Selected quad for the lemma: nature_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
nature_n	cold_a	hot_a	moist_a	5,424	5	10.2024	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A45664	An exact enquiry into, and cure of the acute diseases of infants by Walter Harris ; Englished by W.C. M.S., with a preface in vindication of the work.; De morbis acutis infantum. English	Harris, Walter, 1647-1732.; Cockburn, W. (William), 1669-1739.	1693 (1693)	Wing H883; ESTC R21209	53,865	168

Humours carried upward do affect the thin and sensible Membranes of the Nostrils either of young or old in Acute or Chronick Diseases The afore-mentioned Gripes do continually produce watching disquiet and moaning which the Nurse doth as often endeavour to allay by giving it her Breast that there may be some short delay or Truce struck up for her troublesome business and employ But if the Nurse be oppressed with Poverty at home and therefore be sometimes forced to leave her Infant discharging his Complaints in the senseless Air or being merely mercenary as most ordinarily she is and not compassionating her weeping Infant it is frequently troubled with some one kind of rupture for many years Moreover its Milk or Food while these Pains do continue never duly digesting but turning Acid is posseted so by little and little it becometh Feverish his drougth is intended his Joynts turn flaccid and so the tender Infant groweth daily weak and infirm Upon the close of all this sickness Convulsive motions and Spasms do seize upon the Members of the Feeble Infant and when there is no more force and strength in their Nerves for actuating the Muscles of the Heart and protruding the Blood by the Laws of Circulation into the Arteries doth cast up the White of its Eyes to the Heavens the proper Seat of unviolated Innocency and endeth untimely its short life before it hath understood the miseries of living If they become sick about the time of their breeding Teeth they are affected with a great many of the foregoing Symptoms and Thrushes Ulcers of the Mouth of a firy hotness a sort of white Scurf which do often begin immediately after their Birth and before the growing of their Teeth though now and then later yet about this time do most prevail and do sometimes so blister their Mouth that being overspread and every where Ulcerated it cannot let in the beloved Breasts themselves nor a Spoon without the greatest trouble and aversation Further the Mouths of Infants are very often so hurt and wounded with Thrushes that they cannot weep nor let Tears fall from their Eyes for some days altho' they be tormented with exceeding tenderness and intense heat of Mouth with a great many other sicknesses that are the ordinary Attendants of Fevers And therefore I account that change from their being dumb unto their echoing the House with Cries a very good sign Boys of greater Age tainted with Feverish Symptoms do for the most part complain of their head which pain is no Disease of it self but sympathetick and derived from the Stomach and lower parts of the Body That all these and the like Symptoms do immediately proceed from the posseting and thickness of their Food especially being greater than can be at all agreeable with the Constitution and Nature of Infants whose Canals and Passages should necessarily be most fluid and that this posseting is oftner produced from some degrees of Acidity than any other cause is most evident from our Senses themselves and the way of Cure which is excellently effectuated by such things as obtund Acidity and deoppilate or dissolve Coagulations The frequent Vomiting of that thick Gelly and that viscid and coagulated Phlegm somewhat green when the sickness has advanced and their breath which hath a very sour smell are things most evident to our senses That the green Colour of their Excrements is meerly from Acidity mixed with Bile will be most evident to any who take pleasure in changing of colours into green with Vinegar and Acid Spirits Moreover the smell of their green Excrements being always designed Acid by the very Nurses doth clearly demonstrate the same The excessive Gripes and pains in their Belly and Paleness of Face do confirm the abundance of Acidity for so soon as they are troubled with these Pains they turn pale though never so high colour'd before they were affected with this Distemper except that sometimes their Cheeks are possessed with a pleasant blush which doth easily evanish into the wonted paleness En passant I shall observe that I do by no means hunt or sue for the honour if there be any such of being the Author of a new Hypothesis neither think I my self obliged if I have either excogitated or established one to collect all sorts of arguments as is customary though against my inclination for gaining credit to the foresaid Hypothesis Being the chief thing in Medicine and which can only be serviceable to the health of mankind is such a knowledge of Diseases as is both founded upon and confirmed by Experience and Practice For the other ways of explaining Phenomena's however learn'd and subtile they may be thought do rather make a shew of an acute Sophister or Philosopher improperly so called or very often of a most ready wit but shall never proclaim him a truely skilled Physician and a Man excelling in his own Trade For all these gay speculations which are so admir●d as Poetical Flashes by the frisking Spirits of young Men are seldom or never to be found but in the Brain and Fancy of their Inventor and are never so often contrived as by those who are the most unsuccessful Practitioners But the solid and genuine Ideas of Diseases are never to be acquired or their truth justly to be judged or approved of but by practice it self I know how obnoxious and perhaps not undeservedly this my Notion of an Acid which I suppose to prevail in the most remarkable Diseases of Children is to the Censure of diligent considerers Yet neither shall I too stifly debate whether all the signs of Acidity which subtile Men free of business and given to quibling an strife can remember do quadrate and exactly agree with that Notion of an Acid which I maintain does so much abound in the Stomachs of Infants My expectation shall be a abundantly satisfied albeit take no great pains in polishing and displaying that Notion if I shall be so happy as at length to demonstrate a more effectual and a more certain Method of Curing than hath been hitherto in use and which I freely leave to the determination of such as shall try the truth of my assertions Nevertheless I shall not pass over what Hippocrates without all peradventure chief of all Physicians doth declare at large in his book concerning the old Medicine about the Causes of Diseases that viz. he may more throughly demonstrate that all Diseases have not their rise from the first but second Qualities His words then are these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. They for the most famous of the Old Physicians did not think that man was either injured with what is dry or moist hot or cold and that he had no want of any of those But they esteemed that most apt to injure which was most potent in its kind and was above the Constitution of Man so that Nature could not overcome it and this they endeavour'd to extirpate and remove But the thing that is sweetest is the most potent amongst

whose best Divertisement and only Antidote against Melancholy is hard labour and constant working whose Food is most slender and simple are seldomest essayed and proved with these depravations But above all such as are Hysterick with whom we may justly reckon a great part of your delicate Women who spend the most of their time in Dressing and Decking and do languish and decay with idleness whose lazy and torpid Blood waxeth Acid and Tart after the same manner that standing Waters do corrupt do most certainly Communicate to their Infants such Dispositions to Diseases with their first life Being an ill Raven as the Proverb is an ill Egg. Amongst the rest of the Creatures the innate goodness of the Kind is most surely derived upon their young partly because of their simple Dyet and partly but more especially because the Male sacredly observing the Laws of Nature never copulateth with his Female when his instinct however informed inditeth her teeming But Man whose lofty Reason hath taught him to despise the Brutes almost more salacious than a Buck-Goat not knowing how to restrain and bridle his Lust importuneth his Mate from her first Conceiving until the hour of Birth Hence it is that strong and Healthy Men do so frequently beget weak and valetudinary Children This is the Reason why Old Men having overpassed by the benign favour and help of Nature the Stage and Period of their immoderate Embraces do beget of their Decayed and Barren Seed more plump and healthy Children than the strongest and most keen Youth Thus having considered the procatarctick cause of their Diseases which do mostly depend upon the condition of the Parents whilst they are begotten especially of the Mother in the time of her Big Belly We will now come nigher and inquire into the more immediate Causes of their Maladies which may be reduced to these four Articles 1. To their catching Cold. 2. To the too thick Milk of the Nurse 3. To their over soon eating Fleshes And 4. To the mad and imprudent fondness of Mothers and many Nurses who do often permit their Infants to sip up Wine and other strong and Spirituous Liquors And 1. Cold especially from the night Air to which they are most subject doth very often make way for these Fevers with which Infants are so frequently affected Sith that they come naked from the Womb not being cloathed by Nature as all other creatures are Reason or rather Nature destitute of her own help doth instantly suggest the necessity of wrapping them up into warm Cloaths Moreover the mutability of the Air and the continual vicissitudes of Heat and Cold do plainly advertise us how great our care should be in the warding off its Injuries For the more tender and delicate the Temperament and Constitution of any even of the most adult is the more are they subject unto impresses and inconveniences from the Air. But the strength and constitution of Infants are of all the most tender and infirm and unless there be great care taken for warm and convenient not fine splendid and sumptuous Cloaths especially for such as are descended of honest Parents they cannot long eschew these Diseases which are the ordinary attendants and consequents of night Air. Yea an exact care for convenient Apparel whatever some strong men may deny is so absolutely neessary for every age that ordinarily the most weak and valetudinary People for as much as I could ever observe do live longer than the most robust and strong Men which can be attributed to nothing else than the great care of the one and supine negligence of the other for convenient and warm Cloathing 2. The too thick Milk of the Nurse For if she be a lover of Wine or any other strong and spirituous Liquors her Milk is so warm'd and on a sudden inflamed that fire it self only passeth her Breasts for her sucking Infant but if she more wantonly entertain the untimely embraces of her Husband her monthly Visits are renewed by their Coppulating and so her Milk Corrupteth and groweth soure and the matter for the Milk being otherwise diverted the Milk it self doth gradually diminish and the lean Child for some time troubled with unconvenient Food is so often killed Lastly If she be hysterick h. e. of a more tender and delicate Constitution however Chaste and sober she may be yet her Milk doth degenerate and Naturally turneth thick In how great danger then are Sucking Infants upon how Inconstant and Slippery a plan doth the Health of these Innocent Children Sist It 's this and some other Causes which I shall just now recount that are the frequent occasions why we hear so often the sound of the Passing Bells of the Villages about London for some one Child that is undeservedly Atoning and Expiating the faults and mistakes of its Nurse and now ending it● scarce well begun Life having met with some unchast Intemperate or froward and dishonest Nurse But also from the foregoing Causes doth depend a remark which a Divine of very good Credit and intire Fame Rector of the Parish of Haies twelve miles from London did make when he told me with great Grief how his Parish which is very large and of great extent well Peopled and seated in a most pleasant and wholsom Air was upon his coming to that place filled with Sucking Infants yet in the space of one year he was assistant at the burying of them all if you do except two and his own only Son whom being yet very weak he did not unadvisedly commit unto my Care from his Birth Yea he was witness that same Year to the Interring of the same Number which had been twice supplyed in a City perhaps amongst the greatest in the World yet brought to an untimely end by the fault of the Mercenary Nurses Moreover the thickness of Milk whatever be its cause cannot but produce a great many inconveniences of sundry kinds being that the Bodies of Infants should of all be the most fluid and these smallest conduits which are ordained for transmitting of the Chyle should always be kept open and lastly being that this most unnatural thickness of Food is most opposite to that most fluid Constitution of Infants and doth give occasion to all kinds of Obstructions in the first Passages 3. To their over soon eating if not more properly devouring and swallowing down of fleshes For it 's most admirable that Mothers are not in a fear of killing their Infants with so disagreeing and improper Food whom though they love so excessively that they seem mad in that passion For who could seriously think that flesh so solid and compact a substance can be at all agreeable with these tender Infants who as yet have got no teeth at least not strong and firm enough for the chewing of fleshes What man of the least judgment can assert the Riot and excess of the most manly and robust Age any way convenient with one that is so tender and most simple and whose strength is