appropriations do agree to seeds but not to Elements Therefore moisture and driness do not admit of degrees neither therefore do they change as neither do they alter each other Because properly they are not qualities in the abstract but qualified bodies themselves But heat and cold do mutually pierce each other throughout their least parts and do break and graduate each other And therefore it is no wonder that the Schools have remained so dumb in the degrees of moisture and drinesse For to the air that there is a moisture heightned unto eight degrees but to the water that the same is remiss or temperate to wit to the fourth degree Lastly That driness is heightned in the earth to eight but remiss in the fire unto four degrees But these trifles of Complexions as well in Elements as in Bodies which they have hitherto believed to be mixt of the Elements have fell to dung being on every side already sore shaken by a manifold necessity of going to ruine CHAP. XXVIII The threefold Digestion of the Schools 1. The generall scope of this Book 2. The first digestion in the stomack 3. The first Region of the Body 4. Two things are to be admired in this work 5. Another digestion and second region 6. The third digestion 7. The last Region of the Body 8. The forgetfulnesse of the Schools 9. The state of Growth IT is not enough to have shewn that there are not four Elements in nature as neither the material mixtures of them and Complexions and Strifes resulting from thence Lastly Not their Congresses or Combates embraces of humors feigned from thence and the madness of these But that contrarieties sprung from thence and the abounding of humors in the Body are the meer dreams of the Gentiles brought into Medicine and even till now adored by the Schools Neither is it enough that I have shewn elsewhere that the three-first things are to be banished from the rank of diseases and cures Likewise to have refuted the causality of the Stars in healing also to have hissed out Winds to have rejected the Consumptions of radical moisture as vain terrours Last of all to have expulsed Catarrhs and the hard and new invention of Tartarous humors and so to have shewn that a disease as well in the general as in the particular hath hitherto lain hid from the Schools and consequently that mortall men do languish under a conjectural Art as yet fundamentally unknown unless I shall even discover the proper causes of Diseases And seeing the causes of the most inward enemies are for the most part intimate or most inward I will before all things propose a history of the functions or offices but after that done I will demonstrate some principles of nature necessary to be known hitherto unheard of The Schools affirm That the meat and drink are by the force of heat transchanged in the stomack into a liquor the which by reason of its likeness to Barley Cream they have called Chyle But they say That afterward this Chyle is by the veins inserted in and accompanying the stomack and whole guidance of the Bowels therefore being annexed by the mediating Mesentery which in the room of a third Coat doth cloath encompasse and involve the Bowels by little and little sucked forward and drawn inward But that the more grosse remaning part is left in the Bowels as it were unprofitable dross to be expelled thorow the Fundament Indeed this first coction they have called the first of the three digestions And so that the first Region of the Body begins from the mouth but to be terminated in one part in the fundament but in the other part in the hollow of the Liver Two things sufficiently admirable do concur herein To wit that in a few houres hard meat is resolved into juyce and that the veins are terminated into the bowels by their utmost mouths that by these I say they suck thorow as much Liquor every day as is cast in and made But that they do not suck to them any thing of a blast more subtile than that Cream yet the bowels are not found porous or holie in life more than in death Nevertheless the whole Chyle passeth thorow the veins of the Mesentery into the Liver Wherein they say the whey of the venal bloud is again seperated for Urine which passeth thorow to the Reins but they will have the more corpulent Cream to be changed in the Liver into venal bloud For in the first digestion that which is more hard and thick is excluded But in the other the thick is retained the transparent part being secluded Therefore the second Region and Shop of the Body begins from the very Body of the Liver and is terminated in the ultimate branches of the hollow vein And then in the third place the bloud falling down out of the veins and being snatched into the nourishment of the solid parts is by degrees perfected and transchanged into a humour which they call secondary And that they divide into four degrees of affinity before it being truly informed be admitted into the solidity of the sound parts Therefore in this alimentary humour is bestowed the labour of the third and highest digestion And therefore they call this last shop of the Body the habit of the Body and do forget the Bowels The which indeed do also
ibid How the Antients remedies may profit though not cure the stone 708 Why an expulsion of the stone is not to be intended 709 The quality of a remedy resolving the stone 710 56 Why stones are sometimes white 248 28 Whence a three-fold stone is made 249 3 Of the Stone 828 The flux of seeds for a stone 829 706 20 After what manner a man is made a stone 833 Of the Coagulum and Runnet of the stone by handicraft operation 840 Salt profitable in the stone 843 Of the occasion of the stone 857 Of the womb of the stone 866 Its Scituation 867 The pain of the stone from a contracture 86 Of the intention to cure the stone 701 15 874 Its cure 878 879 With testimonies thereof ibid. Of the manner of ministring a remedy for the stone 883 Of the stone that maketh gold its projection 674 58 751 807 The stone that maketh gold hath not the blessings of the tree of life 807 Sulphur only resists a fermental poyson 1158 In Sulphur is the life and death of bodies 66 14 Sulphur boiled in Linseed oyl 427 70 In oyl of Turpentine 515 The whole band of diseases hearken to some Sulphurs 577 260 39 The Sulphur of Copper hot stupefactive yet sweeter then honey 304 39 How floures of Sulphur profit those that have a Cough 309 94 Sulphur commended against the Plague 1154 Of the Gas of Sulphur 1155 The Sun scorcheth without pain 72 14 Is hot 74 23 139 41 794 The gifts of the Almighty are placed in the Sun 796 Sugar hurtful in most diseases 462 30 Loaf-Sugar not so good as the common 467 57 Swooning from the Stomack 302 303 27 What that Sweat is that accompanies death and Swoonings 42 What the Synovia is 842 389 20 Of Sympathetical Mediums 616 The cause of Sympathy 775 68 Of the Sympathy and Antipathy of things 1114 T. TAst in the midriff 909 Tartar its distillation 412 68 427 68 183 39 Why salt of Tartar dissolves crude Tartar 234 19 How Tartar is made 233 No disease ariseth from Tartar 235 1 Tartar not in foods 241 8 Tartar afâ—â—â— digestion in the stomach ceaseth to be a Tartar 242 243 Tartar not in drinks 250 7 Of the Tartar of the blood 1103 Of the original of the Tarantual 1509 The poyson of the Tarantula 787 148 What thirst is and whence 471 8 Thorn in the flesh how cured 521 Of thunder 90 17 A preservation against its effects on Beer c. 91 21 The seat of the Timpany and by what it is made 520 Why Tin is lighter than other Metals 107 20 The Toad commended against the Plague 1149 How prepared for that use 1150 How it kils the Ferment of the Plague 1151 How quickly he dies with fear Ibid. The Toad given by God as a Remedy for the poor against the Plague 1152 The bone of a Toad cures the tooth ach Tooth-ach whence caused 438. 30 247 Of the original of the tooth-stone 246 Of the flourishing and decaying of teeth 247 25 How the Transmutation of bodies is effected 115. 23 The tree of good and evil why forbidden 656 664 665 666 680 Of the tree of life 745 753 754 755 Tree of life what qualities it ought to have 808 The Cedar tree doth signifie the tree of life in this world 810 Of the preparation of the Cedar tree 811 V. VAlerian good against Inchantments 605 All Vegetables not woody contain a winie spirit 413. 73 Their Archeus hath no anatomical affinity with man 458 5 Their whole property from their seed and not from the heaven Ibid. 7 Their degrees whence different 146 88 Why vegetables unprofitable to the sick 578 Vervain commended 605 Venal blood wholly turned into nourishment 257 13 Venal blood never putrifies in its place 941 The natural endowment of the veins 942 An example Ibid. Vesicatories more hurtful then Phlebotomy 968 Vital spirit is salt 195. 19 733 734 Made of Arterial blood 196 24 732 By the ferment of the heart 733 Actuated by a vital light 734 The virgin earth 689 The Author instructed by visions 22 42 His vision of the soul 726 A vision of a Layick concerning the Lues venerea 1904 The spirit of vitriol reduced into an Alum by its dissolution of Mercury 473. 21 The dignity of the sulphur of venus and the nativity of vitriol 889 The best vitriol where to be had 891. 695 15 How vitriol may be made Ibid. The preparation of the Sulphur of vitriol 339. 9 Unguents how applicable 47 58 Ulcers their principal vice where seated 〈◊〉 18 21 23 Of the Difference of Ulcers 321. 29 The cure of Ulcers 322. 31 323 35 Volatile things fixed by fixed things  Volatiolation caused by ferments 117. 33 To provoke Urine in lingring fevers 465. 46 VVhat true provokers are 473. 19 476 31 Urinary salt made by the kidnyes 473. 19 Observations on distilled urine 847 Of the various actions of the spirit of urine 864 Urine-vessels not enlarged by drink but by the stone 708. 41 42 Urine not an excrement of the Kidneys 257 11 Of the division of vrines 1051. 1 Of the errours in the circle of urine 1052. 4 What the circle in the urine is demonstrated 1052. 5 What the yellownesse in urine may signifie 1053. 9 Watery urines after yellow ones signifie dotages 1054 VVhat a troubled urine signifies 1056. 26 VVhat the litle cloud in the urine may signifie 1054. 20 Of the several sediments of urine 1056 Examinations of urine by weight Ibid W. WArts how cured 141 55 154 VVater the material cause of things 32. 31 105 3. Proved so by an experiment 48. 11 109 30 Likened to the internal Mercury of Metals 65. 8 Never radically conjoyned with the earth 10 c. The parts of the water 71 8 410 54 What its unrestable appointment is 74. 28 Easily putrefiable under the Equinoctial 116 30 All bodies thereinto reducible 116. 33 The great use of that which comes from the Quellem 117 33 Water doth not always fal in a circular Figure 684. 50 When waters loose their life 689. 9 Waters the womb of seeds 693. 1 Why some waters hurt those that have the stone 251 Wheat changed into mice c. 113. 9 Winds whence generated 730 18 80 14 771 59 What the wind is 78 4 The vanity of the Schools defining it 85. 23 Violent ones how allayed 79. 13 Remedies for windinesse 4â—0 28 What causeth it 422. 41 Only in defective persons 424. 54 Some wind in the Ilcon c. Natural and necessary c. 428. 76 Spirit of Wine how reducible into water 69 27 105 9 106 11 VVines hurt by keeping in their Gas 107. 16 Wines profitable to our natures 966 Spirit of wine passeth into the Arteries without digestion 194. 12 731 Cold preserveth wines 232 VVhy wines wax soure 234 15 21 How wines become troubled 773 62 The labor of wisdome 184. 45 Of witches and witchcraft 568 The Devil how concerned therein 569. 1
Of the power of witches 779. 86 Of the nature and extent thereof 780 How a witch may be bound up in the heart of a horse 782 109 110 Witchcraft Simpathy and Magnetism do differ 759. 1 VVomen why monthly purged 405 24 VVomen are subject to double disieases 609 358. 17 VVomen consume not so much Blood as men 740 Yet they make more Ibid. VVhy they have so many conceits when with child 306 50 VVomb its overslowings cured by odorus ointments 114. 17 Remedy for a woman in travel 306. 46 VVomb a peculiar monarchy 575 A Twofold monarchy of a woman 609. 15 VVomb governs its self Ibid. 334. 43 VVomb brings forth an alterative Blas Ibid. Disseases of the womb differ from products 610. 19 The progresse of the wombs defects 612. 358 Its cure 612. 325 48 Sugar stirs up the sleeping fury of the womb 612 Wherein the fruitfulness of the womb consists 630 Where the womb of the urine beginneth 209 23 Womb warreth under its own banners 306. 52 Of the force of Imagination in women with Child 1117. 1118 The monarchy of the womb distingisheth a woman from a man 335. 48 In words herbs and stones there is great vertue 575 Silk-worms figure out a shadow of the Resurrection 684. 94 VVounds asswaged by odours c. 114 17 Hurt by the Moon-beams 141. 55 Z. ZEnexton against the plague 1144 Of the uselessness of some Zenextons 1145 Pretious stones not true Zenextons 1146 Amber a Zenexton and how so made Ibid. The qualities a Zenexton ought to have 1148 1149. Toad a Zenexton Ibid How the Toad is prepared for a Zenexton 1150 VVhy he is a true Zenexton 1152 A Poetical Soliloquie of the Translatour Harmonizing and Sympathizing with the Author's Genius WHen first my Friend did ask me to translate Van Helmonts Works wrapt up in hidden state Of Roman dialect that 't was a Book Of Med'cine and Phylosophy I took It in good part enough and did not doubt But to perform what I should set about By Gods asistance for I willing stood Much pains to take about a publick good I forth with entred on it and did see More than my friend thereof could tel to me For why since something was begot within My inward parts which loved truth but sin And selfish errour hated I began To feel and love the spirit of the man Whom I perceived like a gratious Son To build his knowledg on the Corner Stone And out of self to sink in humble wise As his Confession in me testifies The light of understanding was his guide From heath'nish Books and Authors he did slide And cast them of that so he might be free Singly to stand O Lord and wait on thee And in the pray'r of silence on thee call Because he knew thee to be All in All. And thou didst teach him that which will conduce To th' profit of his Neighbour be of use Both unto soul and body as inclin'd To read with lowly and impartial mind But as for lofty and and self-seeking ones Thou scatter wilt their wisdom wealth and bones Because thou art not honour'd in a lye Whether of Nature or Divinity But in the truth of knowledge of thy Life And of thy wondrous works which men of strife And alienated can no whit attain Till from the fall they do return again Helmont that thou returned'st I believe Thy testimony of it thou dost give When by the light thou saist entring thy dore Thou changed wast from what thou wert before And cause thou suffredst by a wicked sort For being good and once wast poyson'd for 't That 't was unjustly I am doubting past ' Cause th' Enemies conscience prickt him at the last And truely'n many places of thy Ream Words slow forth from thee like a silver stream And so that I at sundry times have found Sweet op'nings from the un'ty in the ground But did thy life in words alone consist Or art thou to be enrowl'd among the list Of Stoical Notionists which only spend Their time in contemplation and so end Their days or were good actions wrought by thee Which as the fruits discover do the tree Did shew that healing virtue forth did start From thy fire-furnace as love from thy hart If not how is it that thou dost us tel Thou ceased'st not Annually to heal Some Myriades or ten thousands yed Thy medicines were not diminished Or that thou wert so tender of the poor What if I say that bagd from door to door That thou retiredly didst live at home And cure them out of Charity not roâ—â— And gape for gain for visits as do most Physitians who unto rich houses post Floating about even as in a floud Of poysoned purged filths and venal blood And so the peoples wealth health life do soaâ— Through the sâ—ay viâ—ard of a Doctors cloak But Helmonts hand-pen asit plain appears Their false-paint coverings a funder tears In room whereof such Practicâ— Theory It doth insert that they as standers by Like Bibels Merchants will ven weâ—p and waâ—â— When they shall see their trade begin to fail And upright Artists held up by the â—an Of him who owns the good Samaritan Yet such School-Doctors shall not thus relent Whom Grace and goodnesse shall move to repent This is not utter'd out of spleen but pity Unto the sick in Country and in City No just cause given by these words to hate But to be owned by the Magistrate And I my self in former silly times Through School-tradition and Galenick lines Have wrong'd my body weaken'd my nature Clipping my vitals in their strength and Stature And though through Grace to soul and body to T' was turned to good yet that 's no thank to you Help Chymists help to pul their Babel down Builtby the pride of Academicks Gown Let Theophrastus Azoth Helmonts Lore Erect an Engine such as ne're before Hark Chymists hark attend Baptista's law He speaks to h's Sons as th' Lyon by the Paw And why as th' eye is opened to look May y' not discern Hercules by his foot Be it sufficient that he gives a tast Least pretious peat is he unto swine should east Be 't no dishonour to the Ghymick School That some mistakes thereof he doth controâ—â— Rather a praise unto the Masters eye Houshold disorders for to rectifie Strike Chymists strike strike fire out of your 〈◊〉 And force the fire unto the highest stint Of a Reverb'ratory such a heat As Galen back out of the field may beat And fetch th' Archeal Crasis Seminum To keep the field gainst a Rololleum Srrive not not by reason if you 'd win the day Pâ—ice your Athanar as he another way Aime not at lucre in what ye undertake Your motive love the spirit your guider make That day to day in you the Word may preach And night to night unto you knowledge teach That so Elias th' Artist if he come Ye as prepar'd may bid him welcome home And all well-wishers unto Science true Unto